When I first started out in the working world I was a 19-year-old who thought she was very talented. In my mind, I had it all figured out: I’ll show up, work hard, show everyone how capable I am, and be super successful! Great plan right? Well, I learned pretty quickly that that’s not the case. As good as I might have been at the time (I thought VERY:) I was missing 2 other fundamentals of attaining success: Accountability and, most importantly, opportunity. 

Capabilities, or talent, are something you’re born with. For me, I am naturally inclined to see things in a very organized, black-and-white manner that helps me make decisions quickly and easily. Very good skill for someone in management or leadership. 

Everyone has one or multiple of these types of abilities. It’s your God-given, inborn resource to tap into when you’re going out into the world. For some people, it may be less obvious and harder to pinpoint but it’s definitely there. Our job is to find that ability and build on it to maximize its potential. And that brings us to our second necessity for success: Accountability. 

So you’re good at something. Woohoo. It doesn’t mean much if you leave it at that. Accountability breaks down into 2 parts: 

1. Accountability to yourself and your future: owning that part of yourself and utilizing your talents correctly to grow and feel fulfilled. It’s taking all the necessary steps, big or small, to achieve what you set out to do.
2. Accountability to your work: you need to build trust, become reliable within your work, and be someone that people can count on to do what you say you’ll do. 

It took time for me to start owning my decision-making. I had to build a lot of confidence and also humble down and listen to learn so that I could come up with thought-out and clear resolutions. There were so many times that I answered too quickly only to find that I was missing vital knowledge. 

Accountability is all about taking what makes you innately valuable and cleaning up the edges. Making it available and usable to others. That’s when you get to see step 3 which is opportunity. 

Opportunities. You need them but the fun thing is that you can’t just get them. You need to wait for someone to offer them to you. What’s cool about Opportunity is that when you sufficiently work on your Capabilities and your Accountability, Opportunity usually follows. The people around you will naturally start to notice once you’ve presented yourself to them in a way that benefits them and it isn’t just a mess of wild potential.

So yes, hard work definitely plays a huge part in achieving success. Finding and cultivating your talents is your challenge to bear and it’s not a simple one. But feeling fulfilled and feeling successful doesn’t come from accomplishing a task or getting a certain award. It comes from knowing that you own your potential and are building off of it every day. What can be better than that?