Understanding yourself requires knowing your personal strengths, which requires self-assessment. Identifying how you excel can help lead you on a path of success and fulfillment. 

Assessing and identifying your personal strengths can be a challenge. However, it can help you determine how to make an impression on the world.

You’ll experience successes and failures, giving insight into your personal strengths. You’re not guaranteed success, and determining what you’re good at can make a difference. There are different ways to achieve goals while using your strengths.

Determining your strengths allow you to reduce your risk of failure, although it might still occur. Each time you fail, you further define what you’re good at doing. It helps you get closer to your goals, allowing you to reach your full potential.

Sometimes it’s hard to identify your personal strengths, and doing so can make a difference. When you know what you’re good at, you’ll understand how to utilize these aspects of your life. These tips can help you if you’re unsure of how to assess your personal strengths.

Here are Six Ways to Identify Your Personal Strengths:

1:  Make a List of Your Skills

Making a list of your skills and knowledge can help you determine your strengths. Take the time to write a list of the less-obvious strengths you possess. These skills are often more fundamental and help you follow the best path for your life.

Don’t forget about your list after you make it. Revisit the list often, modifying and reflecting each time. Be specific when you make your list, and don’t hesitate to categorize and rank it.

When trying to hone in on your strength, it’s essential to acknowledge who you are as an individual. Strong people know who they are and stay true to themselves, allowing them to understand their strengths.

2:  Assess Your Attempts and Failures

Examining your attempts and failures allows you to become more self-aware. While you want things to work out the first time, it doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes you’ll make an attempt and experience failure, but it’s a learning opportunity.

There is a learning opportunity in every attempt and failure, if you look for it. When you think you’re going through hard times, look for what you can learn. When you do this, it helps identify your strengths and areas you should improve.

Assessing your attempts and failures helps you become better equipped to recognize dangers or lessons in the future. When you look at your mistakes or failures, you can learn more than in any other instance. You can work to minimize the issues that hold you back and maximize what you’re good at doing.  

3:  Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is one of the best ways to assess your personal strengths. Evaluate who you are and what you’re good at to determine how you should move forward.

Get to know yourself by reflecting on your strengths and weaknesses and determining which areas can help you. Taking the time to get to know yourself allows you to address your foundational background. It also allows you to take the best steps to reach your goals.

4:  Assess Your Successes

Success shows that you’re doing something right, but it can still be a learning opportunity. It can teach you how to utilize your strengths and improve each time. Even when you do well, you can find areas to gain experience.

5:  Identify Your Passions

Think about what you want to do for the rest of your life if you could choose anything. Dream big as you think about what you love and how you want your life to turn out.

Following your passions allows you to focus on your personal strengths while working toward your goals. Consider what you love at your job and in your personal life.

You might find opportunities to bring your passions into your work life. When you know what you’re passionate about, you can determine your strengths and embrace endless possibilities.

6:  Ask Others What They Think of Your Personal Strengths

Don’t be afraid to ask people you trust about what you’re good at doing. They can likely recall things quickly that you hadn’t considered before. While reflecting on past feedback helps, people don’t always openly tell you what they think.

Asking a friend about it can enlighten you to beneficial characteristics of yourself. After they tell you what they think you’re good at, think about if you feel it’s an accurate assessment of who you are.

Additionally, asking others removes potential biases that occur in self-assessment. It’s also helpful to take your self-assessment to a friend for feedback and to check for areas they agree with you.

If a supervisor or anyone else gives constructive criticism, spend time reflecting on it. Additionally, if they gave positive feedback, think about that, too. Think about what people compliment you on to begin assessing your strengths.

Other people can see things about you that others don’t. While cruel people might say hurtful and untrue things, others want to see you do better. Their feedback can help you identify your strengths, helping you make better progress.

How to Use Personal Strengths

After assessing your personal strengths, it’s essential to determine how to leverage them to improve yourself. Using your strengths in the best possible way makes a difference, and your skills won’t go to waste. You can use your strengths as a foundation for growth in the following ways:

Invest in Self-Improvement to Sharpen Your Personal Strengths Continuously

Working toward self-improvement is essential if you want to keep strengthening your skills. Your personal strengths won’t improve if you don’t improve yourself. Invest your time, energy, and money into doing things that allow you to improve yourself.

Consider the Tasks That Help You Work the Most Effectively

Think about the parts of your workday you enjoy diving into the most. Time might seem to fly while you’re working on those tasks, and it’s a good indication of your strengths.

Once you determine the tasks you’re best at and enjoy, consider why that’s the case. You may want to write down why you enjoy these tasks the most, helping you focus on developing your personal strengths.

Strategize Around Your Weaknesses

When you know your personal strengths, you can strategize to make your tasks easier. If something doesn’t play to your strengths, consider if it’s necessary or if there’s another way.

You can sometimes find a new way to do things, avoiding your weakness and using your strengths productively. However, if the task is necessary, you’ll know that you must get better at it.

Strategizing allows you to spend more time on your strengths and things you enjoy. It can improve your life by making you more productive and joyful. Strong people don’t focus on their weaknesses, but they are self-aware enough to know how to strategize around them.

Remind Yourself Why Using Your Strengths Matters

You might have set your goals, but that doesn’t ensure you accomplish them. Using your strengths to reach your goals requires staying motivated.

Thinking of why using your strengths matter can motivate you to keep working. You might find motivation in personal accomplishment, so remind yourself of what keeps you going.

Implement the Strength into Your Routine to Improve Yourself

You can set a time each day to practice using your strength. Focus on one of your strengths daily and do something that allows you to develop and utilize your skill. It helps you make strength a habit and use it more throughout the day.

Consider using the strength in a new way sometimes. Try an activity you haven’t tried before or tackle a project you’ve been meaning to do.

Assessing your personal strengths can make all the difference in achieving success. When you know what you’re good at, you can spend more time focusing on and utilizing these characteristics. It not only makes tasks easier but also improves your overall happiness.

Once you identify your personal strengths, use them as often as possible to improve yourself. Spend time developing the skill and learning more about it so you can use it to your advantage. You’ll find meaning and fulfillment in life if you focus on your strengths.

Michael McKee is a long-time member of the Omaha business community. If you have something to share with Michael McKee, you can write to michael@omahadailyrecord.com, or you can attend the Omaha Empowerment Breakfast (OmahaEmpowermentBreakfast.org). This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a licensed professional.