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When you look at the people who are the most successful and who do the best in their trade, you often find a commonality: They are all doing something that they love, which comes naturally to them. In fact, the more you look at what the person is doing, the more you find that they are incredibly gifted at their chosen pursuit–in many cases to an extreme level.
I remember when I was in college, I was taking a philosophy course that was about ethics. At the time Bono from the rock band U2 was very vocal about various causes. The professor who was teaching the class seemed very annoyed by this, and he told the class something to the effect of: “Who does he think he is, speaking out about this stuff? He knows nothing about it. Experts should be the ones out there speaking about it and Bono is not at all qualified to talk about these matters.”
This comment always stuck out with me because I did not quite understand the implications of it at the time. Was it wrong for Bono to be speaking out about causes? Should someone have swooped down and picked up the professor at the University of Chicago and put him on tours to groups of people all around the United States? Should only people who have the proper education be allowed to speak out?
When I turn on the television and read the gossip pages, US Weekly, People, and all sorts of other magazines, I am always struck by the fact that stars always seem to be speaking out and leading charges for or against various things. It could be cancer, clean water, a war, treatment of refugees, the environment, you name it. Wherever you turn and look, the chances are very good that you will find movie stars and other celebrities in the limelight speaking out about one complex issue or another.
In most cases these celebrities do not have the greatest educations. Very few, if any, are scholars in any sense. As I have watched this since hearing my professor speak out against Bono in college, I have been enraptured by this. Most of these celebrities are not “geniuses” in any sense of the word. In fact, if a highly educated person were to talk to some of these stars face to face, the person might very quickly form an opinion that the stars are not too smart.
Or are they?
What the professor was missing about stars such as Bono and other celebrities who raise awareness about social issues is that they actually often are geniuses. They may not be gifted in terms of having sat in a room for decades or more, studying various issues, but they have a gift that has allowed them to become incredibly famous as actors, musicians, and so forth. They have a gift that has allowed them to touch millions of people, who are willing to pay just to see them perform. They have a gift that has allowed them to get into the position they are in within the entertainment world–while virtually everyone else around them who has had such dreams has failed. They are read about, studied and loved by their audience, while my old professor simply speaks to a room of 15 freshman three times a week about Plato. The professor may have had a gift of navigating academic circles, but he did not have the same gift as someone like Bono.
It is for this reason that I am incredibly impressed with stars and others who rise to great levels of success. Despite in most cases not having the same sorts of brains and intelligence as doctors, lawyers, successful business people, academics and others, they are gifted in other ways. They generally have artistic and social gifts that are extraordinary, which have allowed them to charm and navigate their way to the top.
A while ago I watched a biography about Lew Wasserman, the Founder of Universal. It was a fascinating biography that tracked his life and career. What was so interesting about Wasserman, and what made him and his early studios successful was that Wasserman understood that people went to the movies and watched television to see the stars, because the stars had a pulling power. Wasserman realized that success in the movie business was not so much about how the movies were marketed, the power of the scripts, or how prestigious the studio was: It was about the stars. At the time this was a brilliant realization because the entertainment world was not paying stars the sorts of fantastic sums they are paid right now. Wasserman was the one who changed all that. He realized that stars were what brought many people to watch movies and television.
The reason I bring up the power of stars is to point out that they have their own powerful abilities just as the people running the studios have their own powerful abilities. The professor likewise has his own powerful abilities, as does Bono. Everyone around us has some sort of extraordinary ability. This ability is something that each person needs to make the most of and to use as much as possible.
The more you understand what your strengths are and can incorporate these strengths into your job on a daily basis, the better career and life you are likely to have. The development of your career stems from insuring that you make the absolute most out of yourself, and the only way you can do this is if you concentrate on what you are good at and understand. This is the way virtually everyone I know that is extremely successful gets to this high point and stays there. All the work and dedication people put into their careers goes much farther when they do what comes naturally to them, and what they are good at– instead of pushing themselves in a direction they do not understand.
