How do you discover and develop talents and abilities?

I have been thinking about this one all week. There is a lot of information out there I have heard over the years about developing your talents; everything from religious viewpoints on talent to advice from self help gurus. I have seen a lot of it over the years. 

I believe the key to discovering your talents is being open to trying new things and not immediately giving up. If you have an opportunity to try something new or approach something in a different manner, give it a few tries before you call it quits. This applies not only to activities but also skill sets you think would be great to have. I think when a lot of people think about developing talents they consider things like learning a new instrument or taking up some new sporting activity. There is so much more out there in the realm of talents and abilities to consider working on. 

A great way to find traits or skill sets you would like to develop is to look at people you admire, both living and not. Learn about these people and find out why they were so successful and what qualities they had that you admire. How did they develop those qualities? I personally am a big fan of Benjamin Franklin as well as John Huntsman, Sr. 

How do you go about developing new talents and abilities? Once you have decided what you want to do or work on, decide what the end goal would be. Work backwards from there and figure out what activities and decisions would take you toward that goal. Find things that you can do on a daily basis to work towards it. In my study of Franklin and Huntsman I have compiled a list of attributes that they embody I want to emulate. When I was younger I played the trombone. The only way to learn and get better at it was to practice every day. When I started I would practice for 4 hours per week. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot, but spread across 6 days that worked out to 40 minutes per day. For a kid that is quite a time commitment. 

I think the most important things to consider when finding talents and abilities to develop are: 

How does this improve upon me as a person? How will it increase the quality of my life and of those around me? 

Do I enjoy it? If you try an activity a few times and you don’t like it, you gave it a good shot but don’t kill yourself. 

What kinds of costs are associated with it? If there are some activities that you are truly passionate about, I believe you will find a way to finance what it is you love. Just remember to not kill yourself financially in the process. 

Above all, use the development of talents and abilities as a way to further your passion for life.

What is the source of individual rights?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
–          Declaration of Independence 

There are a lot of us that have read these words. There are even some of us that can quote this particular phrase. How many of us have actually sat down and taken the time to think about and evaluate this phrase? 

The portion of this phrase that I would like to focus on is “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. How many of us actually understand this phrase? It is such a small portion but holds such profound truth. Our rights come from our Creator. They come from God. If you truly understand that then you also understand that we lend the government a small portion of our rights to do the limited things we have asked them to do. This means that we do not get our rights from the government or through legislation, we get them from God. They come from Him directly to us. Why is this important? It is important to understand that we are given the rights and freedom to decide our own destiny. To understand that not only can those basic rights we have been given by our Creator not be legislated away but that man cannot legislate new rights. 

 “We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. The process is necessary in order that life my run its appointed course. 

“Life, faculties, production – in other words, individuality, liberty, property – this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. 

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws [for their protection] in the first place.”
–          Frederic Bastiat 

When you understand that your rights come directly from God it gives a magnificent power. It gives you the strength and courage to press forward and blaze your own path. You will not end up sitting around waiting for somebody else to come up with a solution to problems. You will solve problems yourself. This applies not only to the personal problems you experience but even those of your family and neighborhood. 

We as a people need to get beyond the point of “oh the government will just come in and fix this.” That is not what God has intended. He wants us to take the rights and abilities He has given us to solve the problems ourselves. When disaster strikes, we should turn to our neighbors and ask where we can help. We need to help each other out as individuals and not wait for the possibility of somebody else to swoop in and make it all better. 

I leave you with this question. How can the knowledge of where our rights truly come from create not only a personal impact but a community impact as well?

Selected virtues to work on

In a previous post I discussed increasing individual ability by developing certain virtues or character traits. After my initial post here I moved my weekly accounts of my quest to improve myself through developing these virtues to my personal blog. After processing for a couple weeks and reviewing I have taken some ideas from Mr. Franklin and some things I thought were important my list to come up with the list below. 

