Are You Maximizing What You Got?

 by: Beth Tabak

“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.” Saint Augustine

What you’ve got + What you need = What you want …. Right? Well… maybe or maybe not. We often strive to fill that gap between what we’ve got and what we want focusing our attention on weaknesses. In fact, I often have suggested this strategy myself in coaching sessions. Yet recently I have been investigating another point of view. Are we spending so much time and energy trying to get up to speed where we are lacking that we miss the opportunity to leverage and maximize the strengths, talents, and resources that we already have?

Even our brain seems to develop to our strengths and talents. In Now, Discover Your Strengths, a book based on the Gallup study of over 2 million people, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. the authors explain how the brain’s threads are woven. To summarize, they say that your “synapses create your talents”. The synapse is a connection between your brain cells, called neurons. Your brain grows quickly and by age 3 you have about a hundred billion neurons with fifteen thousand synaptic connections. The odd part is by your 16th birthday you have lost 1/2 of your connections. Don’t be concerned though, the authors explain “your smartness and your effectiveness depend on how well you capitalize on your strongest connections. Nature forces you to shut down billions of connections precisely so that you can be freed up to exploit the ones remaining.”

John Bruer describes in the book The Myth of the First Three Years, nature has developed three ways for you to learn as an adult. 1) Continue to strengthen your existing synaptic connections (as happens when you perfect a talent with relevant skills and knowledge), 2) keep losing more of your extraneous connections (as also happens when you focus on your talents and allow other connections to deteriorate), or 3) develop a few more synaptic connections (which expends the most energy). With regard to skills, the authors of Now, Discover Your Strengths suggest “If you learn a skill, it will help you get a little better, but it will not cover for a lack of talent. Instead, as you build your strengths, skills will actually prove most valuable when they are combined with genuine talent.”

So are you ready to get acquainted with your strengths? Here are a couple sources to help you with this:

The book Now, Discover Your Strengths mentioned above by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. offers the www.StrengthsFinder.com Profile to anyone who invests in the book. This profile helps you to identify your Top 5 Strengths plus the book itself contains great information.You can find this book on my website or just about any book store.

The VIA Signature Strengths Survey by Martin E.P. Seligman is available for free at www.authentichappiness.com along with a number of other assessments including one for children. This survey provides you with your top 5 signature themes.

You may be surprised by what shows up as your strengths even though it makes sense once you think about it. Life will begin to flow when you are using your strengths which is one reason why we don’t recognize them. To us our strengths seem like no big deal, or we think everyone thinks that way.

So I ask you:

Where are you wasting time on something that is not in the area of your top strengths and talents?

Are there tasks that can be delegated to someone who has the strength to do it exceptionally?

How can you set up your business and home so that the people involved are developing their strong points?

Does this mean you shouldn’t bother learning a new skill? Not at all. But if the new skill is in line with one of your strengths you will find it easier to leverage and maximize that skill which is built on a strength. Finally, how can you take what you’ve got and maximize it to make a positive impact in your life and the life of others?

Starting Now!

About The Author

Copyright 2004 © Beth A. Tabak, All rights reserved.

Beth Tabak is a Business & Life Coach, columnist, & owner of Starting Now. She coaches sole-preneurs & professionals to grow their business without limits while creating the life they keep thinking about. Home of the Business Unlimited Success Group, Leveraging the Connection, free classes, resources, goals report, & more visit www.startingnowcoaching.com.

startingnow@houston.rr.com

Source: High Quality Article Database – 365Articles.com

When my daughter received a gift certificate at KB Toys for
her birthday this month, she announced her intention to
spend it all on Barbie.

Never mind the fact that she already owns a Veterinarian
Barbie, Lifesaver Barbie, Prom Queen Barbie, two Barbie
Ballerinas and a Prince Ken… She’s got Barbie’s Beach
House, a Barbie Steering Wheel, two Barbie autos that each
seat four, a Barbie tape player, Barbie Hair and Makeup
Model, Barbie Nail Designer Software, and a big box full of
clothes. But Megan wants to have a *collection*, a
peculiarly human urge understood well by the Mattel Toy
Company, which comes up with all this stuff.

It’s too bad they don’t make a Work at Home Mom Barbie. If
they did, they could draw on the life of Ruth Handler for
inspiration. Handler, who passed away last week, is best
known as the inventor of the Barbie doll. She was also one
of the most successful female entrepreneurs of all time,
beginning in an era when women were expected to stay in the
kitchen and out of the boardroom.

