TALENTS & WEALTH

In Africa today many reasons can be adduced why most people live far below their financial potential. One of the most painful reasons is that people neglect to harness their talents – gifts and capabilities! They are sometimes so busy admiring or envying what others have they fail to see that what they have is equally good. Making the best use of your talents is extremely important if you want to be financially successful.

Talent, simply defined refers to those innate abilities that seem to have been inputted in you when you were born. It is a special, natural ability or aptitude for doing something exceptionally well. It was deposited in you by the Creator at birth and is synonymous with gifts, traits and attributes. The good news is that everybody on this earth is gifted and talented in one thing or the other.

Talents manifest themselves in things you love to do. These are the things you do easily, without stress where your abilities are easily expressed or demonstrated. Talents are like flags or signs pointing out where your wealth is lying fallow because it is meant to be exchanged for wealth and fortune. For example someone with a good voice can use his or her voice to produce wealth by waxing records, or producing radio jingles of which he or she can expect to be paid.

These talents are discovered in a raw form; it is your responsibility to develop your talent, hone your craft so you can make the most productive use out of it. This is sadly not the case with so many people. Many will go to the grave knowing they have talent, but failing to make any use of it to produce wealth for them. This is why I believe the greatest treasures in this world are in the graveyard, not the oilfields or gold or diamond mines but where people are resting eternally buried with their dreams, gifts and talents. I hope you do not want to be like them.

The process of creating wealth with your talents starts with discovery – either by self or by the observations and inputs of others. Have you discovered what your talents are?  You need to sit down and do a self-assessment of what you are good at. Even if you are not sure ask those whose opinions have weight with you what they think. Naturally you will be good at several things but in one or two areas you will be far better than many others. Do what you need to do to discover what it is.

Now that you have discovered your gifts you need to commit to polishing and developing it so that it can produce for you. Invest heavily in developing your gifts to the highest standards available. It is in this process that you will learn how to convert your gifts into wealth as you succeed in deploying it. The more you develop your gifts and talents the more it can be converted into wealth and prosperity for you.

Third, you need to trade your talents. You will remain poor as long as you do not offer your talents in the marketplace of life. Talents are one of the things you can easily exchange for money but you must act by taking steps to trade. This could include telling people in your network, volunteering to use your gifts for free, and other related activities. By all means write that book, record that album, create that recipe, bake that cake, design those clothes, trade the produce of your talents.

You also need to persist at it. Having talents is not a guarantee that people will automatically fall over themselves to procure your goods and services. You must keep at it and not give up. Sooner or later if you persist people will beat a path to where you are requesting for your gifts and wealth becomes inevitable.

Consider standup comedy. In Nigeria there was no comedy industry twenty years ago. Today many comedians have sprung up who are taking the continent by storm. These were talented people who used to make their friends and loved ones happy without expecting anything in return until they discovered the potentials in comedy and the rest is history. They have indeed traded their talents and it has brought wealth, fame and fortune to many of them.

The world is constantly on the lookout for talented people. Recently Forbes Magazine named former professional basket ballerMichael Jordan as the richest sportsman, and the first sportsman to have a net worth of One Billion Dollars. Michael was extremely talented in sport, but he was also talented in doing business as well hence his success. He has been able to trade his talents productively thus producing wealth and fortune.

Surely there is a place for your talents, you need to find it. Stop complaining that you don’t have money or that things are not working for you when you have not discovered, developed and traded your talents. God gave you these talents to use in chasing poverty away from your life. Put them to good use and poverty will be a thing of the past. The worst thing in life is to waste your talents.