Develop Your Talents

“If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded and won satisfaction and a triumph few men and women ever know.”

Thomas Wolfe

I’ve Been Thinking . . . about strengths.

No one has the ability to use their weaknesses to accomplish anything great. Building self-confidence is effectively achieved by managing your weaknesses and developing your strengths. In other words, do a lot of what you do well. And, quit doing, or at least reduce the frequency of doing, what restricts your confidence. . . what you don’t do so well.

As a little boy, he was unusually shy and noticeably thin. He wanted to be a tough guy, but no matter what he ate, he couldn’t gain a pound. To make matter’s worse, he was a minister’s son, and that certainly didn’t make him popular. The other members of his family were outgoing and endowed with public speaking ability. He wanted nothing to do with that kind of responsibility.

“I was shy and bashful,” he says, “and this self-image of inadequacy might have gone on indefinitely had it not been for something a professor said to me during my sophomore year in college. One day after I made a miserable showing, he told me to wait after class. ‘How long are you going to be bashful like this, a scared rabbit afraid of the sound of your voice?’ he demanded. ‘You’d better change the way you think about yourself, Peale, before it’s too late.’”

Norman Vincent Peale went on to become a world renowned speaker and author. The talent he possessed laid dormant because he was investing more time and energy dwelling on what he couldn’t do than exposing what he was capable of.

In his book Making The Most of Life, J.R. Miller told a heart-warming story about Leonardo da Vinci. While da Vinci was still a student, long before he became a renowned renaissance artist, his old and famous teacher asked him to finish a picture he had begun. The young student was in such awe of his teacher’s talent that he initially declined the request. His instructor would not accept no for an answer and handed da Vinci the brush, along with these encouraging words: “Do your best.”

DaVinci took the brush and his trembling hands began to stroke the canvas. He gradually gained confidence, his hand grew steady, and his eye “awoke with slumbering genius.” Soon he overcame his initial timidity and found himself engrossed in his work. When the painting was finished, the master teacher was brought into the studio to see it. Filled with pride over his student’s achievement, he embraced da Vinci and exclaimed, “My son, I paint no more!”

Leonardo da Vinci was a common person with an undeveloped talent. He became a master of his trade when he continually did the best with what he had. Henry Van Dyke once suggested, “Use that talent you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”

Da Vinci’s instructor had a keen sense of talent and an even wiser approach to surfacing talent in order to maximize da Vinci’s potential. As Peter Drucker believed, “To build on a person’s strengths, that is, to enable him to do what he can do, will make him effective . . . to try build on his weaknesses will be . . . frustrating and stultifying.”

What talents have you been timid with? What undeveloped abilities do you possess that are just waiting to blossom? Like Leonardo, your true abilities will surface when you do the best with what you have.

Start viewing yourself as a bundle of potential waiting to be opened - not a package of limitations. Listen to Malcolm Forbes: “Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”

See yourself as endowed with a unique selection of talents, abilities and skills - not as one left with an empty bag when talents were distributed.

Begin seeing yourself as a person with an exciting future of successes, enjoyment, and opportunities to use what you’re good at.

Your self image rises when you use the gifts you’ve been given. Get started on your list.

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.”

H. Jackson Brown