Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
September 29, 2021 · 7 min read
Love what you do and do what you love. Passion is the key that opens the door to joy and abundance. – David Cuschieri
One of the most influential things on happiness is finding what are you good at. I received many inquiries from acquaintances and readers about career paths and individual strengths.
The answer to this inquiry can be both simple and complex. A lot of depends on how well you know yourself. However, I can assure you that everyone can find their strengths, weaknesses, and meanings of life.
Some general tips before diving into solutions
- Ignore the money aspect (ignore trends). Before even starting to think what you are good at, you must ignore money. Nowadays we try to go for the highest paying jobs or skills and compare ourselves if we have required skillset. This is a forced way of thinking which should not be done if you want to find your natural talents.
- Ignore what others insisted you for years to become. There are parents who tries to attach a specialty to you starting from your early childhood. It could be that your parents might‘ve wanted you to become a doctor, lawyer, businessman or have any other profession. After many years, you could‘ve unconsciously and falsely adopted this persuasion. In most cases, that‘s not your true identity. You have to forget this when trying to figure out what you are good at.
- Your current skills asset don’t matter. The whole point is to find something that you enjoy and brings you excitement. If you find that organizing events is very interesting but you have no experience, that’s totally fine! As long as you enjoy it and are willing to learn, that might be your potential strength.
12 ways How to find out what you‘re good at
1. What are you curious about?
The most obvious way is to think of a thing that you are most passionate and want to learn more about. Curiosity develops naturally to things that makes us interested and engaged.
What are your interests? This is a great place to start. Perhaps you are very good at generating fruitful ideas? Perhaps you like to stand out and be a leader? What do you prefer: arts or science?
If you are creative, being an engineer, scientist, graphic designer, marketer (and other creativity-oriented professions) can be very good options to transfer your skills into.
Possibly, you can be a natural born handyman or a hairdresser.
True passion attracts. If you have passion in your business, the right people will be attracted to your team. – Robert T. Kiyosaki
Be open-minded and think with a wider lens. You might not like everything about general topic like “economics and finance”, but you might be very interested in stocks and wealth. You might not like everything about “woodworking”, but you might be interested in a specific niche like “building guitars”.
There‘s no wrong or correct answer. This self-learning process is all about your self-improvement and understanding your skills and values.
2. What “unconquerable” tasks have you beaten?
We‘ve all faced some very challenging tasks in our life. Certainly, I couldn‘t complete some of (or even all!) the tasks that you‘ve managed to do.
If you think that it‘s nothing special what you‘ve done, think twice. Definitely, with very, very hard work most of the things are possible for every person, but the time required to achieve the same task can differ vastly for everyone.
Have you completed an equation that majority of the class couldn‘t? Have you fixed an enginee all by yourself? Can you explain things better than anyone else? Do you understand difficult concepts better than others?
Have a thought about your challenging tasks and if anyone else would‘ve easily beaten it.
If it‘s hard for you, it doesn‘t mean that the other person undergos the same difficulty level. It might be even harder for him.
3. In what position do you feel comfortable?
Are you comfortable with your current job? Are you bored in it? If you are, it might be because you are expert in it and you find it easy to do. This could‘ve happened due to:
- You are naturally good at it and are able to grasp the concepts of that topic fairly quickly
- You‘ve had a mentor that was by your side all the time
- You‘ve been doing this job for many years
If it‘s the first case – good for you! It means you are good at this position and this is one of the things that you are good at.
If you can’t figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose. – T.D. Jakes
Also, take a glance whether you are stressed in your job. Definitely, there could be different reasons to the stress:
- Harsh employer/manager
- Very cold communication between colleagues
- You have too many responsibilities and too little time
- You find tasks difficult to do
If it‘s the last case (you find tasks difficult to do), then it means you are not comfortable in your current position. It could be either because you have just recently started working or you find it hard to grasp the concepts. Obviously, if you are a slow learner in this field, it means you are probably not naturally good at it.
Nevertheless, you might value something in your job. It could be the attention to detail, creativity requirement, communication with people and others. Have a thought if there‘s something that you find interesting (even if you are a slow learner on that).
4. Take a strength assessment test
Try “My Next Move“ quiz.
It‘s super easy to do and I‘ve done it myself. Although there are 60 questions, but you‘ll manage to cope with them in 10 minutes or so.
As a person that has done it myself, I can tell you that it was accurate and got a lot of great insights about my personality and strengths. Not only that, but you will get a bunch of recommendations about occupations that could fit to your strengths.
It‘s very important to keep in mind “General tips before diving into solutions“ section above while doing this quiz. Don‘t let emotions, stereotypes, social opinions to influence your answers to these questions.
Remember that there are no bad or good answers. You have to learn about yourself as much as you can and be honest about your opinions.
5. What tasks are you trying to avoid?
This is more of a reverse engineering method. Instead of looking for your strengths, we‘ll be looking for your weaknesses.
