4 Simple Steps To Being Yourself

Last week we discussed the importance of being different (or being yourself), no matter how appealing someone else’s style is. If you missed the post, click here to catch up. Today we’ll have a closer look at how to discover your uniqueness.

Whether you are looking to discover your unique strengths to set your business apart, improve your job position, or land the job of your dreams, the following tips will apply to you.

Step 1: Discover your unique skills, strengths and abilities

You can define your uniqueness in many different ways. I like to define them in 3 different areas:

• cognitive – what you know (awards, prizes, education, experience)
• affective – why you do what you do (personality, motivation, beliefs, desires)
• conative – how you take action (who you are, talent, strengths, instincts)

Conative strengths are measured by the Kolbe assessment. Kolbe is NOT a personality assessment. The strengths is reveals are unique to you and they remain the same throughout your lifetime. This is who you are, how you take action and create results. You can’t improve or change them. But you CAN leverage them!

Step 2: Recognize & accept your strengths

This is a very important step. You can’t grow into being yourself without accepting and utilizing your own gifts. It’s crucial that you recognize the value of your own strengths and talents. Otherwise you will waste your time fighting against yourself, sabotaging your own achievements.

You will be like Tinker Bell in the first part of the fairytale series, trying to shift away from who she was to become like her friends. Simply because she viewed her friends’ talents more valuable than her own.

The truth is, you are you for a reason and if you choose to turn yourself into somebody you are not, you will never be able to fulfill your purpose in life.

Step 3: Start using your strengths

It’s not enough to just know and accept your strengths, you must choose to use them. Not being yourself and failing to maximize your own talent is the main reasons why people fail in life. The following are top three benefits of using your skills:

1. Grow into a better you – stop being like others around you and become more and more true to yourself. You can only improve if you work on your real skills, talents and strengths. Working on your weaknesses can help you become mediocre, but is this what you truly want?
2. Lower your stress – remove unnecessary stress from your life by doing things in a way that works for you. Doing things in a way that’s natural for you is a key to fueling your passion and making work seem like fun.
3. Increase your productivity – by taking action in a way that’s natural to you, you will be able to create better results faster. Significant improvement of results while using less effort and time is a reality for many. Is it your time to join the party?

Step 4: Design your positioning around who you are

Now that you know who you are, how you get things done and what results you can deliver, it’s much easier to create your positioning. Whether you’re a business owner defining what your business is about, or you are a job applicant defining what sets you apart from other applicants, you no longer have to be in the dark.

You know exactly how to promise the results you can actually deliver. If you still need help, Career MO+ might give you additional ideas to help you in this area.

In my next article I’ll show you how to use your strengths to maximize your performance.

Question: Have you ever tried to work contrary to your strengths? What helped you realize and change the way you take action?

If you enjoyed this post, check out my 5 Tips to a Better Performance Training below.