Working Your Muscles the Wrong Way

I'm a lucky girl. I married a man who lives to stay healthy and work out. From the moment we met almost 25 years ago, he's been instrumental in keeping me on the right track a true accountability buddy. Sometimes we work out together. Sometimes I do things he thinks I should be doing and sometimes he's just motivated me to go off and try new and different ways of trying to stay in shape.  To that end, one of the most enlightening times I had was working with a personal trainer, was actually a tenant in my building, and agreed to trade taking me through intense workouts for a break on his rent. He taught me the importance of working on my muscles in the best way to get results in the shortest period of time. What he taught was completely different than what I had been exposed to and learned over several years, including my stint as a dance instructor. I won't go into all the details now, but it involved lifting weights at an agonizingly slow pace until failure. What came out of his lesson on muscle building was a new understanding of how working on something the right way is vital. Otherwise it's easy for complacency or discouragement to kick in, or the wrong conclusions to be drawn from the effort. As a result, doing something the right way from a basis of knowledge is something I keep a keen eye out for. 

So if I can get just a little bit "woo woo" for some of you, the basis of coming from a position of strength requires that you have a personal vision and the only way to get a personal vision is to do a little introspective analysis. That's why I found the Strength Finders book useful as well as fun.  I've learned over the years that there's really nothing more interesting than trying to figure out myself.  Besides, it's a lot easier than trying to figure out other people.  And on a serious note, it does help me figure out how to deal with other people. What I found was that the book helped guide me, not through the touchy-feely, pie-in-the-sky kind of personal vision that may come to your mind as you start to read this, but rather it helped identify an image of myself using my most powerful talents. And frankly, putting no emphasis on my weaknesses. Working through the book creates a template that can help me make decisions about what I should do next to get what I really want.  Believe it or not it can help with big decisions about life and career, as well as help with those small decisions that add up to the big ones, and that affects whether your life feels balanced or out of control and stressed. 

You have to agree with the premise that talents - natural abilities, are completely different from acquired knowledge, skills, and interests. You cannot change, really change them that much and you need to know what they are.  Your skills and life experience - your expertise, unlike natural abilities, which are set for life, can be practiced and learned. On the flip side, if you don't use them you can lose them.  Generally speaking, I think that you have to determine what interests or fascinates you and gives you passion and energy.  You need to understand your personality and your preferences and how you interact with those around you.  Understand what you feel is worth doing in life.  Also, consider your large goals and messages that you learned about work and success from your family.  Yep, that's a really important one.  And it really helps to determine if you are at any kind of a turning point or building stage . If you are doing this introspection while dealing with a turning point or building stage it will have a tremendous impact on how you view choices and make decisions. 

I'm sure this approach may seem alien to many of you, especially those of you who are very right brained, bottom-line, action-oriented types.  Like me working out with the trainer who told me I had to do everything really slow. The hardest part for you will be to slow things down and take a look inside!

We live in such a reactive society.  It's hard to see how much more powerful it is to slow down and try to create a clear and positive picture of the kind of career we enjoy, both by who we want to work with and the work we will be doing. I know it helps me keep from getting sidetracked, derailed and even defeated.  If the only thing that I get is some small assurance that I might be able to look back someday and honestly say that I got to do what I really wanted to do and had fun along the way, the time spent will be worth it. What do you think? Are you willing to explore a better way of getting the results you want, even if it feels really weird and goes against what you've learned in the past?  If you decide to grab the book and give it a spin.  I hope you let me know.