ability

Using the fulfillment triangle when deciding on your career

When you’re at a crossroads and looking to find a new career, take into consideration Ken Coleman’s fulfillment triangle. He describes this as a place where your passion meets your talent and opportunity.

What do you love doing? What are you interested in? What do you find yourself constantly researching or talking about with your friends? Looking at these things can help you figure out what you’re truly passionate about.

What are you good at doing? Has anybody told you that you are a natural at completing a particular kind of task? What do you feel like comes easily to you? When you do things that you are good at, you are usually in a flow state. This is your talent and ability. (By the way, you don’t need to have the ability to do something right now, but if you are capable, that will suffice.)

Who do you know that might be able to introduce you to whatever it is you like and are good at doing? If you’re unsure about this, put the question out on social media. Go on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and clearly lay out what it is you’re interested in doing. You never know who might have a connection and get you an “in” with a company. This is your opportunity.

Fulfillment triangle from Ken Coleman on the Dave Ramsey Team.

Experience makes things easier

Whenever you first encounter a new problem, it can seem overwhelming. You don’t know what to do. Trying to find the right answer or response is hard. But once you figure it out, once you’ve experienced it, the next time you face that problem, it will seem easier. But the obstacle hasn’t changed, only your ability to overcome that obstacle has.

The obstacle is what it is. How you (and others) view it depends on what it is in comparison to. Your experience has shaped you and helped strengthen you, making the “hurdle” that is the obstacle appear to shrink. And over time, as you continue clearing the hurdle with relative ease, it will seem even smaller.

So, as you face new challenges, keep that in perspective. It may seem like a massive undertaking today, but you’ll look back at this in a year and wonder why you thought it was such a big deal.

The key to greatness

To be great, you have to be consistent. You have to be disciplined. You may have natural talent/ability, but without nurturing it and growing it through consistent effort, you will never achieve true greatness.

Do you think LeBron James or Michael Jordan were born with gifts that you and I don’t have? Yes. That’s how the world works. Everyone is different. But they also worked tirelessly for years on end, spent millions of dollars investing in their bodies to help strengthen them, honed their craft with hours in the gym, etc. They had natural ability, but so do a lot of other guys in the NBA. It was their consistent, focused effort over many years that helped them become the greatest of all time.

While it is easy to think of sports as the best analogy here, it applies to everything we do in life. Want to be better at your job? What actions are you taking daily to train to become the best? Do you role play scenarios with other team members? Do you take continuing education classes? Do you read about specific subjects to help you or watch “how to” videos?

You don’t improve the most by going to a weeklong seminar once per year and then not doing anything else until next year’s seminar. You improve the most by taking small, focused actions every single day, always building upon the previous day.

What actions are you willing to take to achieve greatness – not today, and not tomorrow, but five, ten, or twenty years from now? Are you able to look at the big picture and base your decisions on that instead of what feels good today? Do you have the discipline to repeat the monotonous actions (slightly/slowly improving over time)? If you want to be mediocre, that’s fine. You can live a good life coasting through it. But if you want to achieve greatness, you have to endure many unheroic days to reach some heroic decades in the future…

There is natural ability (what you’re capable with very little training) and there is learned ability (effort that you put in to increase your overall ceiling for achievement). Don’t rely too much on natural ability. This can lead to overconfidence and a lackadaisical approach to learning, growing, or improving. Don’t discredit yourself thinking that you don’t have much natural ability either. You are more capable than you believe. If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re less likely to step out of your comfort zone and try to tackle new challenges that can help you grow.