Who is the natural ‘You’?

OR

Do you know the original ‘You’?

OR

Finding the natural ‘You’ or Finding the original ‘You’

OR

Discovering the natural ‘You’ or Discovering the original ‘You’

Insights from book ‘Strengths Finder 2.0’ by Gallup – Tom Rath

‘M.S. Dhoni- The untold Story’, this movie depicts a story-turning point scene where the character M.S. Dhoni is sitting at the railway station wondering what he should do with his life ; should he go back to becoming a T.T.E or follow his heart and pursue cricket as his career, which is his passion.

Did you ever think what would have happened if Dhoni would not have been bold enough to recognize his talent and live for it? Yes, we would have lost a very valuable player in the midst of a crowd with millions more who are not able to identify their true strengths.

Uncovering individual’s strengths and talents is also the core message of the book of Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

This book inspires millions of people around the world to think beyond the obvious of focusing on the weaknesses to achieve the unthinkable and instead focus on the individual’s strengths and talents to reach beyond one’s apparent horizons.

Donald O Clifton, the late Father of Strengths Psychology, challenges the truism that ‘You can be anything you want to be, if you just try enough’. To just keep working hard, trying and not giving up till you actually master the weakness, is what we have heard and learnt throughout our lives.

Have we actually calculated the time, energy and cost of working on our weaknesses vis-à-vis our strengths and talents?

Like in a game of chess, the king and queen are our strengths and talents while the weaknesses are like the soldiers who contribute, however to a lesser extent to win the game. Managing your weaknesses if the job demands is crucial; to identify the alternatives to fulfill these weaknesses instead of focusing a 100% on it, is your decision.

“You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.”

– Tom Rath

The key findings on which this assessment and book is based on are:

• People with the opportunity to focus on their strengths are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs.
• Three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.
• Talent (natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving)

X (multiplied by) Investment (time spent practicing, developing your skills and building your knowledge base)

= Strength (the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance)

How do Strength Finder 2.0 book and assessment work?
Our core personality remains more or less the same throughout adulthood, hence the strengths based on our talents remain unchanged. The Strength Finder 2.0 assessment among millions of talents, groups them together into themes. It helps to identify one’s natural talents and shortlists the top five themes of talent among 34 themes which leads to a unique amalgamation of one’s individual strengths.

Finding our natural talent helps us to truly focus on our strengths and work towards utilizing our highest potential.

Some of the themes among 34 themes are explained in brief:

1. Achiever – one who needs a constant need for achievement; must achieve something however small to feel good about self; will feel extremely dissatisfied without any form of achievement.
2. Analytical – one who likes data and facts; looks for patterns and connections in the information to understand how it affects one another.
3. Competition – one who compares with everyone around him; always believes in competing to achieve; interested in actions which lead to winners; when he wins the feeling is unmatchable.
4. Empathy – one who senses the emotions of other people; understands the feelings and perspective of others and is able to recognize their unspoken need.

The book and assessment together is a complete value package. For all the 34 themes, ‘Ideas for Action’ is given which suggests tips on how to refine your strengths on a daily basis for maximum effective utilization of the strengths. In case of working with people having different strengths, suggestions have been given how to utilize and develop their strengths as well as lead to maximum benefit for everyone.

It also suggests the people with certain talents to partner with other people with certain other talents so that they complement each other to create a successful business, work job etc.

There are however questionable factors related to the motivational figures whose example has been given to us since forever –some of them are Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan. They have failed multiple times before reaching glorified heights.

​One of Michael Jordan’s statement was, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot and I missed.”

So should they have taken another path to realize their actual strengths? History then would have never witnessed these personalities.

Again the point to rethink is that most of us have limited endurance to translate our weaknesses to the extent to which these famous personalities have.

The choice is up to us if we still want to continue with the paradigm of ‘victory over our weaknesses’ or upsurge with our natural strengths.

If we decide to win in our lives through our strengths and with the support of Gallup’s 40 years of study of human strengths spent into discovery of common talents, Strength Finder 2.0 ought to be a good start for us to reexamine our learning and developmental milestones.