Abilities

Abilities are my capabilities to perform various tasks, fulfil my goals and achieve higher peaks of success. There are two types of them:

1.         Intellectual abilities- needed for mental performances, such as thinking, reasoning, solving problems, finding solutions

2.         Physical abilities- needed for practical tasks, related to strength, flexibility, and other tasks for activities and physical tasks.

1)      According to Thurstone, there are several mental abilities, which people have or develop or use in their daily life:

a.       Verbal ability- to understand and use written and spoken language (used a lot by teachers, lawyers, writers, etc.)

b.      Numerical ability- to solve arithmetic and number-related problems quickly and accurately (waiter, investment bankers, engineers)

c.       Reasoning ability- come up with solutions for problems and understand the principles by which different problems can be solved (therapists, interior designers, mechanics, programmers)

d.      Deductive ability- to reach appropriate conclusions from an array of observations or evaluate the implications of a series of facts (researchers, detectives, scientists)

e.      Ability to see relationships- to see how two things are related to each other and then apply this knowledge to other relationships and solutions (anthropologists, travel agents, consultants, wedding planners)

f.        Ability to remember- to recall things ranging from simple associations to complex groups of statements or sentences (translators, salespeople, managers, researchers)

g.       Spatial ability- to determine the location or arrangement of objects in relation to one’s own position and to imagine how an object would appear if its position in space were altered (air traffic controllers, architects, clothing designers, astronauts)

h.      Perceptual Ability- to uncover visual patterns and see relationships within and across patterns (photographers, aeroplane pilots, cruise ship captains, landscape designer)

I decided to ask help from the Google, to find some tests about mental abilities and to figure out which sides are the strongest. However, I did not find any free tests available, therefore I just take a deeper look into myself, my past, my feelings, feedback and opinion from the people around me.

            I feel I have always been good in verbal tasks. Throughout my lower education, I always received rather high grades for my written tasks and I enjoyed writing essays, reviews and compositions. It was also the time I had a lot of time to read books and newspapers. In fact, I have always enjoyed languages, and therefore, tried to improve these. In my high school times, I was the person who almost always knew how to decline or conjugate a word in a proper way, also to correct typos and odd wording. My classmates asked me quite often to proofread their papers because I simply perceived the Estonian language with my “sixth sense”. From an early age, I attended the so-called Olympiad competitions and received great points from there. 

            However, now, I feel that my Estonian abilities are diminishing and I tend to speak not the real proper Estonian, but rather “Estonglish”. This comes from the fact that the most of the day I think, speak and work in this language, and my brain switches off the Estonian mode. Of course, I do understand, I am ready to answer immediately, but I feel my Estonian language is not that fluent and error-free as it used to be. By now, I have given up the idea to become a philologist, which I was thinking of becoming. Although, verbal abilities are very strongly needed in the diplomacy and politics related professions, to be able to recognise ‘hidden meanings’, express the ideas in the correct and neutral way and sometimes even ‘read between the lines’.  To work on that type of ability, it is important to read, revise, communicate and keep myself updated.

            I could say that I have shown great results in numerical abilities, but at this point in my life, I do not enjoy working with arithmetics and numbers that much. In the lower education, maths was one of my favourite subjects – I even attended post-class study groups to solve higher mathematics and logic exercises. I think I enjoyed these tasks mainly because it was satisfying to find alternative ways of thinking, to create new bridges and get the pleasure of finding the desired solution. Today, however, I do not use numbers that much- the only occasions are my economics classes, very easy calculations in my daily life and at the work [comment: I work as a waitress in the restaurant]. Even though I have been good in this, I do not see myself working with numbers- I feel too creative for that – accounting or bookkeeping have never been appealing to me. 

            I find myself being quite a creative person, therefore, I think that finding solutions is not a problem for me. Although, sometimes it is easy to find a solution which is suitable for me as an individual, but more complex when other people or community or the environment or why not the entire world is involved in the process. For me, it is very important to know the background, a lot of information, theories before I am able to come up with some suggestions. I am very critical on my views in the eyes of another people – I do not want to seem silly or ineffective. Therefore, sometimes, I stay in the position of a listener at first and when it comes towards the end, I usually have gained a reasonable amount of knowledge, insight and ideas to offer my opinion, suggestions or solutions. Here I can say that quite often I follow the saying ‘Steady row, far you´ll go’. Moreover, I find this ability to be a very useful in my current studies and also in my future work.

            Ability to see relationships is definitely needed in the international relations, -affairs and just world related issues. There is no such a situation where one action causes no consequences or influences some other actions or parties. This is an ability to foresee, predict and analyse. I could even relate it to 3D-thinking. For example, if we imagine an opaque 3D cube: first we see the closest facets of this cube, second we need to imagine the framework of this cube, to create a notion of a 3D-obect, thirdly, apprehend the facets in the perspective and fourthly, constitute a complex vision of this cube in the way that the hidden facets are exactly the same as the one visible. Event managers need an excellent ability of relationships to take into account all the risks, shortcomings and successes. When it comes to me, I tend not to analyse too much or create a working plan, but I am a type who experiment and changes my strategy on the route.

