The Dirk Tietjen Blog » Personality Test

Discover Your Talents ala Brian Tracy

Dirk Tietjen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:03:08 +0000

I have talked about finding your passions in this Blog before. Here is another great essay which can help finding the right business:

When we do strategic planning for corporations, the first thing we think about is how to increase the company’s rate of return on the equity it has invested in the business. This is done by allocating more resources to areas with higher potential, and taking resources away from those with lower potential. By developing or promoting newer and better products and services, and discontinuing those that are less profitable, the company can channel its efforts in a way that maximizes its returns.

In doing personal strategic planning, the first thing you want to think about is how to maximize your personal “rate of return.” You need to realize that the most valuable thing you bring to your work is your ability to think, to act, and to get results. Your earning ability — which is a function of your education, knowledge, experience, and talents — is your equity. And the way you “invest” it will largely determine the quality and quantity of your material and psychological rewards.

A young man in one of my seminars came up to me and said that he was working as a plumber for a large contracting firm. He made good money, but he was envious of the salespeople in his company who made more money, drove nicer cars, wore nicer clothes, and had much better lifestyles.

He had completed his training, had his journeyman’s certificate, and was at the top of his wage scale. The only way he could earn more money in his current job was by working longer hours. Instead, he wanted to get into sales.

I told him that if he wanted to get into sales, it was up to him to learn how to sell — and then to do everything possible to get his boss to give him the chance to sell the company’s plumbing services. His future was up to him. But he first had to learn how to do the new and higher-paying job.

A little more than a year later, he attended another one of my seminars… and brought me up to date on his situation. He had told his boss that he wanted to get into sales. His boss discouraged him, telling him that plumbers have very little aptitude for the skills involved in selling a service. He then asked his boss what he would have to do to prove to him that he could do it. To make a long story short, his boss helped him learn how to sell the company’s services by recommending that he study manuals and take extra courses on his own time.

And that’s what he did. He bought books and listened to tapes and spent time talking to the company’s salespeople. As a result, he became a full-fledged salesman.

After five months in his new job, he was already earning more than twice as much as he had ever earned as a plumber. But most of all, he was happier.

He was more enthusiastic about his work than he had ever been. He loved selling, and he considered his career change to be one of the best decisions he had ever made.

This is typical of countless stories that have been related to me over the years. In every case, the individual had discovered and developed his or her strengths — and, subsequently, improved the quality of his or her life. You can do the same thing.

Thinking of yourself passively — as being employed and, therefore, subject to the dictates of someone else — can be fatal to your long-term success. In reality, you’re the president of your own personal-services corporation. You’re completely in charge of production, quality control, training and development, marketing, finance, and promotion.

Seeing yourself as self-employed forces you to recognize that you are also self-responsible and self-determining. That everything that happens to you happens because of your conduct and your behavior. You’re in the driver’s seat. You’re behind the steering wheel of your life. It’s up to you to decide how to utilize your talents and abilities in such a way as to bring you the very highest return on the investment of your time and energy.

No one else is going to do it for you. Others can help you, guide you, direct you, channel you, point you in the right direction, and even give you opportunities.

But in the final analysis, you’re the boss. No one else can make the critical decisions that will determine your future and your fortune. To that end, here are four questions that you need to ask yourself on a regular basis:

1. What do I most enjoy doing?

2. How would I describe my ideal job?

3. If I could have any job at all, anywhere, what would it be?

4. If I won a million dollars in the lottery and I had to pick something to work at indefinitely, what would I choose to do?

To uncover your strengths and determine your unique talents and abilities, ask yourself:

What have I been good at in the past?
What things do I do easily that seem to be difficult for other people?
In what areas of work do I seem to get the best results… and derive the most pleasure?

The answers to all of these questions will give you a good idea as to how you might increase your return on the energy you invest.

Then look at your current job, and ask yourself:

Where do I want to be in three to five years?
What kind of work do I want to be doing?
What kind of people do I want to be working with?
What level of responsibility do I desire?
What kind of money do I want to be earning?
What part of the country do I want to be living in?

Look at your work and at your life in general, and ask yourself:

What kind of people do I admire and most want to be like?

Who do I know, or know about, who is doing the kind of work that I want to do and isliving the kind of life that I want to live?

What changes would I have to make in my life to be like that person?

Remember: Whatever anyone has done, someone else can do as well. You’ll never be exactly the same as another person, but you don’t need to be. You can use the successes and achievements of other people as guidelines to help you decide where you want to arrive at the end of your particular journey. But you can be unique and different and successful in your own way.

As a result of your genetic structure, your education, your experiences, your background, your interests and proclivities, you’re a unique and rare combination of talents and abilities. You can be extremely good at something. And it’s your responsibility to find out what that something is.

