Discover Your Talents in 2014

Thanks for your continued support and encouragement. I trust that you had a wonderful first week of 2014 and hope that the rest of year will be filled with joy, peace, happiness and success.

As we are still at the beginning a New Year I would like to share with you my thoughts on how you can discover your talents this year. We all have special talents that can propel us to success in our finances, careers, relationships. We can use to pioneer a new business. We can use our talents to help others in our communities. Finding your talent and passion does not always mean that is how you will make a living. Some people like Tiger Woods, Lebron James, Usain Bolt and others are able to turn their talents into jobs. The winner of the American reality TV show, The Voice, Season 5, Jamaican recording artist Tessanne Chin coached by Adam Levine is hoping to use her talent to make a living. However, we can’t always turn our talents into jobs.

I used my knowledge and experience in finance to start my consulting practice, Mark McKenzie Consulting. Late in 2013, I use my communication and organisational skills to carry out a Holiday Season Food Drive and collected over 2,000lbs of non-perishable food items for the Salvation Army of Brampton. I discovered at a very early age that I had a special knock for building consensus and creating synergies within teams. In university my peers would always asked me to join their project groups. Throughout my career, I am frequently requested to undertake special projects.

I believe the reason others are attractive towards me is because of my ability to work well with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Perhaps I benefit from what sociologist call the “halo effect” where people automatically associate traits of kindness, trust and intelligence to my attractiveness. By attractiveness I mean my ability to attract and draw people to me. Let me be very clear, in social settings I never set out to be the centre of attractive but through my life I have always noticed that people seem to naturally attractive to me. Consequently, as I am attempting to build my professional speaking business I have started wearing a fedora hat as well as I also wear baby pink and other bright colour shirts as part of my brand recognition. I use those props as part of my icebreaker.

Again we may not all be able to turn our talents and passions into income generating activities. Notwithstanding we must seek to discover our talent and passion. It is about making time to do the things that you are good at doing and most importantly doing the things that make you feel fulfilled, purposeful and authentic. If you are able to turn your talent into a business you will likely be your own boss but not always.

What is your talent? Do you have a hobby at which you excel?

Once you have discovered your talent and passions ask yourself the following questions:

What do I want to achieve with my life?

What are my purpose and goals?

Which are my most important natural talents I want to develop further?

Which of my natural talents can contribute most to achieving my purpose and goals?

What do I have to do to develop these talents into strengths?

What knowledge do I need to learn to develop these talents?

What skills do I need to acquire or improve to develop these talents?

What weaknesses do I need to overcome to develop these talents?

As I pointed out in my blog last week Creating Opportunities in 2014 you have to identify your core values and priorities. To do this you must identify your unique talents and passions. This does not happen by chance. Your talents and passions are as scarce as precious metals and very often they are buried somewhere deep inside of you. You have to be focus, deliberate and systematic to discover your talents and passions. Ask yourself, what things do you enjoy in life? What am I good at? What do you love doing?

We are all unique and talented. As I wrote in my blog Rekindling A Childlike Approach to Success Curiosity, creativity and imagination, eagerness to learn and exploring new things are attributes for success. You have the tremendous powers of imagination and creativity. The magic key to discovering your talent is The Power of Believing in Yourself and overcoming fear.

The greatest obstacle to finding your talent and passion is fear. We fear our friends and relatives’ opinions. We fear failure. We fear we may be seen as foolish. Fear can lead us to inaction. You do not want to fail because of inaction but rather make mistakes because of your fierce ambition and courage to succeed. Finding your talent and passion takes courage. Look at Elon Musk he wants to colonise Mars. Is he foolish?

I don’t think Elon Musk is foolish since he one of the most successful individuals today and he is also a  billionaire. Passion and courage are key drivers for success. Remember strong passion and enthusiasm blend with moderate talent take you further ahead than strong talent with little passion and enthusiasm. And when you add courage you too can contribute to the colonisation of Mars, if that is your dream.

What is your talent? Discover your talent in 2014!

Mark McKenzie is a leading Subject Matter Expert in financial services regulation and supervision as well as a professional motivational speaker, corporate trainer and youth mentor.  He can be contacted by email mastbmckenzie@gmail.com or by telephone 647-406-4622. Read my blog http://mastbmckenzie.blogspot.ca/ and always write me a comment and share. Follow me on Twitter @mackynacky. Connect with me on www.youtube.com, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.