S4 E9 - valuing and finding your hidden or elusive dyslexic strengths

0:00Welcome to Dislexic Life of Joey's Season 4 Episode 9. How are you all? I am absolutely fine apart from I am fed up with not reigned but some sort of crazy mist that looks like something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean which seems to be stuck on the island at the moment and have been with us for days. It's just making everything feel a bit heavy I think but apart from that I'm all good. Last week was a crazy busy week for us as a family. It's the start of birthday season, March is always super busy with I think we have about 10 family and close friends birthdays in March plus Mother's Day always falls in March so yes always a little bit crazy as much and audition season is finally over thank goodness I don't know if I said that last year last year last

1:00week but as a parent I've been supporting the girls with their auditions for their places that they're going to be in September and audition season is finally over so now to just work out where they're going to go so that's good news. The other thing I did last week was I cut my grass and I can't tell you how cross I was for myself with myself for not doing the final cut of the autumn because I'm telling you the grass was so long I had to cut it three times across last week to sort of roughly get a back to normal and it still isn't totally back to normal and actually it's massively grown in the last week so I could be doing that if the fog clears and the grass actually dries up a bit later on today. Anyway last week I said that I was going to talk about dyslexic strengths this week and I almost forgot because I had something else that I wanted to talk to you about but I am going to talk about strengths

2:02because I know that in the episode last week I said that I was going to talk about that and the reason why I wanted to talk about it is because the more one-to-one clients I work with adults dyslexics who have slipped through the net the more I realize that people with dyslexia literally have no clue what their strengths are but also they don't kind of value their strengths which led me to kind of look back and unpick kind of where that comes from and I think if you look at the curriculum the curriculum is literacy heavy it's knowledge heavy it is reliant on not having a dyslexic brain so it is reliant on remembering information on remembering terms it's a knowledge-based curriculum isn't it as opposed to a skills-based curriculum and I think what happens is we go to school and dyslexics try really hard to comply we get

3:07measured and compared literally just using our literacy skill and we could become completely disconnected from our strengths and if you think that many dyslexic people often their strengths are in in the creative skill so that is our drama but it's also D.T. it's also it's also music it's also you know in debating and discussion it's it's an empathy and understanding in intuition and so often these skills are not well they're not recognized but because they're not recognized we don't value them and then because we don't value them we then don't use them and I think there's something to be said for really first of all identifying what your strengths are because if you don't know what your strengths are you can't even begin to use them and then once you know what your strengths are you can then begin to integrate them into

4:08your every day because actually when we are using our strengths a bit more life just feels easier in general and we're more efficient and even if we're not using our strengths or the things that we love in our day-to-day base if day sorry in our day-to-day base in our day-to-day job actually if we can be confident enough to kind of get the right strategy in place an advocate for ourselves it frees up our brain it makes us more efficient so there is more time for us to enjoy and work on the creative things and the things that we love the other thing to say is is there's an element of needing to balance out our brain so if we're constantly working on literacy based things that drain our brain that makes us feel exhausted and that isn't inspiring and actually dyslexics get their best ideas and their best thinking where they're being creative and they're feeling inspired and I actually listened to and it was for me a life-changing podcast I listened to Fern cotton and boy George's

5:10episode of Happy Place and it was just just really interesting listening to how he generates songs using chat GPT but how he also creates art which gives him ideas now I know that we're not all in the privileged position to literally be kind of playing absolutely to our strengths like that but why can't we be working towards that and actually if we value our strengths and we value the things that we're good at we're more likely to be fulfilling our potential and I think when you look at artists and I don't just mean physical artists I mean any kind of artist from architects to you know music music artists to people that actually for some people teaching is an art but when we look at people who are really kind of like have stepped into their power and I kind of hate that phrase but it's true when people that have stepped into their power and they're kind of working with their passions and their strengths life is just so easy and they make it look easy but it is like a work of art so how do you find your strengths so I've got a whole module on how you

6:16find your strengths in the thrive camp online course which is self-led which is a four module course but I have been so through in a circle and through the one-to-one mentoring I'm offering a much we have been starting with looking at identifying our strengths and basically there's no hidden formula no secret it's about looking at when things are natural and easy and just happen and then unpicking why did that just happen and where is the strength in amongst all of that you know equally what are you inspired by what are you motivated by what are you naturally good at or interested in where do you show natural resilience you know for my son it was always music when he was growing up it's not so much music now but like he was just naturally resilient and that so we could use his strengths to help us tap into his his weaker areas because actually when we use our strengths we're building resilience but we're also building

7:20really helpful skills critical skills thinking skills that we can transition into areas of our life that don't come as not as naturally easy so yeah playing to your strengths is really really really important so your mission should you choose to accept it is to spend this week thinking about and identifying your strengths and reach out to me let me know email me message me comment under a podcast post let me know that you let me know that you've listened to it you know comment on social media DM me I would love to know what your strengths are and how you're gonna use them and if you need some help locating strengths then please do check out the rive camp I'll pop the link on the bottom of this in the in the show notes so you can have a look at that but yeah strengths I lead with my strengths always you know my strengths my strength that I didn't

8:21value for years was talking I was I was selected to represent the school at a competition when I was probably 12 years old at middle school and I hated that skill because people totally took the mick out of me for it I was really bullied because I was the person that was identified to go and represent the school I was the person that was asked to talk on there we actually had media coverage at the time that was years ago and I received a lot of hate as a result of that and and as a result you know my mum always used to say to me Joe you talked too much and she's right I do talk too much however and as a result I became ashamed and embarrassed of that strength when actually it's one of my greatest assets I'm brilliant at talking to people building relationships and I'm actually a natural mentor and coach I know what questions to ask and interestingly I had one of my lovely first ever students here on Saturday that's looking at changing direction with their career and we did sort of a bit of a one-off ad

9:24hot mentoring and off she went with loads of ideas and I was like yes I am really good at this like this is something I am naturally really good at and for years I ignored it because nobody valued it and I just saw it as the thing that you know made me stand out as being too loud or too over the top when actually it's probably my greatest asset and one of my biggest skills and I need to be building my whole business around it so there we go strengths all the way people so I hope that you are having a lovely week if you're new to the podcast please do go back and listen to previous episodes if you can please do leave a review as well because that makes a really good big difference you can subscribe so that you're the first to know when the next episode next episode so next episode is released but all that's left for me to say is always look on the dyslexic side of life because it's great it's really really great

10:25have a great week guys and catch up next week