Personal Development - Developing your Potential Talent and Skills
Developing talent or potential is the key to personal development
Personal development goals can only be achieved as long as there is a desire to develop one’s potentials, talents and skills. Potential or talent are something each individual on the face of this earth have in abundance. Sometimes they are just waiting to be discovered and polished. It is possible that an individual does not even know that s/he has a certain potential until they are forced by some strange force of nature to discover it. I once read the story of a young man who lost his job and being unable to get one, was slowly falling into depression, being alert to the fact, he took the advice of his friend and started pursuing his hobby - painting. Today he is an artist in his own right and has greater success awaiting him.
Discovering your potential or talent and honing them into workable skills, puts many more tools within your reach, to achieve your goals and objectives. You have more to choose from, which also means that you can choose those that are more appropriate. This should be reason enough to delve deep into your resources and find that talent or that potential that you have, but have never put to good use. My aim in writing this is to get you, to look at yourself more positively and believe that with a little polishing you can achieve great things.
How to develop talent or potential?
If you asked that question you are well on your way to finding it. It is easy and you just need to work with yourself. Your determination and commitment towards personal development will be the key to reaching greater heights.
Here are a few points to help you on your way to developing your potential/talent.
Identify your talents. The first step to developing your potential is identifying all those things that you loved to do, enjoyed doing in the past, but for some reason have not pursued them, and those things that people told you are good at.
List them, write them down and study their utility and how you can use them in your current line of activity. You will always find a few skills that stand out, above the others in terms of usefulness and value. This does not mean you have to neglect your other skills or abilities. Focussing on high priority skills will give you immediate direction and purpose.
Assess your potential - This has to be very objective in nature and clinical in approach. An objective assessment will show you the level of your talent or potential and where you stand. It can also specify how much more inputs, or training or skill polishing you need. It will clearly indicate the line of action you need to take to hone your talent or potential.
Get feedback. Sometimes it would help to take feedback from your peers or your superiors at work. This could lend more objectivity and credibility to what you have already done. It may also help you look at your skills from the point of view of others and review / refine your personal skill assessment.
Direct your action towards talent development
Create a vision statement that reflects what you want to achieve in a period of five or ten years. Having created a vision, you need to have a mission statement that translates into figures and numbers. That is breaking up your vision into short term goals and defining systematically your path of progression towards your vision.
Draw up a plan of action, have secondary and tertiary plans of action that you can fall back upon. This will help you evaluate the road blocks or hindrances that you expect to crop up in the course of action. This objective evaluation not only mentally prepares you for difficulties in the way; but also helps to creatively work out ways and means of working through issues and roadblocks.
Work on your personal development plan to develop potential
Take help. Make use of resources that are available to you, use material online, books, classes or even specific training in that area to develop your talent or your potential.
Find mentors who can help you achieve a better level of potential through direct interaction. Having a mentor is something that would be second to none. Finding a person who is willing to spend his/her time and attention on you would help you fine tune your skills in an effective and precise way. It also gives you the added advantage of having a fund of knowledge gained through experience (without having personally gained it yourself) within your reach. A human observer, who is interested in you, will always point you in the right direction.
Find ways of putting to use what you are learning. Seek opportunities to employ your skills and excel in them. Don’t wait for opportunities to come your way, look for them.
Seek to develop your talents/potentials for the sake of personal development. If you are only looking at ways of making your skills pay initially, you may get burnt out a little too soon, take time to develop your skills. If you put in enough effort and passion into it, it will eventually pay off. You do not have to chase opportunities, opportunities will chase you.
Take up more responsibilities. More responsibilities mean more opportunities and better growth. The higher the responsibility you assume, the higher the challenges that you face, the more you develop your potential and grow as an individual. Fight off any fear of failure and doubts that may arise as you take up challenges.
Keys to personal development through talent development
Never give up. Determination is the key to developing your talent/potential. Failures or small problems that may arise will provide opportunities to help you think creatively and work through the odds. They are what give you strength of character and self-confidence to reach higher grounds. Turning back always means that you go to a level that is below where you started out from, because now your pride and self-confidence takes a battering.
Passion is one ingredient whose presence or the lack of it can build a person or break a person. Being passionate about what you do provides you the drive and motivation that is necessary to see it through. Your passion causes you to be focused on your goals and trying to achieve self-improvement without passion is bound to fail.
There is no end to self improvement and developing your potential and talents, as you keep growing and becoming better you find that there is always scope for improvement. Put your best foot forward and work towards developing your potential and achieving excellence in your sphere of work today.
