It seems that many people focus on improving their perceived weaknesses, or comparing themselves against the strengths of their peers; so I thought I’d write a quick post to discuss why I see this as the wrong way to look at things.
When I look around me, I can identify that there are many people that I would love to be like, because they are brilliant at certain things; however, when I think about their character as a whole, there are always flaws where they are less able then others around us.
This leads to my point, that when we compare ourselves to others, we generally tend to compare our perceived weaknesses against their strengths, which will almost never be a fair contest! What I have learnt, is to accept that I am better at some things than I am at others, and to focus on developing and using my strengths to the best of my abilities in order to achieve my goals more quickly.
Importantly, this is not to say that I do not identify my weaknesses. I most definitely do! However, rather than having them feel like a lead weight holding me back, I choose to use them as a goal to drag me forward. I know that by utilising my current strengths, I will be able to continue to make great progress; and that in being mindful to improve on one or two things at a time, that i believe will provide me with the best jump in overall ability; I am able to really motivate myself to do that extra bit to learn, or be mindful of a a particular character trait that I wish to change.
Anyway, the things I try to do are these:
- Try to be aware of all my strengths. If you don’t know what they are, ask the people around you (You may be amazed at the things that people admire about you!!)
- Focus on those good points, and make them work for you
- Don’t focus on your bad ones, other than to identify things that are holding you back, and build a plan to improve
- Never measure myself against anybody else!! Success is a challenge to be better than the person you were yesterday (although sometimes it’s nice for the product of that to jump a position in the rankings), so only ever consider whether you’ve made acceptable progress in reasonable time
- By all means identify good characteristics in people, and figure out how they do what they do, maybe even ask them; but only use this to posititivly improve yourself, not a stick to beat yourself with
Thanks for reading
Dave
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