Finding your talents

How do you find your talents / skills / hobbies when you don't think you have any? Have you ever wanted to change your career but you have no idea where to start? Here's a simple exercise to get the ball rolling.

Write down all of your talents, skills, and abilities on a piece of paper.

Start off with the obvious skills you've included on your resume. I started with my software skills as my day job involves knowledge of designing presentations, marketing, and branded materials. Then I started to think about the not so obvious.

What skills do you have that you have not included on your resume? It might be something that you already do but you never thought of doing professionally. Some of you have left comments on my YouTube channel saying that I have a pleasant speaking voice. I neeeever knew that. I hear my voice everyday and didn't think much of it. Perhaps I could consider doing some voiceover work. Commericals, audio books, and movies are industries that I never even considered that I could be a part of. Why limit ourselves?

If you have a passion for something but lack training, write it down. You can learn how to perfect a skill but you can't teach passion. It might be a good idea to keep your skills vs. your interests in separate lists. Bridge the gap later by getting more training thereby transforming your interests into your skills.

You might not find the perfect career immediately, but you never know whom you might meet along the way and what you might learn about yourself that others have been seeing all along.