create your own world.

 To design your life effectively, you must learn the difference between skills and talents and align your talents with the path you want to take.

That’s why I’ve put together a 3-step process you can use to establish a new direction, utilize your talents, and pinpoint the skills that will take you to the next level.

This is the same process I’ve used for getting unstuck in my own life, and I firmly believe it can work for you too.

here is the 3 most important tips:

1. Identify where you want to go.

It’s important to have your end goal in mind at the start of this process so you know where you’re going.

Knowing you simply want things to change is not enough. You also need some idea of how you’d like things to be.

So ask yourself…if you could wave a magic wand and make your life look like anything you want, what would it look like?

• Where would you live?
• What would you be most excited about?
• Who would you spend most of your time with?
• How would you feel when you wake up in the morning?
• What problems and fears would no longer weigh down your thoughts?
• Don’t shrug these questions off as fantasy. Answer them honestly and often.

2. Align your life with your key talents.

The path you choose in life needs to be aligned with your talents because they reveal what you were made to do.

We’ve all seen examples of people NOT aligning their talents with the path they choose on American Idol. These contestants want to be stars, but they simply don’t have the gift of voice or pitch.

But when you align the path you’ve chosen in life with your actual talent, that path will begin to open up and become clearer than ever.

Whether you believe it or not, you are talented at something. In fact, you likely have multiple talents.

There are two problems, however, that commonly hold people back from identifying those talents:

• It’s much harder to evaluate our own talents than the talents of others.
• We tend to have a narrow definition of talent.

3. Discover the skills you can develop to complement your talent.

Your talent is your main asset, but skills are vital too. They put weight to your talent and make it stronger.

Here’s the good news—unlike natural talents, skills can be learned. With time and focus, you can incorporate just about any skill into your life.

Time and focus, of course, are finite resources—which is why it’s critical to identify the right skills that complement your talent.

Again, with “normal” talents it’s fairly easy to identify the important skills. If you’re a great singer, you’ll probably want hone your stage presence.

If you have a weird talent like me, you might have think through a greater amount of confusion in order to find the right skills.

I wasn’t even the best student in my eighth grade English class…yet writing has been one of the most important skills I’ve harnessed to strengthen my odd talent of noticing things.