Finding the Sweet Spot

Your Gifts – What you’re uniquely good at

The greatest part of the challenge of finding the sweet spot is our ignorance of what our gifts, our natural talents, things we do easily, are. We live in a world that is terribly specialised, and we are driven early in life to pick one of a few narrow career channels that are suited to the needs of today’s large, impersonal, industrial employers, and to stop dreaming or thinking about doing anything else.

Questions for identifying and recognising your gifts:

What have people said you are good at

What tasks come easiest to you?

What are you most capable working with: people, tools, ideas or information?

Your Passions – What you love doing

Although intellect, which drives our gifts, evolves rather slowly over our lives, our emotions, which underlie our Passions, can change quickly. As our bodies change and our experiences colour what we care about, so do our passions.

Questions for identifying and recognising your passions:

What do you seem to enjoy the most?

What activities cause you to smile or sing while you do them?

If you suddenly receive a lot of money, or a lot of power, what would you do with it and what would you start doing that you’re not doing now and why?

Your Purpose – What’s needed (that you care about)

Your purpose must be discovered, not invented. It starts with needs, not with solutions. Your purpose gives focus and meaning to your life and directs your decisions on what to do.

Here are a few questions to ponder when thinking about what your purpose might be:

What stirs you? What’s going on in the world that makes you want to get involved?

What “aha!” moments or “callings” have come to you in moments of reflection or crisis?

What do you feel responsible for, that you think you might be able to help improve?