What You Have to Offer the World

As parents and educators, our primary assignment is to help our children or students understand what they have to offer the world and guide them toward their pursuit of it, but before we can do that successfully, we should know how we can serve the world, so this article is directed inwards - it’s about YOU! In fact, the journey to success in any endeavor or field starts with self-discovery so, we should learn to carry out regular self-audits to identify our interest and skills.

INTEREST:

This is where we start our “self-inventory”, and I encourage you to carry out these activities as you read! Interest includes the activities that you enjoy and can lose track of time when doing it. Your interest could be in anything, ranging from writing, dancing, singing, photography and modeling, playing videogames to running. If you are passionate about it, and can perform the activity repeatedly without getting bored then, it is an interest.

Activity:

1. As defined above, list out all your interest and try to capture as many activities as you can remember. (Don’t be shy to include interests that you consider vices in this list like binging on movies or social media feed!)
2. Shortlist your interests into the activities that you can perform excellently or beyond average. This activity will help streamline your interests and identify, interests that can be converted into skills.
3. Now, identify all the interests that you have been paid to do, or at least could be paid to perform. You’ll have to do some thinking here because this could date back to when you were a kid and maybe offered some money to mow a neighbor’s lawn, or watch their pets, or tutoring peers.

After this exercise you will have narrowed down to about three (3) interests, that can generate income for you. The next phase of this exercise is to advance those interests to skills.

SKILLS

Skills are the activities we carry out professionally that can generate income. According to Richard Bolles, in his book, “What color is your parachute?”, Skills can be categorized into three (3) Functional skills, Special Knowledge, and traits.

Activity:

As we look at each of these skills, identify yours in each category, and at the end of the exercise you will write with a simple sentence to describe what you have to offer the world.

Functional Skills (verb): ?These are what you can do with your body, people, data, or things. The key word here is “do” as it refers to skills like writing, dancing, analyzing, teaching, coding, etc. You will notice that these skills are actions carried out and can be directly translated for income. However, there is a hierarchy to these skills, at the bottom are mindless skills, like copying that tend to earn lower pay than tasks at the top that require reasoning, analyzing, and innovating.

Special Knowledge Skills (Noun): This is what you know and love to use. The key word here is “know” as it refers to knowledge or subjects you have mastered. This skills includes, Grammar, Statistics, Mathematics, Graphics Design, Music, Speech, Business and Finance, etc. This knowledge skills can also be traded for income, and the value of the skills are also scaled in pyramid with the skills paired with higher level of reasoning, experience and knowledge at the top.

Traits Skills (Adjectives): This refers to how you execute your functional skills. The key word here is “how” as it refers to the qualities in conducting yourself while carrying out your activities alone or with people. This skills include, confidence, creative, enthusiastic, fast, resourceful, etc. Traits may not have an off-the-shelf value, but how well you carry out your activities can have a tremendous impact on your pay and opportunities.

By the end of these activities, you should have identified your Functional skills, Special Knowledge skills and Traits Skills. Now, you can combine these skills in a value statement to discover what you offer the world. For example,

“I write articles in education creatively, to provide actionable insights to parents and educators”

Note that:

Write = Functional skill

Education = Special Knowledge.

Creatively = Trait skill.

VOILA! That’s it, you’ve drafted your value statement of what you offer the world, and you can also help your children or students come up with theirs.

If you want to help your child or teen discover their genius, don't hesitate to get in touch with me. We can stand together in the community to support the next generation of adults!

Kimberly Selchan, Resilient One, and Tutor Doctor Owner

My mission: “To help today's youth become tomorrow's successful adults.”

Tutor Doctor Chandler-Gilbert