Several times in the course of delivering more than a thousand Highlands Ability Battery (HAB) feedbacks, both face to face and by phone, I have had the occasional client who does not accept the information of his or her HAB feedback. Usually, the skepticism is centered on one or two specific natural abilities.

In my counselor or coach role, I say to my client, “But this is objective information. Your performance was measured with a stopwatch. It has nothing to do with your preferences. This is hard data about your responses to the various work samples.”

And the client comes back with, “This just is not me. I don’t recognize myself in this.”

What to do when you are faced with such doubts….

Step back a bit. Your Highlands Ability Battery results are likely new information or information presented in a language in that you are not yet fluent. Be open to the possibilities and the magic of abilities.

Abilities do not make up everything about you. There are possibly thousands of factors that make you who you are. You have personality quirks, acquired skills (as well as ones we have discarded), habits of the mind, other characteristics that may appear to be so ingrained as to be natural abilities.

But we are talking apples and oranges. Your natural abilities are objectively measured by the HAB. The rest is not. Believe.

Sometimes it takes awhile to internalize new information about ourselves, but with the seeds planted greater self-confidence may take root and flourish.