Jeff Bezos Says Identifying Your Hidden Strengths Is Key to Success. Here Are 15 Questions to Find Yours 

EXPERT OPINION BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM MAR 13, 2025

Work hard, get lucky, build relationships, persuade others. There are many things you need to do to be successful in life. But according to Jeff Bezos, math, and even Hollywood A-listers, there’s one ingredient that’s more important than all the others for success — identifying your hidden strengths and weaknesses. 

Success starts with identifying your strengths

What does the Amazon founder have to do with actors and equations? It turns out this motley combination of sources has all converged on a single truth from wildly different angles. Many of us hamstring our chances of success in life from the outset because we are not clear-eyed about what we’re naturally good at and bad at. 

A team led by physicist Albert-László Barabási came to this conclusion by analyzing the research output of thousands of scientists and modeling the results. This number crunching revealed that a given scientist’s impact could be predicted by two factors — how long he or she kept plugging away at their work multiplied by their innate ability in their field. In short, talent really matters. 

That conclusion wouldn’t have surprised Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder has spoken openly about how he once dreamed of becoming a physicist but discovered at university, “I wasn’t smart enough to be a physicist.” He switched to business, an area he clearly does have a knack for. That move laid the foundation for his outsize success. 

“When you have a gift and then you work hard, you’re really going to leverage that gift,” Bezos said. 

Nor would it shock Academy Award-winning actor Reese Witherspoon, who has likewise spoken about being honest with both herself and her kids about where their talents do and do not lie. The point isn’t to prevent young kids from exploring their interests while they’re still figuring out who they are. It’s to nudge everyone in the family to identify their the best areas to concentrate their efforts.

That includes Witherspoon herself who admits to being a “terrible driver.”

“I quit driving a year ago,” she says. “It’s great because that’s the time I now spend catching up on phone calls or texts.” When you don’t waste energy fighting your natural weaknesses, you have more to devote to your strengths.

Everyone has hidden talents 

That could come across as discouraging, but the point isn’t to crush dreams or brand anyone as bound for eternal mediocrity. By identifying your weak areas and discarding paths that depend on them, you can devote your time to aspirations that align with your innate strengths and talents. 

Here’s the good news. Everyone has hidden talent. It might be musical, mathematical, mechanical, or interpersonal, rather than something flashy like a sky-high IQ or the ability to catch a football at full sprint. But it no doubt exists. If you identify these strengths and nurture them, life will go easier for you. 

How to identify your hidden strengths

The problem, according to psychologist and author Alice Boyes, is that we sometimes fail to notice our greatest strengths for the very reason they’re so valuable. “We often overlook what we’re naturally good at because it feels too easy to count as a real skill,” she explained on Psychology Today recently.

But “when you identify these hidden talents, you can use them more intentionally,” she continues. How do you better understand your own secret strengths? Helpfully, Boyes offers a list of simple questions to ask yourself, including: 

1. What do you do well even when you’re half-asleep or distracted?
2. What are you “oddly good” at, even though you’ve never studied or trained for it?
3. What mistakes do you never or rarely seem to make?
4. What problems do you enjoy solving, even if they seem trivial?
5. What patterns do you notice before others see them?
6. How do you instinctively explain things to others? What are your go-to methods—storytelling, analogies, step-by-step logic, or emotional connection?
7. What do you instinctively fix or improve, even when no one asks you to?
8. What’s something you do so efficiently that people assume you’re cutting corners (but you’re not)?
9. What decisions do you make faster than others?
10. What do people assume you put a lot of thought into, but you just do on autopilot?
11. What’s something you never do the “right” way, but it still works?
12. What’s something you think is totally unnecessary that most people take seriously?
13. What confuses others that seems obvious to you?
14. What’s a tool or method you use completely differently from how it was intended?
15. What’s something you don’t stress about that everyone else seems to?

Know yourself and have the wind at your back

“Better self-knowledge of your instinctive strengths will help you become more confident about the value of those strengths, lean into them during challenging times, and save mental energy by doing what comes naturally,” Boyes concludes. 

Plenty of other superachievers from a broad spectrum of fields clearly agree. 

Go ahead and belt out tunes with a local choir even though you’re no Whitney Houston. Be the slowest one on the field at your weekend soccer game. You don’t need innate talent to enjoy (and psychologically benefit from) doing something as a hobby. Nor should you conclude that you can’t get better at a chosen field with practice and study. You most assuredly can.     

But trying to fight against your natural skills and inclinations in your career not only drastically lowers your chances of success, but also can turn life into a slog. If you identify your hidden strengths, however, you’ll have the wind at your back. Success suddenly becomes way easier.  

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Jessica Stillman

Jessica Stillman is a writer, editor and ghostwriter whose daily Inc.com column is focused on making work life (and just life life) more meaningful, joyful, and impactful. Visit jessicastillman.com for more information or to get in touch.