Like many of us, Ruth’s career as an entrepreneur began by
accident. Money was tight when she married her husband,
Elliot. She was working as a secretary and he was studying
industrial design. He decided to use his skills to make some
housewares for their apartment. *She* decided that there was
a market for them. They operated their first business out of
their garage. Ruth handled the sales, which reached
$2 million within the first few years… and that was in
1945 dollars. Today that amount would equal ten times as
much!

Ruth and Elliot joined with another designer, Harold “Matt”
Mattson, to form the Mattel Company (named for Matt and
Elliot). They manufactured picture frames. Elliot
realized that he could take the wood scraps from the frames
and turn them into doll furniture. This side business proved
to be so successful that the company changed its focus to
toys.

The folks at Mattel credit Ruth with playing an integral
role in their success. Her natural talent as a marketer
helped the company turn a profit its very first year as a
toymaker. But her biggest was her ability to identify a
market void and fill it (“niche marketing,” which is what
the experts all tell us we should be doing.)

It was just such an instinct that led to the Barbie’s birth.
The 1950’s were an era when little girls played with baby
dolls — in fact, those were just about the only kind you
could buy. But Ruth noticed that her daughter, Barbara, was
fascinated with paper dolls representing adult and teenage
women. She would change their dresses and imagine how life
would be all grown up.

The male ad executives at the company were not impressed
with Ruth’s doll. Neither were the mostly male buyers who
saw her debut at the American Toy Show in 1959. But as Ruth
had guessed, little girls loved her – and 350,000 Barbies
were sold that very first year, which was a record. Mattel
introduced more dolls to the Barbie line over the next
several years, some of which were named after other Handler
family members, such as Ken — Ruth’s son — and Stacie,
Todd and Cheryl, who were named after the Handlers’
grandchildren.

All was going well until 1970, Ruth was diagnosed with
breast cancer. It was a difficult time, bad decisions were
made and the Handlers’ eventually left the successful
company they had founded. But Ruth not only survived her
bout with cancer; her experience inspired her next business
venture.

Ruth told the Los Angeles Times about her fruitless search
for natural-looking prosthetic breast. What was available at
the time was less than adequate. “I looked at the shapeless
glob that lay in the bottom of my brassiere and thought, ‘My
god, the people in this business are men who don’t have to
wear these,’ ” she told the Times. Once again, Ruth
discovered a niche to fill.

Ruth found a designer who created a new prosthetic to her
specifications. Made of liquid silicone and polyurethane, it
looked and felt natural. Her stroke of genius was her
realization that like shoes, it needed to be made up in
“lefts” and “rights.” Then Ruth assembled a sales team made
up of other breast cancer survivors, who demonstrated
her new product to department store buyers and helped train
their sales staffs on how to fit their customers. In 1991,
Ruth sold her company to a division of Kimberly-Clark and
retired.

“Women–and men too–can do almost anything they set their
mind to,” said Ruth. “You have to believe in what you want
to do and have the courage of your convictions.”

Good advice for us all. Rest in peace, Ruth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Figure Out the Pebble in Your Shoe
By BZ Riger-Hull, Certified Success Coach http://www.in-spiros.com

“By asking for the impossible, we obtain the best possible.” Italian saying

If you are serious about achieving a more meaningful life then you’ll need a new perspective for viewing your life and your career. The following exercise is a new method for going through your day and your week. It’s anew sense of being alive being responsible, being at choice, and being the architect in your life.

Tomorrow, you’ll be totally conscious about everything you do, see, say, feel, smell, taste, and who you are being. Use your notebook, journal or computer file to capture notes, thoughts, and insights.

Exercise: A Totally Conscious Day

Notice everything! Write down your observations using 1-2 words or several sentences. There is no wrong or right way to do it.

As soon as you wake up, notice the first thoughts that enter your mind.
Write them down. Go into the bathroom. Look into the mirror. Look into your eyes. Really look! Smile. Spend a minute looking into your eyes.
Smile goodbye. Write down feelings or thoughts you experienced.

As you get ready for work, notice everything the rhythm of brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, the motion your arm makes as you stroke on your makeup, etc. Write down any thoughts or describe any pictures that come to mind.

On your way to work, notice your surroundings. What are the buildings like? What does your route to work smell like? Can you smell the restaurants, factories, etc? Do you smell trees in bloom? As you get closer to work, what sensations do you notice in your body? Write down every observation.

When the day is over, spend a few quiet minutes in bed reading your notes. Do you remember things you didn’t capture before? Write them down in a different color pen than your notes from earlier in the day.
Finally, spend five minutes writing your impressions of what you captured and what you experienced being totally conscious.

