What Is Your Talent?

I was recently listening to Tony Robbins and he was telling us that to be successful in life, you need to be fulfilled.

This got me thinking.

He also went on to say; the way to be fulfilled is to identify what your talent is.

And he said, “Some of you think you know what your talent is, but it isn’t your talent! And some of you know what your talent is and some of you don’t even know what your talent is.”

And I was thinking, which category do I fall in?

Do I think I know my talent, but it’s actually what I think it is?

Or I don’t even know what my talent is.

Or I do know what my talent is.

And the more I thought about it, the more I started to think, I don’t know if I do know what my talent is.

So, I thought, “Why don’t I ask someone else?”

I was just leaving the house, to take my kids to school.

And I thought, “Well, that’s an ideal opportunity, I’m in the car with my children, why don’t I ask them?” So, I asked, “Don’t think too hard about this. Just say it from your heart, just respond from your first instinct. I’m going to ask you a question, what would you say is my talent?”

I was surprised by what my eldest son said, because that was the last response, I ever imagined anybody would say.

He said, “Persistent.”

Persistence! This was something I’d never ever considered.

And I said, “Can you expand on that? What do you mean by persistence?”

And he said, “Well, you’re really persistent with GradeBusters.”

And I thought, “Yeah, I am!”

He went on to say; “If you think about it, it started out as a passion and it has continued to be a passion. For whatever reason, you can’t let that go, you are persistent.”

Sometimes you get to the point where you wonder, who’s parenting who??

If you know your talent, then how to you get success?

It occurred to me that we tend to see success as achievements.

Achievements like getting GCSE exam results, money or a title for the profession we’re doing — all these things we assimilate with success.

But it also occurred to me that people with lots of money or with very big titles like CEO, Director or Head Teacher; whatever that title might be, just because they have that success in one way, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have fulfillment.

So what is fulfillment?

Just because you have success, you are not necessarily fulfilled. And in that case, if you don’t have fulfillment, then it can’t be success!

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Let’s look at someone who has great success but doesn’t have fulfillment. Let’s take Whitney Houston. Hopefully you’ve heard of Whitney Houston, maybe you haven’t. She was an incredible singer. She had tons of success. She became extremely famous for her voice and for her films. You would say, she had a successful life, but did she? She ended it through a drug overdose, which would probably indicate a complete lack of fulfillment.
What about Robin Williams, the star from, ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’. Wow! He was a success. He made many successful films. Did he have fulfillment? Well, he ended his life by hanging himself, in his own home. That can’t be success, what was he lacking? Fulfillment.

So, to get fulfillment we need to be ourselves, doing something that we are good at — a talent.

But what if you aren’t sure what your talent is?
Sometimes in life things may occur to you and you don’t know the answers to them. And sometimes the most surprising people might bring the answers to you.

Going back to the car journey, when I decided to ask my sons what they thought my talent was? I never dreamt that my 16-year-old would say, ‘persistency’.

I thought, “Wow, if that is a skill that my son is witnessing from me and learning, if I’ve given him that knowledge of the importance of persistence,” I thought to myself, “You know what, Heidi? You’ve not done a bad job. Have you? If your son is learning the art of persistence, resilience and not giving up, you should feel OK with yourself.”

Let’s face it — from the minute you get up, if you don’t have resilience and persistence to keep going when things get tricky, well we’d just give up all the time, wouldn’t we? And we wouldn’t develop or grow very much in life.

Then it got me thinking, “Well that’s a great art, persistence.”

Now I need to show my children that it’s worth having the art of persistence. Because if I don’t succeed at what I’m persisting at, then persistence could be seen as a waste of time.

I have a suggestion for you. Go up to someone today and ask them what they think your talent is. You may be very surprised about what they say to you and it may very well have tremendous impact on you.

If you do, I would absolutely love to hear what they said. What did they tell you? They may say something that you completely disagree with. They may get you to think about what you think your talent is and reveal things to you that you wouldn’t expect.

What was I expecting my children to say to me? I was expecting them to say things like, “Oh your talent, Mum, is being caring and loving and helping us.” It wasn’t that at all, was it? So that was quite interesting for me. The answers I was expecting were not the answers I got back and doesn’t that make it even more fascinating and interesting?

I think my talent, really at the heart of who I am, is learning. I see myself as a seeker, finding out things I think I can’t or don’t know how to do. I love to grow and learn new stuff. And that’s why I’m passionate about GradeBusters because I believe it attracts like-minded people, who absolutely thrive and grow on knowing stuff, education, learning, learning, learning. Can you ever stop learning? Do you ever learn enough? I think not, but we’re only on this planet once and I’m going to make sure I can learn as much as I can, while I’m here.

Once you have identified your talent, answer these 3 questions and this will bring fulfillment which will lead to success.

What are you going to focus on?

What does it mean?

What are you going to do?

“Meaning is where all life is shaped

We have the power to change the meaning in an instant.”

Tony Robbins

Go out there, enjoy the day, get learning, get seeking.

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