What Are You Brilliant At?

“When you focus most of your time and energy doing the things you are truly brilliant at, you eventually reap big rewards. This is a fundamental truth. And it’s critical to your future success,” said bestselling authors Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt in the book, The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Certainty.

So how do we best focus on the things we are truly brilliant to ensure our success?  We place the practice of our talents at the top of our life to do list!  Sports champions, as the authors say, do this by focusing on their unique talents, continually practicing and refining these talents to an “ever-higher level of performance.”  They say big winners spend most of their time on the things they are naturally good at and spend very little time on unproductive activities.  They practice and practice, often several hours a day.  In many school systems, the authors point out, children are instructed to strengthen subjects that they are weak in and spend less time on subjects where they are strong.  The logic being to develop a broad level of competency.  Consequently, children strengthen their weaknesses and their talents go underserved, resulting in average abilities overall.  Here’s the bottom line:  Practicing your brilliance, your talents, every day can mean the difference between your life being average or extraordinary.

Finding Your Brilliance

If you are unsure of what your talents are, then some self-introspection will help you to uncover them.  Take a look at the activities that make you feel happiest and fulfilled and, likely, these activities are your talents.  Here are some questions, from the authors, that can help you identify your brilliance:

• What do you do effortlessly – without a lot of study or preparation?
• What do you do that other people find difficult?
• What opportunities exist in today’s marketplace for your areas of brilliance?
• What could you create using your unique talents?

Think about your answers to help you fine tune what you do best.  More than likely, it will be what you enjoy doing the most too, even what you feel passionate about doing.  I asked friends and family what they thought they were brilliant at, and here’s what they said:

“Decorating”
“Design Engineering”
“Sailing”
“Relationship Building”
“Writing”

Their responses told me that, when we think about it, we are all brilliant at something, and it’s a matter of first finding out what it is, if we don’t know, and then believing in ourselves to take this brilliance to its full-capacity.

So, if you are unsure of what your brilliance is, take the time to find out, and it may take time.  You can enlist the help of a counselor or life coach.  You can also ask family and friends for help.  We can be shy about our talents but to other people they are obvious.

Believe in Yourself

“It’s one thing to believe that you possess remarkable potential.  It’s another thing to have enough faith in yourself that you think you can fulfill it.  When it comes to believing in themselves some people are agnostic!  That’s not only a shame; it also keeps them from becoming what they could be,” said Leadership Expert John Maxwell in the book Talent is Never Enough:  Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent.

If we don’t pursue our talents because of self-doubt or belief that we can succeed, then we never become what we can be, our true selves.  Philosopher William James said, “There is but one cause of human failure.  And that is man’s lack of faith in his true self.”  Whatever your talents are, make sure that engaging in them is part of your daily agenda or else they will be lost in the madness of life.

We also may not pursue our brilliance because we fear success and how other people may react.  Marianne Williamson said it so eloquently:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do…”

We may feel that our talents intimidate, threaten or make others’ insecure.  But if we think about how are talents can serve the world, then the focus shifts from ourselves and people’s reactions to our making a difference in people’s lives.

I  challenge you to make your brilliance a priority in your life so that you can reap big rewards.  This will mean not getting sidetracked by the many things that can put off your manifesting your talents.  You want to avoid one day waking up and realizing that your life is half over without pursuing what truly matters to you in life.  As Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “Don’t die with the music still inside you.  Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.”  We make the choice on what to focus on every day and what you focus on expands.  Express your brilliance every day because the world needs you to, and your shining will help others shine too.

Write to us!  Let us know what you are brilliant at by commenting below and tell us how you are focusing on your brillance every day or how you plan to.