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Balancing My Strengths & Weaknesses

For me, figuring out my weaknesses is just as important as figuring out my strengths because I believe that our strengths come from our weaknesses and our weaknesses come from our strengths. In effect, you can’t have one without the other because they work off of each other. So instead of trying to hide from or ignore your weaknesses, so as to avoid believing you’re weak or imperfect, you should strive to be aware of them and understand how they relate to your strengths. In doing so, it gives you the awareness and understanding of how to keep yourself balanced, no matter what life might throw at you.

Without a doubt though, it is a constant and difficult challenge to maintain this balance. Some days you’ll feel so strong that your weaknesses won’t be anywhere in sight. Other days, you’ll feel completely overwhelmed by your weaknesses with your strengths nowhere in sight. This is the natural cyclic nature of life though, this ebb and flow or ups and downs. Again don’t try to be surprised or upset by it, expect that it will happen from time to time (which in itself is hard to do) and strive to do your best work on your strong days, letting your weak days be a time for rest and reflection (i.e. a time to get away from it all).

Now for myself, I want to cover my weaknesses in two ways: intensity and lacking. Think of a weakness of intensity as something like Superman slapping a friend on the back because he told a great joke and sending that friend flying 100 yards across a field in the process because he forgot his own strength. Now a weakness of lacking is kind of the opposite of this in the sense that a man may have barely any strength at all, so he’s weak in being able to do things like carrying heavy objects or even defending himself.

Weaknesses of Intensity

  • Desire for creative self expression which can become scattered and lack direction because I often have so many creative ideas I’d like to work upon, I’m not sure where to start.
  • Desire for the simple luxuries of life because my family wasn’t well off growing up as a kid.
  • Desire for recognition and authority of achievements because I often find it so difficult to communicate my strengths which is crucial if you want to get hired or employed.
  • Desire for personal freedom and change in my work because it lets me fully utilize all of my talents in my work and lets me take risks experimenting with new ideas.

Now to balance out these intensities, I need to do the following. I need to have a creative outlet that let’s me express myself authentically. Right now, this website and journal are letting me do this to a degree but I’d like to elevate this further in the future. With regards to luxuries, I need to be spartan and frugal, realizing that some of my best ideas and most memorably experiences have often come from limited interactions (i.e. limit yourself to expand your possibilities). As for recognition, I need to be self-confident in my talents, even if others can’t fully see them yet, but still work on constructive ways of communicating them better. Finally, with regards to freedom, I need to be more flexible in accepting “conventional” work at times because it may propagate an unconventional idea or interaction that could lead to a new experience or opportunity in life.

Weaknesses of Lacking

  • Lack the ability to be balanced, cooperative, and diplomatic because I see issues that are so common sense to me that I often blurt them out without much consideration for others.
  • Lack the ability to be silent because I feel I can help, so I’m very vocal in trying to problem solve issues.

Now to balance out these lackings, I need to do the following. I need to be more cooperative and diplomatic in my interactions, using empathy to put myself in the shoes of others which will help me soften my blunt words, so they become more tactful. I also need to learn to keep my mouth shut and instead just to listen, observe, and understand. This is critical in understanding the whole of a system. In effect, while I can learn a lot by interacting with others, I learn a lot more by just sitting in the background listening and observing.

My Past Self

What I find really intriguing about this weakness analysis on myself is that I actually used to be much better at overcoming my weaknesses in my past because I was much more of an introvert then. In effect, my shyness forced me to keep silent and it also forced me to go along with the rest of the crowd, thus being much more cooperative and diplomatic.

Ever since around 2001 though, when I started realizing my true talents and potential, everything started getting out of balance. In effect, the more successful I became, the worse I got out of balance. What’s hilarious about this though is that the company I was within experienced this exact same thing as well. The more successful they became, the more they got out of balance and spiralled downhill as a company, until they eventually imploded in 2002.

Creating My Future Self Presently

What I also find really intriguing about this though is that my ideal future self is something very similar to what I’d like do within a company right now. In effect, my optimal role seems to be one in which I’m an advisor, consultant, coach, or mentor within a company whereby I’m not controlling people or telling them what to do, so much as I’m helping to teach them how to achieve things on their own. I do this by helping them to see things around them and in themselves that they may not have seen before (i.e. making the intangible tangible), thus making them more aware and responsible for themselves and others around them.