Building Strengths, Developing Weaknesses, Human’s Gift
Many people have asked the question, “Should I concentrate on my strengths or develop my weaknesses?”
The answer is a simple, “Yes.”
It’s not an either/or question.
In general, you’ll want to find and optimise a ratio between the two. This is individual to you and your needs though. Instead of prescribing your way forward, I’ll give you some thoughts on various aspects of self-help.
Building Strengths
If you have a natural talent for something, then you’ll know. You’ll know by the way people treat you regarding that thing, it’ll likely be profitable and come easy to you and the objective world will give you a measuring stick.
For the rest of us, there’s sweat, toil and brainpower required.
You should build your strengths so that they are as good as possible. Nobody enjoys listening to the guy who “could have gone pro,” and the person who likes it least is the guy saying it.
I can’t be exhaustive about building strengths – be they social, professional or otherwise – but suffice to say the standard you need to reach in all things is objective.
You can’t be a good writer if nobody has ever read your work. Your own subjective judgement of yourself is worth little.
The same is true of relationships: Everyone knows an “expert” with a string of failed relationships. If you are that person, you’re not an expert – you’re trying to change the objective world to fit your subjective desires. You will lose.
A person who is successful professionally will be paid accordingly. A person who is successful socially will have as many friends as they want and strong relationships with all of them.
Good people are known for their good deeds and no amount of saying, “I’m a good person” will do as much good as helping an old lady across the street.
Two key determinants:
- Action
- Objective Standards
Let’s move on.
Developing Weaknesses
Many people go through their lives not even realising their weaknesses, let alone working on them.
You don’t want to be one of those people.
Now, the first step in developing your weaknesses is recognising them. Here’s a painful but incredibly useful exercise that I got from an Occultist many years ago. (I’m serious.)
Black Soul Mirror & White Soul Mirror
In this exercise, you have two lists. One list is all your good qualities. This is called the White Soul Mirror. In the other list, you’ll have a list of all your worst qualities. This is the Black Soul Mirror.
You list all of your qualities, good and bad. You need to be exhaustive and you need to be honest with yourself.
There will be things about yourself that you hate but turn out good. There’ll also be things that you think you’re great at but you aren’t.
Over time, your strengths and weaknesses will shift as you become aware of them. Allow this to happen but also work on them deliberately.
How do you do this?
- Awareness of the issue
- Consciously trying to avoid
- Building better habits
This is a long term process and the job is never done.
Luckily, we’re human beings, and we can weigh the dice in our favour in the meantime.
The Great Equaliser
I’m not a big fan of taglines and slogans, but here’s my favourite one ever:
God made man, but Colt made them equal.
Because Brits can’t be trusted with firearms, let me explain: Colt was a gun manufacturer, and his guns took away the inherent advantages a strong brute has over the weak, wimpy guy who can draw the firearm and shoot him.
The above is an excellent little story that highlights what I’m about to tell you:
Your weaknesses don’t need to exist.
If you’re on this site, then chances are you’re among the smartest human beings on Earth. This site is hardly set up to entertain the masses.
Having a little brain power is enough to give you a massive head-start on the rest of the world when to comes to the stuff I talk about here.
Pretty much everything else can be overcome by the application of useful tools. Like the guy waving a colt 1911 in front of his bully, you can establish a set of skills and get yourself access to suites of tools that overcome all the disadvantages you think you have.
Things like:
- No budget
- No networks
- A lack of natural talent or genius
- Living in a small town i.e. not New York or London
- No lackeys minions or employees
- Fear of the automation apocalypse or the unwashed hordes of low-paid labour that are definitely coming to steal your job
Here’s an odd example: I got a couple of new keyword tools. One of those has this great feature where you can put in a domain and it’ll bring back all the queries that the domain ranks for.
I hate keyword research and I don’t have a multi-million advertising budget. I don’t need one. All I need is the ability to throw up better pages than sloth-like companies and the skill of knowing how to target and produce content better than they do.
In other words, if you’re up against a 6’6 brute with extreme MMA skills… pull out your Colt and win.
Final Thoughts
Despite being the trade of self-help peddlers and other motivational gurus trying to sell you on instant, easy self-evolution, developing yourself is the hardest challenge you can undertake.
We’re all subject to the inertia of objective reality and natural order seeks to put us where it wants and keep us there.
Developing you strengths and developing your weaknesses is the hardest, most permanent challenge you’ll undertake. But you can do it.