This exercise provides a lot of perspective and insight, but you have to actually DO it not just read the directions and say, “That sounds like a
great idea. I’ll try it later.” It’s really important to “get clear.”

This first step is critical to your success. If you make the decision to become conscious to become completely aware of what is really going on
you become aware of what it is that you really want.
We often become excited after participating in a workshop, attending a seminar or reading a book. We think, “Oh, this is it. This is the thing that’s
going to change my life.” However, we don’t make the decision to start, to take action. Or we may think that by simply reading a book, it will somehow magically change our lives: “The information is going to float over me and my life is going to be different.”

When the pebble in our shoe bugs us enough, we pick up a book or attend a seminar. We briefly take off our shoe. We enjoy the comfort of the idea of not traveling with the pebble in our shoe anymore.

When the seminar or book is finished, we put our shoe back on over the pebble. Then we start our journey again. We feel a little lighter and more enthusiastic, because of encountering new material. So the pebble is barely noticeable. However, we never made a decision a conscious choice to remove the pebble or get shoes that keep the pebble from
falling back in again.

We never really get started.

Whether you know what you want to do or no longer want that quiet, nag pebble in your shoe the realization that you need to make a change and take action is a great place to be. When you make the decision to move forward, it’s truly a momentous occasion. Today, you are finally awake.

This excerpt from The Soul of Success: 7 Steps to Monetary and Spiritual Wealth For A Rich Meaningful Life is reprinted with permission from Essence Press.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

What Am I Going To Do With The Rest Of My Life?

 by: Soni Pitts

Unexpected life changes. Anticipated transitions. Long, sleepless nights. What do these three things have in common? The ability to provoke one of the most haunting questions in the library of human introspectives:

“What on earth am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

While I can’t pretend to answer to this question for anyone other than myself, I can offer those in this position some basic tips on how to ensure that their future turns out as bright as their class valedictorian said it would be.

Take Time To Create A Map

Too often, when faced with a major (or even not so major) life decision we tend to either take the first decent choice that presents itself or we allow circumstances to choose for us by default – putting off the decision until the inexorable current of life sweeps us past the turning point. As you can imagine, this is not the best way to get what you want out of life. But the options we are faced with in life can be so wildly divergent, or so deceptively similar, that it is difficult to know which turning to take. Wouldn’t it be great if we had some kind of road map that would help us know which paths to follow and which to pass by?

Below are five questions that everybody should ask himself or herself. The answers to these questions should then be used to compare any decision against – when a choice comes up, simply compare the various options with your stated desires, then choose the option that takes you closer (or at least moves you the least farthest away from) to your destination – your stated goals and desires.

1. What does success mean to me?

Be very specific. “I want to be rich,” is not an answer – just what does “rich” mean, anyway? Are you thinking of a set number, and if so, why? Or is the term “rich” a substitute for certain freedoms and opportunities that you view as coming only with money (and by limiting them to being accessed only through money, are you missing out on other alternative pathways)?

A better answer would be “I want to have enough net income to meet my current financial responsibilities without strain, plus have time and money left over for travel,” or “I want to be able to comfortably afford a jet-setting lifestyle in New York City,” or “I want to spend 4 days a week at home with my kids,” etc. You should try to come up with at least three answers to this question, with each one reflecting a different facet of what you feel to be a successful life. Make sure that only one of them deals with the money issue – after all, such things as personal fulfillment, spiritual meaning and other essential needs and values cannot be solved, acquired or even influenced by money

One of the biggest obstacles to success is that most of us have never consciously explored what that means to us, aside from some vague and nebulous idea of fame, fortune or other worldly success. Knowing what success really means to you – what you hope or imagine that these generic definitions of success would actually provide and how you want those things to physically look like in your life – allows you to weigh your choices more accurately.

2. What are my non-negotiable needs?

List all the things that you envision as inescapable factors of a successful and enjoyable life. Family, travel, no debt, pleasant work environment, social status, contributions to society, spiritual involvement, public acclaim, love, excitement, comfort – any or all of these, and any others you can think of – are legitimate needs that, when not met, create an environment of stress, want and disempowerment in your life. Knowing what you are not willing to do without makes the relative values of different options clearer.

3. What are my non-negotiable boundaries?

List all the things that you absolutely do not want present in your life. If the idea of working in a standard hierarchical office environment makes you ill, put that down. If you can’t stand the thought of living in a cold climate, add that to the list. If being poked fun at about your physical condition or other attributes makes life unlivable, note that as well. By knowing what you will not tolerate, many choices become much easier to make. Plus it allows you to set down rules and policies about who and what you will invite into your life and the standards of behavior you will, and will not, tolerate.

