Love Your Strengths...

... forget your weaknesses.

This topic has popped up in my daily life in a variety of ways. Strengths, gifts, intelligences, currency, etc.

The idea of varied strengths was just on my mind last week for some reason and of course, Seth Godin read my mind (as he always does) and wrote about the idea of multiple intelligences... or "dumbnesses" as he calls it.

On Sunday, being Catholic and all, we celebrated Pentecost. Part of the focus is on our gifts as individuals and the importance of learning about these personal gifts, accepting them and making good use of them.

Today at work, each person in our office was given the book Living Your Strengths by Winseman, Clifton, and Liesveld. I took the (slightly frustrating) online test to discover my strengths: Futuristic, Ideation, Strategic, Maximizer, and Relator. I found it to be a very accurate analysis of my personality and natural abilities. (I may write more about this later)

THEN I see this article at Inc.com all about discovering your "currency."

Are you on this train?

It seems that in this world today, you have to know who you are and why anybody should listen to what you have to say. I also think that it is important to listen to others because 1) they probably have a lot of insight into the type of person you are and 2) if you want respect you've got to give it.

All of those places where this theme showed up this week? They all mention the importance of recognizing the strengths of others. This creates synergy... and it makes things more interesting.