Everybody Underestimates their Talents

Time: 3:52 minutes

Everybody Underestimates their Talents

TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO:

I guarantee you on some level everybody underestimates some aspect of their talents. Without conscious effort, we can’t really separate ourselves from our thoughts and our feelings, our behaviors – especially the patterns in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Those are the things that we do automatically. And they are so easy to us that we just think that it’s easy for everybody. And that’s where we start questioning ourselves. We doubt ourselves. We’re not seeing our own value. And this is something that I invite you to talk to friends, coworkers, family members and really explore just your thought processes behind the simplest things.

And I’ll give you an example. Something I know in my talent results - I’ve got Adaptability and Arranger. What that means is… The way I express it is I’m able to be flexible with rearranging activities. In terms of schedules, I can be accommodating. My Arranger is what allows me to rearrange activities or schedules, or see I need this resource to have that happen. And I can quickly change the order of things.

So it’s a combination of being adaptable and being able to easily arrange things. It’s two different talents that I combine. It’s just natural. I don’t even have to think twice about it. And sometimes I’ll walk into a situation and I see people that are flustered by... to me – the simplest of things: It could be a phone call that something’s not happening or a paper was left behind and it completely derails other people.

In the past, I probably would’ve looked at this and said: “What is wrong? Why is this person overreacting? It’s not a big deal!” And it’s something that I need to remind myself that this is not a big deal to me because quickly (without even thinking about it), I can accommodate that. I can work around it. In fact, I practically expect something to go wrong. I don’t get too committed on things being perfect. I try to go more with the flow. That’s part of the Adaptability.

But it took me consciously learning some of my talents and some of my behaviors and understanding what’s unique about me. Not that Adaptability and Arranger are unique. But that combination is probably a little bit more rare than for most people. And you start combining some of my other talents, and it starts getting more unique and more unique and more unique - that combination and how it expresses itself.

So I invite you to get curious about yourself. Really question yourself. This is something students have told me. As they’re sitting in workshops with others that they were surprised at some of the things that people said – how different it was from them. And they were surprised sometimes some of the things that were the same as them.

I think sometimes we create stories in our mind of what are the things we are different about and what are the things that we just think everybody feels the same way. It’s an incredible reminder of valuing ourselves as well as appreciating the differences between others and yourself.

My name is Elvira Marie Chang. I’m a Trainer and a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach. I offer one-to-one coaching, workshops, an online interactive series, as well as online courses. If you have any questions about Talents or Strengths or how they show up in different aspects of your life, feel free to connect with me and send me some questions. I’d love to talk to you about them. Thank you, and I look forward to connecting with you soon!