What is your greatest strength? This is an important question because it reveals your greatest weakness. Every coin has two sides. Lets take some examples…
If your greatest strength is getting things done (productivity), your greatest weakness might be not listening to the subtle signs from your gut. You may find yourself so focused on checking things off your task list – living in your head – that when your gut says this task is not right, you may ignore it in favor of checking off another completed task. If your greatest strength is seeing and helping others, your greatest weakness can be not seeing your own needs. So focused on others, you cannot see yourself. If your greatest strength is an incredible work ethic, your greatest weakness is likely to be an inability to relax or a tendency to burn out. Let’s try a few more…
- Self-Confidence / unwilling to listen to others
- Straight-A student / thinking you are never wrong
- High IQ / thinking you must have all the answers or you may be inferior
- Go-getter / setting impossible standards for yourself
- Social butterfly / Ignoring your own preferences or needs
- Artistic-creative / neglecting planing, marketing and the practical aspects
Some are an issue of how you define yourself right now. But it really comes down to FOCUS. We focus on things that our current definition of self says are important. When we focus on anything, we get really good at it. In other words, what we focus on becomes a strength. But that means your time and attention are NOT on the opposite thing. And THAT becomes a weakness, simply out of lack of practice. So your definition of self drives your greatest strength, and produces your greatest weakness by focusing your attention on the traits that support the self.
If you get to the point where there is no self, do you then have no strengths? Yes and no. In theory, when you drop this idea of a self, you stop focusing so intently on what would support it and so no one strength is taking all your attention. You have no exaggerated strength and no exaggerated weakness. You do have a set of cultivated skills, but no one of them monopolizes your focus.
But life and being human requires that we have a self to operate day to day. And, being human, we can be sucked into that identity as we traverse the cycle of stages again. It becomes a game of mindfulness and self-understanding; to recognize when we are too focused on one thing to the detriment of others. When you see it happening, stop, and work toward balance by actively practicing the other side of your strength. Bring your weaknesses up to the level of competence and you will have no weakness to worry about.
What is your greatest strength? And therefore, what is your greatest weakness? What will you do to create balance?
