S2:E3 | Discovering Your Talents & Passions
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Jeremy: [00:00:00] You are your greatest asset, but do you really know who you are? Today we'll uncover your unique talents, passions, and purpose to help you step into your potential.
What's good? What's good? It's the Jeremy Haselwood Show. What's good, what's good? Let's get ready to go. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood Show. Plug in. Turn it up. Let's go. Hey, hey. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood Show.
Welcome to this episode where we are talking all about discovering your talents, passions, and purpose. Before we get started, make sure you tap click or smash the follow or subscribe button to make sure that you are notified when each new episode drops.
Now we're in season two where you are learning all about life transformation and [00:01:00] personal development. Each season of my show covers a different topic. My goal is to spark curiosity, build community, and inspire action to deepen our understanding of the world around us. Today is such an important episode.
In fact, what I'm talking about today was life transforming for me when I was on my journey of my path to purpose. So to give you a little bit of background about me,
my journey started when I was around 15 years old. It was a pivotal year for me. And to give you some context as to why that is, I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma called Guthrie. It's one of those towns where mostly everybody knows everybody. You go to school, it's the same classmates year over year.
There's not a lot of people that move in or out of, So you grow up with community when I was 15, I ended up moving, changing schools and going to a place where I didn't know anybody. There was no friends. I struggled to really connect with people. I was one of those people that sat alone by myself at the cafeteria.
For most [00:02:00] of my sophomore year. It was pretty miserable. Now my brother did move with me, so he was there, but we didn't have a lot of classes together and I didn't see him much. So I was on my own quite a bit. And this is the point where I really decided to start writing. This is back when the Walkmans were really happening and this is definitely dating myself, but follow me, stay with me.
I made like beat loops at my house with. a karaoke machine. I would play the first few bars of a beat, pause it, rewind it, play it again, record that. And I would just repeat that process over three to five minutes. And I would take those cassettes with me and I would listen to them every day while I was at lunch.
And I would just start writing rhymes, writing poetry, writing rhymes. And that was really what kicked off what became my dream, which was to do music, was to pursue hip hop. And there was a friend of mine who Started a group with me and I'll tell you the whole story later on a future season But just to give you the high notes as it relates to today and life transformation in this journey We ended up moving to atlanta when I was 20 years old moved with my friend left [00:03:00] everything behind My friends my family except for of course my friend that I did music with And went hard after my dream in my 20s Music was my everything and I thought this is what I was put here to do was make music, be on stage, see the world with my gift.
However, as I got into my later 20s, it became less of my dream and more of a soul sucking experience. There were definitely highs throughout the music career, if we can call it that, that I had. But the griminess of the industry just didn't really align with my ethics So I had some tough choices to make and I decided to leave music behind And also my son was born by this time as well So my priority shifted a little bit whereas music was still important, even though I didn't like the business of music I also Wanted to be a good father and be there for my son I spent the next few years really just trying to figure out what am I supposed to do because I really bet the house when I was a teenager and then I was around 30 years old and I was like i've got to do something different And I really didn't know what to do.
My whole [00:04:00] identity was wrapped up into music and creating I spent a lot of time just assessing that time period of my life and I have no regrets over it.
And during this time period of just assessing myself, I ended up going back to school getting my MBA Spent time just evaluating my life, my skills, my passions, and what I learned about myself over the past 15 years. what I discovered is that it was never about the music. I gained so many skills during that time.
I gained skills of strategy and how to orchestrate multiple parts to create a whole. But more importantly, I discovered what drove me in music was lifting the mood of a whole room over the course of a few minutes. There's really nothing like it. If you're in music, if you've ever performed on stage, like when you hit that stage and just that energy that you get from a crowd is unbelievable.
There's really no feeling like it.
I began to understand why the period of music in my life was necessary. I had to go through that to grow, to gain skills and to live an experience that [00:05:00] now I can use to tell my story and provide hope to others. I learned a lot. My journey was never about being a famous musician or a successful marketer. It was about connecting with people and understanding their diverse backgrounds and circumstances. My journey created relatability and empathy for people of all different races, religions, sexual orientations, and more.
