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Dave 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.

Don’t ever have children: it’s just too damn hard to let them go.

On the other hand, if you get carried away and one thing leads to another and what were you thinking when you drank all that champagne nineteen years ago, you still have your friends.  Most of them already went away to college, so now they can stick around with you instead.  These people will accept your leftover piles of compulsively-baked cookies, as well as your grief-crazed emails re: Love, Abandonment, and Divorcing God Forever.  Instead of calling the mental health professionals they quietly nod and hand over the kleenex. 

Like a little Xanax would be such a terrible thing?

And there are crazy-fun blogger friends, too.  Laurie over at Punk Rock HR invited me to join her Human Resources Bloggers Network today. Though I nearly broke out in hives at the thought of submitting an application to something, given my pretty much -perfect -record of total rejection, they actually let me in.

Then when I found this video Laurie made and posted there a couple days ago, it totally clinched the deal.

Three cheers as well for David Rendall, who has kicked up the pace at  The Freak Factor.  I thoroughly approve, even though he clearly stole his entire blog from my own subconscious one night when I was asleep and unable to defend myself.   I think we’ve established that I love him too much to sue, however.

Finally, I enjoyed wonderful Marilee Jones flashbacks when I read this recent article in CNN.com about the amazing lies people tell on their resumes.  That rascally Marilee Jones!  She remains  my freaky hero.  What ever happened to her after MIT fired her, anyway?

Speaking of being freaky, a big hat-tip to Kathy, who sent me a link to an article published yesterday by CNN, Weird tactics can sometimes get you the job.  The article is terrific, but not as terrific as Kathy, who notes:

This reminded me of my sister who interviewed three times for vet school, failing the first two times because her interview went poorly. She came to Joe and me for a mock interview; my first question was, “Why do you want to be a vet?” She mumbled about loving animals. True but trite. I suggested she consider saying, “The last time I had my arm up a cow butt (she did do this as a veterinary asst.), I realized that not everyone would love this, but I did.”  She got in.

1. There is nothing wrong with you. Weaknesses are important clues to your strengths.
2. You find success when you find the right fit. You need to match your unique characteristics to situations that reward those qualities.
3. Your weaknesses make you different. They make you a freak and it’s good to be a freak.

So says David Rendall in his online manifesto, The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness.    

How do I love this man? Let me count the ways.