There are so many circumstances in life where you really need to “sell” yourself if you want to succeed. This can be anything from getting a new job you’re interested in to attracting a potential romantic partner. It’s all about your own self-awareness and how you use it.

You might have no trouble convincing someone to read a book you really love, convincing them of all the great things they’ll find in it. And you’re not trying to sell it. But when it comes to doing the same thing for yourself, even when there’s a clear advantage, you curl up into a spiky emotional ball like a little porcupine.

No doubt, one of the reasons you’re reluctant to toot your own horn is that you’ve met one of those people who do just that: exaggerate all their strengths and accomplishments, nauseating anyone who’s there to witness it (bleah!). You don’t want people to think you have an inflated ego. So instead, you pretend not to have any strengths (even with yourself), and now you don’t remember what they were in the first place.

You want to know what your strengths are so you can use them to your advantage, and your weaknesses so you can work on improving yourself. So, when you feel like you have nothing to offer, how do you (re)discover your strengths and weaknesses? Here are some tips:

• First, reflect on past experiences.

Try making a list of your successes and failures. No matter how big or small. Then consider which skills or strengths contributed to your successes, and which weaknesses held you back.

• Try some personality tests.

I get it, you don’t trust standardized tests that aim to “put you in a box” so you’re easier to handle for the rest of society. But really, there are some good tests out there. You don’t need to take the result of any individual test as the absolute truth. But you can do a variety of tests and come up with a summary of all the results that seem accurate to you. It takes a little time, but it gets you thinking about the right things, and gets you answers if you’re stuck. If you compare the results with your thoughts on past successes and failures, you’ll probably find some patterns.

Some good ones I recently tried are the Signature Strength Questionnaire (SSQ-72), which you can access for free on the University of Toronto’s Strengths-Based Resilience website Home – SBR | Strengths-Based Resilience (strengthsbasedresilience.com), and the Redbull Wingfinder – Give wings to your career! (redbull.com). Both were interesting, at times even fun, and thought-provoking.

• Then do a personal SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis (SWOT analysis – Wikipedia) is a strategic planning and strategic management technique, which helps a person or organization figure out the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a business or project plan. While originally designed for that purpose, you can apply the same principles to analyzing yourself. It’s a great way to use the information you gathered in the previous steps.

It works like this: once you have identified your strengths and weaknesses, you look for areas with a potential for growth and development (opportunities), as well as external factors that could negatively affect your progress (threats). Really, any analysis tool like this will work.

The main idea is to work on yourself constructively, starting from objective observation of your own traits, relying on your strengths and working to improve your weaknesses.

Having a goal in mind and a clearly laid-out path is essential to your success, regardless of what that means to you specifically. Finally, be patient with yourself. It’s easy to turn this type of exercise into harsh self-criticism. Find your balance. Within reason, treat it like a game.

And if any of the steps aren’t working, get rid of them and try something else. The search itself is a giant step forward.