4. What are my key values?

Spend some time searching your soul to come up with a list of your basic values, creating a life around which would make you the person you want to be and allow you to live the life you want to live. Are you the type who values honesty, clean/green living and a deep love of nature above all things? Or are you more of a ‘comforts of home’, family and fun kind of person? Do you value charity over letting others find their way on their own, or is it the other way around? Knowing what you truly stand for is a vital component of good decision-making.

5. What do I want to be remembered for?

What legacy do you want to leave here when you pass on? What do you want people to say about your life and you as a person? What do you want to be known for? What would you like your obituary to say about you? Knowing where you want to end up makes choosing the path to get there (and keeping track of your progress) infinitely easier.

Key Points To Consider

There are also three key points to keep in mind when you are faced with making life-changing decisions.

1. Look before you leap.

In life, as in some commercial marketing, “Buy now before this opportunity is gone!” is almost always code-speak for “Buy now, before you have time to read the fine print.” True, from time to time real honest-to-goodness, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime offers do come around. But if you have laid down a foundation of well-considered choices and clear-minded focus before this happens, you will have the presence of mind and strength of purpose to know when to jump and when to pass, and be much more capable of telling the difference between a missed opportunity and a close call.

2. Life is no longer a “one chance per person” event.

The times, they are definitely a’changing, and one of the best things to come out of that change is that we now understand that people change, as well, and that not only is this normal, it is to be expected. The career or life that suited you perfectly in your 20’s will most likely not fit the middle-aged you, no more than the same wardrobe or lifestyle would. Sometimes this is merely the result of the normal process of personal evolution we all go through as we age and mature and sometimes it comes about suddenly, in response to reality-shifting events and transitions such as living through a traumatic event or getting married.

But however change comes, be prepared to go with the flow. Don’t worry about “all that time I spent in grad school,” or “what will my friends and family say?” In the first instance, there is no such thing as “sunk costs” in life – 90% of nearly any education or life experience is 100% transferable to new situations and new outlets. In sports they call it “cross-training,” and an athlete doesn’t consider his or her training complete without in. In the second instance, well, if they love you they will want you to be happy and if they don’t love you, then who cares? Besides, they’re not the ones who have to live this life – you are.

Also falling under this heading is the admonition not to trade a good life now for some nebulous “better tomorrow.” All too often, these “tomorrows,” if they ever do come, are no better than the “nows” you wasted. And as often as not the stress of living an unhappy life permanently cripples or even kills people, physically or otherwise, well before they can get to their imagined golden “tomorrow.”

3. Trying to find your “one, true purpose” is a waste of life.

We are all put here on this earth for any number of reasons – some big, some small and most of which we will never understand or even realize we’ve participated in until well after they’ve become distant memory, if at all. Spending too much time trying to discern your “true purpose” in the tea leaves of life can take your attention and energy away from creating the kind of life that would actually support and accomplish these purposes in the first place.

A far better is alternative to create what I call a “Groundhog Day-Proof Life.” Based on the Bill Murray movie in which his character has to live the same day over and over, this concept involves creating a life that reflects your values, offers you opportunities to challenge yourself and is fulfilling enough and just plain pleasant enough so that if, by some strange cosmic fluke, you became trapped in any given day of your life, it would be a good thing rather than a tragedy. And as an aside, living this sort of life virtually ensures that you will be who you need to be, and where you need to be, to fulfill any purpose you may have been sent here to accomplish, while at the same time providing you with a wonderful and rewarding “rest of your life” in the process.

Summary

Getting the most out of life isn’t about living “right”. It’s about living well. Learning to consciously steer your life in the direction you want to take it, making the choice to live by your own set of values and desires and making sure that you get the most out of the limited days you are given to work with ensures that when the time comes for your life to pass before your eyes in review, the show will definitely be worth the price of the admission.

About The Author

(c) 2000-2004 Soni Pitts

Soni Pitts is the Chief Visionary Butt-Kicker of Soni Pitts Visionary Life Coaching/Restless Spirits, www.sonipitts.com. She specializes in creating global change through personal evolution – helping others create the lives God always intended them to live, so that they in turn can pass that change on to the world around them.

She is the creator of the e-book “50 Ways To Reach Your Goals” and many other products, services and resources designed to assist others in this process of change, growth and enrichment.

soni@sonipitts.com

Source: High Quality Article Database – 365Articles.com