1. Integrity
2. Faith
3. Vision
4. Courage
5. Persistence
6. Self Confidence
7. Charity
8. Tranquility
9. Thrift
10. Self Control
11. Sincerity
12. Productivity
13. Humility 

I did like Benjamin Franklin’s calculation of 13 virtues. It allows me to work on each 4 times in a year. I’ll continue posting my results and insights on this to my personal blog. If I discover something I felt was really profound, I will cross post it here as well. 

What types of virtues/character traits do you think are important to work on and develop?

Do small individual acts of charity have a positive impact on our communities?

Dictionary.com defines charity as the following: 

1. Generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless: to devote one’s life to charity
2. Something given to a person or persons in need; alms: She asked for work, not charity.
3. A charitable act or work 

As we think of charity, I believe that most of us envision that first definition. I believe that it goes much further and can be more along the lines of the third definition. We can perform enough charitable acts that it starts to become a part of our character. I believe this character trait of charity is engrained in most Americans. We are continually recognized as the most charitable nation on earth and I believe it comes from this foundation. 

Charity does not have to be something super complicated. The New Testament defines charity as the pure love of Christ. Taking that simple definition, even for those not of a Christian faith, one can simply exercise it as a love and concern for their fellow man. The simplest way to be charitable is by simple acts of kindness in your own home. My wife likes the fact that on our website I mention doing the dishes. It can be spending a few extra minutes with your kids, sending a kind note or email to a family member in the middle of the day, the possibilities are endless. 

From our homes we can move out to our streets and neighborhoods. You can bring in the trash cans for your neighbors. Help somebody in the neighborhood with a project. As we perform acts of charity starting from our homes and spreading into our neighborhoods we start to have a positive effect on those we come in contact with. At times in my life when I have focused on being more charitable I have felt happier and more upbeat. So much so that those I came in contact with me noticed a positive change in my persona. 

Through our church, there is a special event being sponsored in August. A community yard sale is being organized. This however is not your typical yard sale. It is not designated to raise funds for a cause or anything like that. Everyone in the community, not just church members, is being encouraged to bring items they do not need or don’t use on Friday. Everything will be organized and then on Saturday the community is being invited back to see if there is anything they can use and just have it. I am excited because it is an opportunity for the community to stand together and help each other out during tough times. 

Charity spreads like wildfire amongst not only those who contribute and perform charitable acts. It spreads amongst those on the receiving end as well. These individuals then see an opportunity to pay it forward, in whatever way that they can. 

Benjamin Franklin stated this as his creed, “That there is one God who made all things. That he governs the World by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped by Adoration, Prayer and Thanksgiving. But that the most acceptable Service of God is doing good to Man.” 

Let us work together to strengthen ourselves, our families, and our communities through random acts of charity and kindness. As we do this we will strengthen our resolve to work hard and to contribute as individuals, lifting ourselves as we lift those around us.

Where/when does personal responsibility began?

Is it ethical for a woman to flirt with a cop in order to get out of a speeding ticket? This is a question recently discussed amongst some of my coworkers. One of them had the question posed by an ethics professor at school. My coworker claims that it is perfectly ethical and that the ethics falls on the police officer in whether or not he issues her a ticket. 

Unfortunately, this is an all too frequent display of an individual saying something is not their responsibility. One can argue that yes, the officer ultimately makes the decision on whether to issue you a ticket. However, would have been pulled over if you hadn’t been speeding? Ultimately an individual is responsible and should accept responsibility for their actions. If you got caught, own up to it. 

I was not surprised to hear this kind of answer from my coworker. I am not saying she is some completely irresponsible, blame everyone else type of individual. Interestingly enough, in other areas of conversation she chants that people need to take responsibility for their own actions. In a world where we constantly hear the drumming of, it’s not my fault because ……. it doesn’t surprise me that someone can see not accepting personal responsibility for some things is ok but not for others. The question is, where does that end? Where does one draw the line? 

