Wednesday Wisdom: You Have Innate Talents

Inspiration, Wednesday Morning, Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners

Have you ever heard the same compliment so many times that even if you didn’t believe it, finally you had to accept it? Has it ever occurred to you that a trait or talent you didn’t think you were born with, developed over years of either practice or use without you trying? I bet you can think of something specific.

This happened to me as a writer. I never intended to be a writer. I loved math and science. I was a logical thinker, very organized, and excelled in leadership and sports. Writing was not something I loved until I became an entrepreneur and needed writing skills to create press releases, communicate effectively with clients, form contracts, and eventually write this very newsletter to inspire women in business. I never took more than the standard writing courses in high school and college either. So, I finally determined my writing became a natural ability of mine.

Soon confidence in this skill led to writing a column for the Syracuse Post Standard for 11 years, which I and two other women pitched to them; and submissions to magazines and book series like Chicken Soup for the Soul, until I wrote my own book about my struggle and lessons from alopecia in 2019. “What me a writer?” I was still doubtful until I began submitting writing samples for some freelance work and have been slowly getting some business from it. Hmm, me a writer?

Sometimes in life and business, we must trust what others tell us. We must also take time to look at our past history and reconcile for ourselves that we are naturally talented in an area and then pursue it more. The degrees that hang on the walls or the awards on our bookshelves don’t always paint the complete attributes of our success, sometimes others tell us.

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to remind you to listen to consistent compliments in your area of expertise or in adjacent areas of work or duties that might be a signal to proceed more confidently in a new side direction to make money. I was never good at PR until I had to be for clients in my event planning business. What are you good at for your clients that you wouldn’t necessarily think in the beginning you were talented in? Lean into these extensions of yourself.

And if you need some pointers on writing and getting submitted into books like Chicken Soup for the Soul, join me in Rome, NY next Tuesday for a special event I’m giving to provide women with tips. You might, like me, be the next unexpected writer in your group.  your life, take a moment to celebrate that amazing feeling and then share it with others to fill them with positive emotions.