Welcome to episode #169 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast. When we want to change our life for the better, we often struggle with knowing how to spend our time and the decisions we make about what we do next with our careers and personal lives. We know we might have to put in a level of effort but the question becomes whether or not it will be worth it? What if it doesn’t work out and you feel like you’ve wasted your time? Today’s podcast on What Am I Really Good At will help you understand how to align your time and energy with those things that will ultimately bring you the most meaning and results.

From ordinary to extraordinary

There’s a big difference between knowing what you’re pretty good at and what you’re really good at.  This is a question that keeps us out of ordinary and moves us into the extraordinary. Many people have done things in their lives that they’re pretty good at and have achieved pretty good results. But what happens when you need to or want to move on?

Your strengths are your talents and gifts

You have to move into what you’re really good at. You can call them your strengths, your talents, your gifts. These are the things that you don’t always know  you’re good at until later in life. You have to consciously carve out time and thought to engage yourself in these activities and often we don’t have the mind space for us to be curious about extraordinary lives when we’re just trying to figure out what to cook for dinner or how to answer emails.

Yet, I’m going to encourage you to think differently about how you do everything in your life.

Using your strengths makes you more efficient and effective

What if everything in your life could be more efficient and effective? More fulfilling? This happens when you use your innate strengths and talents. It makes decision-making easier. When you know who you are and what you’re good at, can you imagine how easy it would be to figure out what you want to do next in your life? It’s everything.

When you consider the people who seem like they’re on a single-minded path, oftentimes it’s because they have figured out that thing for themselves. They know who they are, what they’re good at (and not good at) and what to focus their energy on. They keep moving forward and it seems like they’re fearless, but in truth it’s because they realize that it’s the only option towards living their version of their most fulfilled life.

The fallacy of being too busy

What most people do, however, is they make the mistake of thinking that they’re going to figure it out as they go along in life. That they’re going to somehow magically have this information come to them as they’re doing their work or engaging in their busy lives. They even go to graduate school or get another certification with the hope to create more options to figure this out. They don’t realize that knowing yourself, your strengths and what you’re really good at is a decision. It’s a commitment. It is something you keep going back to because you realize you want to get even better at it. You figure it out and then you get the certification, not vice versa.

Yet, you let the business of life or work stop you. One of the biggest thought errors I see is that people think that they’ll figure things out when they’re less busy. They don’t realize that they’ve been and have been busy for decades. 

People who seem to have figured out that they will likely be busy for the rest of their life are the ones that seem to have made their lives work for them. 

Busy is the best time

They’ve accepted that they’re busy and figured out how to use who they are and their strengths to work for them instead of thinking that they can’t use it in their day-to-day work and way of living. This is why being busy is the best time to make a change and ask for help to figure out what you want and how you want to get there. You’ll save so much time and energy.

Most people do the opposite. Keep on with the status quo when they’re busy. They change only because changes are happening in the world around them. 

When you’re busy, you MUST do something completely different. You must stop and pause. You have to create the time and space. It doesn’t just get created for you. You need to ask the question, “how do I create time and space to consider my next step and how to get to understand who I am even better?”

One hour will save you years. One coaching session will leap you forward.

The unhelpful thinking that occurs is that many of you will think you’re too late to the party. You think that if you haven’t figured it out yet, you might as well not try. You think that others are so much farther ahead that it’s not worth it. This isn’t true. You have decades ahead of you to live a life where you feel aligned between how you spend your time and what lights you up. You have so much time to save right now by doing what you do best. It’s like finding a better tool for the job. It makes your life and work easier.

One of the most interesting things about knowing what you’re really good at is that it gives you so much more confidence and options. When you’re aware that you’re exercising a strength or an innate gift, you have so many more ways to measure success. When you’re thinking just about end results, you get fixated on one outcome only and if it doesn’t work, you find yourself unhappy for longer than necessary. Creating work and lives based on who you are and what you’re really good at becomes a different game.