I believe an individual is responsible for all of their actions. If you made a decision, own up to it. It does not matter if the results were good or bad. This is true for somebody seeing their business fail to somebody that gets picked up for shoplifting. Our personal decisions have an effect on the environments and social situations we find ourselves in. In the case of a business failing or somebody falling short of achieving some goal, the first step to recovering is taking ownership for your decisions. It is at that point that somebody can evaluate those decisions, learn from them, and figure out how to do it better the next time. In the case of somebody shoplifting, they decided to break the rules that society has set to protect private property and maintain civilization. 

This seems to me to be an opportune time to discuss personal responsibility. US Congressman Weiner has finally admitted to sending lude Twitter messages, including pics of his boy parts. When the story was first about to break last week he came out and claimed someone had hacked into his account and sent the photos. When the world found out his account wasn’t hacked, he denied having sent them out at all. Now when he is being confronted by mistresses on the receiving end of his messages he is finally admitting to sending them and he feels so bad about it.     

Although I personally disagree with the activity, if two adults want to swap racy messages and lude photos of themselves with each other it is their decision to do so. However, as a representative of the people I expect a much higher ethical and moral standard. If he had come out from the get go and admitted to it, he might have gotten off with a slap of the hand from his fellow representatives. Now that he has dragged everybody through such an ordeal distracting everyone from more pressing matters, it may eventually lead to his expulsion from Congress. Only time will tell. 

A word of advice, whether you are a driver caught speeding or a government official caught in a compromising position, it is best to own up to your decision, accept whatever the consequences may be, and move on with your life. Personal responsibility begins at the same time your actions begin.

Increasing ability through developing character traits

The two major cornerstones of what I have dubbed “Individualbility” are individual ability and individual responsibility. This week I want to look at individual ability and how it can be increased by developing character traits.

 Improving your character is a great way to improve individual ability to achieve success in anything that you do. There are a plethora of character traits one can look at improving upon or acquiring. On our site we mention five off the top.

•  Integrity
• Courage
• Persistence
• Faith
• Vision 

There are also many others that people would argue you can work on. Our site includes even more, including those things that Benjamin Franklin picked to work on. Franklin made a conscience effort to work on what he dubbed 13 virtues. He would pick one to work on every week and then rotate through them continually. Looking back at his life I would say that he did very well at developing those character traits and is a great example of increasing your chances at success by building your character. 

I personally decided to start working on a character trait every week. Last week was my first week working on this and decided to focus on integrity. My focus was not only on being completely honest with those I interacted with but being honest with myself and work to cut out the little internal lies we tell ourselves. It made for a very interesting and eye opening week. 

There is one example that really stands out in my mind. I was chatting with some coworkers about midweek and the subject of getting in shape came up. I was comparing notes with a couple people and one of the ladies mentioned that she likes playing the Zumba dance game on the Nintendo Wii. I mentioned that we had a Kinect for our Xbox 360 and loved the dance central game. I was about to say, “I usually play it about once a week, but I want to play it more often.” Well, although it would only be known to me it would be a blatant lie. I haven’t played that game in at least 2 months.  Some people would say, that wouldn’t harm anybody because how would they know anyway. As I caught myself and refrained from making that false statement, I thought about my integrity. If it is ok to tell one little lie like that, then where does that lead to? 

I do not share the above story to brag, but to illustrate a real life example of making an effort to focus on that weekly character trait. If my focus on developing the character trait of integrity had not been at the forefront of my mind, I probably would have made the statement without thinking about it. 

We all have things that we want to improve on and do better in our lives. I firmly believe that by focusing on developing good character traits, those other areas of our lives will start to fall in line. Our personal character really does determine our path. The type of individual we focus on becoming will bring those types of individuals and opportunities into our lives. 

As I move on each week focusing on a different character trait, I will post my progress on my personal blog. For a great discussion of integrity, I suggest John Huntsman Sr’s book Winners Never Cheat.

What character traits do you think are the most important develop? Why?