As you read this, my plan is to be in Tokyo visiting with my daughter. She lives and works in Tokyo as an IT consultant. Not only is she fluent in English and Japanese (we raised her bilingually), but she knows a bunch of those computer programming languages. She is also pretty good at Korean. She knows how to make apps and does so for fun. She is also a talented artist.

I don’t bring this up just because I am proud (I am) but to make the following point: despite all these talents, she is generally dismissive of them.

She is not the only one to be dismissive of their talents. Lots of people are dismissive of their strengths and talents. (Being self-deprecating is a national past-time in Japan.)

While humility has an upside (it allows us to have the capacity to grow), being dismissive of talents can keep people from reaching their full potential.

Good parents will push their kids to believe in themselves. Why? Because a person can do more with positive belief.

Do the same for yourself. Don’t dismiss your strengths. They are unique. Don’t let anyone on your team do it either.

When we embrace our strengths, we perform better, we feel better, and we encourage others by our example.

Don’t dismiss – embrace.