Think of something that you hate to do. Usually, you‘ll be good at something that‘s in the middle or the opposite of the thing that you hate.
For example, if you avoid doing creative things, then you might enjoy or be good at:
- In the middle – copywriting (using a little of creativity while analyzing the facts and doing your own twist)
- The opposite – observing and analyzing the data, doing calculations (you are a very logical person).
Definitely, if you don‘t like to be creative, then these 2 aforementioned occupations might not fit you. There‘s no general solution for everyone, but try to think in a different way and think oppositely than usual. Find what you are good at by starting from the things that you already know.
6. What were your happiest days of your life?
Imagine that you are back to good old days when life was a breeze. Was it when you used to work for your last employer? Was it when you were a teenager and enjoyed going to school?
For example, if you enjoyed attending some kind of institution (school, university, language courses…), then you might be into that particular thing. If you enjoyed that subject, then you would succeed in that subject greatly as a teacher/mentor/leader or any other related role that includes this topic.
To put it simply, when you are happy, you enjoy that moment. Analyze how you can pivot this moment into a skill which you are good at.
7. Do you perform better under pressure?
This might not be a direct answer to your inquiry what are you good at, but it can really narrow down your concerns and help you find your strengths.
If you can perform well only under pressure, that means you have an employee mindset. If you can work independently and efficiently without pressure, you have traits of a leader.
If you don’t love what you do, you won’t do it with much conviction or passion. – Mia Hamm
Therefore, if you can work individually, you are likely to be more creative, initiative and have more self- disciplined. This means that you are capable of being an artist, entrepreneur, or a great problem solver.
8. Would you rather initiate in a situation or be a spectator?
Spectators are good listeners. They are empathetic and tend to be more neutral. This is a sign that you can understand feelings and other people better. You are a great person to talk with and you‘ll never hurt other people.
On the other hand, if you hear information and tend to jump straight into the action and offer your solutions, then you are a logical person with leadership skills. You have a growth mindset which wants to learn and adapt. In other words, you are good at learning and using your learnt skills into practice.
In other words, that means you are good at work that requires never-ending learning, such as scientist, technician, physician and similar. On the other hand, you’d feel miserable doing the same task over and over again, which means you couldn’t work as hairdresser, factory worker, sales manager in a local shop, etc.
9. What compliments do you receive?
It’s rare to get compliments nowadays from other people, but it could be that you got some.
- Have people said that you are good at playing guitar, piano, or writing fictional stories?
- Maybe other people have been amazed by your interior design skills?
- Are people surprised by your persistence?
- Perhaps they are complimenting your cooking and serving skills?
Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks. - Yo-Yo Ma
Compliments may not have a direct association with your natural skills. However, it can be an indicator what you are good at. For example, if people think that you are persistent, then you should ask yourself: “What am I persistent about?”
If you are persistent with fitness, it means you are good at it and probably like it. Fitness can also be branched to smaller sections: nutrition, physical exercises, health and physical activity correlation science, and similar.
10. Ask your friends, family, school, or university lecturers
Try asking people’s opinion with whom you spend significant amount with. They might have insightful opinions about your strengths that you don’t notice.
However, the best option would be to ask people that know you very well and are not afraid to spit out the truth. Ask them what your strengths are, what career paths you could take, and don’t forget to ask why.
Sometimes, that’s all it takes to get someone’s else point of view of you to get this “A-ha!” moment.
11. When do you have the most energy?
Often, we become very energetic when we are excited to do one or another activity. Of course, activities like travelling can’t tell very much, but you might consider careers like “travelling guide” or work for a travelling agency.
If you're a happy person around food, you can be a professional chef. It's fueled by passion. - Ranveer Brar
If you are full of energy to drive your car, arrange meetings, analyze differences between products, those could be indicators where you could start from.
- If you thoroughly enjoy arranging meetings, you could consider a career path of organizing events.
- if you have plenty of energy analyzing differences and finding the best solution, you could consider a path of being data/financial analyst.
- If you enjoy driving and you like cars in general, you could become an auto mechanic, truck driver, electro mechanic, manager of automobiles sales, etc.
The point is to identify what makes you to have a lot of energy and go from there.
12. Hire a coach
Mentors can drastically cut your time in finding your strengths and career paths. As they have accumulated a lot of knowledge, they’ll surely help you to find your passion easier and help you to get this burden off your shoulders.
Try to look for a mentor locally or online. Improving your well-being is worth the time and the efforts, as it can dramatically improve your life satisfaction.
Final Words From Delightful Mindset
Generally speaking, this is what you should do to find out what you are good at:
1. Find what you are curious about, what makes you feel excited and energetic
2. Utilize reverse engineering method and use your weaknesses to find out your strengths
3. Be open-minded and think of indirect associations with your interests and weaknesses
4. Identify these indirect associations and see if you truly like them – try them in practice
5. If you are still doubting, ask other people’s advice and take a strength quiz
6. If you are still unsure, hire a mentor
Also, here is a YouTube video that might help you to find yourself by identifying your abilities: