Page 103 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

STEP 4: IDENTIFY YOUR NATURAL TALENTS AND ABILITIES 91

How Do You Discover Your

Natural Talents?

There are a number of ways to identify your unique talents and
natural abilities. You might find that after doing one of the fol-
lowing exercises it will become crystal
clear to you what you are meant to do.
On the other hand, you might find it I always wanted to
helps to do all of the exercises that fol- be somebody, but I
low to get an overall picture and see should have been more
where that leads. If, after completing specific.
this chapter, you still don’t feel entirely
clear, then I’d recommend taking one —LILY TOMLIN
of the excellent computerized assess-
ments online, as that typically does
the trick.

Interview Your Friends, Family,
and Coworkers

Usually it is much easier for someone else to identify your natural
abilities. When I work with clients on computerized assessments,
people are more accurate about identifying what they are not good
at than what they are good at. You may be well aware, for instance,
that you hate doing the taxes or accounting and have no head for
numbers, but you may not be aware that you are an excellent facil-
itator. We are often the last ones to realize what our talents are,
precisely because they are so natural to us. A fish doesn’t realize it
is a brilliant swimmer, since it is always in water and is just doing
its thing.
Sometimes we make the erroneous assumption that because
we can do something easily and well or because something sounds