You are wondering what talent you possess and how it can become the centerpiece of fulfillment in life, both professionally and personally. The same question arises when it comes to your child, as you try to understand their talents and how to help them express them to the fullest. If this is the case, you’ve come to the right place.
To achieve fulfillment in life means developing the ability to lead a satisfying existence in most aspects of one’s life environment. A simple and effective way to help your child achieve this purpose is by focusing on the development of these 7 competences:
- Increase self-control capacity
- Strengthen skills
- Cultivate high levels of independence
- Foster self-determination
- Develop notable resilience to adversity
- Aspire to pursue desires and goals
- Create value around one’s own abilities
If you need concrete guidance on how to help your child develop these aspects, then keep reading, as I will provide you with effective strategies to educate their abilities, allowing them to achieve a fulfilling life in the most satisfying way possible.
1. Knowing and appreciating oneself to achieve fulfillment in life
At first glance, your child may appear to be just like other children or teenagers of their age; perhaps you don’t notice any particular talent or skill that stands out: maybe they are not excelling in sports or academics, or they don’t seem to have specific interests.
For example, they might not be passionate about drawing, building things, or computer science; or they may not have as wide a circle of friends as their peers.
You have discussed this with your partner multiple times, but you can’t find a way to stimulate your child to explore new interests.
The first step is to observe them, to understand where their passions and interests might lie. This way, you avoid the mistake of looking at your child from your own perspective.
Additionally, it is crucial to acknowledge and celebrate all the small achievements your child makes day by day in different aspects of their life. Recognizing their accomplishments helps them develop a positive self-image.
2. Achievement in life: the talent
When we talk about a child’s talent or a person’s talent in general, the first thing to ask is what talent is. Essentially, talent is a particularly relevant ability in a person; for example, talent in mathematics, in sciences, or in learning in general, but also talent in sports, music, and all other disciplines and arts that people engage in.
We often hear about natural talent. Many wonder whether talent is solely a natural trait or if the environment and education can somehow contribute to its development.
It is evident that nature can endow an individual with greater abilities compared to others. However, it is equally clear that a neglected talent may emerge much less than a common ability that has been developed to become excellence.
Human history is full of misunderstood talents: in sports, in art, in science… Often, these are individuals who haven’t had the opportunity to fully develop an important talent, or whose skills were not such that they could be expressed as a unique and original talent.
Similarly, there are numerous cases of ordinary people who have developed their modest means so accurately that they excel over more gifted competitors.
I prefer not to mention any particular famous personalities, but you have surely noticed on multiple occasions examples that fit the descriptions I provided.
To better answer the initial question, we can stick to these characteristics and define talent as an original ability that expresses itself in unique ways and forms compared to the majority of other people. Now, we have a better understanding of the meaning of “personal fulfillment”.
3. What it means to achieve fulfillment
I want to clear up any misunderstandings right away. When I talk about personal fulfillment, I don’t mean to reveal the secret to turning yourself or your child into a millionaire.
At most, I can show you the path to make the most of your own talents; however, whether this leads to that specific outcome depends, of course, on the individual, their talents, and the opportunities they can seize.
What I mean by personal fulfillment, instead, is the ability to define a personal life project that is ambitious enough and concrete enough to allow a person to live a satisfying life in the majority of their living environment.
It is not at all something taken for granted. Many people have jobs they don’t enjoy, unsatisfying relationships, and long for what they don’t have.
In many cases, this dissatisfaction is further amplified when the same things are experienced by their children, who express disinterest, apathy, and indifference even in the face of the desire to build a future.
All of us have our own Life Project, which, in simple terms, concerns how we envision ourselves in the future, in two/three years, 5 years, 15 years…
Some are fatalistic and live life hoping to win the lottery continuously; some succeed, but there are many more who lose.
Others, however, are more pragmatic and actively seek opportunities to grow compared to their current condition.
If a person is interested in committing themselves in this direction, they already possess a great potential to exploit; they just need a starting point to leverage growth. The two basic elements to trigger this virtuous mechanism are the ones I mentioned before, and I’ll describe them better through an example:
- The Life Project must be sufficiently ambitious: I can desire to be the best pedagogist in the world as much as I want, but unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m not. However, I know that I possess many skills developed through years of study and experience, and I use them to grow professionally. In this sense, I am “sufficiently” ambitious because I aim to continue growing as long as my skills allow me to do so.
- The Life Project must be sufficiently concrete: as I said, perhaps I am not a standout in my field, not a prestigious academic; but this does not prevent me from obtaining significant satisfaction in this area. No one, for example, can take away the enormous pleasure I feel in striving, day after day, to become a better pedagogist and to share my skills with an ever-increasing number of people. In this sense, I am “sufficiently” concrete because I remain grounded and set achievable goals based on my capabilities. Actually, these goals are slightly further away, as you have learned from reading about me; because education is primarily self-education, so the principle of the zone of proximal development can be applied to oneself, as well as to others.
At this point, after clarifying what I mean by “personal fulfillment”, I want to explain the ingredients for a person to achieve self-fulfillment in life. Of course, I’m thinking of your child, but the same rules apply to you as well.
4. The ingredients for achieving fulfillment in life
At this moment, neither you nor your child probably have a sufficiently clear idea of what area or areas he/she will engage in the future to find his/her satisfactions: the studies to undertake, the job to pursue, the country to live in, the time to dedicate to sports, family, and more.
