Today I want to talk about why it is SO important to use your gifts in life.

And what do I mean by “gifts?” Some people refer to them as your “spiritual gifts” or the talents that you were uniquely blessed with as an individual. What I mean by gifts are the things that you are really good at – whether they are a natural, God-given talent, or a skill that you’ve honed and developed over the years that you are proud of. Let’s go deeper. 

The Role That Using Your Gifts Plays into Finding Your Purpose

I personally believe that we were all blessed with a specific blend of gifts, talents, strengths, passions and service aptitudes that come together in a unique way that only WE can embody and fulfill. And it is our responsibility to find out what those gifts are and to use them. More so – it is usually in this culmination of talents, strengths, and passions that we find our “Reason for Being,” or our purpose in the world. The way we are meant to serve others and make the world a better place – through the use of our gifts.

And it’s not just important to find and use those gifts; it is vital to creating true fulfillment happiness in life. Your gifts are the things that make you special; they make you unique, and they make you feel like the truest, most authentic version of you. So why wouldn’t you want to use them every day? Specifically – why wouldn’t you want to use them in your work?

How to Discover Your Gifts

It’s one thing to realize the importance of discerning your gifts – it’s another thing to be able to ACTUALLY do so! But luckily, with a few simple exercises, it’s fairly easy to determine what your gifts and talents are as an individual.

When I begin work with new coaching clients, in our first session together, one of the first things that we always go through together is an in-depth strength-finder exercise. We go through a big questionnaire that helps you reflect on:

• Your strengths
• Your values
• Your natural talents
• The things that make you unique
• Your passions
• The causes you care about – how you want to make an impact in the world

…And more! Doing this deep dive and identifying the qualities that define you helps to get a better sense of who you are. 

And this concept of who you are, or your identity, is supremely important.

Why? Because connecting with your identity and having an understanding of who you are helps to create authenticity in your life, which then paves the way for meaningful work and true fulfillment and happiness. Many people go through life, without stopping to define themselves or take stock of their values and beliefs and strengths. Ultimately, this leads to confusion and dissatisfaction in life, and, eventually, we settle for less than what we want.

The Affirmation of Discerning Your Strengths

Furthermore, knowing yourself and being authentically connecting with your identity is incredibly empowering.

Your identity is your POWER. Especially when it comes to making big decisions, maybe pursuing a new career, a new relationship, or any other time of transition in your life, you need to be rooted in who you are.

And when we are connected with our identity, and we have clarity on our strengths, and our gifts, and our talents, we tap into something incredibly powerful. Yes, it’s important to learn and discern these qualities, but more so – the more that we write down and repeat to ourselves the things that we know to be true about ourselves the better that we feel. 

Affirming the things about ourselves that unique define us helps us to realize our power as individuals – and motivates us to then use that power and make an impact, and whatever way is meaningful to.

Strengths & Confidence

Furthermore, if you’ve read my book, “35 Days of Confidence,” then you are well-versed with my personal definition of confidence:

True confidence comes from knowing exactly who you are and what you want in life and then fiercely pursuing those things.

35 Days of Confidence: Find Your Voice, Focus Your Inner Power & Fulfill Your Dreams

So, a crucial part of that confidence equation is knowing who you are -getting to know yourself inside and out. When I go through this exercise and this discovery process with my clients, they will usually reinforce strengths and talents they knew they possessed… and discover NEW strengths and talents that they weren’t able to see on their own. This exercise serves the purpose of helping to build their confidence because it reconnects them with who they authentically, uniquely are.

Why It’s Important to Use Your Gifts in Your Work

The other reason why I always start my client engagements with the strength-finder exercise is because – whether my clients are looking for a new job, or trying to start a business, or to undertake any sort of change in life – inevitably their strengths play a large role in that desire.

I was recently on a call with a client whose main goal right now is to find a new job – through our work together, it’s become clear that she needs this change, and a new job is going to provide her new challenges, exciting stimuli, and more for fulfillment in life.

I was going through an exercise with this client – we’ll call her Kim – and we were basically going through what exactly she wants in her ideal new job. She revealed that wanted a new job that allowed her to communicate with others, and really motivate a team. She wanted to help solve big problems in the business and work hands-on with people.

And what I heard her saying, and what I then paraphrased back to her was “So basically, you want a job that allows you to use your gifts?” (We had discerned that her gifts were really connecting with people, communication and problem solving through the strength-finder exercise we had already gone through together in a previous session. Sometimes it just takes someone else to help us connect the dots, and realize what exactly it is that we want!)

And this is not a coincidence. For all of us, the reason that we struggle in our work and we find ourselves in jobs that we dislike or that drag us down is because they become a meaningless use of our time. With the key word here being “meaning.” It’s not meaningful for us to be there because we’re not doing anything in that job that makes us feel good – we’re not using our strengths, we’re not using our service aptitudes, we’re not displaying our talents.

How to Find Meaningful Work – the Job You Were MEANT to Have!

So, if you want to find meaningful work (and who doesn’t?!), then you need to start by figuring out your gifts.

There’s a couple different ways I know how to do this and I talk about them all the time one of the easiest ways is to take personality tests. Personality tests are great for learning more about yourself and discerning your unique talents, strengths, and identifiers as an individual. My favorite ones are the Meyers Briggs Test and the Enneagram test – both of which are totally FREE to take!

Get started with those tests… and you never know what you may discover!