Make your Weakness your Strength

I AM NOT SURE

About you, but for way too long I have been listening to the mantra ” forget about your weaknesses concentrate on your strengths” well I know that sounds logical but it also sounds like “80% of businesses fail in the first 3 years”……Why, where is the proof?

Weakness is not something that is carved in stone from the day you were born, it is something you acquire as you go through through life. Chances are it was something that was given to you in a throw away line, you know like “you will never be good at that you are, too short, too dumb, a girl” (insert your own here).

WHY  WEAKNESSES ARE IMPORTANT

Weaknesses can help us grow in ways that things you are naturally good at can’t

Because it takes strength to overcome a weakness, it takes greater practice and patience so we develop far more as a person, and it doesn’t matter that if at the end we still aren’t the best the satisfaction from that growth far outweighs being born good at something.

Weaknesses give us something to aim for, something we can prove to ourselves and others that anything is possible, the people who inspire me the most aren’t the gifted they are the battlers,  people who overcome fantastic odds to achieve  things. And it isn’t important that these things are recognised by others, more importantly they should be recognised by you.

Weaknesses are a part of being human, just like orange hair and being short but they don’t define you, what defines you is how you look at them.

Weakness is not a fact it is a viewpoint and because of that it can be changed at any time it just requires three things.

ACCEPTANCE

Yep that is the first one really, an honest look at ourselves with no FEAR of what we find but an understanding that once faced with our own weaknesses we are able to address them. Fear of failure kept me back from doing lots of things, but once I removed failure from the equation and simply turned it into an experience I removed fear and at that moment I realised that anything was possible as long as it didn’t have a measurement in it.

I will never be as good at sculpting as Michaelangelo but ironicly I probably get more enjoyment from it because I don’t have to measure it against either my last piece or someone else’s.

So look at the things that you are weak at as simply unpracticed experiences and just allow yourself to be shit at things it’s ok and we all get better with practice.

A NEED TO CHANGE

Emotional growth comes to us at different times in different guises, sometimes during adversity, sometimes through necessity and sometimes because we realise we have allowed others to define who we are.

Excuses are what we use in order to avoid the things we feel we can’t do, and sometimes we use our weaknesses as a convenient way of not doing things we don’t like, “I’d love to help you but the last I used a hammer I broke the mirror”

Could you imagine a boxing trainer saying to his boxer “look you’re not that great at moving to the side, so just stand there and let him hit you” .

Yet every day Parents, teachers, friends, teammates etc tell people about their weaknesses, we have reality TV which is designed only to show people’s weaknesses, and we love it. Well as long as it is someone else.

There is a vast industry based on positiveness, but if you are really shit at something ,just a polite cough, and a “you should probably pick another career Ms Rowling” and what we should forget this dream and crawl back under our rock.

And if we believe other people then indeed we will remain weak.

But the moment you decide, “I am going to try that”, “I will just start with one push up”, “I will buy some artists paints” “I will LEARN about that”……right at that moment you can break the cycle.

COMMITMENT

Often this may seem the hardest part, the bit that daunts us the most. as there seem to be no end of advice from people who have succeeded, or people who just write books on it but have never done it themselves, everyone has a theory.

But for each of us that change is different and so for me a simple way is to commit to something in very small stages, and like falling off the wagon or having another smoke don’t be hard on yourself if things don’t work out straight away.

Remember you have probably been telling yourself about your weaknesses for a long time so allow yourself room. Overcoming entrenched thinking is much harder than just deciding to do something new, as you have to overcome that strong negative neural pathway to start with.

But just by starting to change a negative belief in yourself you have taken back a small part of the real you and if you really commit to it then just like faking you can do something and then one day realising that you actually can do it so you will overcome the things you at the moment look at as your weaknesses.

And once you do that you will be unstoppable………

A quick note to the passive aggressives, if you don’t like what I said then please tell me, its a great feeling and a first step in overcoming your fear