3 Things You Need to Know for Success in Your Career

You know you want to have a life in which you can express the best of yourself, because you know you have something inside of yourself that is valuable and unique. We all want jobs where we can share that with people, every day. But in a world that doesn’t seem to care about your uniqueness, how do you do that? How do you find a job that allows you to contribute the best of you?

Before you can do it, here’s the three things you need to know:

1. Your strengths are not what you’re good at, and your weaknesses are not what you’re bad at.

You’ve always thought that your strengths are what you’re good at, but there are likely an awful lot of things you’re good at that you actually hate. What do you call something you’re really good at, but if you never had to do it again, it would be a day too soon? You actually call that a weakness. Because a weakness is an activity that weakens you – even if you’re good at it. And a strength is an activity that strengthens you.

A strength draws you in, and you know better than anyone else what your strengths are. And if you don’t, then it’s time to learn.

2. You will grow the most in your areas of strength.

You will grow the most, learn the most, and develop the most in your areas of strength. You don’t have strengths vs. areas of opportunity for growth, because your strengths are your areas of opportunity for growth. Stop trying to fix your weaknesses and focus on your strengths. 

Brain scientists say that learning is like growing new buds on an existing branch, rather than building new branches. Your brain learns and grows by creating new synaptic connections, and we can see that the brain grows more synaptic connections in the areas of your brain where it has the most preexisting synaptic connections. So yes, you should deal with your weaknesses. But don’t call them areas of opportunity, because they’re areas of least opportunity.

3. Your company wants you to love your work

You may think that your company doesn’t care about what your strengths are, they just care that you can do your job. That’s not true. Your company wants you to be resilient, creative, persistent, focused, and productive – these are all ways you feel when you’re in love, either with a person or for what you do. So naturally, your company wants you to find things in your life and work that make you feel this way. You get that by doing activities that you love.

You’re the only person who can take this advice, own it, and put it into play in your own life and work. If you can do that, then you can build a life that is a true and beautiful reflection of the very best of you.