In a world of so much darkness and deception. I felt a calling, a purpose to provide hope. My story of following my dream to find my purpose is one of failure and loss, but it's also one of perseverance and impact. Hope is what allowed me to never give up.
Hope gave me the motivation to believe beyond my circumstances that things wouldn't always be this way.
There were times when hope was the only thing that I had. and as such, I like to look at myself as a messenger of hope.
I discovered this after years of working on myself. It's the most powerful thing that I've ever done in my life to provide clarity on my [00:06:00] purpose. And today I'm going to start that work with you.
If you're listening to this podcast, you might've had that moment in time where you do want to change. You want to elevate, you want to, Have that life transformation. You're stuck in a job. You're doing something that you can do with your eyes closed. You're not challenged. You feel like there's more to life than where you are right now.
And sometimes it can be overwhelming because you want to change, but you're not really sure where to start. I want to talk about a few ways that you can start to discover yourself and really unlock your talents and purpose. The first one is counseling. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be scared of it. If you're in counseling right now, then you've probably already had some moments that you've able to experience and
discover things about yourself that have been dormant or just things you didn't really recognize about yourself If you're in counseling right now, and you're not really vibing with your counselor, I would say don't give up I've talked to several people who's like i've tried counseling, but it didn't really work for me my response to that would be maybe you just didn't find the right person And I know it sucks because you're spending [00:07:00] money on counseling and you don't want to just go Keep spending money and not finding your person, but I would say don't give up on that.
Number two, another option would be to get some coaching. So maybe it's professional coaching. Maybe it's life coaching, finding someone who will coach you. I will lump coaching and mentoring within the same thing, even though these are two very distinct types of roles, finding someone that you can connect with.
Whether it's through someone that you know, or maybe there's a network at your job that provides mentorship or coaching, or maybe you can plug into local community resources that offer this kind of assistance. The third way to start discovering yourself is to just ask yourself what you're good at. And we'll go over an exercise here in a moment that can help with that.
The fourth one is asking others. There's no shame in when you're trying to do this work. Asking people, what do you think I'm good at? If you could see me in any job that you think I would excel in, what do you think that would be? And even though a job isn't necessarily your purpose, when you start to get people that are close to that you trust close friend or family member, they see things in you [00:08:00] that often you don't see because you've always been that way.
You may have certain skills, Certain characteristics about your personality that are just different and unique and set you apart from other people in this world. You don't recognize it because it's always been in you. It's just who you are. And you don't always see that other people don't have what you have because You might be comparing what they have versus what you don't have.
And we can get stuck in that trap a lot. You see someone who's really talented at a gift and you're like, wow, I wish I could do that, or I wish I could be that good in that skill. But at the same time, you have a whole artillery of skills that you haven't even tapped into yet, or you're not aware that you have these.
So start asking others as well. The fifth way to start discovering yourself is to do assessments, and these are things that I've done as well, these have actually helped me out quite a bit, and I'll run through some assessments here in a moment. But what I like about assessments is you're taking different quizzes and batteries that help to define characteristics of who you are.
And these are things again that have been inside you, [00:09:00] but you never really put a name and a face to them. So doing these assessments really provides some aha moments. And it's really like looking in a mirror of emotional intelligence. So let me run through a list here of a few assessments that I've done that have certainly been helpful to me.
Some of these assessments costs I can't tell you which ones do and don't, there's some free versions out there, but even if you pay for these, they're not really expensive and I'm not selling them. I'm just telling you so you know, once you start doing this work, there may be some costs with some of these assessments.
but the first one is Honey and Mumford's learning styles. And this is a really good one Because what you learn about yourself is your actual learning style, and they dig into four different ones. One is an activist learning style. This is someone who learns by immersing themselves into experiences.
The second learning style is a theorist, and this person learns through rationality and logic. the third one is a pragmatist, and they learn through experimentation. And then the fourth and last one is a reflector. And this is someone who learns through observing different perspectives.
And I actually, I'm a [00:10:00] reflector and you may have heard these four different ones and you say, Oh, that's me. I'm a theorist or I'm an activist. But when you take this assessment, it also gives you a long description in the results and it really goes deep into these. So even though I read these and maybe you think, what your learning style is, I would invite you to take that assessment and really learn what your learning style is because once you learn that it actually helps you when you're communicating with others how you need to learn because we all don't learn the same way and when you also are working within a work group and other people's learning styles, you start to understand why you're trying to teach something and someone's eyes just gloss over because you need to reach them in a different way.
