A lot of research has been done in the science of strengths and weaknesses. Most research tells us that we need to stay in our strength zones.
And I’m a strong believer that we see the greatest results when we apply our strengths to what we’re doing.
However, I’ve come to believe that we’re doing a disservice when we dismiss our weaknesses.
Why Strengths Are Great
Our strengths are the areas in our lives that we rock at. These are things like being a visionary, including others in what you do, or in a desire to achieve goals.
By focusing on these strengths, we’re able to play to our natural talents. We’re able to do what we were created for.
We also feel great when we are working in our strengths.
These feelings make us want to focus on our strengths all the time. But this is a mistake.
Why Avoiding Your Weakness Is A Mistake
Because of tests such as StrengthsFinder, we run from our weakness. We put it behind us and go, go, go.
We don’t want to look at our weakness. We want to look at our strengths and do only that which we are good at.
Errr… Hold up, wait a minute!
That’s good and all but we’re missing something when we completely avoid weak areas in our lives.
As much as we’d like to outrun our weaknesses, we can’t. These pain points stay with us. We will continue to struggle with them.
And, honestly, that’s okay. We can learn to love our weaknesses.
From our weaknesses, we’re being taught life lessons.
In our weakness, we learn:
We can’t do it all: That’s right, you’re not a one-man show. You can’t do everything.
You can do something. And you can enlist the help of others to do what you cannot do.
That’s one awesome thing about our weaknesses. They get others involved in our lives.
We have to be humble: I like being good at things. I like being able to fix computers or help others become better leaders.
However, there are times I’m weak in these areas. I may not be able to figure out a tough computer problem or I can’t help another leader move past his struggle.
I get frustrated and angry. Then I’m reminded why I face weak moments…
Humility.
As believers, we’re called to be humble. That’s a hard thing to do if we are excellent at everything.
Be okay with having a weakness. Let it humble you. Then continue to do good work.
We have an opportunity for growth: Yes, we see greater returns when we put our efforts into improving areas that we’re already good in. But we can gain better emotional happiness when we improve something we believe we sucked at.
You may not know this but I have a fear of heights. Going higher than 5 feet off the ground terrifies me.
So, what do I do? I push myself in this area of weakness.
I’ve made myself jump out of an airplane. I go ice climbing. I challenge the belief that I can’t do something.
And you know what I feel afterwards? An amazing sense of accomplishment knowing I faced a weakness and grew from that experience.
Stop hiding from your weakness. Use it as a chance to grow.
I hope you can see that we can use our weaknesses to improve and remind ourselves of who we are and what we need to be. We don’t have to flee from weakness.
We can embrace it. We can tell weakness we’re okay. We can use our weakness to become better.
Do that today.
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