Discover Your Superpowers!

Your strengths and superpowers and what you can create with them are important to identify at the start of your freelance business. When we are beavering away in the workplace or getting through in school days, we are pulled up on what we are weak at and what needs to be improved, instead of looking at the things that we are really good at and that come easy to us.

When we are focusing on our weaknesses, and trying to improve them, we are spending time not being our best selves, not working in our best way. We can’t get into ‘flow’ by being our best selves because someone is trying to put us in a pigeonhole to suit their company culture.

SUCCESS IS ACHIEVED BY DEVELOPING OUR STRENGTHS, NOT BY ELIMINATING OUR WEAKNESSES

MARILYN VON SAVANT

Once we know what matters to us, we have to get a grasp of what we are good at. These traits are your superpowers, the things that come easy to us, so easy that we don’t think of them as superpowers or strengths at all. The problem is that much of the working world is focused on improving our weak areas. We forget to use the talents, skills and superpowers that we have, and then our passion disappears. We don’t stand out, become remarkable or shine, we become a world full of average people full of average talents that are getting more and more average and miserable by the day. You only have to look at the people passing you by on a wet Monday morning to know they would rather be anywhere else than going to work!

Your superpowers depend on three things – Passion, focus and strengths.

Without all these factors you will lack the power to leverage your success.

PASSION:

The ultimate motivation behind your actions is passion, if you find yourself constantly motivating yourself to take action, then you are not passionate about the work that you are trying to do.

FOCUS:

The amount of time you can focus on a task will determine how much you can get done. If you love the work, it will be easy, if not, you will struggle.

STRENGTHS:

Each skill that you have must produce quality results otherwise its not a strength. Be Your Own Hero!!

So start to recognise opportunities in your field of interest, when something comes your way that will utilise your strengths, jump on it. Get to know the person or people involved, immerse yourself in their world and learn all you can from them. We should get better at the strengths we have in our arsenal and focus on our Superpowers, what’s the point in being mediocre anyway? It’s impossible to be passionate about your work if it doesn’t utilise your talents.

Try these exercises to find your superpowers (the worksheet can be found here)

1. What tasks are you good at?

2. What do you enjoy doing?

3. What can’t you stop doing?

4. What tasks excite you to think about working on? Researching a book or blog? Running an event? Presenting an event? Time to get creative about your Superpowers!

5. Pick your top five strengths (get a list of strengths to use as an example for the exercise), If something resonates from the list, write it down.

6. What underlying strengths do these tasks require? Remember tasks and skills are specific to a job or role, but strengths are universal and come easy to you. Be sure to know the difference.

The next thing I like to do with my clients is to identify the things they don’t like doing, their non-strengths, the Lex Luther to their Superman! These are the things that in your freelance business you can delegate to others, otherwise you are just wasting your time!

Identify your non-strengths:

1. What makes your blood boil just thinking about it?

2. What work experiences have been most difficult for you in previous roles?

3. List 5 things you are not good at, that you hate doing, or that make you feel uncomfortable, like public speaking, working with numbers, dealing with a lot of different tasks at the same time.

4. Now work out ways to avoid doing these things in your freelance career! Get creative, or just plain delegate!

The goal is to spend as much time as possible leveraging our natural strengths and as little as possible of the things we can’t stand to do. There are plenty of other people around to do the things we dislike or are weak at, so identifying your weak spots means you can delegate them to people who are actually talented in these areas and are good at the tasks you are not. The key to a freelance life is to focus on what you love to do, and how to do more of it!

TAKE ACTION! 

Not sure what your Superpowers are? Try my free workbook in the Resource Library and get started!