How well do you know yourself? What are your natural strengths? When I was 24 years old I had one of those “Aha” moments when the penny dropped and I realised who I was, what my natural strengths were and only then did I start to feel comfortable in my own shoes.
I had spent 4 years at University studying Pharmacy. I had spent a lot of that time surrounded by my fellow students who I felt were different to me. They studied all the time, they were much quieter than me and their passion seemed to be the detail and the research. Why was I not like them? Was I on the wrong course? Would I be a failure at being a Pharmacist? Why did I want to be a Pharmacist?
It wasn’t until I was fortunate enough to experience Insights Discovery, a self-awareness tool that produced a whole booklet on my strengths, my communication preferences, my personal style, how I interact with others, how I make decisions, my blind spots, how I like to be managed amongst other rather interesting insights, that I realised who I was and why I had felt this way.
I learned that my strengths were building relationships with others……….and these strengths were the opposite of a lot of my fellow students’ strengths. They were brilliant at the detail, the research, working on their own – everything that I was not!
The penny had dropped and from that day onwards I realised that finding a career that played to my natural strengths was so important.
- What have been your “Aha” moments in your career so far?
- What are your strengths?
I look forward to hearing your own experiences around this.
Regardless of the tool that you use to facilitate this learning (and there are many!) it is the learning which is SOOOO valuable. The corner stone to Emotional Intelligence is self awareness and how much happier would we be if we were to play to our strengths 80% of the time rather than be “working on our weaknesses”!