Whatever you’re doing today, it’s nowhere near what you’re really capable of doing. The key to a happy and prosperous life is for you to regularly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, to become very good in the areas you most enjoy, and then to throw your whole heart into what you’re doing.

By Brian Tracy

[Ed. Note: Relax and allow positive affirmations to flow through your subconscious mind. Feed your mind the fuel it needs while you rest. This powerful CD includes 10 powerful affirmations with music. You simply let yourself relax as Brian Tracy talks to your subconscious mind. Find out more here.

And for more help setting and achieving the goals that will get you your dream job, check out ETR's Ephiphany Alliance program. With Bob Cox as your mentor, you'll learn the time-management strategies and success techniques you need to accomplish more in one day than most people do in a week. Check out the Epiphany Alliance here.]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading, Dirk

Find out about multiple intelligences to improve your learning

Dirk Tietjen — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:28:35 +0000

Have you ever wondered why on some occasions you can remember information easily while on other occasions you aren`t able to recall it at all?

Well it could have to do with the fact that in one situation you are in an environment which is compatible with your personal learning style, while in the other case the teaching is just not presented in a manner which is right for you. Every human being has a certain learning style which is connected with a certain strength. In order to make your learning as effective as possible anyone should know the own learning style which is based on his strongest intelligences and talent structure.

His intelligences? There’s only one intelligence in the person, right?

Well, following the theorie of Harvard professor of education Howard Gardner there are seven different intelligences. Those are:

Linguistic : good in reading, writing, listening and talking, spells easily
Logical-Mathematic Intelligence: good in abstract thinking, counting, performing calculations, orderly note-taking
Spatial Intelligence: thinking in pictures, good in reading map, likes arts, good sense of colour, uses metaphors
Musical Intelligence: sensitive to rhythm, the composing and singing
Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence: good in control of one’s body, good timing, good reflexes, learns good by moving, skilful and purposeful movements (dancers, athletes and surgeons)
Intrapersonal Intelligence: good negotiator, empathy, enjoys company, likes to mediate disputes, good self-understanding
Interpersonal functioning: good understanding of others and one’s relations to others, intuitive, self-motivated wants to separate from mainstream, being high in social skills (psychologists, teachers and politicians are often equipped with this type of intelligence).

Gardner states if we all had exactly the same kind of mind and there was only one kind of intelligence, then everybody could be taught the same things in the same way and assess them in the same way and that would be fair. Once it is realised though that people have very different kinds of minds, different kinds of talents, like some people are good and thinking spatially, some in thinking language, others are very logical, other people need to be hands on and explore actively and try things out, then education, which treats everybody the same way, is the most unfair education.

He adds, then we have this myth that the only way to learn something to read in a textbook or hear a lecture on it.

Gardner admits himself and those seven intelligences are not definitive, but can show the facets of the human mind and each human will have combinations of those. Not all experts agree with this theory as you can read yourself here (Howard Gardner Under Fire: The Rebel Psychologist Faces His Critics).

Each reader may find out for himself whether this knowledge about the different intelligences helps understanding and learning a new subject in the future better.

So knowing about your special talents and intelligences is the first step in helping you to advance your learning. Obviously it would be helpful to use as many of those talents while learning as possible. At the same time you should leave out the channels which don’t fit your preferred intelligences, may it be reading, hearing or something else.

The second step to improve the learning would be finding out about the own learning style. For that we need to acknowledge three different sectors which are relevant for the learning:

how do you receive information easily (kinesthetic, auditory, visual for instance)?
how do you organise and implement information more easily (step by step approach or big picture)?
what circumstances would help you to receive and implement information you are learning (being alone in library, study buddies, calm or music playing?

How do you find your own learning style while using your strongest intelligences?

Actually there are several tests available these days to find out about your preferred learning style. Here I found a site for you where you can take the test and find out your learning style for free and print it out; simply click this link (click on learning styles in the second paragraph of the site).

Its is pretty close to the intelligence types Gardner is using with slight differences, but you will be able to find out your strength easily.

Anyone interested in improving his learning exponentially should go and take that test now, because it brings valuable insight for the rest of the life.

People who are interested in finding out even more about Gardner and his seven intelligences finds some excellent references here:

Frames Of Mind: The Theory Of Multiple Intelligences

Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century

Five Minds for the Future

Changing Minds: The Art And Science of Changing Our Own And Other People’s Minds (Leadership for the Common Good)

Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice

2 your learning success,

Dirk

Improve Your Memory with Tony Buzan’s Mind Mapping

How to find your passions in online businesses

Dirk Tietjen — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:46:52 +0000

I talked about the importance of finding our true passions and talents before in this blog – only after finding out about those we will be able to find out our ideal online business income stream, too, which has the potential to lead to fulfilling of life dreams. Only oneself knows about our passions and talents, but if I say we know I mean we should know by observing ourself and I have been talking about a few techniques to make that process easier and faster. In fact most people dont really know about their true passions and talents when you ask them and mostly it takes time to find out after having followed different paths ruled by common sense before.

