Get Real About Your Strengths and Weaknesses
When you finally get real about your strengths and weaknesses, you’re opening the door to real improvement and success. You may even be able to use your weaknesses in a manner that brings about more success.
If you’re interviewing for a job, you can probably count on a future employer asking you what your strengths and weaknesses are. After your qualifications for the position, it’s probably the most important question an employer will ask in the interview.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses will help you live your life to the fullest because you’ll be able to either build on the strengths or improve the weaknesses with that special and essential knowledge.
Why Do Employers Always Want the Answer to This Question?
The reason that a future employer might ask you to list your strengths and weaknesses is to test your honesty and commitment to improvement. Even if you’re not interviewing for a job, you should be honest with yourself about strengths and weaknesses and make a commitment to improve where necessary.
If you’re honest with yourself and really want to know what your strengths and weaknesses are, you’ll be happy to go through the learning process. You’ll finally understand why you feel inferior – or superior to others around you.
The main benefit of knowing your strengths and weaknesses for your own purpose is that it lets you plan your future accordingly. You can depend on your strengths to get you through the worst of times and overcome obstacles that get in the way of your success.
Even weaknesses can be a plus when planning your life. You’ll know the precise areas that you need to improve and can go about planning and taking action to do just that. By knowing what your weaknesses are, you know where to concentrate on developing them into strengths.
Think about what you’ve done that seems natural and easy for you. You may be a great leader – one that people admire and love to follow. That strength alone will get you far in life.
To discover your strengths, write down some that you think represent you best. For example, you might choose artistic, disciplined or trustworthy. Also jot down some things you know to be weaknesses.
Weaknesses might include such things as arrogant, wasteful or stubborn. Knowing your weaknesses is as great an asset as knowing your strengths because they are obstacles to your progress in life.
By getting to the core of yourself and knowing your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll better understand what makes you tick and to narrow the options in your life that will push you ahead or hold you back.
You’ll be able to reach for new heights if you know the things you excel at and those things that are holding you back from achieving what you’re capable of. Most of the time, it’s best to focus on the strengths that can take you far in life and career.
Focusing on weaknesses might reduce the amount of enthusiasm and confidence you have in yourself. But if those weaknesses become obstacles that are keeping you from achieving all you can, it’s important to spend some time fixing them.
For example, if you are a born leader and want to get into politics, but have too much anxiety (a weakness) to get in front of an audience and proclaim your beliefs, you might want to take a public speaking course to get over it.
By gaining a true understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, you can have confidence that you’ll reach your true potential.
When You Map Out Your Flaws, Look for the Yin to Your Yang
Yin and Yang – dark and light – can be found in your strengths and weaknesses. A strength may also be a weakness, but a weakness may also be a strength. They work together to make up the whole of who you are.
So look for the strengths in your weaknesses and the weaknesses in your strengths. For example, if you (and others) consider yourself to be disciplined (a strength), could you also be stubborn and demanding (a weakness)?
If you’re diplomatic, is it possible that you might have the flaw of not being assertive enough – letting other people run things while you sit on the sidelines – even though you might have better ideas?
A flaw can be turned in to a strength and developed further to help you succeed beyond where your strengths could take you. Rather than concentrating on the actual flaw, look at its opposite and develop that.
For example, if you know one of your weaknesses is talking too much when you should be quiet, how about turning the weakness into the opposite – a great communicator. You might be great as a politician or teacher, where you must talk to your heart’s content to do your job and get ahead.
If you spend too much time focusing on your weaknesses and fixing them, you may lose self-confidence and energy. Instead, concentrate on the opposite of that weakness and focus on how your potential can be improved. It’s a much stronger way for growth.
You may need to develop a different mindset when you begin to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but you’ll soon see that your self-awareness can make you a stronger and more successful person.
When you think of your strengths and weaknesses as yin and yang, you’ll better understand how they can get you farther in life and release your full potential.
Sometimes a Weakness Can Be a Blessing in Disguise (And Sometimes Not)
It’s easy to think about a weakness as a negative force in your life. But a weakness can actually be a blessing if you find a way for it to benefit you. All your life, you were probably told to be more disciplined, to do things – even though you’re scared – and to work on the ultimate weakness – being too nice.
When you see your weaknesses with a fresh perspective, you’ll know what you need to work on to turn it into a strength. If you ever read Tom Sawyer, you likely remember when he was forced to paint the fence.
One of Tom’s weaknesses was laziness, but he knew he had to get the job done. So, he made it look like he was having so much fun painting the fence, that all his friends wanted to do it, too.
Tom’s laziness was the catalyst for him to find a new way to get it done, without doing it himself. The fence was painted in record time, without Tom ever having to lift a finger and his friends were grateful that he let them.
