I asked….and they didn’t know. I was a bit saddened by that. They looked so lost.
I asked them what their strength was; 29 out of 58 wasn’t able to write down anything on the paper in front of them. Just a sad face in the space where their strength was supposed to be.
A room full of young people, 85% had already told me they didn’t know what they wanted to do, or be, or dream of. A few were clear: focused goals and a plan of how to get there….but the majority looked like deer in headlight; “Oh no, will this be another grown-up telling me what I should do..?”
So I told them. Loud and clear, I let them know that I wasn’t going to tell them a single thing about what to do with their lives. A few looked like they were thinking I wasn’t being very helpful. That may very well be true. But I wanted to give them a bigger gift than that.
I wanted to give them a tool to figure it out for themselves.
So we spent an hour together, talking about two major things:
- Body language. How to figure out what someone is saying when they are not using just their words. And, perhaps more importantly, how to communicate back and forth on that level.
- Strengths. Not weaknesses. Not fixing “what you have to be better at”. I told them to stop wasting their time, because trying to fix your weaknesses is fighting nature. Make sure your weaknesses isn’t putting barriers up for you, but don’t strive to be better than someone else in an area of weakness. Focus on your strengths: Find them, hone them, practice them.
Show off your strengths. Wear them like a badge of honour, a crown on your head, a halo of skill leading your way.
And then we talked about how. And we practiced, because if you don’t know what your skill IS, how are you going to know how to do all that?
More about that later. Sign up to get a notice when I spend time to develop that part of the conversation.
