John Place online

Welcome to the fourth installment in our six part series on living with synergy. In this installment, we will discover the internal strengths you will use to express your life’s message.

If synergy is a new self-improvement concept to you, I recommend reading my introductory article on synergy, the follow up article on the synergy process, and my article on message discovery before proceeding.

Discover Your Strengths

The best way to communicate your message to the world is by leveraging your natural strengths. A gifted speaker could communicate his message using the spoken word; a gifted writer, the written word; a master artist, his art. In other words, once you have discovered your message, you should figure out which of your many talents will help spread it.

Skills Assessment

Take out a sheet of paper and list everything you are good at. The list doesn’t have to be pretty – it’s just a thought starter. The important thing to keep in mind as you perform your skills inventory is that every skill counts, whether it’s marketable or not. To get you started, I have included a list of categories to consider, along with examples of each:

• Cognitive Strengths: thinking, analyzing, problem solving, calculating, designing, planning, strategizing, comprehending, learning
• Communication Strengths: public speaking, private counseling, writing, persuading, listening, explaining
• Physical Strengths: speed, agility, strength, endurance
• Emotional Strengths: caring, nurturing, empathizing, supporting, loving, honoring, respecting, connecting, relating

Once you have listed your strengths, take a moment to consider which of them could help you communicate your message. Be very open minded and optimistic regarding the communicative powers of each skill, since the reality will become more clear on its own once we get to the job selection step, in the next article.

The Benefits and Limits of Skills

If you’ve been reading this series of articles, you know that my own personal message is an expression of my need to help people learn, grow, and achieve. I am utilizing several of my strengths to accomplish this, including writing (the articles), programming (the Web Site), and my natural empathy for people. It would be foolish and frustrating for me to attempt to accomplish my life mission using skills I do not have. In other words, before I can build something important, I must understand my tools.

Have you ever taken one of those tests designed to help you figure out what you want to be when you grow up? Those tests focus on skills and aptitudes, since there is an obvious connection between these and job success. These tests are based upon an assumption that you will enjoy your daily tasks if you are good at them.

But this all-too-common approach to job selection is backwards. Just because you are an excellent writer does not mean you will enjoy writing TPS Reports. Just because you’re a master communicator does not mean you will feel fulfilled by boring code-of-conduct seminars. And just because you are a superb visual artist does not mean you will enjoy designing company logos. For those of us who long for meaning in our daily activities, it’s not enough to be good at our jobs. We want our jobs to matter.

I spent 6 years of my life designing and building Web applications. I was good at my job. Performance evaluations exceeded expectations. In the six years I was there, my salary almost doubled, one of the fastest increases in the history of my office. My bosses loved me, and my co-workers respected me. I was able to perform well because there was a strong connection between my daily activities and my natural abilities. I was good at analysis, design, problem solving, syntax, and communication – skills I used every day.

But guess what? I hated the job. That’s right, I hated it. Going into the office felt like walking toward my death. It’s a strange sensation to hate something that treats you so well. I felt ashamed. Surely there must have been something wrong with me. My bank balance kept going up, but my happiness kept going down. I had no idea why. It was all very perplexing.

I finally realized that although it was a good job – a great job, in fact – it was the wrong job for me. I hated my job because there was no connection at all between my job responsibilities and my motivations. I am good at writing, but I derived no sense of purpose from writing whitepapers and best practices on the software development lifecycle. I am good at problem solving, analyzing, designing, and speaking, but I did not enjoy using these skills to build software applications. The only part of my job that I really enjoyed was mentoring and educating, which I didn’t get to do nearly enough.

When Using Your Skills Isn’t Enough

Once I came to the realization that this life is my one and only chance to make a difference, my attitude changed. Instead of wondering why I hated such a good job, I started wondering how I could have wasted so much time building a career I did not believe in. This is it, folks. You either do something important now, or you don’t do something important at all. Put up, or shut up. I chose the former.

I took some time to discover my message. I inventoried my skills, exactly as described above. I already knew what I was good at, but I wanted to take stock of which skills I enjoyed and which could be discarded. What I discovered was life changing, astounding. I discovered that I could advance my life’s mission using the very same skills that made me so successful as a software developer.

That’s really the wonderful thing about our natural propensities. Many of them can be used across jobs, fields, and industries. I now take great joy in using my strengths. I enjoy writing again. I enjoy coding too. In fact, I enjoy every last bit of it because I know I’m doing what I was meant to do.

Do you feel you are using your strengths to accomplish something important? If so, great! If not, carry on to the next article, where we will try to find you a better job.

You Are Reading an Article Series — Synergy, The Key to Greater Energy and Happiness:

1. Intro: Synergy, the Key to Greater Energy and Happiness
2. 4 Steps to a Fulfilling Life Mission
3. Discover Your Message — Synergy Step One
4. Discover Your Strengths — Synergy Step Two
5. Choose Your Medium — Synergy Step Three
6. Choose Your Environment — Synergy Step Four