In every family, school, club, workplace or association there are always those people who excel at something ridiculously hard, leaving you scratching your head wondering, “How are they so good at that?” For those people, it’s as simple as recognizing their talents and using them effectively.

Most of us are more skilled then we realize, and unfortunately for us we do not use our skills and abilities to our advantage. This could be because we don’t know what they are or simply undervalue them. In our society, a blatant boisterous skill is most valued; this makes it hard sometimes to discern our skills and talents. The underestimated value of our talents is why so many feel so generic, desperately wanting to be a name brand.

The drive to be great and be acknowledged as such resides strongly within us. The only problem with this is that most of us have no clue how to accomplish that. Surprisingly enough, the first steps to becoming great aren’t all that hard. It really boils down to recognizing your skills and talents and then finding the best way to utilize them. This can be accomplished by following four steps:

Step 1. Take a few minutes to think about and then write down the things that you and other people have told you that you are really good at. Just to be clear, it doesn’t have to be something that people would necessarily consider a positive thing. For example, you may be really good at talking yourself out of trouble. Many wouldn’t consider your silver tongue and the way that you wield it to be a skill, but a judge might. That quick wit could make you the perfect candidate for law school. If possible, get someone else to look over this list as well – they may recognize skills that you have that you haven’t considered.

Step 2. Generate a top ten list of activities that you frequently engage in, or would like to frequently engage in, that make you happy.

Step 3. Look at your activities list and go through each activity considering what type of skills it would take to excel in each one. If you were honest with yourself, you will find that you have the necessary skills to excel in at least one of these activities.

Step 4. Now that you are able to recognize your skills and talents and how best to utilize them, get to it. In order for a skill to be recognized as a talent you need to engage in it regularly. That old adage “practice makes perfect” doesn’t exist for nothing. Let the next “how are they so good at that?” be about you. Bask in someone else’s praises about how skilled and talented you are and show the world the glory that is you.