So that helps with communication. The next assessment that I would recommend is Myers Briggs, and this is a pretty popular one, the Myers Briggs consists of 16 personality types based on four sets of preferences, which would be Introversion versus extroversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling and judging versus [00:11:00] perceiving. as you take the Myers Briggs, you'll start to learn what your personality type is.
And again, you learn these things about yourself. You can put a name on it and a label on it and it really helps you realize, Hey, I'm not really, a messed up person. I'm just this way and that's okay, because we're so hard on ourselves about certain ways that we think we are when in actuality, it's actually really normal for certain personality types and it's not a flaw.
The next assessment that I would take is actually a quiz and if you're familiar with Gary Chapman's five love languages book this is a very simple quiz you can take on his website. And it's about learning what your love language is.
In love, language is great for relationships, but it's also good for you to know what it is you like. Whether it's a romantic relationship or just a friendship or a personal relationship, it helps you understand what some of those needs are when it comes to affection and attention. And the five areas that he talks about in his book are words of affirmation, quality time.
Physical touch, acts [00:12:00] of service and receiving gifts. And although we may have multiple love languages, there is one dominant love language. Like for me, for example, it's words of affirmation. It doesn't mean that I don't like quality time or don't like physical touch. I love all those things as well.
But when you start to learn what's most important to you, it helps you to communicate those needs, but it also helps you understand what you need as a human being. And again, you're building this emotional intelligence it all connects to what we're talking about today of discovering yourself and understanding your talents, passions, and purpose.
The next assessment is the DISC personality profile and that's D I S C. , and basically the DISC breaks it down into four different personality profiles. There's dominant, the people that fall into the dominant category tend to be confident and focused on results.
There's the I, which is influence, and these people tend to have a higher level of enthusiasm and place emphasis on relationships and influencing others. The S is for steadfastness, and these are people who are [00:13:00] supportive and dependable. And then the C is conscientious, and this focuses on quality and accuracy.
So as you take the disc, it doesn't mean that you're only one of these things. It will actually rate you across all four of these different categories, but you typically have a very dominant personality profile. Sometimes you might have two that are close, but again, once you understand this about yourself, You're able to function in the world, having this emotional intelligence about yourself.
And it really helps you for what we'll be talking about. In future episodes of this season. The last one I'll talk about is Clifton strengths and Clifton strengths. There's actually a book about it. It was formerly called strength finder. So if you're familiar with strength finder, it's now Clifton strengths.
And this categorizes your top strength themes. there are 34 total themes that this book in this assessment. Categorizes. this is actually a really good one. And what I find interesting about CliftonStrengths is I've taken this assessment three or four times. each time there have been [00:14:00] differences within my top five strengths.
It doesn't mean all five were different, and I've taken it several times over the years. So what I've found is like throughout the years as I grow, and I'm sure with these other exams as well, as you grow, you start to change a little bit, but wherever you are in that season of life. Your strengths may actually be a little bit different.
So your dominant strength in your teenage years may not be your dominant strength in your twenties or your thirties. Because what I found is, just like any skill in life, what got you there won't keep you there. So whatever skills you acquired to get you to this point in life may not necessarily be the same skills that will help you to level up on the next phase of life.
But understanding where you are right now gives you that position of emotional intelligence to work with and to move from. All right, so let's do a quick exercise about talents and passions. This exercise is actually in my book. So if you've read my book, then you may have already done this exercise, but this is a good time to take out a pencil, paper, pen, and pad and create three [00:15:00] columns.
Column one will say talents I have, and I'll explain what each of these mean. They're pretty self explanatory, but I'll explain it further. The second column will be talents I enjoy. And then the third column will be my passions. Now column one, talents that I have. You need to spend some time on this and you're not going to do this right now unless you actually pause this episode.
