Now, Discover Your Strength

I bought this book by Marcus B. when I was in Folsom which recommended by my manager. It's worth to mention as it propose a way to look into personal development that different than traditional way of how we manage our performance or development or career....

In brief, what the book preach is that everyone has certain unique talent (they give very precise description on what talents and identified 36 major talents groups), and weakness. The book suggest that we can only be happy and successful if we continue to develop our strength and we will fail and confuse if we try too hard to change our 'weakness' into strength. It suggest, the best way to tackle our weakness is to understand how to reduce it's impact and learn ways to reduce the opportunity to make a mistake. It further suggest that we will not able to change weakness because of how are brain being develop since we are young. (They gave specific examples and scientific references.)

I have not yet finish the book, but i found this idea ' refreshing'. Remember our managers always tell us that you fix your weakness by developing your skill over here and there? Our performance review always has a section talks about our weakness and how we could improve it? But most of the time we didnt spent as much time or may not focusing on our strength.

I seldom read books that talks about their own methodology as a lot of times, if you are not careful enough, you will fall prey into believing what they suggest its the truth, the only truth that exist.

Furthermore, too many people write books about what/why they think they were successful in the past or present, where the fact is Success does not equals to hardwork or understanding the best method. Success is dynamic and opportunity based. You can prepare for it, work hard, but if opportunity does not arise, you are always - where you are. Nonetheless, one thing is a constant, not hardwork or tools/methods, but relationship. We are all humans and bound to our senses and relationship with others.

(note: i am not saying that hardwork is 100% useless, but hardwork only means you have the heart to do your best; tools/methods as preach by books only tell you what happen in a predefined environment during the time (which is the past) they test our their methods... both cant guarantee anything... in fact, its not part of the direct equation to be successful. Skill sets can be learn, process can be created, tools can be mend... but the only direct influence into a Success is ability to sense/grab opportunity and relationship)