Page 99 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

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he more people I coach, the more
firmly I believe that we are all born
with certain innate abilities and tal-
Tents. We are not lumps of clay at birth
waiting to be molded into shape by our
parents and environment. We arrive on
this planet preformed to a fairly large Most people think
extent. For example, from the age of six, they know what they
we can be tested for the three abilities are good at. They are
that make for musical talent (rhythm usually wrong.
memory, pitch discrimination, and
tonal memory). And, by the age of fif- —PETER DRUCKER
teen, your brain is pretty much set into
the patterns that will stick for the rest of
your life. After this age you can take a computerized assessment
that reveals whether you have the ability to see things in three
dimensions (helpful if you want to be an architect). Tests can indi-
cate whether you are a visionary and able to imagine the future
or whether you are a tactician and adept at getting the immediate
task at hand completed.
Do you have the capacity to do higher mathematics, medi-
cine, architecture, writing, performance? Some people are born
with a set of abilities that match up nicely to certain professions.
If you can’t imagine things in three dimensions, you may find that
fields such as engineering or architecture just aren’t for you. Some
people need to work with their hands to feel satisfaction in their
endeavors; they need a tangible end result, or else they may feel
that they work all day and produce nothing, even if they actually
are getting abstract tasks done. Others have such strong musical
abilities that they need to include music in their lives or learn to
play an instrument before they will be happy. Do you know if you
are a specialist by nature and like to go into depth on one topic or
field or are a generalist and know a little bit about a lot of different
subjects? It isn’t always obvious. I used to think I was a generalist