In the bestselling business book, Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson and Jerry Porras, more than 300 “enduringly” successful people were interviewed . These are people who have had 20+ years of impact on their fields in common. People like Sir Richard Branson, Michael Dell,Maya Angelou, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Lance Armstrong and Bill Gates were among them.

What did all these people have in common after all? One of the most important statements was that we must choose our own personal definition of success, rather than assume we need to follow anyone else’s path!

You can see some samples of the videos with these people here.

So the importance of finding our own path and not following other peoples footsteps once again leads to the necessity to find out about the own passion.
Plenty of literature is written telling you how important it is to live your passion.

But how is it actually done? Another important and succesfull tool for finding out exactly the own passions is the so-called „Passion Test”!

It shows us how to discover and live our passions.

Who is the test for?
A 2005 study by Harris Interactive found that only 20% of working Americans are passionate about their work. The remaining 80% are not satisfied as a consequence – not happy, not living passionate lives.

Why do 80% of the people dont live their dream?
The 80% of people who are not passionate, not happy, not fulfilled in their own lives are people who have “settled” with the „circumstances“ dont know enough about their passions and the importance of follwing those according to the book authors Janet and Chris Attwood. So their test is a very powerfull tool to find out about your true passions and well worth trying it out. As Marci Shimoff ( Co-Author of Chicken Soup for the Soul) put it “Simple, clear, powerful. The Passion Test is a remarkable tool for getting the clarity you need to begin living your dreams.”

The authors offer an the initial test here for free (small donation is expected).

Regards, Dirk

Online business – developing products on a “vision” or pre-testing?

Finding the right Online business

Dirk Tietjen — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:12:27 +0000

Looking for the right onlinebusinesses these days is not easy – we all are confronted with different kinds of income opportunities. While this is a good thing on one hand since the strategy of multiple streams of income makes us less vulnerable if one source is not doing well. On the other hand it is kind of confusing facing all these opportunities in stocktrading, real estate investing, affiliate marketing, multilevelmarketing and online shops only to name a few.

Many of these chances sound promising and it would not be a good sales letter for those opportunities if we left that proposal advertising site without that feeling. Usually then we feel tempted to check this and that immediatley, running around trying everything new. Unfortunately this way too often we end up not accomplishing one thing, but dancing on to many dancefloors at one time.

After some time we might even notice we dont like that certain businessmodell or dont feel talented for it.

So then we invested a lot of time and energy ending up with something which doesn`t suit us. We wasted a lot of time and energy. In the meantime you could have succeded in another business which fits you better.

Ok, but how do we know if we never try things out first place you might hear a little voice in your head.

Success in any particular business depends upon your possessing the faculties required in that business. But that alone wont bring you success. There are equally skilled people on the market, one of them doing great, the other one kind of failing. So what is the difference between those two – it has to do with their “inner game”.

Parts of it might be the attitude, but probably the biggest part is passion and pure talent. Obviously it will be a lot easier for you to succeed in a business you have some passion and talent for. You will do best in that business where you have the right skills plus where your are “best fitted” by nature (passion, talent).

So is there a shortrack to finding the ideal income streams for oneself, which suits us and makes us feel comfortable „in the zone“ without wasting time and energy?

Recently a man by the name of Roger Hamilton returned to the I Ching in order to devise a personality profiling system for entrepreneurs and money making.

Hamilton classifies eight personality types.

> The Creator … Builds innovative products – Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Richard Branson

> The Star … Builds an influential brand – Oprah, Paul Newman, Bill Clinton

> The Supporter … Builds high performance teams – Steve Balmer, Jack Welch

> The Deal Maker … Brings deals together – Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch

> The Trader … Buying and selling commodities – George Soros

> The Accumulator … Buying and holding assets – Warren Buffet, Paul Allen

> The Lord … Controlling cashflow producing assets – Lakshmi Mital, Ingavar Kamprad

> The Mechanic … Creating a duplicatable system – Michael Dell, Ray Krock

You are more naturally ONE of these types. This means that you have a more natural path to success than you think and there are other people who can help you get there faster (eg: every Star needs a Deal Maker).

You can use this link to access your WealthDynamics Test Wealth Dynamics Profile Test

And yes, the test costs 100 USD which is some money, but I found it worth every penny compared to the wasted time and energy before. But even if you dont take it reading about the different styles will help you in the future.

While the system is complex, it resonated with me because I have learned the hard way over the years not to try to engage in activities which go against my personality type. Instead I need to go with my strengths and build a team with complimentary ones. Big success is always a team effort. So, the trick to success is to focus on your strengths and passions while others with complimentary skills cover your weaknesses.

Anybody who is curious to find out more about Asias most famous wealth coach can click here

Regards, Dirk