Ever heard the phrase, “Follow your passion, and the money will follow.” I think everyone who is making lots of money doing what they love, has given this advice to others at some point. But is it really that easy? Should I just start doing what I love each day, and expect money to follow?. What if I decided to golf all day long? By playing and practicing golf for 50-60 hours a week, will I eventually become a professional and be making millions on the PGA? Chances are pretty slim.If I’m not going to become a professional, I could follow my passion into the golf industry. I could become a caddy, a rules official, a tournament organizer, a local club pro, a swing coach, a greens keeper, golf course designer, a marketer or accountant for the PGA, or even one of those guys at tournaments carries the signs with the players score on it.You get the idea. There are many different jobs inside the golf industry. Just because I love golf, doesn’t mean I would excel, or even like, every one of those jobs. I know this because I was once an assistant pro at a local country club. After working 60-70 hours a week, I decided that it wasn’t for me.
The often repeated phrase, “Follow your passion, and the money will follow” is then missing something. Not only do you need to follow your passion, you need to follow your strengths. You need to be doing what you’re good at.
Sitting in a golf shop, 60 hours a week wasn’t what I was good at. I enjoyed some parts but most of it was boring work. I didn’t feel challenged. I didn’t feel like I was fulfilling my potential. I wasn’t working within my strengths.
The goal in one’s career is to overlap your passion with your strengths. If you can find a way to do that, not only will money follow, but probably a lot of it.
Strengths Finder 2.0 Review
So how does one go about finding one strengths? It’s actually pretty simple, read the book and then take the test, in Strengths Finder 2.0.
Strengths Finder 2.0 is a book I just got done reading, that really changed the way I go about my work. It was able to define, through an online assessment, what I’m talented at. What I should be doing to reach my potential.
After taking an online assessment, I was given the following 5 Strengths:
- Consistency - “People who are especially talented in the Consistency theme are keenly aware of the need to treat people the same. They try to treat everyone in the world with consistency by setting up clear rules and adhering to them.”
- Deliberative – “People who are especially talented in the Deliberative theme are best described by the serious care they take in making decisions or choices. They anticipate the obstacles”
- Input - “People who are especially talented in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all information”
- Harmony – “People who are especially talented in the Harmony theme look for consensus. They don’t enjoy conflict; rather, they seek areas of agreement.”’
- Futuristic – “People who are especially talented in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.”
Taking Farther Action
Where I think the book really over delivered, is that it didn’t end after it giving me my strengths and a short explanation of what they mean. The book and the website go into specific actions to take, to start working with my strengths.
For example, here are some of the things it said I should be spending my time due to my Input strength:
- Look for jobs in which you are charged with acquiring new information each day, such as teaching, research, or journalism.
- Devise a system to store and easily locate information. This can be as simple as a file for all the articles you have clipped or as sophisticated as a computer database. (I have started using Evernote)
- Partner with someone with dominant Focus or Discipline talents. This person will help you stay on track when your inquisitiveness leads you down intriguing but distracting avenues.
For each strength of yours, the book gives 10 recommended applications, a total of 50 all together ( 5 strengths and 10 applications per strength). The goal is to center what you do each and everyday, around your strengths.
Going back to my golf example, I can now take my strengths and apply to finding a specific job inside the golf industry. For example, since one of my strengths is input, I could become a golf journalists.
Go Discover Your Strengths
If I could give six stars to a book on Amazon, Strengths Finder 2.0. would be it.
About 95% of career books are useless. They spend 200 pages telling you to follow your passion and the money will follow. Or even worse, the author uses 100 more pages explaining to you why they love their own job and how they worked so hard to get to where they are today.
If you’re struggling finding the right career path, Strengths Finder 2.0. has more potential to help your situation than any other books I have read.
One Caveat
Each book comes with it’s own access code to take the test. An access code can only be used once.
I found this out the hard way, when I received this book used through PaperBack Swap. Somebody had already used the access code.
What I ended up doing was purchasing the book through The Kindle for PC (you don’t need a Kindle to have the application) application on my computer. Immediately I was given an access code to take the test. Plus, I was able to purchase the book for less than the cover price.
Just a word of warning.
##
Photo by: koka_sexton
{ 2 comments }
How did u get the unique code when u bought the kindle-for-pc edition? By email?
Sorry, but not sure what you mean by Unique Code. I downloaded it form this page http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311
Comments on this entry are closed.