            Ability to remember is necessary to relate pieces of information and experience with different tasks, duties. I feel that this part of me is not that well developed since I tend to forget facts over time and if I need to share facts or tell stories to several people, after a while, the facts start fading and I might become incorrect, doing it unintentionally. Moreover, I have not had a good memory for numbers or specific dates/years, concrete facts- I rather memorise more general, broad, human and people related information. Therefore, history has never been the greatest success in my studies, because I tend to forget the dates and hence, also the structure of past events.

             Even now, during my bachelor studies, I have written a lot of papers on various topics, conducted some researches, but I do not remember specific data to be able to use in further tasks, without researching again. I can vaguely talk about the outcomes or findings, but I am unable to come out with certain facts. When it comes to languages, when I have to deal with different languages together, I even forget words in one language and unintentionally want to replace it with words from another one. As I speak quite a fluent Dutch [comment: unofficially the Flemish language], I occur to use these words when speaking in English, or I might even know a certain word only and only in Dutch, meaning that I cannot even express it in Estonian, because my brain is unable to come up with a good counterpart.

            Coming to the spatial ability, I once dreamed to become an air traffic controller, to face the stress, to take the responsibility in terms of thousands of passengers flying every day. I even spent one day at the Flight Control Tower of the Tallinn Airport. It was the time, I tried to find out who I am and what will be my goal in my life, in the meaning, in which direction should I go in my higher studies. 

            I have always been good in determining my location whether in the forest or in an unfamiliar city, but I have never been good in Physics. My mother was the one, directing me away from this profession and studies, telling me that it would be the waste of my talent [making me even more uncertain about my will and options, but also growing my feeling of defiance and willingness to strike]. Now, almost three years later, I am thankful to my mother, not letting me choose this path, mainly because professions in this field are mainly either technical and do not include that much of active face to face communication and human contact.

            My perceptual side has been and still is strong since I have been to an art school for 14 years of my life. I see art where others see daily life, ugliness or cheer. When going to the cinema, I do not always seek pleasure from the plot or setting, but I rather go to see it from the artistic perspective. That is also the reason, why I do not like to watch a typical Hollywood film, but prefer quality films (mainly European ones). I feel that it is an abstractive sense of creating and seeing something where other people see nothing special. For instance, aeroplane pilots must see a flight route in the middle of nothing, being instructed by the map and coordinates, heights, etc. They see something that a person with a weak ability of perception cannot see. Even though I can use this ability in my daily life, I am not quite sure whether I am the best in this.

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 Moving on to the Nine Basic Physical Abilities, I just list them up in here, but I find these easier to achieve and improve than mental abilities, therefore it is also more complex to find whether I am good in one or another.

• Strength factor

o   Dynamic- Exerting muscular strength rapidly and repeatedly

o   Trunk- Exerting muscular strength rapidly and repeatedly using the trunk muscle

o   Static- Exert force against external object

o   Explosive- Exert and expend all force in one or series of explosive acts.

•      Flexibility factor

o   Extent- Ability to bend trunk and back muscle

o   Dynamic- Ability to bend trunk and back muscle rapidly and repeatedly

•      Other factor

o   Body Coordination- Mind and body control

o   Balance- Ability to maintain equilibrium against external force

o   Stamina- Ability to exert force persistently

            In activities, the most important abilities that we need are strength, resistance, speed and flexibility (in their various forms). We are all capable of acting in a certain way, but practising makes it possible to become better and develop these skills and abilities. Strength can be developed with sports games, pushing, pulling, boxing, climbing, throwing balls, etc. Speed can be developed through practising sports games, running, cycling, tactical games (e.g. paintball) etc. to train the muscles and body to enable muscles and body react to its ultimate level. Resistance can be trained via cardio training, sports games, exercising for a long time. Flexibility can be improved via stretching, doing yoga, warming up your muscles.

            According to the saying ‘Healthy Body Healthy Mind’, everyone should try to include workouts in their daily or weekly schedule to be more effective in their daily life. Physical activity in my case has always come and gone – in lower education, there were P.E. lessons included in the timetables, but I can say it with an ease that I enjoyed these. However, I am rather a person who enjoys working with weight and muscle resistance, therefore, I feel the ultimate satisfaction when exercising in the gym club or developing muscles by my own body weight. My flexibility has never been that great and maybe that is also the reason why I have not found yoga for me or have not enjoyed dance training in the way my sisters have done it.

            Abilities are possible to develop and achieve improvements in every level, although, I believe that there are certain limits derived from our physical body, personality, culture, motivation, support, general opinion, our values and many more factors. The most important strength is situated in our own mind, because without self-esteem and internal willingness we cannot achieve greater results and climb higher peaks. For short people, it is possible to become a basketballer, for a person who has lost his limb, it is possible to start running (with a prosthesis and workouts), a person who stutters while making a speech might be able to give a fluent speech when overcoming a shortage of self-confidence, investing time in practicing and backs his stage nerve. Human mind and brain is a powerful organ which holds the most of our potential.