{"id":34720,"date":"2013-08-08T12:15:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T16:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=34720"},"modified":"2013-08-29T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T17:11:10","slug":"discovering-your-strengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=34720","title":{"rendered":"Discovering Your Strengths"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Diana La Femina, Head Editor, INALJ South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Discovering Your Strengths<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"0508081839a\"<\/a>I\u2019m being hard on myself again. I\u2019m at a perfectly good job, with wonderful coworkers and an environment that\u2019s anything but stale. Problem is, this isn\u2019t where I had envisioned myself a few years ago (or even one year ago, or six months ago).<\/strong> It\u2019s frustrating and disheartening when things don\u2019t work out the way you wanted them to. So what am I doing? I\u2019m second-guessing myself and my abilities. I\u2019m picking apart my weaknesses and strengths, assessing the former as too prominent and the latter as insufficient. It\u2019s a dangerous cycle to get into and one I know I need to break out of (I\u2019ve been here before many times).<\/p>\n

I know I\u2019m not alone in this, so I thought I\u2019d take the time to explain how I\u2019m getting myself out of such self-flagellating thoughts.<\/strong> Usually I try to concentrate on what I HAVE achieved. This time, though, I\u2019m taking a different approach: I\u2019m going to analyze my strengths and figure out how best to use them rather than concentrating on how to improve my weaknesses.<\/p>\n

I recently read somewhere that from the time we\u2019re young we\u2019re taught to improve our weak areas and become \u201cwell-rounded\u201d rather than capitalizing on our strengths. I couldn\u2019t agree more. I\u2019m NOT saying that a well-rounded education is a bad thing (it\u2019s not, it\u2019s a wonderful thing and I\u2019m a science geek now even though I was never good at it in school). What I\u2019m saying is that our society, as a whole, concentrates on improving weaknesses, usually to the detriment of developing strengths.<\/strong> How many of you can identify what you excel in? I\u2019m not talking school subjects, but in the workplace. It\u2019s extremely difficult for me to pinpoint what I\u2019m good at and where I excel on the job, and that limits my ability to grow professionally.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m definitely not an expert on tactics for figuring out your strengths, but I think if you analyze your daily tasks and pull out the easiest or most enjoyable you\u2019ll start to see a pattern. The tasks you avoid most likely correlate to your weaknesses. I know, it\u2019s an overly simplified approach, but the message remains: stop thinking about where you\u2019re weak and start concentrating on where you excel. You\u2019ll become a more efficient employee and will be better-able to sell yourself.<\/p>\n

There are also a bunch of online quizzes<\/strong> (some free, some not) that can help you analyze your strengths. I have one bookmarked and plan on taking it as soon as I have time (cue hysterical laugher). I\u2019ll let you all know if it\u2019s any good. You might also want to take a Myers-Briggs test to get some more insight into the way you work. I\u2019m a proud INFJ, but I think sometimes taking a personality test like that and reading the results can tell you about yourself just by how much you disagree with certain aspects of the resulting description.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Diana La Femina, Head Editor, INALJ South Carolina Discovering Your Strengths I\u2019m being hard on myself again. I\u2019m at a perfectly good job, with wonderful coworkers and an environment that\u2019s anything but stale. Problem is, this isn\u2019t where I had envisioned myself a few years ago (or even one year ago, or six months ago).…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,3996,3633,5077,4208],"class_list":["post-34720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-diana-la-femina","tag-inalj-south-carolina","tag-myers-briggs-test","tag-strengths"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-920","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}