If they’re older, they may have some ideas, and perhaps you catch a glimpse of something on the horizon; but if they’re younger, you are still in uncharted waters.
However, now you have the opportunity to strengthen the foundations that will allow your child to express their desires and abilities, so that over time, they can envision their Life Project. The aspects you can focus on are:
– Self-control (security/insecurity): The first foundation for personal fulfillment is security, which a child perceives by feeling accepted and finding solid points of reference in their parents. To achieve this, it is crucial never to judge them, especially for what they cannot do; it is much more useful to appreciate what they do well. The more a child is raised with such positive stimuli, the easier it will be for them, as adults, to feel capable in everything they do. This will also lead to fewer tantrums as a child…
– Skills (inner comfort/discomfort): Can’t do anything? Are you sure about that? Perhaps you are judging him based on traditionally valued criteria in society or school (reading, writing, arithmetic). These are sure really important, but maybe this child is sensitive and capable of understanding and empathizing with others like no one else; yet, this is not a skill that school values.
However, social skills like these can allow an adult to climb the professional ladder just as well, and sometimes even more than many technical competencies.
The role of the parent is strategic in helping the child bring out the best in themselves, but above all, in helping them recognize the value of their abilities, which may otherwise go unnoticed.
– Independence (harmony/tension): Adolescence is the time when the need for independence is expressed most strongly during development. The more a child is accustomed to feeling secure, in control of their abilities, and aware of their capabilities, the more independent they will be as a teenager and adult. This is because they will feel more in harmony with themselves and others, thus better equipped to manage tensions.
– Self-determination (serenity/conflict): Life already produces enough conflicts, and there’s no need for a child to accumulate more of them within the home. Of course, a couple may have difficulties in managing their parenting roles, even facing severe disagreements; however, as long as the child is not involved and remains the center of each parent’s choices, he learns to place trust in them, which will make him more serene and stable.
This is the greatest legacy one can leave to a child; none other can compare. It is precisely this serenity that will enable him to face conflicts, internal and external, constructively, to carve out the space he desires in life.
Thus, the serenity generated by the relationship with his parents can motivate a child to construct his Life Project day by day, in other words, to self-determine.
– Fulfillment (self-esteem/instability): The logical consequence for a child who benefits from all the resources mentioned above is the exponential growth of his self-esteem, a fundamental pillar on which a person’s resilience rests.
Resilience is the ability to withstand the impact of adversities and is the final ingredient for realizing one’s most ambitious Life Project. A person with high self-esteem is capable of recovering more quickly from a setback and rising stronger and more motivated than before.
With that said, now let’s look at the last element, which is how to transform one’s skills into talents.
5. The strategy for achieving fulfillment in life
In many cases, the educational approach adopted by parents is greatly misguided in relation to their intention of raising well-rounded children. For example, many tend to put the cart before the horse and decide their child’s educational and professional future when they are still young, without considering their interests, abilities, and ambitions.
I prefer to help you reflect on how your child expresses these aspects because, in the long run, dissatisfaction can resurface, and it can do so disruptively in a person’s life and relationships with those close to them.
For this reason, if you truly care about allowing your child to fulfill himself in life, the aspects I suggest you not neglect during his growth are directly related to the fact that people fulfill themselves when…
– they can do what they desires: no one is satisfied doing what they don’t want to do for 7-8… 24 hours a day. Life inevitably involves sacrifices, but these sacrifices can be channeled to create the most conducive conditions for achieving one’s goals. For example, having a job one enjoys is essential for personal fulfillment and well-being; being able to choose it or change it are significant aspects.
– they can develop their best skills: reading, writing, counting, but also speaking, debating, listening, empathizing, struggling, running, jumping, sewing, cooking, storytelling, programming… What are your child’s best skills? What are the ones he is starting to express now and surprise you? Does he/she know that he/she has them, that he/she is particularly capable of doing something?
He/she certainly has special skills, on which he/she may be more or less gifted, but his/her biggest difficulty is understanding that he/she possesses them. From your perspective, as an adult with significant life experience, those skills should not go unnoticed; you, more than anyone else, can help him identify them and encourage every opportunity to develop them.
– they can create value around what he knows how to do: it is said that finding a job today is more challenging than in the past. In some ways, this is true; when I was young, there were many public competitions, and many companies were hiring. Those who studied a bit more had many more opportunities for professional fulfillment.
On the other hand, having two degrees today may not be enough to get a decent job; paradoxically, completing compulsory education may be enough to become a millionaire. The difference between succeeding and not succeeding lies in the ability to create value for one’s skills, making them attractive to those seeking resources of that kind. Let me explain this with an example.
About twenty years ago, a close friend of mine who had just finished middle school and nothing more, decided to go to China to look for work as soon as he turned 18. He didn’t know a word of Chinese or English; he was a professional pizza maker.
He was hired in a restaurant, where he personally built a wood-fired oven. The owner saw his customer base quadruple within a few months, to the point of having to open another location.
After a couple of years of underpaid work, my friend opened his restaurant with partners; his establishment quickly became one of the most renowned in the city. He had skills but here he couldn’t express them to the fullest; so he created the conditions to increase their value.
