Reaching Your Goals - Part 3 of 4 (Your Unique Blend)

Your Unique Blend

Everyone has a unique blend of talents, skills, experiences and dreams. Your talents are innate to you. They are your natural building blocks that if understood and honed will become your strengths. These talents are those things that come easy for you, they are fun for you and when you’re using them you feel like you’re in the zone. You know when you’re not using your talents at work because you will not be happy and maybe even frustrated. You might feel awkward, like trying to write with your left hand if you’re right-handed. You’ll dread going into work or facing a specific task. But when you are using your talents, and turning them into strengths it will feel natural, people around you will recognize that you’re doing well, you’ll be enjoying your work.

The second thing that adds to who you are, are your skills. Unlike your talents your skills are learned behaviors. You may have a talent of being analytical, but you can learn various skills to make that talent a strength. For example if you love math, you might learn the skill of accounting, if you love helping people you might learn the skill of counseling, or if you have a passion for business you might learn entrepreneurial skills. Skills are learned behaviors that ideally would complement your talents. When someone with the talent of "analytical" knows what he or she desires to accomplish in life, they simply need to learn the appropriate skills necessary to turn that talent into a strength.

You have a unique life experience that adds to who you are. Your life experiences play an important roll in your unique blend because no one has the same set of life experiences. Even Siamese twins view life from a different perspective. Your experience is one of the things that sets you apart from others who have similar talents and skills. Your life experiences, negative or positive should serve as a key learning tool for you. One category of life experiences is education. Your education may be formal or informal. In fact part of your education may be learning from the life experiences of others.

Finally, you have dreams. Everyone has an aspiration of what they would like to accomplish with their lives. Some people have suppressed their dreams, but if you dig deep enough everyone has them. Even people who are in the “depths of despair” (as Anne of Green Gables would say), have dreams. In fact if you are suffering from depression I believe that part of the reason you’re depressed is because your dreams, your hopes and aspirations seem so far out of reach that you fear they are gone forever.

Clearly, these four things are not an exhaustive list of what makes up a human being. I realize that this description is not a clinical definition. It’s not intended to be. It is intended to be a simple, practical starting point for you as you begin your quest to turn your dreams into a reality. Here’s the point. You are a unique blend of several factors making you un-duplicatible and needed in this world. No one else has the exact same blend. Therefore no one else can replace you. You are unique and needed.

Everything you use today began as someone’s dream, and every inventor has been supported by others in his or her life. Your destiny may be to invent the next technological wonder, or to be the mom or dad who raises the boy or girl who finds the cure for AIDS, or be the friend who inspires the philanthropist to create the next Red Cross. My objective is to help you become the person you are meant to be so you can fulfill your destiny.