re-thinking your strengths
When we take a hard look at the areas in our life we should develop, we tend to gravitate to the ones we aren’t necessarily “strong” in. We have mislabeled these time and time again in an attempt to shine them in a positive light. Be it “opportunities” or “areas for improvement” we need to be honest with ourselves and label them under their correct term. These are our weaknesses. And popular thinking dictates we need to put the majority of our focus and effort into improving weaknesses until they become strengths. That putting in effort to improve strengths isn’t a valuable use of time, because they already are our strengths so they don’t need any attention. This mentality has the opposite effect on our actual abilities though and how we become successful.
what gets us where we want to go
A great metaphor to sum up strengths and weaknesses is a ship. On which, our strengths are the sails and our weaknesses are the holes in the hull. We need to spend time patching the holes to keep us afloat but that won’t actually get us anywhere. Our strengths, the sails, will propel us to where it is we want to go. And if we neglect them, let the sails fall into disarray, this becomes increasingly difficult to do. We need to ensure we dedicate adequate time to maintaining our strengths, if not enhancing them, to keep us going. Because ultimately, our strengths are what make us successful and they became our strengths for a reason.
maybe your born with it?
They didn’t just become our strengths overnight. Through our lives, we gravitated towards these activities and actions because when we did them well, it ultimately brought us a sense of satisfaction in our effort. We felt good about ourselves when we did them, so we kept doing them. Through that repetition, we started doing them well. When we did these actions well, it made us successful. Whether it was shooting a basketball, painting a picture or even statistical analysis, the actions we found an immense amount of satisfaction in became our strengths. Not simply because we were born with that innate ability, but because we also worked on them enough to continue to improve them until they actually became our strengths.
why we stop working on strengths
Somewhere along the line though, we were told that was enough. That we need to shift our focus to the areas that aren’t our “strengths” to be successful and focus our efforts to improve there. Of course the word “weakness” conjures up a lot of negative thoughts and less-than-good feelings so we tried to re-label them most commonly as “opportunities”. We did this in ways like “this is an opportunity for you to improve”. However the underlying idea remains the same, it is an area we are weak in and the negative feels are still associated with it, regardless of how positive we make it sound. What happens then, is we begin to associate the idea of “opportunities” as something negative.
Because unlike our strengths, we found no satisfaction when we completed them. Also unlike our strengths, we didn’t work to improve them. We did just enough repetitions to get them done, so we could complete the task, and not much else. If we found no satisfaction in making a basket, then we didn’t work harder playing basketball. If we finished a painting, and found no satisfaction in the artistic expression, then we didn’t pursue any additional forms of art. If we didn’t find satisfaction with the basics in addition and subtraction, then we wouldn’t work towards understanding and completing complex math equations.
unpopular opinion about popular belief
And this is where the biggest disconnect comes from. That we need to put our focus and energy into fixing our weaknesses. When we have this focus, on the activities that bring us no satisfaction, we lose any real motivation to put in the necessary effort to improve them. We might attend a course, or try self-study, however we still lack the internal driver to get better at those activities because they bring us no satisfaction. In some cases, accomplishing and completing these tasks has the opposite effect. That have a sense of relief that something is over. The feeling we get, when we have the release from the anxiety and stress of the task we were trying to accomplish. If that is how we feel when we accomplish a task then it will never be our strength, because that is not a feeling we want to work towards. Simply to get something done to relieve the stress and anxiety it brings us.
Our strengths are our strengths because we love the way it feels when we use them. When we accomplish a task, it is a feeling we chase. So we work harder at it, to feel it even more. This is the area we should focus on. Because while we put too much effort on improving our weaknesses, our strengths might atrophy. If they don’t, then they aren’t improving, they’re staying at the same level. Which means we will only be as successful as the level of our strengths. We can spend hours agonizing over a task we are bad at, simply because we think we need to improve it to a certain level. Only to find at the end the gains were incremental. Whereas if we spend those hours working on improving something that we are strong in, we might actually see the gains are much more significant.
The more time we can allocate to our strengths, the further we will go. And more importantly we will enjoy the process of actually doing it. We will look forward to putting in the work, and enhancing our abilities. We will want to spend the extra time doing something because when we do it well, we find an immense amount of satisfaction in it. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try new things, or get out of our comfort zone. It is to say we should allocate our time on the activities that matter. We should take the time to identify the activities, tasks and actions in our lives that when we accomplish them it brings us a sense of satisfaction. Even if they are new to us, or something we have been doing our entire lives, these are the areas we should look to improve in. This is where we need to allocate the time to do them better. Finding out where they will take us and just how far we can go.
