You were born with a unique ability in one specific area. Everyone is. This unique ability is a source of limitless energy, creativity, and potential growth. Your unique ability is a combination of your talent, the passion you have for using it, and the incredible value you create when you deliver it to the world.
The most important skill to use in discovering your unique ability is to think. Thinking critically and purposefully requires more work by an individual than all of the physical labor it takes to build the world’s tallest sky scraper. The process of thinking in itself is a unique ability and there are very successful people who are richly compensated for their thinking, their ideas, and their imagination. We all process information in different ways and this is another topic in itself however; thinking critically and purposefully is an important skill to continually develop. It is the one faculty of our mind that few people use yet, it is the most important when trying to determine what your unique ability is.
Your first step is to discover it and to reveal what your unique ability may be. Your unique ability may be an innate talent that you were born with. Many times you can tell by what your parents or grandparents were skilled at doing. Some people are fortunate enough to discover it early in life. Others need time and experience to reveal it. There are countless stories of people who after the age of 50 year, discovered what they described as a passion and a unique ability.
What is unfortunate is that most people never get close to discovering their uniqueness. Without identifying it, you go through life and you are called to perform a wide range of skills and activities which take you away from what you are really meant to do and you lose the original sense of drive, and energy, and passion for one particular talent.
It is then up to you to refocus on your unique ability, to restore your sense of concentration and single mindedness. Earl Nightingale once said that there were two kinds of people in the world – River People and Goal People. The River People are the ones who know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. An example would be a concert pianist. This person realizes at an early age exactly what they should be doing. Goal People move from one objective to another, succeeding from one goal to another and not necessarily focusing on one particular talent or skill. Goal People can be people who have just never found or have never polished their unique ability.
If you haven’t yet discovered your unique ability, these are some clues which can help you discover what it is that you should be doing with your life. Everything that you do, you do at one of four levels. Review and answer the following list of questions to help you discover what may be your unique ability:
- Things that you are incompetent at and that you usually fail at doing.
- Things that you are competent at doing and you produce a passing result, but you don’t feel compelled to do them.
- Things that you excel at but don’t have a passion for doing them.
- Your Unique Ability is something that you are excellent at and you love doing it all day long and others value what you do.