Summary: <p><strong>Find your strengths</strong></p> <p><strong>Welcome to Episode 5 and today I am talking about Finding Your Strengths and the importance of them in your business journey.</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong> You might want to have a pen and paper handy for notes for this one</strong></li> </ul> <p>You need to find your strengths if you want to successfully design a business around who you are.</p> <p>If you want the perfect fit that is?</p> <p>If you don’t find those strengths and work with them instead of fighting against them, your work life will be a big struggle.</p> <p>And who the heck wants that? Life is hard enough, right?</p> <p>In modern life, positive psychology is all the rage and I don’t mind it at all in the right circumstances however, the quote that reads along the lines of...</p> <ul> <li><strong>You can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough</strong></li> </ul> <p>Really isn’t helping people at all, because it makes people think hard work is all they need.</p> <p>Unfortunately, no amount of effort makes you better at something you are not born to do or be despite any amount of passion for it.</p> <p>Well, I learned something interesting from something on my bookshelf recently, and I found it a complete revelation.</p> <p>What do you think about this as an alternative instead?</p> <ul> <li><strong>Weaknesses are strengths in the wrong environment</strong></li> </ul> <p>I thought it was genius!</p> <p>Now, doesn’t that <u><em>immediately</em></u> make you feel better?</p> <p>At last, not some advice to try harder at what you don’t like doing much and will always fail to master no matter how long or how hard you try.</p> <p>I learned this from the lovely Marianne Cantwell, she has written a great book call <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0749466103/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0749466103&linkCode=as2&tag=noviceprene05-21&linkId=ddfca4e3debe0ae71d2d37f3c85f865e" target="_blank"><strong>Be A Free Range Human</strong></a> and she talks about how to get off the treadmill and become the person you really want to be with a career to match.</p> <ul> <li><em><strong>She believes we go through life masking our strengths and trying to improve our weaknesses, to no avail, so why not just change the environment.</strong></em></li> </ul> <p>I absolutely love that way of looking at the world.</p> <p>If you struggle to find your strengths, perhaps if you look at your perceived weakness instead, and flip your world view, you might find this approach more helpful.</p> <p>Marianne explains it better.</p> <p>She uses herself as an example when she was originally in the world of corporate job land</p> <p><em><strong>“I changed career back in the job world.</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong>I thought I had a huge weakness of constantly wanting to change how things were done.</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong>I came up with new ideas all the time for how we could improve the status quo.</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong>My boss wasn’t interested; he wanted me to focus on the job at hand, which had nothing to do with creating change.</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong>My constant need to make things better and better – and never settling for average – was a weakness when I was supposed to keep things ticking over quietly.</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong>Then, I changed my career into consultancy...</strong></em></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.createyourperfectbusiness.co.uk/find-your-strengths.html">Read more on my website</a></li> </ul> <p><br></p> <p><strong>Mentioned in this episode</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://amzn.to/2VzIcjz"><strong>Marianne Cantwell - Free Range Human</strong></a></li> <li><a href="https://amzn.to/2wlF3JW"><strong>Sir Ken Robinson - Finding Your Element</strong></a></li> <li><a href="https://amzn.to/2Vy6b2M"><strong>Tom Rath - Strengthsfinder</strong></a></li> </ul> <p><br></p> --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/createyourperfectbusiness/message
