You’ve been asked about your strengths and weaknesses since pre-school. By now, you’re intimately familiar with your seemingly finite list of abilities. It’s ingrained into your identity. You know that some people’s list is longer than yours, but you’ve made peace with it.
Except – you’d like to be good at a few more things. You want to have a talent to show off. You want to follow in the footsteps of an idol. Instantly, your fixed list of strengths and weaknesses feels limiting.
Luckily, “ability” is about more than innate talent. For talent to flourish, we need practice and resources. It’s how we learn to refine our intrinsic characteristics and learn new skills.
Previously, I wrote about abilities in a post titled 5 Five Steps to Fall Back in Love with Learning but left little information on how to maximise your internal and external resources. So, let’s unpack that.
Don’t have enough time to read the whole article? Find the summary here.
Table of Contents
What are Abilities?
Ability refers to your proficiency in a particular area. Each time you learn new knowledge or skills, you improve your proficiency. A few factors influence your skill development, including genetics, early childhood and the material and emotional resources you can access.
In school, cognitive abilities like memory, concentration, and problem-solving are emphasized. These abilities occur naturally and develop with time, attention, and investment from parents, teachers, and mentors. Unfortunately, not everyone gets the attention they need, making it challenging to excel in academic settings.
Social and emotional abilities include skills that help you make friends and perform different roles in social settings. Generally, people focus less on actively developing these skills. Usually, we learn from our surroundings and how the adults around us behave. We don’t think much about how these skills can improve our lives. However, where we lack in one skill area, we can make up for it in others. That is the basis for embracing your abilities.
What about Disability?
Ability is diverse. Individuals have their own set of limitations that affect their participation in school, work, and society. Impairments can be physical, cognitive, or social. However, we’ve seen how accommodations for disabilities (e.g., glasses for particular visual impairments and remote work for immune-compromised people) can make life more comfortable and allow people to excel at what they do.
With good support and adequate accommodations, more people with disabilities can focus on improving their skills instead of using all their energy to survive frustrating systems that exclude them. Yes, limitations exist, some more devastating than others, but with the correct external resources, there is more potential to emphasise and develop naturally occurring abilities.
Why Should You Embrace Your Abilities?
It feels good to be acknowledged for what we excel at. It improves our confidence and self-esteem. Finding something you shine at and enjoy can give you a sense of purpose and an idea about what you want to do with your life. It could even set you on the right career path.
As the world evolves, the workplace demands more diverse skills. It also insists on creativity in both formal employment and entrepreneurship. In this regard, traditionally valued abilities won’t necessarily lead you on your way to success.
How to Embrace Your Abilities
Step 1: Identify your strengths
Identifying your strengths requires high self-esteem. You must acknowledge that you do some things better than others. Without that, this exercise can feel like building a mansion out of popsicle sticks—difficult, tedious, and futile.
However, there are ways to develop your list of skills even when you don’t feel too confident in yourself. Grab a pen and paper and try any of the following:
- Make a list of things you’ve been complimented for in the past
- Write down compliments you often brush off
- What can you do easily that seems more difficult for others?
- What hobbies do you have?
- Is there anything you were good at growing up but haven’t practised in a while?
Your preliminary list will probably be filled with things that can be measured objectively. When you win a race, everyone calls you a good athlete. But some abilities can’t easily be measured. There’s no medal for mediating conflict in your friend group or rebuilding your life after a significant setback. Regardless, these types of abilities still count.
Look at this list of skills and see if you can identify with any of them:
Step 2: Use the Past to Plan the Future
Next, reflect on how your skill has helped you solve problems in the past. For example, how has your ability to collaborate with others helped you plan successful events? Think about how you might use your skills in different scenarios. What is a problem you are having trouble solving right now? How could your social or emotional skills help you solve it?
Step 3: Gather Your Resources
Consider how you will develop your abilities to be useful in different scenarios. Thus far, we’ve outlined our internal resources – things we are naturally good at or have practised to improve. But to maximise your abilities, you must continue to develop them. This usually involves three components:
Self-awareness
True self-improvement lies in identifying shortcomings, even in areas where you feel most confident. Even at the top of your field, there is always room for improvement. Self-awareness helps us understand our thoughts and actions and decide whether they align with our values and dreams.
Self-awareness can help us build our internal resources by helping us identify self-limiting beliefs, such as “This is too difficult for me to do.” You can list your limiting beliefs and analyse them. Examine where they came from. Was it something someone told you? Do you have any evidence for or against them?
Awareness of your circumstances can also help you determine what resources you need. Figure out if any external factors are preventing you from improving yourself. What would you need to overcome those obstacles?
Research
The next step involves research to find the resources you need. The first step can be as simple as typing a question in a search browser. For example, “What are the benefits of self-control?” Find out how your skill can be used to improve your life. How have others before you done it?
Make use of a variety of sources – from books and videos to your local library. Learn how to make the most of your resources in this article.
Find a Mentor
When you’re feeling stuck, you need a guide. A mentor can show you the way forward, especially if your field of interest is very specialised. This can be someone you know in person or find online.
Another way mentorship can help you develop is by helping you become a mentor to someone else. Sharing your knowledge and skills compels you to stay updated on new developments in your area of expertise.
Summary
Ability refers to our capacity to perform a skill. It is influenced by inherent talent and the care given to developing it. The focus is usually on abilities that help us excel in school. Social and emotional skills receive less input, even though they are similarly useful for problem-solving.
People with disabilities experience the additional barrier of living in a world that systematically excludes them from opportunities. However, given adequate resources, they can participate in their communities and excel like anyone else.
The template to embrace your abilities involves:
- Identifying your abilities
- Using experience to plan the future
- Gathering your resources
Conclusion
We show interest in certain things from a young age, and with the right encouragement and resources, we can excel at them. Embracing your abilities can grant you the creativity to overcome difficult obstacles and excel in your personal, social, and professional life. Self-reflection can help you determine which internal and external resources you need, and with research and guidance, you can maximise your abilities.