Discovering Your Skills/Talents

A guide to discovering all your skills and how to enhance them

What is the key to achieving wealth?

In previous posts I talked about the beginning of the journey to become wealthy. Together we came to the conclusion that the first step is to find a decent paying, non-toxic job which would support your essential needs. It was also mentioned that if you want to be a top earner aside from the everyday job that you have, you need to start sharpening your skills. Now let's dive deeper into that. What does sharpening skills exactly mean? how do we know what skills do we possess?

At the end of the "From Learning to Earning, An Introduction to Skill Development" post, I gave a quick guide on how to come to know your hidden skills/talents. In this post, we will explore this topic in more depth, and I will assist you in identifying the skill you most need to develop.

As always, let's start with a personal example of my own. I went through the same process that I'm going to write for you myself. I was lost and confused and I felt like I was good for nothing. I didn't really like what I studied, I didn't really like many of my past experiences and skills that came to grow from them. I needed to know myself, understand myself, to realise the top skill/talent that would guide me to the right path. So I started searching on google about how to find my skills. The most common advice on many of those websites were to write down your skills on a piece of paper. So I started doing that. I picked up a notebook and a pen and started writing any skill or talent or interest that I believed I had, even if they were not that good or they were the skills that weren't much of my interest. Eventually, I was left with a 3 page bullet points of all the things that I thought I could do. Then, I started rating them from 1 to 10, with 1 being the ones that I am the least experienced in or the ones that don't interest me as much as others. After that, I chose the top ten rated skills and so on.

Now, let's turn our attention to you. Take out a piece of paper, a notebook, or any other item you can write on. I recommend using physical writing materials, like paper, as it can enhance the experience and make it feel more tangible compared to writing on a screen. Start from scratch, write down anything that you think of. Let's start with the Talents. A talent is an innate skill or ability that resides within you. It is a skill that you have that you may not even be aware of. These type of inner skills have one of the highest potentials to pave your path to wealth and success as they differentiate you from others who have gained them by only practicing. In my opinion finding your natural skills/talents is much more difficult than finding the acquired ones. For talents to be known to you, you must discover your true self. I might sound so spiritual right now, but this is in fact highly logical.

Here are several methods to help you discover your talents:

• Reflect on past successes

Take a trip back to your memory lane and remember the times that you did good at school, extracurricular classes, or any other situation. Usually talents are more visible when you're younger, before you have a chance to start developing skills by practice. So look beyond that in the past, what were you good at? For instance, I recall writing stories when I was as young as 8, which indicates a talent, as an 8-year-old cannot have fully developed writing skills at that age, making it undoubtedly a natural ability.

• Remember your "zoning out" moments

Recall the activities that made you lose track of time while doing them, ones that make you excited when you think about doing them. These activities are very likely to be tied to your innate skills aka talents. Someone might get lost in the time while gardening, or they might spend hours fixing furniture without noticing the clock.

• Ask friends and family

Sometimes people around you might know you and your abilities better than yourself. It is almost like the smell of a perfume you used. You might get used to the smell and not notice it, but others can feel it stronger. Ask them questions like "What do you think I'm really good at?" or "What job can you imagine working me in?". This will give you a pretty good sight on yourself.

• Experience new things

This is one of more time consuming methods, but if other methods didn't work out for you, trying out new experiences is a great way to know yourself and your abilities. For obvious reasons as humans we don't have the time and resources to try every little thing that we think we're good at. So my suggestion is to start by doing some small personal projects and figure out along the way if this is one of your secret skills. For example, if you think teaching is one of your strengths, try explaining a fact or tell a story to a friend, or if you think gardening is your thing, try planting some flowers or vegetables in a small pot. Do these activities give you joy? Do you feel you don't have to put much effort doing these?

Now that we have gone through the methods of discovering talents/natural skills, let's get into the skills that are acquired rather than built-in. These are the skills that we learn throughout our life, skills that we learn at school, at home, or simply by experiencing new things. As an example, you can have painted your room's walls when you were younger, now you have experience handling the paint roller, how to roll it on the wall and how long to wait for it to dry. Along the way, by practicing painting, you will learn more valuable experience and if you are persistent enough, you can achieve mastery in that skill.

Generally acquired skills are divided into two main categories: Hard skills and soft skills.

There are lots of different definitions on the internet, but my definition of Hard and soft skills are unique to me. Hard skills are skills that you can actually make money off of them, whereas soft skills are the skills that increase your chances to find better opportunities with your hard skills, among others with the very same hard skills. It got a bit complicated I know, but bear with me.

An example of a hard skill would be "Engineering & Technical Trades". If you have learnt engineering either through a degree or experience, you can generate income through your engineering skill. An example of soft skill is "Problem Solving". Problem solving will not secure any job or opportunities by itself, but it could certainly give you priority over other applicants for a job.

Now that we got familiarised with the concept of acquired skills, it's time to add them to our list. On the same paper/notebook write down any skills that you think you might have gained through your life, as little as they might be. Thinking about what skills you do have, might be a bit overwhelming, so below, I will list some general categories of such skills to help you out.

Common Hard Skills:

• Information Technology & Software

• Data & Analytics

• Engineering & Technical Trades

• Construction & Skilled Trades

• Creative & Media

• Language & Communication

• Business & Finance

• Healthcare & Medical

• Culinary & Food Services

• Education & Training

• Agriculture & Horticulture

• Logistics & Supply Chain

• Legal & Compliance

• Hospitality & Tourism

• Transportation & Logistics

• Security & Law Enforcement

• Energy & Utilities

• Real Estate & Property Management

• Telecommunications

• Marine & Maritime

• Sports & Recreation

Common Soft Skills:

• Communication

• Active Listening

• Emotional Intelligence

• Teamwork

• Leadership

• Adaptability

• Problem-Solving

• Critical Thinking

• Conflict Resolution

• Decision Making

• Collaboration

• Time Management

• Organization

• Accountability

• Self-Management

• Resilience

• Stress Management

• Creativity

• Work Ethic

• Professionalism

• Negotiation

• Persuasion

• Networking

• Attention to Detail

• Mindfulness

• Patience

• Self-Confidence

• Empathy

You can also use Google or ChatGPT, or explore job posting websites. Typically, when searching for a job, platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn will prompt you to select a category to display relevant job listings. Those are the usual hard skills you can begin to explore.

For the final part, I want you to rate every single talent/skill that you have written down on the paper from 1 to 10. If you have excelled at cooking or baking, rate it high on the list (8-10), and if you are really good at managing everything around you, you can add Leadership or Time-management to your list and rate it according to your own assessment. When you're finished, write down top 10 highest rated skills/talents on another paper, that is your starting point to discovering your skills/talents.

In the upcoming posts, we will explore various types of hard and soft skills and review the most appealing ones to help you identify the perfect fit for you.