You start to think about the process of getting better and fine-tuning your craft. You get more comfortable with the discomfort it can bring up for you and others when you do things differently. You allow yourself to be different and more visible to others, speaking up and sharing your point of view and way of thinking. You notice the nuances that only come with practicing something at an expert level. 

I’ve realized that one of the things I’m really good at is turning thoughts into action and really maximizing life for myself and others. One of the nuances I’ve realized around that talent is that it brings up discomfort for people. I used to think that something has gone wrong if people don’t feel like doing something immediately, but I’ve realized that this is the edge. If they would have naturally done it themselves, this wouldn’t be a unique strength that I bring to the situation. What you do really well will be your unique thumbprint in any situation. It’s how you change the energy in the room. It’s how people knew you were there.

This is why in my coaching, we do that work where we find out what your edge is and what talents you bring to the room. We go through a process of understanding what you really care about and what you genuinely do better and more easily than others. We find the ways you have of doing things that you can truly own to be more fulfilled, find ease in your health and to better your relationships with others. This is your edge and these strengths will likely be the easiest and simplest way for you to make money as well. It can also be what makes others really uncomfortable – because you’re thinking and doing things so differently.

I was considering several coaching sessions I’ve had where my clients have actually said to me that what we’re talking about is blowing their mind or breaking their brain. This might sound a bit strange, but to me it’s a sign that we’re doing things that will create the change they’re seeking. You didn’t come to coaching to do things the way you’ve always done them. You’ve come to coaching because you want to see life and your work in a new, expanded way. You want to see ease where there might have been difficulty. You want to see possibilities.

Often, you might even reject the possibility of a different way of seeing the world, so know that even when you have, know and are utilizing your strengths, it doesn’t mean that they won’t be rejected. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to be skillful about how you utilize your strengths. You need to be even more selective and thoughtful about the energy and time you spend using your gifts. It’s not needed everywhere. This, in and of itself, is a huge revelation for many people.

The same thing goes for you. Your acceptance of what you’re really good at is going to be both a gift and sometimes what feels like a challenge as well. Yet, see it as a gift and use it to do what you need to get done more naturally and with better quality. It’s like writing with your dominant hand versus your non-dominant hand.

You save so much time and energy in life when you know what you’re really good at. It’s the difference between having to prove yourself to everyone you meet and the internal knowing that you don’t need everyone’s approval and that you’re fine and happy anyways. This is why it takes another level of awareness to have even more success in life than you do now. You are taking you everywhere you go and while you can change the outside world by changing jobs, locations, or relationships, you’ll often find that you stop seeing growth and the honeymoon phase of excitement goes away because you haven’t figured out the one constant denominator. You.

I am so confident that this awareness of what you’re really good at is the unlock that we’ve been waiting for – and would bring so much more direction to your life. We’re only scratching the surface here of what’s possible in terms of clarity. Many of you are looking for work or your next job or your next relationship. 

I want you to imagine that you’re so certain of what you’re good at that you’re willing to invest the time and energy into it yourself without anyone else asking you to do it. You see our entire life through that lens, not just one work situation or relationship. Your worldview changes. It becomes so obvious to you that it’s so much easier to explain it to other people. You’ll be able to explain why what you’re thinking makes sense and why it works. You’ll know why you can help them and how you’re the best fit.

I believe everyone has innate talents and gifts within themselves – ways of thinking, living and working that they’re really good at. We need you all to come forward because we need more spiky people, not well-rounded people in this world. People who are best in class and can be relied on to bring their talents. It is your calling card and we’re waiting for you to show up.

If you’re ready to Own Your Best Life, I want to invite you to watch the free training on how to Stand Out and Lead, using spiritual, high-performance strategies. You can access the training at https://may-empson.mykajabi.com/stand-out-and-lead.

You can then apply to join my Spiritual Achiever® program, where you’re going to create your next chapter with spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom using my proven method. It’s risk-free. You either start seeing results within your first month or I give you your money back. Schedule your call HERE. We’ll see you inside.

If you’re ready for a change, I’d love to support you.