Customer Rating:
Summary: So now what?
Comment: Because the book describes each of the many different talents, it does not get into depth with any of them. It is a helpful basic resource, but I was hoping for more.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Are You On Track?
Comment: Are you on the right track? Do you wonder about why you love doing certain things and dislike others? Do you wonder why you react in certain ways? Are you looking for a better way to make right decisions, enjoy peace of mind, and live in harmony with others. This may be the book for you.

"Living Your Strengths" is an extension of "strengths" research begun more than forty years ago by Dr. Donald Clifton of the Gallup Organization. Clifton researched the natural patterns of thought, feeling, and action of two million people in more than 25 countries. The result is the Clifton "StrengthsFinder," a tool that reveals a person's top five themes of talent - one's "Signature Themes."

A "Strength" is the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity. This ability is a powerful, productive combination of talent, skill, and knowledge. Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. Unlike skills and knowledge, talents exist within you and cannot be acquired. We must first need to identify, affirm, and apply our unique mix of talents then apply them.

Clifton's research highlights folly of the widely used "weakness prevention" model - to be successful, we must "fix" our weaknesses. This thinking is wrong. Building a life around one's greatest natural abilities rather than trying to repair weaknesses is the path to success.

The book is organized around the use of the StrengthsFinder (provided with the purchase of the book) to identify, assess and affirm our Signature Themes (talents), and how to apply them for growth and life success. There are thirty four identified talents ranging from achiever, maximizer, ideation, individualization, and significance to woo.

The Signature Themes are unique to the individual. According to Gallup, the chance of finding someone with your Signature Themes, in the same order, is 1 in 33 million and the chance of finding someone with your top ten themes of talent is 1 in 3 trillion. Finding one's themes and understanding their uniqueness should help one to gain a better appreciation of how special they are and how special the people around them are - deeper self-respect, deeper mutual respect.

Most of us generally are not harnessing the power of our innate gifts. We are not fulfilling our purpose...we do not even know it! "Living Your Strengths" provides a tool so we can assess our talents and harness them in the betterment of ourselves, our families, and the various communities we participate in.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Good Tool for Church Congregations
Comment: We have developed a weekend program around this book to use as a minsitry tool. Those who have participated have been been enriched through discovering their strenghts and how they can use their strenghts in their daily work life. Paticipants have also discovered ways to offer their strenghts to serve at church. The on-line survey is a wonderful tool. In addition to being accurate it gives participants the option to pick a time conveient in their schedule to go online and complete it in a private setting.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community (
Comment: Excellent book. We are using it with all our staff and small groups in our congregations.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Living your Strengths
Comment: Most helpful for my ministry in the Church and for my work with the team I work with. I found it most helpful.

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