How knowing your strengths can rewrite your future

Life is busy. So often it’s easy to forget who we are and what matters as we throw ourselves in the hustle and bustle of life.

I see my friends, swamped with the pressure of study or work forgetting and forsaking their talents.

Friends who have walked away from their creativity and art, to pursue a life of stability and monotony. Friends who are scared that they are simply not good enough.

I’m saddened to think how easy it is too put aside what we truly want and what we’re really good at.

My sister illustrates such a perfect example of developing your true strengths. At university she studied medical science. It offered her offered stability, security and prestige.

Then she had an awakening.

What she realised was this isn’t her. It wasn’t playing to her natural gifts and talents. She couldn’t see how this was going to be the thing she would do every day for the rest of her life.

Then she did something bold.

I call it bold, because it wasn’t planned. In search of her future, she started working with my Dad in the family business. She brought her ideas, her creativity and soon realised she had a natural flair for marketing and business.

She started studying business at a college and read a great deal about women leaders in the workplace. Taking the opportunity to enlarge and expand what my dad had created, she now runs her own shop.

This is why I advocate “Find a career that aligns with who you are.”

Your strengths are the start of it. Finding it, and incorporating it into your life. First with small steps, who knows what future you can create for yourself. My guess, it’s a one brighter than you can possibly imagine.

Have the courage to take that chance or make that change.

They say, when you find something you love, you never work a day at all.

My hope, is that we can all live like that.

By Michelle Lai