How to discover your professional talent?

When I entered the faculty of psychology, a new world opened up for me. In addition to meeting new people and taking fantastic classes, I realized that the professional possibilities were even broader than I had imagined, before the entrance exam. I took the Enem 2001 test and the test score was already used to compose the total score and it was the following year, in June 2002, a little late in the semester due to a strike, that I started.

In the first months, then, I saw all those possibilities and I was thinking: but what am I going to do after I graduate? This is a frequent question at the end of graduation, but – with so many options – it is normal to be in doubt or confused. It happened to me right from the beginning and I found out that the college had openings for a Professional Guidance group therapy, only for psychology graduates.

It was an interesting experience to be part of this group and it is even more so to remember it more than ten years later.

The main question we asked ourselves in the group was about our professional future. Inevitable to ask us about our dreams, desires, vocations, fears, and… talents. But what is talent? How can we discover our talents? This text seeks to explain what talent is and gives tips on how to discover your professional talent.

We can define talent as the sum of facility, love and knowledge. Saying it this way might get too abstract, but the concept is simple. Imagine someone talented in music. How can we say that there is talent? We see that someone has talent when he finds it easy to play an instrument, when he loves to play and spends hours and hours playing without realizing the passage of time (Jimi Hendrix even slept with his guitar) and also when the person has knowledge, you know what you are doing and always seek to improve.

I have a great friend, actually a brother, who early on discovered how easy it was for him to play the guitar. When we were 14, we were always together and looking to find a girlfriend. One day he told me he had fallen in love. And he didn’t want to tell anyone who he was. After much insistence he told me that he had fallen in love with music.

But not only was he easy to play the guitar, or he was passionate about it, he studied it in depth. One of his teachers taught him that to excel he had to study when others weren’t studying. So he did, he studied 10, 12 hours a day. And he laughed when he remembered that his teacher, who demanded more and more, asked him what he did from midnight to six and why he wasn’t studying at that time.

After more than 15 years in the field, he not only loves music and is easy to use, therefore, he dedicated himself a lot and acquired the necessary knowledge, such as reading complex scores from Bach to Chopin, and venturing not only on the classical guitar but also on the electric guitar. , viola, piano…

How to discover your professional talent?

With the above example, I think it is quite clear what we mean by professional talent. Thinking in another way, we can imagine someone who is very comfortable with an activity, such as, for example, being able to do math. He can do math in his head, he’s excellent in all exact subjects, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the area at all and doesn’t intend to study further.

In this case, the person has only one of the three characteristics of the talent.

It’s no use having it easy and not liking it. How it’s no use to like and not want to study and improve. Talent is really the sum of these three characteristics: ease, love and knowledge.

To discover your talent, or rather your greatest talents, ask yourself the following questions:

Ease

– What comes easy for you?

– What came easily to you when you were younger?

– In which area or areas did you receive public awards or congratulations? (Recognition by others)

– Areas that others have told you about – “I would like to do this as well as you do”.

– What are your natural talents?

Love

– What do you love to do (would you do it if you didn’t need to earn anything)?

– What do you hate doing?

– Describe your hobby or activities that you do without commitment.

– What elements of the hobby could you use as a career?

Knowledge

– What did you focus on in your education (high school, technical, courses and preparatory courses)?

– What types of activities did you experience in your family?

– What jobs have you done?

– What books have you read and enjoyed reading?

– What kind of training have you had in other situations, for example volunteer work?

Answering these questions, you will be able to raise some activities that you have talent for. Psychology has proven that everyone has at least one talent. Most people have more than one talent, two, three, four. So if the questions didn’t help you find your talent, it can be helpful to ask friends and family the same questions about yourself. Sometimes the look of the other helps us to see what for us is already common, everyday and is no longer recognized.

For example, we can think of a woman who is very easy to deal with people. For her, this can be something so natural and present that she no longer realizes that she is talented in this regard.

It may also be that, until now, you have not studied or acquired greater knowledge in the area in which you are talented. This doesn’t matter, what matters here is that you recognize your potential and go after it. This same woman can use this talent to study in a number of areas, from professions with public service, sales, psychology, etc.

Conclusion

When I was an undergraduate in psychology and I did group therapy on Professional Guidance, I rediscovered my talents and the main reason that had led me to choose psychology as my college. In summary, I can say that I have a talent for studying. And it was this talent that made me a researcher and have studied psychology in depth for eleven years, going through graduation, postgraduate, master’s and now doctorate.

Another talent I discovered was my clinical ability. It is easy for me to help people of all ages (I’ve worked with people from 2 years old to the elderly), I like to help people and I’ve also studied clinical psychology for many years.

As a hobby, I’ve always liked technology and in recent years I’ve noticed how easy it is for me to create and manage websites (such as ). I also like programming and have studied – when I have some free time – codes and CMS like WordPress.org

But for programming, I still have a lot to learn. Maybe another 5 to 10 years I’ll also be talented in the area, lol.

Questions and suggestions, please comment!

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