How to Maximize and Leverage Your Strengths

You've got a divine gift and it's about time you started using it. Here's how.

You know. As we start out in life, we're always trying to figure out what our purpose is, what our significance is, what are we passionate about? We spend all this time trying to have a self discovery notion. The problem is most of us don't actually do the work to actually truly self discover. Instead, we just let those questions kind of purr in our mind over and over again. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I don't know where supposed to be with over and over again. One of the things that I struggle with early on is the fact that I'm ADHD dyslexic and high school dropout. Now, on the surface, you would think that I should probably have no real chance at a winning life or having a life that I love, so to speak. So what I've discovered is in order to actually achieve pretty much anything, first of all, you've got to believe you can do that. But in order to do that, I wanted to give you some tips and some tactics that I currently use to get myself from homelessness to here, as well as things that I use today to make sure that I am leveraging my talents, my gifts in my strengths in the right way at the right time to help me make massive progress on a consistent basis. In order to maximize and leverage your strengths, one of the first things that you've got to do is live in the present and not in the past. Far too many of us, when we start making some mistakes and we start going through some difficulties, we make bad decisions and those bad decisions give us bad results. And those bad results, if we're not careful, will haunt us. That's the last thing that you want to have done, is your results haunting you over and over again. The easiest way to do that is to forgive yourself whatever mistakes you made and then simply decide today that you're going to do things differently and then do it differently. That way you can actually understand how to move yourself from the negative mindset, the negative self talk into what do I want to achieve kind of mindset that'll help you move along a lot faster. The next thing you want to consider is discovering what to amplify, what types of gifts, talents and strengths that if you amplified them on a regular basis, would the world find value in. At the end of the day, you have to discover what gifts, talents and strengths that you have to amplify you. One of the easiest ways to do that is to understand some of the things that comes naturally to you. So if I was to say, what are top so if I was to say, what are the top five things that actually come naturally to you, what would you list? Would you list? I'm great with people. I'm great with sales. I'm great with encouraging people. I'm great with speaking. What types of things would you say come naturally to you? Side note, one of the easiest ways to do this is to actually have your friends tell you what comes naturally to you. Sometimes our friends and our family have a greater perspective on really our strengths and our struggles and our blind spots all at the same time. For the purpose of this scenario, though, we want to discover what to amplify. So ask your friends and your family, hey, what are some things that I do really, really well that other people really would probably struggle with? Let them help you better understand some of the natural gifts and talents that you may just not be thinking about. Sometimes the blind spot in not understanding what we can amplify in our life is because we can't actually see what comes naturally to us only because we're always doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. So much so that it's a force of habit, and we take for granted that as that's actually a gift or a strength. So ask your friends and family. All right, next up, discover what you need to clarify. What I mean by that is if you have confusion, for example, I don't know where I'm going in my life. There needs to be serious thought and preparation in that discovery of understanding. What do I need to offer me the best chance of clarity over confusion. One of the best ways to actually discover this clarity is by asking a very simple question. Who would I like to be and why? So many times people refuse to sit down with a pen and a pad or an iPad or an iPhone and just ask that question and sit there for 20 to 30 minutes and actually let that question sit inside their spirit so they can actually understand who it is they really want to be. More importantly, why do I want to be that way if those two things don't actually match? In other words, I want to be a rock and roll star, and your why is so other people look at me. Well, that's probably not a good match. But if you say, I want to be a rock and roll star and I'm naturally gifted, amazing, creating amazing music, then that might be a good match. It's just an idea to help you understand some of the areas that you might need clarity in. If you find yourself confused about something, that means you need more knowledge and more information to give you more options that then allow you to get clarity in the direction you need to go. The next thing we got to focus on is understanding what we need to remove and replace. What I mean by that specifically are what are your current distractions? Ask yourself about people, places, and things, what I refer to as the nouns of life. What type of people are distracting you? What type of places are distracting you? In other words, events, experiences, and or what types of things distract you? I used to love to play video games until the wee hours of the morning. Well, guess what? That impeded my progress in making me successful. What did I decide to do? Eliminate that distraction. Not entirely, but mostly so I could actually make sure I was making more progress in every single day. And you've got to do the same