It may not be something you really want to do, but you know deep down that in order to move ahead in life, in business, in your relationships, or pretty much any area of your life then you are going to have to face up to a couple of facts about yourself.
- You have weaknesses
- You need to do something about them
The real problem arises when you either cannot or will not face up to those weaknesses, but it can also be a problem if you misidentify what those weaknesses really are.
In fact, this can be an even bigger problem than trying to ignore them.
If you look up weakness in a dictionary, you are likely to find it defined as a “lack of proficiency”. Ouch. That’s going to put a lot of things into our “weaknesses” category.
First you need to define weakness as anything that prevents you from reaching a level of excellence in an area you want or need to excel. That may seem similar at first glance, but weaknesses defined by the first method are very likely to fall into the realm of irrelevant.
I cannot dunk a basketball any more. Is that a weakness? Well, since I only play basketball with my young sons, it is hardly something I need to focus on. Does it bother me? Frankly, yes it does sometimes. However, when I consider the time and effort I would need to put in to upgrade that deficiency, I quickly realize too many other areas of my life would suffer and drop off, and I might – ack! – never regain that ability. I know I can’t do it, and I accept that. Instead I focus on the strengths I have and still work to improve those.
Unless you are hoping to be a power forward or center in the NBA, dunking is probably not that high up on the list of required strengths to be a worthwhile expenditure of your time, money, and energy. A layup counts for the same points as a dunk. Ask yourself then, what weaknesses do you really have? Are they really relevant to your success? Do they really keep you from reaching your ideal of success? How much would your strengths suffer if you diverted time and energy from them to focus on improving this weakness? So, is that really a weakness or just something you should ignore?
Most importantly, do not let a perceived or mislabeled weakness become a major inhibition of your success.
Copyright 2011 Allen Williams
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