This is a follow up to my article “Focus on your strengths.”

There’s a couple of things I want to say from a different angle that contributes to that article.

Focusing on your strengths doesn’t just apply to the professional world or work-related areas.

I think we often try to copy others. “Copy “as in we try to be like them. When we see someone having success with something, we want to be like that person instead of focusing on being more of ourselves. We think that the characteristics of that person are what brings success. So we think we need the exact same characteristics.

What we might fail to realize is that that person has simply played to his/her strengths. When we try to copy those strengths, we’ll always be the poor version of that person. Simply because our strengths might not match the strengths of that person.

We can never win the game of being someone else. The only thing where nobody can beat us is being ourselves - as cheesy as it sounds. When we focus on what’s unique to us, we will be at the top of our own league.

This is why copycats never succeed. They don’t focus on what’s unique to them and try to focus on what’s unique to someone else instead without realizing that they’ll never beat that person with this strategy.

Of course, when you’re learning, it’s okay - and actually necessary - to copy and mimic. Yet, at one point, you need to find your own lane.

In the beginning, we might not even have any ideas about what is our lane. We need to find that out. Try different things, until you figure out what clicks. Then hammer on that.

A quite random and simple example: some public speakers use slides and some stay away from them. When we see someone giving an awesome talk without slides, we think we need to do this as well (not use slides).

But, perhaps our strength lies in giving a speech with slides. If so, we should focus on that.

It's almost always about the “how” not about the “what”.

KRISTJAN