adminMost people think a better life comes from acquiring things. A new habit, a new job, a new routine, a new car. Stack enough of those and eventually it clicks.
I used to think that too, and it’s backwards. The bigger shift isn’t what you add. It’s figuring out what you were put on this earth to do, something you and you alone can do better than anyone else, something nobody can copy. Find that lane, the one where you’re actually built to operate, then rebuild whatever you’re working on around it. A career. A business. A family. A life. It doesn’t matter which. The principle doesn’t change.
Dan Sullivan calls this your Unique Ability: the small set of things you do better than almost anyone, that energize you instead of draining you, and that you’d probably still do even if nobody paid you for it. Most people never find theirs. They spend decades excellent at the wrong things and wonder why everything still feels like a grind even when it looks fine on paper.
It’s not about your job title
Sullivan breaks everything you do into four tiers:
- Incompetence. You’re bad at it, it drains you, nobody benefits.
- Competence. You can do it, but you’re replaceable at it.
- Excellence. You’re genuinely good, people rely on you for it, but it still costs you energy.
- Unique Ability. You’re better at it than almost anyone, it gives you energy instead of taking it, and you’d do it for free if you had to.
The trap that keeps people stuck
Success can blind you to what fuels you. Your best skill doesn’t feel like a skill. It feels like breathing, so you assume it doesn’t matter, or worse, take it for granted. Meanwhile the stuff you had to grind to acquire becomes your whole identity, and your passion gets buried under all that excellence.
I lived in that excellence tier for years, starting out as a graphic designer and marketer. The underdog of the class, I proved them wrong. Graduated, landed one of the best jobs in my class, kept climbing. By every external measure I was winning.
But my passions lay elsewhere. I lived for the weekends, counting the days to go out, socialise, meet new people, have adventures. I was a people person, a communicator, a relationship builder. That’s what I lived for.
Somewhere on the climb, all of it got quietly passed by and traded for a desk and a monitor. But underneath it ate away at me. A fire in my belly I had to make friends with and embrace.
Staring at my own reflection, bags under the eyes like rucksacks, I asked myself what the hell I was doing with my life. And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I handed in my notice and got on a plane to the other side of the world with no plan beyond one: try as many things as I could while doing what I loved, and figure out how to make money from it within five years. It took more than five, filled with adventures, exploring, and pioneering, before I came across a book built entirely around the concept, Unique Ability 2.0. The title alone sold me. I was in. It brought light to something I’d known for years but never had the words for. By the end, I knew myself in a way I never had before, what I was built for, what drove me, what drained me, what I’d been chasing without realizing it, and most importantly, why.
Why this is the “why” behind everything else
This is the same principle behind everything we talk about here. Discipline without direction is just noise, whether it’s a workout plan, a business plan, or a morning routine. None of it sticks if it isn’t connected to something you actually want to be building.
How to actually find yours
You won’t find it sitting still. I didn’t. It surfaced through action: trying things, paying attention to what pulled me back and what I dreaded, and working through it deliberately instead of hoping it would surface on its own. A few ways in:
- Ask five or six people who know you well (colleagues, friends, family) what they’d say you’re clearly better at than most people around you.
- Look for the pattern in what you did before anyone paid you for it.
- Pay attention to which parts of your work or your day leave you with more energy than you started with.
- Notice what you keep getting pulled back to, even when you’re supposed to be doing something else.
Do this properly and you won’t land on a job title. You’ll land on a short, honest description of the specific way you create value and meaning that almost nobody else creates the same way. That description will tell you more about how to rebuild than any five-year plan will.
What actually changes once you know it
Once you know your Unique Ability, the move isn’t to abandon everything else. It’s to spend more of your time in that space, wherever it shows up, and delegate, drop, or systemize the rest. In a business, that might mean finally letting go of the parts you’ve been white-knuckling since day one. In a life, it might mean cutting the commitments that were never really yours to carry. Either way, it’s fewer hours spent excellent at the wrong things and more hours spent in the one lane that was built for you.
That’s the real incentive here. Not a better title, not a new routine to bolt on, but something you love and are genuinely passionate about, done daily. Something that runs on its own momentum instead of your willpower. Better body. Better mind. Better direction. Go find the thing you’re built for. Stop settling for excellent.