I used to hate hamburgers. Absolutely hate them. But, when I got older, every time they were put in front of me, I had to eat them. Why? Because of the pure fact that I wish I liked them. I believed if I ate enough burgers, eventually I would acquire a love for the food and desire to eat it, maybe even crave it. And now, I do. Hamburgers are one of my absolute favorite foods!
You may think I am completely crazy, but studies have proven “we don't just eat foods because we like them, we like them because we eat them.” The more we eat foods, the more accustomed to them we become, and we even begin to like them as we grow up and continue to make it a habit to eat them. As a kid, I was a very picky eater; at one time my sister even told me I couldn’t be a part of the family because I didn’t like hamburgers and my family ate them so often. (I can laugh about it now!) However, after eating hamburgers for so long, I gained a long tolerance for them, then a liking, which turned into a desire.
I don’t know if all this food talk is getting you hungry or just curious about why I am talking about eating food. However, this same concept can be compared to our strengths. The past few years I have been exposed to the Gallup CliftonStrengths Test, and ever since then, I love seeing strengths in those around me. This has led me to realize the talents I have, the choice I can make to develop them further into strengths, and helped me realize why my talents have been developed into my top five strengths.
I love the analogy I have heard about the 34 talents being compared to a person working at a desk. On the top of the desk are our top 10 talents, readily available and easy to grab at, with the top 5 being directly in front as we have developed them into our strengths. The next 10-12 are in the side drawers, so it takes a little bit of time to get to them but they are still available with little work. While the last 10-12 are in the recycling bin, so you have to get up from the desk, and shuffle through the bin to find them. However, we can strengthen our talents and move them from one part of the desk to another through our usage of them, just like we can eat certain foods to make ourselves like them. The creators of the StrengthsFinder assessment help me understand this by sharing: “Talents, knowledge, and skills -- along with the time spent (i.e., investment) practicing, developing your skills, and building your knowledge base -- combine to create your strengths.” (Learn more at: http://strengths.gallup.com/help/general/125543/difference-talent-strength.aspx)
I have taken this strengths assessment three different times, and every single time “Achiever” is in my top 5, but only recently rose to the top strength for me. This is because, as I have gotten older, my desire to succeed has also risen. Sure, when I was little I wanted to be good at school (I once cried because I got three wrong on a spelling test), but that desire to achieve was not present up until the last two years when I was filling out scholarship applications and competing in different events for FFA.  |
| 2016 Minnesota FFA 1st Place Parliamentary Procedure team -- HLWW FFA |
I used my talent of achieving nearly every day of my senior year, and it became so evident that it floated to the top and truly became a strength -- “Achiever” is like hamburgers. I worked toward developing that talent into a strength, or eating that food on a regular basis. This is a strength I now KNOW I can rely on and love, it’s always there (just like the hamburgers). If I wouldn’t have even looked into the possibility of eating another hamburger, I definitely would not eat them today as frequently as I do. Similarly, that “Achiever” talent would not have became a strength and could not have gotten to where it is today without my work to develop it. We all naturally have things that we are good at, but to truly excel we must practice, improve, and put in the time to develop the talent into a strength. In other words, you could say:
We don’t only practice strengths because we have them, we have strengths because we practice them.
What are you naturally good at? Have YOU ever noticed that the more you do something the better you become at it? What are your hamburgers? As we begin another school year, we have the chance to make the choice to take our talents to the next level - to make them a strength. How can FFA help you continue to strengthen your talents? How are you going to ensure that you work toward developing those possibilities and talents into strengths?
Stationed by the door,
Maddie Weninger
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