When we navigate different phases of life, particularly after reaching significant milestones such as turning 60 or considering a career transition, it’s common to reassess our personal strengths and passions. Understanding what truly motivates and energizes you is key to finding a career or pursuit that brings both fulfillment and success. However, identifying your strengths and passions can feel overwhelming without a clear strategy.
As a career and life coach, I enjoy guiding my clients through the process of conducting a personal skills audit, exploring new passions, strengths and interests. This process allows people to align their skills with the next phase of their life. Whether that’s for a career transition or focusing on an encore career!
Why Identifying Strengths and Passions Is Essential
Your strengths are the skills and abilities that come naturally to you and can be honed through experience and practice. Passions, on the other hand, are activities, subjects, or causes that spark joy, excitement, and a sense of purpose. Identifying both is crucial for several reasons:
Career Satisfaction
Aligning your strengths and passions with your work leads to greater job satisfaction, as you’re more likely to enjoy and excel at what you do.
Personal Fulfillment
Beyond your career, knowing what you’re passionate about helps guide decisions in your personal life, whether you’re pursuing hobbies, volunteering, or exploring creative outlets.
Work-Life Balance
When your career aligns with your strengths and passions, it can enhance your work-life balance, reducing stress and improving overall well-being.
Now, let’s walk through how to identify these critical aspects of yourself.
Step 1: Conducting a Personal Skills Audit
A personal skills audit is a self-assessment exercise that helps you identify your core strengths and areas of expertise. Here’s how to conduct one effectively:
List Your Professional and Personal Achievements
Start by listing both professional and personal achievements from all periods of your life. Consider times when you felt proud of your work or accomplishments, and take note of any recurring patterns. For example:
- What roles or responsibilities did you excel in?
- What tasks came naturally to you?
- What types of projects or activities did you enjoy the most?
This exercise helps you recognize the areas in which you have consistently demonstrated strengths. Include not just work-related achievements, but also personal accomplishments (e.g., leading a community project, learning a new skill, or overcoming a significant challenge).
Ask for Feedback from Others
Sometimes, it can be difficult to see our own strengths objectively. Asking for feedback from trusted colleagues, friends, or family members can provide valuable insights into skills you may not have recognized. Ask questions like:
- What do you think my greatest strengths are?
- In what situations have you seen me excel?
- What skills or traits do you admire in me?
The feedback you receive may surprise you and help you see yourself from a new perspective.
Identify Transferable Skills
Transferable skills are abilities that can be applied across different roles or industries. These skills often include communication, problem-solving, leadership, adaptability, and collaboration. Identifying transferable skills is important if you’re considering a career change, as they can be leveraged in a new field or job.
Review your list of accomplishments and feedback to pinpoint these versatile skills. For example, if you’ve successfully managed teams or projects, leadership and organizational skills are likely transferable to other roles.
Assess Your Weaknesses
While focusing on strengths is essential, it’s also valuable to understand your weaknesses or areas for improvement. Knowing your limitations allows you to make informed decisions about what roles or projects to pursue and helps identify areas for growth.
Ask yourself:
- What tasks do I find challenging or draining?
- Where have I struggled to achieve success?
- What skills do I need to develop to reach my goals?
Understanding these aspects of yourself can help guide your next steps and highlight areas for future learning or improvement.
Step 2: Exploring New Passions and Interests
Once you’ve identified your core strengths, it’s time to explore new passions or interests that align with the next phase of your life. Here’s how to discover or reignite your passions:
Reflect on Your Hobbies and Interests
Think back to activities or hobbies that have brought you joy, whether recently or earlier in life. Have you always loved writing, painting, or cooking? Are you drawn to solving complex problems, helping others, or working with your hands?
Jot down these interests and explore how they might connect to new opportunities. For example, if you’ve always been passionate about fitness, perhaps you could explore a career in wellness coaching or personal training. If you enjoy creative pursuits, consider whether you can turn your hobby into a side business or full-time venture.
Experiment with New Activities
If you’re unsure of your passions, experimenting with new activities can help you discover what excites you. Take classes, attend workshops, or try volunteering in areas you’re curious about. For instance, if you’re interested in photography, sign up for a course or join a local photography group. If you’re drawn to public speaking, try participating in a Toastmasters group.
By engaging in new experiences, you open the door to discovering hidden talents or interests you may not have considered before.
Consider What Energizes You
A key indicator of passion is the energy you feel when engaging in an activity. Reflect on times when you felt truly energized and motivated. What were you doing in those moments? Passion often comes from a sense of flow – the state where you lose track of time because you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing.
Identifying these energizing activities can lead you toward your passions and help you align them with your strengths.
Step 3: Use Tools and Assessments to Clarify Your Strengths and Passions
There are several helpful tools and assessments available to guide you in clarifying your strengths, passions, and career direction. Here are a few popular resources:
StrengthsFinder
The CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) assessment identifies your top strengths based on your responses to a series of questions. It’s designed to help you understand what you naturally do best and how to leverage these strengths in your career and personal life.
By pinpointing your top strengths, the assessment provides actionable insights into how to build on them and use them to achieve your goals.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The MBTI is a popular personality assessment that helps you understand your preferences in how you perceive the world and make decisions. It categorizes people into 16 different personality types based on traits like introversion/extraversion, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving.
Knowing your MBTI type can provide insights into which careers or activities align with your natural inclinations and personality traits.
Ikigai: The Japanese Concept of Purpose
The Ikigai framework is a tool for discovering what brings purpose and meaning to your life. It’s based on four key components:
- What you love (your passion).
- What you are good at (your strengths).
- What the world needs (your contribution).
- What you can be paid for (your career or livelihood).
By reflecting on these areas, you can gain a clearer understanding of what aligns with your strengths and passions, and how to pursue work that brings a sense of fulfillment.
Exercises to Help You Identify Your Strengths and Passions
Here are a few practical exercises to further clarify your strengths and passions:
Journaling Exercise: The Peak Experience
Think about a peak experience – a moment when you felt particularly fulfilled and successful, either professionally or personally. Write down the details of the experience:
- What were you doing?
- Who were you with?
- How did you feel?
- What strengths did you use?
This exercise helps you pinpoint moments of alignment between your strengths and passions and can guide you toward similar opportunities in the future.
Passion Brainstorming
Set a timer for 10 minutes and write down everything you’re passionate about. Don’t overthink it – just let your thoughts flow. Once your time is up, review your list and identify common themes or interests. This can reveal patterns in what excites you and help you explore new paths.
Skill Swap
Partner with a friend or colleague and exchange skills. For example, if you’re good at graphic design and they’re good at marketing, teach each other a new skill. This exercise not only helps you hone your existing strengths but may also introduce you to a new passion or skill you’d like to develop further.
You Are Not Alone: Aligning Strengths and Passions for a Fulfilling Future
Identifying your strengths and passions is a powerful step toward a more fulfilling career and life. By conducting a personal skills audit, exploring new interests, and using tools like personality assessments, you can gain clarity on what drives you and how to pursue opportunities that align with your true self.
Having someone to guide you through this process can be helpful and unlock some areas of awareness you had not considered for yourself. In my practice, I’ve found that we often keep ourselves “small” by not allowing ourselves permission to think of opportunities larger than imagined. If you are ready to start exploring what’s next for you and unlocking your strengths and passions then let’s connect for a free 60 minute clarity session.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What do you feel is your number one strength or “super power”? Have you recently made a career transition into something more rewarding? How has focusing on your strengths helped you to show up for yourself and others? Have you recently explored a new passion or interest? Share in the comments!
