Recognize your strengths - the biggest fallacy in life is that we've gained nothing that we can use, as we grow older.
Women, specifically seem to believe after the kids are grown up and gone, if they weren't involved in a career their skill-set is useless. When Jodi asked me last week about whether or not her skills as a writer, those ones she learned back in high school, were any good at this point in time, I said, "Don't you read now?"
Totally in awe of the fact that people did go to school 'way back when' but they're still LIVING now. How can that happen? Do they just use the skills they acquired in school and never learn anything new?
Most people learn something new every single day. Perhaps what they learn is useful, or perhaps not. But learning is an on-going lifetime process that you do all the time.
This morning, while talking to my daughter, I learned that she had gained incredible skills of research and investigation after our first experience with a tornado. The tornado didn't touch down, but she had been sent to a basement for some crazy reason and she wanted to know why, so she took a dive off the hard wood floors of the library into a book about weather and learned at the tender age of nine that tornadoes appear when changes in temperature take place at high altitudes. Before the tornado can touch down, it has to gain sufficient sucking power to shift the temperature down the funnel which moves the funnel downward.
Independent learning is something most of us do naturally. Every day.
The REALITY - in one way or another - you've overcome every obstacle that ever landed in your path. Every turn of the road, you've found a way to step over, climb, walk around or overcome the obstacles you've faced. What strengths have you gained from those experiences?
Take a moment and write those down. Perhaps you're tenacious, dedicated to survival, or perhaps you've learned to negotiate your way out of paper bags? One particularly brilliant young woman I've known for a lifetime, could literally sell snow to an Eskimo. She's an absolute WHIZ when it comes to sales. What is your strength? Write that down.
Here are a few things that might have motivated you to grow life long strengths:
1) Relocating to a different area.
If you and your family relocated, you most likely had to find new educational resource. Perhaps, during the move you had to find and provide transportation for your family, locate your new home in a new town.
2) Change jobs, or help your spouse or children find a job.
This kind of personal assistance will increase your ability to communicate and interact with others.
3) Negotiate through class work and schedules with your children.
Negotiation skills are top end in most any business. Don't negate those negotiating skills, they are really important.
So what are your personal strengths?
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