Finding Your Life Purpose - Talents and Skills
When people wonder about their life purpose, they often overlook their talents and skills, some of which may have been there all along without them realising it. They may be relevant or not relevant to your life's purpose.
To illustrate this (if you will indulge me!), here's a bit of my own story.
Nick's Story
When I was very young my grandma decided that I was going to be a concert pianist. This was because at that time I was learning the piano and was doing quite well at it. I also loved the music I was playing and even wrote some of my own music.
But I was only 'sort of' good at it, hardly concert grade!
As I grew older I struggled with the expectation of becoming a concert pianist. My parents argued that in my home town there was no work and that I would always be poor if I tried. Thus I branched out into other interests as a result of this conditioning and prepared my mind for other careers.
As time went on I went to university and studied organ imaging, specifically Nuclear Medicine. I initially had an interest in the technical side of the profession, particularly of getting into what was then the nascent IT industry. However my patient skills - i.e. dealing with people who have an illness - needed some work.
Cue the IT Nerd!
After a brief return to music, which failed for a number of reasons, I returned to the IT industry. I did computer programming and specialised into database development. Here I found my creative streak well catered for.
After some time in the IT area, economic circumstances forced me to take a job on an IT help desk. I also then started to ponder my life's purpose given that I had talents and skills in the IT industry but wasn't getting anywhere.
Initially I found the help desk to be unchallenging and odious, and my workplace was filled with incompetence, mediocrity and arrogance. Yet I really enjoyed helping the people on the other end of the phone. The challenge of the job was being able to put technical information in terms that everyday people could understand.
Over time my interest in people grew, and it eventually led me to becoming a life coach. It was easy in the early days to bury myself in tech stuff as it catered to my thirst for information. My interest in people developed slowly over the years and took a while to flourish. When I finally realised what it was and that there was a profession that caters for it, I felt like I had finally found my place, my niche in life. It was a feeling of comfort and satisfaction.
Talents and Skills Develop Your Idea of 'Life Purpose'
The point I am making is, you develop your idea of life and its purpose over time. It is not necessarily instilled upon you at birth.
You may have talents, but these may not necessarily be your life purpose.
Similarly you may have great skills that you have acquired over time, but they may have nothing to do with your life purpose.
You might even have skills that are so natural you are not even aware of them.
Nevertheless, if you are not clear about your life purpose, examining your talents and skills can help you discover it, even if these are not your life purpose.
Questions to Ask Yourself
To conclude, here are a few questions to ask yourself about your talents and skills. If you have trouble answering these questions, it may help to enlist people you know, as often they will see things about you that you may not.
1 - List as many talents and skills as you can think of. What do you excel at or do naturally?
2 - Over the next few weeks, keep adding to this list and aim for 100 or so.
3 - What do you 'shine' at?
4 - What are you continuously drawn to?
5 - What do others tell you that you're good at? Do you believe them?
6 - What skills do you have that are unique?
7 - What skills do you have that are more useful than you originally anticipated?
8 - What do you find easy that others find hard?
Further Reading
Read this hilarious article by Mark Manson - author of 'The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck' - called 7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose
Coming Next: Personality
Previous Article In This Series: Passions and Interests