The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.
"Kant described a mechanism as a functional unity, in which the parts exist for one another in the performance of a particular function.
An organism, on the other hand, is a functional and structural unity in which the parts exist for and by means of one another in the expression of a particular nature.
This means that the parts of an organism – leaves, roots, flowers, limbs, eyes, heart, brain – are not made independently and then assembled, as in a machine, but arise as a result of interactions within the developing organism."
— Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed His Spots
It is related that the bodhisattva Manjusri was once standing at the gate, and seeing him, Shakyamuni Buddha called to him, "Manju, Manju, why don't you come inside the gate?"
Manjusri replied, "I don't see anything outside the gate."
When you once attain true self-realization, these barriers disappear in an instant as though they were nothing but mirages, and you will find that from the very beginning you have always been in a world where there is neither inside nor outside. That is what "gateless" means. Therefore, all koans are impassable barriers for those who are unenlightened, but for the enlightened there is no gate at all. They can come and go quite freely.
One day, as Kyogen was clearing the undergrowth, a pebble bounced off the tip of his broom and resounded against a bamboo tree. Hearing the sound, he suddenly experienced great enlightement. The first stanza of the poem he composed on this occasion is very famous:
One striking sound,
and I have forgotten all I knew.