Have you ever had an “AHA” that made you feel like everything had changed? That you’d been looking North all the time, and suddenly someone turned you in a Southerly direction – and you saw a TOTALLY different, beautiful view?

Can you remember thinking “I can never walk North again and ignore what’s in this new view?”

My Aha

In 2015, the foundations I’d been building my work on for the 8 years before that, were severely (fortunately pleasantly) shaken. It felt like my world was turned upside down in a mere 3 days.

I attended an Associate Level Strengths Coaching course. By the first evening, at home, my mind was reeling and a little confused. I was frowning, and trying to fit the new way of thinking into my old way of working… and it didn’t seem to fit! I had a few moments of panic, even, when I thought “Gosh – EVERYTHING has to change! I simply can’t keep working in the same way than before!”

I’ve been working with tools like Energy Healing, EFT, The Sedona Method, PSYCH-K, Coaching and NLP for more than 8 years. Usually, when someone wants to know about the work I do, it’s because there’s a problem. Something that seems to need fixing or a solution.

My paradigm has therefore been ‘Let’s look at what’s wrong, fix it, and then you can move on’. On a personal level, too, I’ve been spending many hours and a lot of energy on Self Improvement and Personal Development for many years. It’s a worthwhile effort, yet there’s the danger of constantly feeling “I’m not there yet! There’s so much more to change, I’m not good enough YET to stop this work.”

Constant striving, never arriving.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was told “Let’s turn around and look at what’s RIGHT with you!”

Wow.

Strengths

I first heard those words from a precious friend, who introduced me to my Top 5 Talents and Strengths, in 2013. I was blown away by the feeling I experienced when I had a 90 minute discussion with her, totally focused on all my strong points. The biggest shock and surprise came when she showed me how a quality I thought was ‘wrong’, that I was working hard on changing, was in fact, one of my strongest talents.

This work is based in Positive Psychology where researchers started asking “What will happen when we focus our energy on our natural talents (what’s already working), rather than trying to fix weakness?”

Here’s a 1 minute video clip that talks about the fascinating findings when researchers tried to help weak readers to improvement their reading speed, versus what happened to readers who were already quite proficient in reading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKmbmhK7KeY&feature=youtu.be

How can this help YOU?

Are you bored in your career? Are you using your superpower talents at work? Do you even know what your Top 5 Talents are?

I really thought I knew mine because of all the Personal Development work I’d done. Until I had my session with my coach-friend back in 2013! I discovered with a shock that I’d been judging some of my Top Talents as ‘weak’ or ‘wrong’. And that meant that I was unable to make the contribution in the world that I was MEANT to make with my particular, unique set of talents.

My whole world has changed since I’ve had the privilege of starting to work consciously with my Strengths.

A personal example: Conflict

Without going into too much detail – one of my natural and strongest Talents is the ability to create peace and harmony around me. Yet, I had been seeing that as weak. I saw myself as unable to handle conflict. “Wrong! Improve it! Work on it!”, said the voice in my head.

The thing I didn’t realise was – I have a strong natural ability to restore harmony. Because of that, of course I don’t enjoy conflict! But – because I was judging it (I don’t enjoy conflict) in myself and making it wrong, I could never make my peace-creating contribution in conflict situations.

I see it in a totally different light now, thanks to an awareness discussion around my Talents. I can own this ability now. It feels so empowering to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’m able to restore harmony, sometimes simply by being in a room.

What lies undiscovered in you?

I wonder about you…. What talents have you not discovered yet? What about you are you making ‘wrong’ because of past criticism…without realising it could actually be a strength, if applied in a well-managed way?

Over the next while, I’ll write more about this fantastic way of working with your Talents and Strengths. We discover them through the CliftonStrengths (a scientific tool developed over 30 years), and spending time together to understand them, love them, and develop them.

One person I recently worked with said:

“Thank you so much for the most wonderful session. For the first time in my life I found myself in the company of a warm, empathic person that was showing me what is right about me. There was no judgment – only celebration of me and my talents. Normally we look for weaknesses to fix and as a result we walk out feeling worse about ourselves. This time it was different. I felt good about myself and my Divine blueprint that is unique to me. As a result I have a greater sense of myself, feeling more grounded, more confident and at peace. I also have greater clarity on how to create success that is unique to me. Thank you Liesel, from the bottom of my heart.”

For now – if you want to explore your own Talents – why don’t you drop me an email and ask about options?

photo credit: Glued in Firenze via photopin (license)