If you’re lazy about doing some things in your business, think about finding other ways. One of your strengths might be that you’re very enterprising and can get things done even though the odds (and your weakness) are against you.
You may have been told that you’re just too nice to make waves and become successful. But if you’re honest and nice, you’ll build trust with people and when they feel they can trust you, the sky is the limit to how much they’ll want to do for you and take your advice.
Just be ready to say no when required. They’ll respect you for that. Both laziness and being too nice can also be a detriment to your progress unless you turn them into a strength.
Laziness can keep you from reaching your full potential. Watching television and flitting away the time takes away your energy and self-confidence. Being too nice can become a big sign on your back that says people can run all over you and take advantage of your good nature.
There are people out there who exist to scam and take advantage of others. Learn to take a firm stance when you sense this is happening.
Should You Waste Time Strengthening Your Weaknesses?
Strengthening your weaknesses can be a waste of time if it takes too much of your time and effort that you could be using to develop your strengths. If you can make a weakness such as public speaking into a strength by taking a class, it can also help you succeed in other areas.
Sometimes it’s best to cut your losses – and your wasted time – and delegate your weakness to others or find a different way of doing it. If you don’t enjoy something, why make yourself miserable by trying to improve that weakness?
You can leave your weaknesses in the dust with the enthusiasm and progress of your strengths. Improving on your strengths can be an incredible boost to your success. When you’re wasting too much time trying to improve your weaknesses, you risk losing momentum and power – and confidence.
When you embrace the truth of your strengths as weaknesses, you know you’re terribly unskilled at some things and highly skilled at others. You can’t be an expert in everything, so spend most of your time on the things you’re good at.
Those who have made incredible successes of their lives are known for what they’re extremely good at. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren’t known for their great architectural skills, but for their expertise in computers and the internet.
They probably had a well-known architect plan their fabulous homes because for them to do it would have been a disaster. No one cares about their architectural or cooking skills.
What they’ve done with their strengths is incredible and worth being fascinated by their accomplishments. It’s doubtful that those two men ever gave any thought to their cooking or architectural weaknesses when they built their empires.
They ignored them and concentrated on their known strengths – in the genius category of technology. They were successful beyond belief. It can be a lesson to you not to spend time on things you’re not good at – your weaknesses.
Instead, focus on what you know that will make the most impact on your own life and others. Some weaknesses are simply an inherent lack of a natural ability to accomplish something in a certain field.
If you do lack the natural ability to improve some of your weaknesses, take it in stride and focus on what you can do well. No one excels in everything. When you find your strengths and know which weaknesses are just not in the realm of you to improve.
Weaknesses are human traits that all of us have. Accept your own weaknesses and go on to make the very best of your strengths.
The Biggest Strength and Weakness in Most Successful Individuals
It’s for you to decide what is your best strength and worst weakness. But for most highly successful people, the strength that serves them best is persistence. Persistence can get them through the hard times, overcome obstacles and stick with it until they succeed.
You can’t start from near nothing and build an empire unless you have this crucial strength of – persistence. It’s an ability to follow through despite the odds, a commitment to do your best until a task is completed to the best of your ability.
Persistence is key to transforming a desire for success into the finished product which equals success. You might also think of persistence as will power – your power to conquer things and have your will be done.
Many people are often thought of as strict and ruthless when they’re only being persistent in attaining what they desire. Often, those who have acquired wealth and power are thought of as cold-blooded, but that might be misunderstanding their drive and the desire to attain their objectives.
Success often requires a definite goal and the persistence to follow through with everything needed to make it happen. If one of your strengths is persistence, it might also be considered one of your weaknesses if you persist to the detriment of others.
You may think of multi-tasking as a weakness. You need to do it all right now and focus on everything rather than concentrate on completing one task at a time. Outsourcing could help you focus on your strengths and leave the weaknesses to others, but you may not trust anyone to do it but you.
Some people think of multi-tasking as an affliction that can get you in lots of trouble because you’re not focusing on one task at hand – but many. Scientists have proven through much research that the human mind isn’t meant to multi-task.
Although some people use it as a positive skill on a resume, chronic multi-tasking is now considered a detriment to doing the best job you can. Multi-tasking to some might mean checking email while chatting with a client.
It seems to be a good idea, but the truth is that neither the client nor the email is getting your full attention and problems can result that can hold you back from promotion or other successes.
While listing your strengths and weaknesses is often the most dreaded portion of an interview, it could be a good opportunity for you to fit into the exact position they’re interviewing for.
Rather than dread listing your strengths and weaknesses, understanding them can be a big step in moving ahead with what you do best. You’ll finally know what you can do very well – and what you need to work on.
