My Story

Your Natural Talents/Unique Abilities are the core basis for your God-Designed Potential. Your greatest successes in your Professional life, and your greatest significance in your Spiritual life, will emerge from the utilization of your God-given strengths!

What are some of your top abilities?

Whether you've ever written them down, whether you have ever given words to them, you probably have some lifetime goals that have given direction and impetus to the key decisions of your life. You may have never shared any or all of them with another person. These goals are what you want to accomplish before your life ends.

Your unique experience gives meaning and definition to your past; your unique goals give the same to your future.

You haven't gotten this far in life without overcoming some challenges that could have taken you out of the game, or neutralized your progress somewhere along the line, 'instead of assuming a "victim" posture, you chose to find a way over, around or through the very boundaries that stop many other people in their tracks.

Your obstacles are unique to you, and have played some part in making you who you are today.

Identify your top three obstacles.

Personality type is one way of distinguishing people from one another. Various methodologies and systems are used to profile people—not to pigeonhole them, but to help them understand some of the unique facets of their individual createdness and how those distinctive characteristics affect their relationships with other similarly distinctive people.

What is your personality?

From birth to now, a considerable amount of time, effort and money have been expended on your education. Not all of your learning has happened in a conventional classroom. Lessons are available in various places, form curious sources, in surprising forms.

As you think through the sum of your education, what are the unique aspects? It may be stated in conventional terms—degrees, schools—or, it may be described in some short-hand understood principally by you. What is your training?

By the middle of adult life, most people have enjoyed the impact of a few exceptional people who have chosen to make a valuable investment into them. Sometimes they know thy are acting as mentors; frequently, they would be humbly surprised to be so designated.

You may have had multiple mentors too. Each key role of your life may have been enhanced by a mentor's model, showing you the way.

Think of the top three mentors whose examples have gone into shaping you.

There may be some crossover between your mentor(s) and your heritage.

Heritage has to do with what you have inherited from the generations that came before you. It may be that your parents or grandparents have also served as mentors. It may be that your heritage is something that your have overcome; perhaps your heritage has been a launching pad for your own strong play in this generation.

Whatever you have received from your forebearers, recite as your heritage.

Everyone has access to resources in life, but they aren't the same resources. Some of these are external resources, like things, people, money, or technology. Some are internal, like skills, motivation, time, or commitment.

Whether money, wisdom, or strength, an accurate inventory of resources must precede the investment decisions of life.

Your resources are different than every other person you know, and they are just as high in value.

Most people begin their adult lives with limited networks. Not that they lack relationships; it is simply that the friendships that had value through youth may have little transference into adulthood.

Today, your network represents a distinguishing dimension of your life.

Your network is not just a list of phone numbers; it is the pool of people with whom you have interactive relationships, who you can count on if you need them.

When people "freshen their resumés", they update the recitation of positions they've held and awards they've earned over their careers.

Many parts of ones resumé are boilerplate; they hold little uniqueness. Usually, there are two or three points that are bookmarks for the personal stories that bring four-color vibrance to ones life story.

What are the most fascinating, distinguishing stories hiding in your resumé?

Alliances are powerful connections that bring winners together, not as ongoing partners, but as occasional collaborators, when separate missions converge to a common purpose and alliances form.

These can be transient, or they may be lasting. In any case, they are always elective... and are even more powerful because they are continuing recognitions of mutual value.

You may have some strategic alliances in different realms of your life today.

The majority of people never have eyes to see opportunities. Their vision is locked on their problems, and they cannot see beyond them.

Leaders are aware of their challenges, but they never lose sight of their opportunities, no matter how weighty their difficulties may be.

In a long-view perspective, what are the unique opportunities that most excite you with their potential for distinction? Choose the three that could be the basis for your place in history.

Every life has a collection of unique experiences that leave an indelible mark, Often, they signal a change of direction in life. They frequently involve deliberate decisions that help to establish long-term decisions that help to establish long-term direction. Though time passes from those experiences to the present, they can usually be revisited in the mind as if they has just occurred.

All the elements of God-designed potential have value; some of them are exceptionally valuable. Select three that are most distinctive for you.

Which stands out to you?

• Unique Goals
• Unique Obstacles
• Unique Personality
• Unique Education
• Unique Mentors
• Unique Heritage
• Unique Resources
• Unique Network
• Unique Resumé
• Unique Alliances
• Unique Opportunities
• Unique Experiences

The original content was designed to be used with the StrengthFinders Assessment. Order your copy.