How to Discover and Master Your Natural Gifts

Ethan Butte (0:00)

Welcome to The Brian Buffini Show, where we dive into the mindset, motivation, and methodologies of success. It's like having a coach on your commute. Here's your host, founder of America's largest business coaching company, Brian Buffini.

Brian Buffini (0:22)

I've presented to over 2,500 audiences. There is one question I've asked every single audience every time I've spoken. And I'll ask the audience who can raise their hands and tell me if they have some untapped potential. And every person in the room, their arm shoots up. Now, I don't really ever let an audience know what I'm thinking about that. Because if I'm thinking in terms of I have this untapped potential, I have this unused set of gifts, or underutilized set of gifts.

In my way of thinking, it would be the greatest shame of my life.

I'm not trying to shame the audience, and I never really get that. But the fact that we all think that we can shoot up our hands, and say, yeah, I got a bunch of untapped potential. It means, number one, we know we're not fully maxed out, or even close to it, in regards to our giftedness. Secondly, the reason people shoot their hand up, is because they think it's their choice. And third, the reason they shoot their hand up, is because it presents a sense of hope.

Yeah, I might not use it, but things could get better if I ever want it. And when are you going to use it? Like, so when they close the lid on the pine box, the gifts are gone. The potential is gone. The talent is over. And nobody knows that day. Recently, one of the very famous Irish musician, who was a guy I grew up with, same age as me, went to the same schools, just died in a motorcycle accident, which is kind of close to home for me, is having a near fatal motorcycle accident. And he was in my favorite Irish movie called The Commitments. He was a great character. He won an Oscar for best soundtrack. And it was a guy who created his career busking on the streets of Ireland. And just like that, he was gone. And they had his wake and Bono and all these famous musicians from all over the world came. And I thought to myself, he never would have envisioned one day in his life that all these people would have gathered for him.

He died at 56 He wasn't a young man. But he was taken away before his story was fully told. Does that make sense?

So here's the blueprint. I'm not trying to depress you today. But I am thinking in terms of the end. And gifts are things that have an expiration date. You know, you go into your fridge and you look at, oh, should have thrown that milk away a week ago.

Because it's past its sell-by date. Well talents and gifts have to be used. By the way, the less they're used, the older they get, the less gifted they become.

So we don't want to be raising our hands. The next time the Irishman says, how many of you have someone type potential? We go, no, I'm actually maxed out, Brian. I'm good. You know, I've fought the good fight. I'm in good shape. So I have three points for you today, as I always do, which is, first of all, you have to learn about your gifts. You actually have to become a student of the gifts you have. And I'll tell you why that's so hard in a minute. You have to honor your gifts, and then you master your gifts. So let me tell you about giftedness. And I've spent my career on this. Is they're so natural to you, it's like breathing. One of the reasons we have the Real Strengths profile at Buffini, which I spent seven figures on to buy a company 35 years ago.

So that I could coach people in such a way that we coach people around their giftedness. Which is why now we've put that same Real Strengths into Ask Buffini. So we can have people have access to that 24-7. What's your gifts? What's your natural abilities? And what we found with that profile is that you've been gifted at birth, and your gifts become either better, the more used they are, or they become worse because of how you've used them. A great example of this was a movie that I was enamored with when I was younger, called Chariots of Fire. And Chariots of Fire's true story, Eric Little, Scottish runner, who doesn't compete in the Olympics because he was a devout saboteurian, and he wouldn't do activities on a Sunday. And so the whole story is his religious conviction and why he wouldn't run on a Sunday, and he ends up costing him a gold medal. Of course, he ends up being entered into a different race, he doesn't win a gold medal anyway. So he's from a very, very devout family. His family were missionaries. In fact, he ended up after the Olympics going and being missionaries in China and dying in a concentration camp in China.