What’s your problem?
August 27, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Dave Rendell, Freak factor, Strengths, affirmation, inspiration, weaknessesDave Rendell asks that question on Freak Factor this week:
What’s your problem? I’m serious. What do you wish you could change about yourself? What is the complaint that you hear the most from those closest to you, your friends, co-workers, and family members? Are you too loud or too quiet, too hyperactive or too sedentary, too organized or too messy? You get the idea.
So, what should you do? Most people think that they should find and fix their weaknesses. Unfortunately, this just leads to frustration and failure. Your weaknesses are actually the best clue to your strengths. Furthermore, building your strengths, not fixing your weaknesses, is your best strategy for success.
To watch a free preview of Rendell’s Freak Factor Seminar, click here.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I know this whole “ignore your weaknesses, build your strengths” approach is all the rage nowadays but I have mixed feelings. . . .
After all, some weaknesses really do need fixing! Especially those in the range of sloppy bad habits (tardiness, etc.).
Anyway, I’ve often thought the cleverer approach by far would be to leverage your weaknesses. I.e., choose work that “requires” you to have the shortcomings you have. Make sense? I’ve been kicking around this idea for a while…..
August 28th, 2008 at 9:00 am
That *does* make sense, WG! I hadn’t been paying attention to the fact that even within this small space, Rendell kind of went in two directions (or at least seemed to): “embrace your weaknesses” and “ignore your weaknesses.” Hmm.
In the little video clip I’ve linked to in this post, Rendell uses the example of a sun dial in the shade… it doesn’t work there, but not because it’s broken. Rather, iit doesn’t work because it’s in the wrong place. The true weaknesses that you describe certainly are worth fixing, but my own take here is that sometimes we spend too much of our time rooting out further weaknesses to fix when our time might be better spent zeroing in upon and further developing our strengths (relocating our sun dials.)
Part of the positive effect here is that focusing on our strengths also develops our confidence, while spending too much time looking at our weaknesses (even our LEGITIMATE weaknesses) can also sap our confidence.
I wonder if by “leveraging weaknesses” you really are referring to misperceived strengths, e.g., not our true weaknesses (sloppiness) but our poorly-utilized strengths that only seem like weaknesses because we aren’t using them properly or in the right place (e.g., short attention span which might indicate a person who’s terrific at multi-tasking). Is that right?
August 29th, 2008 at 12:17 am
My weakness is failing to admit my weaknesses. Oh, dammit, now I’ve done it …
February 12th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
My weakness is that I always do to please others no matter what they do to me. The way i see it whats the point holding grudges.