Both this week's workshop and my talk at The Cheltenham Festival were about finding your talents. The children (and some of the grown-ups too!) who came to The Festival workshop were brilliant - they knew they were talented at sport or being a leader or being creative, but those in my Westminster Life Club were much more dubious.
I don't know about you but I could tell you exactly how brilliant everyone I know is and what they can do really well, but when I used to think about myself I didn't know what made me special.
It was the same in my club. Although my clubbers had written down that they loved adventure and creative writing and all sorts of other things, they just couldn't believe that that meant they were talented in those fields - and yet I believe it does.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, puts forward a very strong case for needing 10,000 hours of practice in order to be really good at something, and I would agree - talents don't come overnight - but each clubber had identified their passions and it's those passions that make you unique and can be turned into talents with just a bit (10,000 hours!) of practise.
One of my passions is colour. When I was a small child I used to ask to be taken to the local department store so I could admire the carpets displayed so stunningly (just look at those reds!). As I got older my favourite present was always colouring pencils and now we call rooms in my home after the colours they're painted (the purple room... the red room... and so on). Just look at the Life Clubs logo - that too shows my love of colour.
You may not call colour a 'talent' of mine, but that's really just semantics. All I know is that without colour I feel bereft.
What are your 'talents'? Or, if you prefer, the things without which you feel bereft? Don't be modest!
Hope you have a great weekend,
Nina
PS I was at The Cheltenham Festival to celebrate the publication of my book, How To Get What You Want. Do have a look at a copy - it's fun.
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