Prepare to Succeed by Taking an Inventory of Your Skills (By Tammi Brannan)

This week I'm doing a workshop that has the same title as this article. In the workshop, I will help people identify 30 of their skills and then brainstorm ways they can apply those skills at home and at work.

Why do I need to do this? Because if you were to ask the average American what their skills were, he or she would most likely be able to count them on less than one hand. Sadly, some would even shake their heads, toe the ground and say that they had none. What would you say?

ARGH! This saddens me like nothing else! Each one of us was given the same amount of skills, but unique to us. Without the use of these skills, we will never fulfill our unique potential.

In this workshop, I will use the analogy of a contractor who mistakenly believes the only tools he has are in his tool belt. In the back of his truck, however are a ton more... but he has either forgotten that he had them or never knew. Imagine the contractor trying to use a hammer when he should be using a wrench. He has a wrench in the back of his truck, but it's so buried and rusted from lack of use that he's completely forgotten all about it. This will lead to frustration and eventual demise for both the contractor and the project... not to mention the poor hammer!

This is just like us... we approach our jobs with the few skills we admit we have, and inevitably run into roadblocks, because our jobs require more of us than we think we have. This continual lack of success makes us think less of ourselves and verifies our opinion that we have little to give. Do you feel the same?

Instead of looking to see if we have more tools in the back of our own truck, like the contractor, we try to emulate those around us who are successful, thinking that they must have received more skills than we did, but they haven't!

If you want to achieve greater success in your career, you must become aware of your skills. You have just as many as the next dude, promise. You know how hard it is to walk in someone else's shoes, so don't try to achieve success with someone else's skills. It will not work.

Taking inventory of your skills is fun and easy! Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What do you receive compliments on?

• When do people thank you?

• When do you notice that you can do something and another cannot... or it takes them longer with less successful results?

The answers to these questions are indicators of your skills. There is a lot more digging to do here, but this is a start!

Remember... everything you find needs to make its way into your tool belt as you do your job day in and day out. Without the application of your research, you will never experience the success you were meant to achieve.

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