5 Ways to Discover Your Talents: Master Your Mission

Relying on talent alone is a surefire way to failure. Everything you do takes energy, motivation and action.

One way to stay the course is to create a mission statement that carries you and your team through the tough times to derail your path to achieving your goals.

Recognizing, understanding, and mastering your mission is the cornerstone of your success. But, unfortunately, people talk about missions, passions, and callings like it’s innate.

Your talents are innate, but your mission is learned. Using your abilities to form connections that yield results is an equation worth exploring.

It’s easy for people to point fingers and tell you who you should be, but truth be known, no one knows you better than you know yourself. What’s automatic for some people, however, requires a well thought out process for others.

Early on in life, our parents or mentors will help us identify our talents and help us hone our skills. However, the challenge with being managed too much is you skip the discovery phase of life. The Toolbelt of Success you create is a lifelong journey, but let’s narrow down the time frame of discovery.

5 Ways to Discover Your Talents

• Reverse engineer your results – think about the products you want and note what action you have to take to get you there.
• Go to Your Growth Zone – If your analytical, do something creative. If you’re clever, do something analytical. People who grow continue to challenge themselves beyond their comfort zones experience proper growth.
• Ask those around you what they view as your talents and why – Trusted advisors can help you sort through talents. Many times others see something in us we haven’t recognized yet.
• Follow Your Inner Voice – We’re emotionally driven people. Our instincts are an inherent trait that drives us to react to our environment.
• Denounce Mental Inertia – Keep moving. Inactivity stunts you physically and emotionally. New activities breed new talents.

Learning about yourself is a lifelong process, and it’s exciting finding out something you don’t know you had or could do. For example, when you step outside your comfort zone and attempt an activity that you’re not 100% sure of success, where there is a risk of failure, there is the burst of exhilaration when you nail it. What gets you started and pushes you to the end is adrenalin, and it’s addictive.

Adrenalin

According to HealthLine, we need adrenalin for survival. It’s our flight or fight hormone, and all animals have it.

When you are fearful, your adrenalin can get you through even the most challenging events. So there is no need to fear the unexpected or shy away from discovering your true talents. Your mission must be mastered, however, so you stay true to your goals.

Mission Statement

Knowing what you want in your career and life generally is powerful. There will be little time wasted when you have direction and goals, so how do you create a mission statement to carry you through just about anything?

BigCommerce, in their article, sums up the critical components of a mission statement that you can memorize and use for all your mission statements. Remember, mission statements are not just for business. They can be used for every part of your life, including sport, leisure, philanthropy, and close connections like family and friends.

Critical components of a mission statement

• Usefulness or value – what and who will benefit?
• Inspiration or revelation – why is it purposeful?
• Real – has to less fantasy, more authentic or plausible
• PEST – be specific and use methodologies to work it out

PEST methodology

Your mission statements will be your guiding force, mainly when change is unavoidable. Use methodologies to check your mission statements are still relevant. Using PEST will assess the validity of your statements considering factors relating to political, environmental and economic, social and technology.

Summing up

Seek to learn all you can about your talents and then use mission statements to guide you through your career and life. Of course, talent alone won’t be fulfilling; however, knowing why you’re using it and who and what gets value from your action will be immensely rewarding.