thing. So what are some of the current distractions? And when you identify what those distractions are, it tells you what you have to remove and replace. So basically, remove the distraction and replace it with focus, Remove the distraction and replace it with progress. Another potential thing that you might have to remove and replace are the types of relationships that could be holding you back. So some of those relationships, I would ask this question, who does not believe in me? And granted, some of those people might be in your family. That's okay. They normally are in your family, to be honest with you. Why? Because they're so close to you. There's an old scripture in the Bible that says a prophet is not known in his own town, which means a prophet who is gifted in a certain level is always ignored by the people he lives in a town with. It's the same thing with your house. By understanding that many of the relationships that you most encircle yourself with likely have this element of not believing you can achieve something special. Don't need to have the priority in your life, doesn't mean you need to cut them off entirely. But you do need to take the time to understand whether or not they bring actual value in the direction that you're going. And if they don't, you remove them at least the majority of the time you spend with them, and replace them with maybe someone like a coach or a mentor that can help you move along. Before we go on the next one, do me a favor, like subscribe, comment, hit that bell for me to make sure you never miss a video that can actually help you change your life. All right, let's get back to the list. The next thing you got to focus on with a lot of attention is your top five passions. And the reason you got to focus there is because inside of every one of those passions could be hidden your purpose. In fact, some of the questions you need to ask yourself are, things that I would do for free. What are they? What are things that you would do for free? What are things that you find yourself doing with your own free time by choice on a regular basis? Sometimes by asking questions just like that, it'll help you understand what your top five passions are. Also, you can simply just ask yourself, what are the top five things that I'm most passionate about? After you do that, you can look at those five passions and look and see if there's any patterns. Do any of them talk? For example, one time I was working with a young man who was really good at sales. He was really good with people, and he liked real estate a lot. So guess what? He ended up in a professional career as a real estate agent and became one of the best in the state that's taking your passions to discover your purpose and making it work for you. All right, the next one we got to pay close attention to is know your marketplace. Now, I did a whiteboard video not long ago called the nine mission driven marketplaces. I want to make sure you take the time to look at that video. In fact, I'll make sure I link it in the description below. The reason I say that is is because there are nine specific areas that most hobbies and professions fall into once you understand your gifts and your talents. Now, the next part of the journey is understanding where to apply those gifts and those talents. And the easiest way to do that is by looking at the nine mission driven marketplaces to take a better understanding of how to apply those things in a way that's going to bring the most value to you and to the community around you. All right, next up on the list is this one. Know your life impact. Here's what I mean by that. Most people think about their life from day to day to day, not realizing that the clearest way to make sure you have a life that matters, where you leverage your gifts and your talents and your strength to maximize amazing results, is actually by defining where you want your life to end. Now, I'm not being morbid. What I'm trying to help you understand is by understanding where you want your life to end up, it's easier to work backwards to chart a course forward. What I mean by that is this. I use an epitaph statement to help me understand what it is I want my life to mean at the end of the journey. And here's what I mean. My epitaph statement is, here lies an amazing husband and father who also set out to change the world and did. My ultimate goal is to make such an impact that people can stand on that impact for years and years and years to come. Maybe I'll get there with your help. Every one of us has a life impact we're trying to make with a specific purpose behind it. And your life impact may shift and change a little bit. You know, when I started my construction businesses, I. I wanted to build a successful construction company. It wasn't until after I had a lot of understanding and a lot of things happen in life and I got to the place I'm in now where all I want to do is serve people at a very deep level, at scale. That's how you actually shape up some of your life impact. So you may not be the same as when you actually finish your life, but at least it gives you directions on where to go and how to get there. In fact, Les Brown once said, the graveyard is the richest place on the earth because it is here that you find all the hopes, all the dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared or created, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take the first step. Don't let that be you, because you have amazing gifts and talents and strengths that the world needs to see. Now, if you enjoyed that specific video, you're really going to like this video right here. So make sure you check it out. That's not the time to go out and buy a bunch of stuff and over leverage yourself. That's the time to actually take a lot of that cash off the table and put it in the emergency fund, whether it be your personal one or your business one.