Developing our Strengths?

or

Making our Weaknesses Disappear?

Which one is best? What do you think? do you gain more power and efficiency through diminishing the effect of your weaknesses, or do you gain more energy by exercising and developing your strengths?

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” Samuel Johnson

We may be tempted to think that focusing on our weaknesses is the most effective way to increase our efficiency and limit the damages that we might cause by releasing the negative effect of our weaknesses. We may have the impression that if we don’t get rid of those flaws we may think we have, we wont be able to step to the next level and go a little bit nearer to our objectives and dreams.

I have been thinking that way for quite a long time. Everytime I faced a conflict situation, I questioned myself and the other persons involved in order to be able to understand more of my weaknesses, in order to be clear as to what may have triggered such a situation. And I thought, that by focusing on finding out my weaknesses, and focusing on making them disappear, I would get rid of all the factors creating recurring problems in my life. Sometimes, it may even happen that we would like the people in our lives to change, our partners, children, parents, and we concentrate on telling them what their (would-be) flaws are, with the intention of helping them getting better and more positive results.

Actually, it seems to me, that the exact opposite is happening. I have the feeling, that although I first thought I would get more energy by concentrating my strengths on reducing my weaknesses, the contrary happened to me. In fact, as I have been trying to know more about my weaknesses, and questioned myself and others, I realized that I ended up focusing, and making others focus on the parts of me that were not at my advantage. And in this way, instead of getting the results I wanted, which was to get more energy and less problematic situations, I ended up feeling drained from energy, forcing myself not to re-do the things that brought me troubles, and the ultimate result happened to be a lower self-confidence, that further reduced my creativity and level of satisfaction and happiness.

Has something similar already happened to you? Or have you already met some people who were talking to you about how “flawed” their father, mother, partner, child, friend was in that particular area? Did you then learn about this person’s good intentions of letting them know all the things there were doing wrong, in order to help them?

I guess this already happened to all of us. We may all have been trying all we can to change our weaknesses, trying to educate ourselves or our loved ones not to do that again, not to be soooo egoistic/impatient/severe/worrying , etc… but we often had the impression nothing changed.

“Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.“
Marilyn vos Savant

A more productive perspective seems to be not to ignore weaknesses, but to put all our efforts first into finding out and developing our strengths, and encouraging other people’s strengths, so that they may grow that much that they will naturally eliminate, or cover up the typical weaknesses that get on our way.

Let’s think about somebody who is very undisciplined, coming late to any appointment, and forgetting about bringing right away the things friends or coworkers may have asked him to bring. This person may have tried to organize better, to read some books on task/time management, may have cursed himself for always doing the same thing, because actually, he was not seeing that much the importance of being punctual with time and things. This person may feel angry with himself for repeating doing what fires up criticism from the people around him, as if he was not responsible for his acting, objecting that “he cannot do anything about it, that s the just the way he is”, because he’s more into “flexibility”. But this perspective appears to draining his energy down, and sapping his self-confidence.

However, a more productive alternative to this perspective, may be that this person capitalizes on the talent he has for relating to people, for empathy, for being attentive to people’s emotions and needs, or on his talent for being creative in finding ways to make people laugh or feel appreciated. By refining and developing his skills and talents for relating to people and making them enjoy his presence, this person actually has the power to develop his talents to such a point that over time, when he consistently lets his talents expand, they may naturally start decreasing the importance of his weaknesses. In this particular case, it can be at first that people won’t be angry with him for too long, because they have such a good time with him, or because he will then relate to them in a way that, in spite of some of his inconsistencies, they will feel acknowledged and respected as valuable persons. Another step further coming on the way with this person developing his talent for relating to people may actually enable him to develop his understanding of his attitude or of his task as a salesman in such a way that he will consider “being on time”, “respecting his promises/commitments”, “respecting delays” as tools for increasing the positive results of his actions, and increasing his level of professional or relationship success. And on the way to developing his talents to the best of his ability, he may actually end up considering those things that were at first weaknesses as natural elements helping him to get the best out of himself and others.

“A true friend knows our weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.” William Arthur Ward (I would just suggest: try being your own friend! ;o) )

What I am trying to say, is that by concentrating on expanding and developing our talents and strengths, we actually provide ourselves with more strength, more energy, and more power to do the best out of our abilities. And it also often appears that our very weaknesses actually came up from the excess or lack of control of our powerful strengths. Inquiring more our talents and skills may actually lead us to discover some new strengths inside of us and others, and this may also enable us, along the way, to actually diminish or even get rid of those weaknesses that sometimes prevent us from getting the results we would like.

In a nutshell, I would say that I’ve come to believe that by developing our strengths, and not focusing on decreasing our weaknesses, we may have some good chances of turning our stumbling stones into stepping stones. Giving ourselves opportunities to grow and perfect the strengths we already have, we not only reduce the attention and effect on and of our weaknesses, but we also release our full potential for advancement, success and derive more satisfaction by discovering more of our (sometimes) unknown abilities.

I would then leave Oprah Winfrey the last word:

“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.”

Do you maybe have examples of situations in which you first wanted to get your (or others’) weaknesses sorted out and fixed and felt quite powerless after many trials? Have you already tried focusing on discovering, developing and better releasing your talents and abilities (or others’/your partner’s)? What did it bring to you?

If you may want to share your experiences with me, I’d be happy to know about your process of discovering, focusing, and working on expanding your strenghts and talents.

I wish you a wonderful day, enjoy! Naomi

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