You could waste a great deal of your life struggling to succeed with things that aren’t congruent or in harmony with your natural talents and strengths. You could also waste a great deal of your life struggling to overcome weaknesses related to areas where you simply don’t have the natural talents to do so.

If you know what your natural talents are, you can focus on developing them into strengths. And you can devote your life to work what is congruent or in harmony with your natural talents and strengths.

Most likely, this will be a much better use of your time and generally make you happier, more effective, and more successful. First, I recommend the book ‘Career Tests: 25 Revealing Self-Tests to Help You Find and Succeed at the Perfect Career’ by Louis Janda, Ph.D.

Completing the tests will tell you about your talents and strengths (and much more besides). Also a great way to do some important self-discovery. Second, you could discover your talents and strengths through personality  and psychological tests. There are many you can do online.

Third, I highly recommend the book ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths’ by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. The authors work for The Gallup Organization, which has interviewed more than 2,000,000 people. Based on their conclusions from this extensive research, they propose two basic assumptions:

1. Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.

2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.” They also say, “The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have. Benjamin Franklin called wasted strengths “sundials in the shade.” Look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest threads [natural talents], reinforce them with practice and learning, and then either find or, as he [Warren Buffett] did, carve out a role that draws on these strengths every day. When you do, you will be more productive, more fulfilled, and more successful.”

For your success.