Too often, we let others define success for us.
It’s “better to thrive at what you’re wired to do than to aspire to something that others tell you that you should want.”
Daily Creative: Find Your Inspiration to Spark Creative Energy and Fight Burnout, by Todd Henry.
Last week, my wife and I watched the classic 80s movie, An Officer and a Gentleman. The movie chronicles the challenges and love lives of two Navy Aviation Officer Candidate School students.
Toward the end of the movie, just before graduation, David Keith, playing AOC Sid Worley, quits the program, saying he never wanted a military career and was only assuming his deceased brother’s role to please his family.
He had let his family define success for him.
Personality Profiles Can Help Us Understand What We’re Good At (and Not)
Instead of letting others define success for us, we need to define success by what fits us.
We need to understand and build on our strengths. Our career and the other work we choose to do must be based on our areas of strength, not weakness.
Personality profiles helped me to understand where I was strong and where I was weak. Typically, professionals will use a form of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
While Myers-Briggs can be helpful, I’ve found the DISC inventory to be much more practical. It helps me understand my innate skills, strengths, and weaknesses. I know what I’m good at, and what I’m not good at.
A free online Motivation Code evaluation gave me important insights into the type of work I find highly motivating and fulfilling.
“…make decisions according to who you are, not according to who others want you to be.”
Daily Creative: Find Your Inspiration to Spark Creative Energy and Fight Burnout, by Todd Henry.
Base Your Career Choices on Your Strengths
Knowing what you’re good at and what type of work motivates you can help you decide what career or projects you want to take on.
I’ve discovered that I like to learn new things, research new topics, analyze and organize my thoughts, then find ways to communicate them to others in a simple and interesting way. I enjoy researching and teaching. Likewise, I find these types of projects motivating and fulfilling, and I feel productive when I complete them.
Realizing this, when I needed to make a career change, I listened to what my personality profiles were saying and went to Law School. I found the best, most fulfilling job I’d ever had was as an Air Force JAG (a lawyer in the AF), where I was constantly researching, analyzing, and organizing my thoughts to present to others in oral and written form. I loved it — it energized me and was highly fulfilling.
Prior to my law career, I’d been a minister for local churches and a Chaplain in the Air Force. While religious teaching did use my research and analytical skills, the bulk of my work involved interpersonal skills. My strongest skill sets were not a good match for the job. As an introvert, I expended huge amounts of energy in social interaction.
The JAG job fit my strengths, I didn’t try to change my essential self to fit the job.
Each Strength Has a Corresponding Weakness – Your Job is to Maximize Your Strengths and Minimize the Weaknesses
When I was younger, I thought that to be successful, I needed to adopt the strengths of the people I viewed as successful. I read self-help books and looked at the characteristics of successful people. I thought, “If I could adopt their qualities, I could be successful also.”
It took me a long time to realize that I couldn’t become an mixture of other people — rather, I had to focus on maximizing my strengths. I had to focus on being a better me, not someone else.
It also took me a long time to recognize that for each strength I had, there was a corresponding weakness. A strength I have is that I’m very detail-oriented and good at producing high-quality work. The corresponding weakness to that strength is that my perfectionism can make me judgmental of others’ work and bog me down when “good enough is enough.”
No matter how much work I do, I will never become great at my areas of weakness. I can be aware of my weaknesses and work to compensate for them, but I’ll never be great at them.
It takes a proportionately giant expenditure of energy for me to work acceptably in my areas of weakness. That investment in energy yields very low returns.
It makes much more sense to intentionally invest your energy in maximizing your strengths. By recognizing and intentionally building your skills in areas of strength, you have a much better chance of reaching “success” as defined by you, not someone else.
How to Maximize Your Strengths
• Define your strengths and corresponding weaknesses. Use personality assessments to uncover what you’re good at. Ask friends how they perceive your areas of strength — what do they think you’re good at?
• Find ways to build more skills in your areas of strength. If you have a job, volunteer to take on projects that fit your strength profile. Take an online class that improves a skill you have. Do creative work on the side that uses and expands your strengths.
• Choose a career area based on your strengths. Sometimes personality assessments will suggest careers based on your personality profile. Ask friends what careers fit the kinds of strengths you possess.
You might discover a career field that fits you that you didn’t even know existed. I know several lawyers who subsequently became Human Resource directors, where detailed work, analytical skills, legal interpretive skills, and communication skills are valued.
• Inform your boss of what your strengths and weaknesses are, and how you can best be productive for them. Maximize your chances for success by letting others know what you’re good at.
Occasionally, we all have to work in areas of weakness, but that’s not where we want to major. Once, during a job interview, I stated up front what I was good at and what I wasn’t good at. They knew what to expect from me. If my strengths didn’t fit the job they were looking to fill, it would be best for them and for me not to hire me.