In all of the times I have gotten into trouble in business and in life, I was working in an area where I did not have the skills to navigate the waters successfully. I am ashamed to admit this; however, I have made numerous mistakes in business by going into areas I did not fully understand. I have started a real estate company and then watched in astonishment as the market collapsed. I have started student loan companies and then watched in astonishment as most of the market disappeared overnight, since financing for the loans was no longer available. My specialty is career development, and every time I have strayed from this I have done poorly and ended up with new problems. I am energized by and I understand the career market instinctively. It has never been in my best interest to move away from the career market because it is something I love and understand. You should take the lesson I have learned to heart: do not stray far from those things that come most naturally to you.
Several years ago I was an asphalt contractor and I understood how to work with asphalt very well. However, this was the only thing I understood at the time. After spending many years working in the asphalt business, it just came naturally to me. In the Detroit area, one prestige item for homeowners and their driveways used to be something called Belgian brick. The brick was used to weigh down ballasts of boats that travelled through the Eerie Canal and into the Great Lakes. When the boats from Belgium would arrive in Detroit, people would unload the bricks because the boats no longer needed them. It became fashionable for people in a part of Detroit, Grosse Pointe, to use Belgian brick as a border on their driveway. Because I worked on most of the asphalt driveways in Grosse Pointe, I started getting countless requests from people to put Belgian Brick up and down their driveways. I got so many requests in fact, that I decided I should go into a new side-business of lining driveways with Belgian brick. One day a woman requested this and I told her I would be more than happy to do it.
When I was in the asphalt business, I typically would not go out to work unless I had several thousands of dollars of work to do in a single day. I told the woman who had requested the Belgian brick that I would do a border around her driveway for around $500, figuring it would take me no more than an hour or two, after all, the bricks did not cost a lot of money, and the biggest expense was the labor.
Unfortunately, the project ended up taking me three and a half days to complete. During that time I lost out on thousands of dollars in other business. Moreover, the work did not turn out all that good. The woman was angry with me, and I knew that she would never use me for asphalt work again. Plus, I had other customers that were now angry with me for not showing up on time to do their job, since I had been busy working on this woman’s Belgian brick job. My employees were also frustrated with me because I had asked them to do something way beyond their comfort zone, and they did not feel fulfilled doing work that they did not understand. I was frustrated and angry with myself.
Being a bricklayer is much different from working with asphalt. The two may sound similar but they each require different skills.
I hated that job with the Belgian bricks.
The afternoon we finally finished the job, a guy I worked with, Rodger, who did not even have a high school education, said to me: “You need to do what you are good at and understand.”
Rodger’s observation really stuck with me because it was absolutely and positively true. It does not require a genius to understand this principle. But it requires a lot of intelligence and common sense to follow through on this advice. Many people spend their lives and careers doing things that they do not enjoy or understand, or that do not come naturally to them. This is a huge mistake.
One of the hardest lessons I have had to keep coming back to whenever I have contemplated various projects in my career is avoiding taking on tasks for which I am not as well-suited. I always ask myself the question: “Is this project I am considering within my field of expertise?” When it is not, I am generally far better off avoiding it completely. In the past I have purchased entire buildings without understanding how buildings are valued based on their rental rates. Huge mistake. I have entered into giant businesses like student loans and invested millions of dollars in warehouses, printers, and other facilities without having any understanding whatsoever about how lending is impacted by government policies and the securities markets. Many people and businesses have taken similar risks; I am not alone, but the truth of the matter is that when you are doing something you love, which comes naturally to you, you will generally be well suited for pursuing a career in that field.
I remember that when I was in law school, I had no interest in virtually every single class I took, except for tax law. Tax law requires a different thinking process than other law school classes, and it is quite theoretical in the way ideas unfold. I remember sitting there, listening to a professor talk and developing an idea and I realized that tax law came so naturally to me that I could see where the professor was going with an idea, 30-40 minutes before he ever arrived at a conclusion. I just got it and understood tax law almost naturally. Some people have this ability with tax law. Others have this ability with mathematics and so forth. When I was interviewing with tax attorneys I got along with them incredibly well because I understood how they spent their days thinking. I was hired for my first legal job by a tax attorney. The entire profession of tax law was something that seemed to come really naturally to me. Had I taken more tax law classes in law school I am confident I would have gotten a better overall GPA.
