Understanding Your Strengths and Values: Key to Finding Your Passion at Work

Knowing yourself and feeling confident about yourself helps a lot in finding your passion at work. This begins with accurate understanding of your strengths and values – it's what makes you feel good about yourself. The process starts by evaluating the factors that molded your personality – family, experiences, education, and trainings. Majority of your strengths and values can be determined even at young age. Some are product of your parents' upbringing while some are product of unfulfilled needs you try to reinforce as you grow mature. Knowing your top top-five strengths and values gives you a template by which you measure choices in your career and personal life. Being successful at work means you can freely use all of these strengths as well as fulfill your values.

When your act is not reflected with your strengths and values, what do you feel? Useless and powerless? You fail when you find yourself in a work that tells so little about your values, your thought and feelings. When you are in this kind of situation, you feel tied up in a routine that is too far from your own personality. You will usually feel bored and unfulfilled. You don't look forward to exciting and adventurous days. You feel trapped and always wish for vacations, day-offs and lunch breaks. Regardless of how much money you make, when you deny your thoughts and feelings – your work is difficult and boring.

The best time to determine your strengths and values are when you are honest and direct. By accepting your feelings you reveal so much of your potentials and possibilities in life. It is also important to become proud of yourself. Some people hide their true strengths out of fear of rejection. Your power lies in your uniqueness and powerful people are confident about their self even if it's about negative or positive one. To find your passion at work you must resist the urge of comparing yourself to others as it limits your choices and career development.

Your hobbies and interests tell so much about your strengths and values. We take pleasures in the things we do such as reading, gardening and traveling. The things you do naturally and effortlessly motivate and empower you. Pleasurable experiences are either academic or non-academic. When you enjoy yourself doing something, your personal strengths are clearly manifested. Remind yourself of the times you feel so happy at work? What are the values and strengths that were so evident from you?

Values change over time but there are some that remains imbedded in our personality. These values reflect what you think is good and worthwhile. Of all human activities, work has the potential of fulfilling your personal values and defines your career choices. When you are true to yourself and passionate with your values you are most likely to find yourself in the work you love and enjoy. Most of your values are evident in the things you do and say. While there are some that comes into the open under certain circumstances.

Now that you have assessed your strengths and values, you already can determine your parameter when looking for new employer or job. Make sure the values and strengths you have are in line with your job or employer. In finding your passion at work it is important to be able to fully share the values and strengths important to you.