But go back and listen to this or go back and do this work. So on the talents I have, just sit, think, reflect, take an inventory on the talents that you have. They may not necessarily be talents that you like. That's why we have a talents I enjoy. So for example I'm pretty good at spreadsheets. I'm not like a spreadsheet master, but I'm good at spreadsheets.
So I could put talents I have. I'm good at spreadsheets or math or something like that. I'm cooking. I have a talent. I'm not like a chef or anything. All these things that I have a talent with. And then the next one are talents I enjoy. So when you look at column one of talents I [00:16:00] have, maybe you circle those and draw an arrow for the talents I enjoy.
Or maybe you just write those. You reference the first column and you write those talents that you enjoy. So if I really am good at spreadsheets, and I also enjoy doing spreadsheets, then I'm putting spreadsheets. Doing spreadsheets. I guess that's a talent. Doing spreadsheets. I don't know. Then the third column is my passions.
What are you passionate about? I'm do this for a couple reasons. One, talents and passions are different and passions and purpose are different. write down your passions. Maybe for me, it's like traveling, it's college football, it's writing, even marketing. Like marketing is, It's a talent. I have a talent I enjoy and it's a passion. So write down the things that you are passionate about. Maybe it's. animal care or helping the homeless or something like that, or running, whatever your passions are, capture all those in your passions. Now, as you're looking at this sheet, these three columns, especially those talents I enjoy and my passions [00:17:00] reflect on those, really look at it and see if there are any ideas that are sparked.
What are your talents and passions telling you? What I find is that your purpose Often, not every time, but often lies at the intersection of your talents and passions. think about it like this. If I'm really good with my hands, let's say I'm a carpenter.
I'm really good with my hands. That's a talent I have, a talent I enjoy, and I'm passionate about helping the homeless. Maybe my purpose is to build things that can either raise money for the homeless or maybe it's to volunteer with organizations that provide and build housing for people who need a place to live.
look at those talents that you enjoy and those passions and think about what are some areas in life or some causes or ways that you can use both of these to live out your purpose. My disclaimer is I'm not saying that is where your purpose will be, but I do think that your purpose can be lying at that [00:18:00] intersection.
So the importance of understanding yourself. Taking these assessments, understanding who you are, what makes you tick, what your talents are, what your passions are. This actually helps you to come closer to discovering your purpose. When you're thinking about where do I even start this work, it starts with doing the work on yourself.
You're not going to find your purpose externally by asking someone else. Nobody can tell you what your purpose is. You have to take the time, sit with it, do the work on yourself, And it is going to come to you are going to discover so much about what you're capable of when you start to reflect on your past and experiences that you've been through, that you've survived, that you live through.
You're going to understand the resilience and the perseverance and the skills that you've obtained throughout that journey of your life. Let's talk about your action plan for this episode. What I want you to do is review the assessments in this episode and put a date on the calendar for when you are going to complete each of them.
Like literally put a date on there. Month, day, [00:19:00] year. Again, some of those cost money. If you don't want to do the ones that cost money, I don't believe they're that expensive, but at least the ones that are free, put that on a calendar as to when you're going to complete that. the second action I want you to take is to complete the talents and passions exercise. Those three columns, talents I have, talents I enjoy, and my passions. And this week, ask one person that's close to you what they think you're good at, and what they could see you doing in life. But then also reciprocate with them if it's okay. Ask them, say, Is it okay if I share with you what I think you're good at?
And they may welcome that because again, a lot of times we don't see it. We don't see who we are, what our skills are, what we're good at. So that might also be a way for you to even help out the friend or family member or coworker that's helping you out. reciprocate that with them. As we close this episode out, it's like my book. At the end of each episode, I ask some reflective questions. this week's reflective questions are, what are three pivotal moments that shaped who you are today?
At the top of this podcast episode, I talked about me [00:20:00] moving when I was a sophomore in high school and then moving to Atlanta. Those were two definite pivotal points. So think about your own life and what are three pivotal moments that shaped who you are today? And the second reflective question is, How can you use your talents to make a meaningful impact? How can you use your talents to make a meaningful impact? And that is today's episode. I want to thank you for tuning in to the Jeremy Hazelwood show. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to follow or subscribe. So you're always up to date when the latest episode drops until next time, keep following your dreams to find your purpose.
