Your Talents and Skills

The next key ele­ment in design­ing an authen­tic life is to explore the tal­ents and skills that you have devel­oped over the years, and to iden­tify the tal­ents and skills that you would like to develop over the next few years.

There is a bit of con­tro­versy sur­round­ing tal­ents and skills. On the one hand there are those who believe that we are born with nat­ural tal­ents and skills, and these are what we should be iden­ti­fy­ing and design­ing our authen­tic life around.

Sup­port­ers of this belief advo­cate that when indi­vid­u­als uncover their nat­ural skills and tal­ents then they should par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties that they are authen­ti­cally pas­sion­ate about. One way to know if the tal­ent or skill is nat­ural is to explore the activ­i­ties that you used to enjoy as a child.  If you still enjoy doing these activ­i­ties, then the skills and tal­ents asso­ci­ated with these activ­i­ties are natural.

The prob­lem I find with this belief is that, as a child, I didn’t nec­es­sar­ily par­tic­i­pate in many activ­i­ties. To this day there are still activ­i­ties that I am drawn to but that I have no expe­ri­ence with, like sail­ing or horse­back rid­ing. These are the activ­i­ties that I will learn the skills for and, hope­fully, develop some tal­ent for over the next few years.

I tend to sub­scribe to the belief that tal­ents and skills can be learned and devel­oped as we age and have access to more expe­ri­ences. My pre­ferred method in deal­ing with my tal­ents and skills is to be aware of what activ­i­ties draw my atten­tion and then try them out. I con­stantly mon­i­tor what activ­i­ties, etc., draw my atten­tion when I am out and about, when I am vis­it­ing with friends, when I am watch­ing TV, or read­ing mag­a­zines, or wan­der­ing through book stores, etc. By mak­ing a list of these activ­i­ties, etc., I can explore my inter­est in them. If I can main­tain a fairly high level of inter­est for more than a fleet­ing sec­ond — well, maybe a month or two — then I decide whether I want to develop my skills in that area.

Maybe my inter­est is drawn and held by nat­ural tal­ents, I don’t know. What I do know is that for me, my inter­est needs to be there first oth­er­wise I won’t make the effort to develop the skill.

Cre­at­ing a list of our tal­ents and skills doesn’t always pro­vide us with insight into activ­i­ties that that we would want to include in our authen­tic lives or develop into a busi­ness. Most peo­ple have skills and tal­ents that they don’t nec­es­sar­ily want to use on a reg­u­lar basis. For exam­ple, I might be have a great tal­ent for wash­ing dishes, or trap­ping dust bun­nies, or catch­ing and remov­ing spi­ders from the liv­in­groom,  but I wouldn’t want to spend my life doing any of those.

How do you know which tal­ents and skills are ones you should be invest­ing your time and effort into?

One exer­cise you can do is to the following:

• make a list of every thing you have done in the past that you have really enjoyed doing. Things that have made time dis­ap­pear, where you lose track of the time, of your where­abouts, etc, while you are doing this activ­ity. These are tal­ents and skills that you already know you have.
• make another list of every­thing you have always wanted to do, or try, but have not yet man­aged to do so. You know the kinds of things — the “If I knew I could not fail I would .….….….….….….….” activ­i­ties. Go to the local book store to see what kinds of how-to books draw your atten­tion. Look through the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion classes offered in your area. Add any­thing and every­thing that you can think of that attracts your atten­tion. Then elim­i­nate any­thing that is impos­si­ble to do (like time-travel, etc). From what is left on the list. make a short list of the top ten eas­i­est activ­i­ties you would like to try, and then try them. See if you like like them. Dis­card any activ­ity that you don’t like actu­ally doing. Keep going through your list of pos­si­bil­i­ties until you have nar­rowed it down to your top ten activities.
• com­bine the two lists above and see if any pat­terns emerge. Are there cer­tain types of things that you pre­fer over oth­ers (e.g. sports over crafts)?
• once you have iden­ti­fied pat­terns regard­ing the tal­ents and skills that you have a pref­er­ence for, iden­tify sev­eral activ­i­ties that use those tal­ents and skills and begin incor­po­rat­ing them into our life.
• if there are activ­i­ties that already have the tal­ents and skills for, then begin incor­po­rat­ing them into your cur­rent lifestyle.
• if there are activ­i­ties that you are keenly inter­ested in, but you haven’t yet devel­oped the skills and tal­ents for them, then begin devel­op­ing the skills and tal­ents for these activities.

This short video from Bar­bara Sher pro­vides her per­spec­tive on the con­nec­tion between our nat­ural tal­ents and par­tic­i­pat­ing in activ­i­ties that we really enjoy doing:

 

Bar­bara Sher Cre­at­ing Your New Life

 

 

Recent stud­ies have shown that tal­ents and skills in pretty much any­thing can be learned, regard­less of a person’s age - as long as there are no phys­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems that pre­vent the devel­op­ment of the spe­cific skill or tal­ent. Play­ing the piano, learn­ing a sec­ond lan­guage, becom­ing com­puter lit­er­ate, devel­op­ing an enter­prise, belly danc­ing — what­ever you have an inter­est in you can develop a skill or a tal­ent for. The only com­pro­mise that aging has is that it slows the speed at which tal­ents and skills can be learned and developed.

What skills and tal­ents do you have that you want to incor­po­rate into your Authen­tic Life? What skills and tal­ents would you like to develop so you can also incor­po­rate them into your Authen­tic Life?

The next post will explore the 5th Key Ele­ment, Life and Work Experiences.