Everyone has something that comes naturally to them. You too have something that comes very naturally to you. You have incredible gifts and abilities in some area, which energize you when you use them, and also energize the people around you when you use them. People can pick up on the gifts of others, and when you use these abilities the world is different for you.
There is a something else that is really important, which is doing things that continually engage you and drive you forth, with a continual need to improve at them. These are signs that you are doing things that match your inherent skill set.
When I was in school I always got bored in math class. Once I understood what the teacher was doing (usually early on in a class period), I would quickly lose interest and start thinking about something else. Consequently, I would miss out on learning what came later in the lessons. I sort of looked at the class with the attitude of “Hey, I understand this stuff and it is boring. I’m no longer interested in paying attention.”
When it came to other areas of study, such as social studies, the exact opposite would happen: I would be fascinated throughout the entire class period, and would want to continue learning more and more. Time would fly in these classes and I was engaged the entire time. I always looked forward to, and did really well in these classes; I found the material to be much more engaging. When a person feels this way about a particular area of study or career orientation, it is a sign that he or she is doing what comes naturally. He or she may find opportunities therein, from which he or she may soar to new heights.
One of the things that has always been interesting to me when I have watched teen movies is that there is always the “popular crowd” and the “nerd crowd” in every movie. Certain people have incredible social gifts, for example, but they may not be the smartest. They do well with their peers, are always seeking out opportunities to socialize, and they have a process of never-ending improvement in social situations. Someone who frequents and enjoys parties and other social gatherings three or four nights a week for several years will generally become quite gifted socially after some time. This is just how it works. If you love doing something and you apply yourself to it, you will become gifted in it. In these movies the people in the popular crowd are generally the ones who enjoy social situations, whereas the ones in the nerd crowd are the ones who do not. Each type of person has different skills. This is how the world works.
In these films, often one of the biggest mistakes we witness is when someone in the nerd crowd attempts to join the popular crowd, or vice versa. The reason this makes for a good plot line is because it usually leads to disaster. And disaster makes for great entertainment. Legally Blonde, for example, is a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, about a girl in the “popular crowd” who goes to Harvard Law School. Mean Girls is a movie starring Lindsay Lohan, about a “nerd” who joins the “A list” crowd. The reason these movies are so popular is that they tap into something that rarely happens: People try to “fit in” by acting in ways that are not natural for them.
In order to succeed in your career, it is very important that you stay focused on doing what comes naturally to you and what drives constant improvement. You should never find yourself trying to fit in and, instead, should be doing something where you automatically fit in because you understand it and are good at it instinctively. Everyone has something like this and you are no exception to this. When you are doing something that comes naturally to you, you find yourself looking at people in the world, saying to yourself, “I do not understand why this is so difficult for other people to do.” This is how it is when you are good at something. You just get it instinctively.
I remember when I was studying for the Law School Admissions Test. I did not get it instinctively at all. One day my cousin decided he was going to study and take the exam as well, and he asked to borrow one of my practice tests. He saw the answers I had circled with a pencil and, after taking the practice test himself, he came up to me while giving back the books and said something to the effect of “You need to think differently. You are not thinking right.” He never took a class for the LSATs and got a near perfect score. He just got it. He went to law school; he is still an attorney and probably always will be. It comes naturally to him.
If you’ve ever found something that you could do all day long, all the time, and that others praise you for, you probably have found something you are very good at. You need to spend most of your time doing what you are good at and what comes naturally to you. When you do what comes naturally to you, it is constantly evolving and improving throughout your life. When you focus on it, you get more improvement than you would otherwise be getting and the value you can provide to others increases.
In your career and life you need to be who you are. You should never have to feel inadequate or guilty, and you deserve to always feel fulfilled in what you are doing. When you try to do things that are not in your natural comfort zone, you will often experience feelings of guilt and inadequacy. So instead, concentrate your career and life on those things that engage your passion. When you focus on what comes naturally to you, your productivity, passion, and happiness will all be maximized.
In school, this means taking classes that you know you will do well in. This means going into careers you know you will do well in. This means taking jobs with organizations that will compliment your natural skills. Concentrate on your strengths and be prepared to achieve long-term results.
Click hereto read more of such interesting articles from our CEO Harrison Barnes.
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