As human beings, we tend to make judgments about the world. The world is viewed and interpreted by you based upon your own imagination and understanding of what you perceive it to be. You are perceived by people in a similar way.
But have you ever directed this unique, personally curated lens upon yourself?
What I have found is that most of us have a distorted and unrealistic view of who we really are. We look at who we are masked by a film of judgment and insecurity. This is especially true when we consider our “inabilities or weaknesses”.
But before I continue, let me state one thing: it is important to understand that we as human beings are always looking for validation or acceptance. We might be looking for it from our peer, our family, our boss, etc., but the one person that we need it the most from is ourselves.
OK, now let us concentrate on our inabilities and weaknesses. We tend to have more compassion and objectivity for other people’s inabilities and weaknesses than our own.
One of the reasons that comes to mind is that we are more emotionally involved (those feelings) when it comes to ourselves. Criticism is hard on us, we get defensive and feel badly about our inabilities and our weakness, they make us feel less than or worthless.
From my experience in team building training for project development in my Dancing with Riches workshops, I realized people often don’t want to acknowledge areas that they are not skilled in, they consider it a weakness in themselves. They think that if they acknowledge “these
Knowledge about yourself, both what you are good and not so good at is extremely useful. As it allows you to always find the path to overcome your weaknesses.
So, this is the part that may “blow your mind”:
If you are not willing acknowledge and have the awareness of the areas you consider yourself to have “inabilities or weakness in” then you are resisting the knowledge of what you are good at.
Yup. That is correct.
This resistance doesn’t allow you space and time to work on enhancing the skills you DO have. Instead, people try to figure out how they can improve the skills they are weak at or acquire skills they don’t possess. They become so busy trying to better these things that they skip right over the knowledge of what they are great at and the possibility of becoming even better at it.
You literally deny yourself space to PRACTICE what you are good at and become an expert.
Let’s say, for example, you’re a sculpture and want a website of your work and who you are. You hire consults to construct a website as you know nothing about. However, you must now write something about yourself and there is a deadline. Perhaps writing is not something you do well. You struggle at this task, judging yourselves, attempting to write a biography, but it just doesn’t work (a weakness). You keep doing it and doing it attempting to improve. How much time and awareness are you spending on this (perhaps up to 80%)? How much of that time and energy is left available for the things you are good at, known and unknown (perhaps 20%)?
The resistance to acknowledging the things you are not good at, and accepting their so-called weaknesses, does not allow you to receive the information about what you are good at, your strengths.
Think about this:
What if recognizing what you are not good at is a strength?
The funny thing is if you think about it, it’s all just information. Being willing to recognize where you might not be at the top of your game is useful information and affords you two great gifts:
1. KNOWLEDGE- If you don’t have full and complete knowledge about yourself, you cannot employ all your abilities and skills to their fullest potential. In addition, this would allow you the understanding of what kind of people and talents are compatable with you, a contribution to you, and nutrient to you that would assist you in your life and business. What this means is “What qualities are you going to look for in someone or something that will add to your life?”.
Again, if we don’t have the knowledge of ourselves, and the practice of being who we are, we cannot function to the best of our abilities.
So now is the time to start saying hello to your inabilities and weakness and see how they can contribute to your life.
What have you decided is a weakness to eliminate that if you would embrace it instead would become a strength or contribute to your strength?
Kass Thomas
