I talk to a lot of people. I meet with people as a spiritual director, and listen to their stories. I meet with people as a consultant to nonprofit groups, and hear what they think of themselves as leaders and of their organizations.
I talk to people at church; I talk with people as I get coffee; I talk to people about sports or books or movies or politics throughout my day.
One thing characterizes how almost everyone I talk to understands and talks about their experiences; we see a tension between strengths and weaknesses. We tend to assess and evaluate based on strengths and weaknesses: a particular team is strong in this area but weak in that area; a movie or a book has a strong that but is weak in that; coffee has this strength and that weakness.
We also tend to assess ourselves and other people based on how we see our strengths and weaknesses.
Some people may have a nearly all-consuming focus on our own weaknesses (you know who you are!). This focus can stop us from accepting ourselves and taking steps forward. Others of us may have an elevated sense of our own strengths, or not be able to grasp our own weaknesses.
My experiences have helped bring to a point where I tend to see things differently; it gets more and more challenging for me to differentiate between strengths and weaknesses. I am coming to the conclusion that how we evaluate weaknesses and strengths is all about how we see them.
There are qualities that I tend to see as weaknesses that other people view as strengths; there are traits that I see as some of my greatest strengths that other people experience as very significant weaknesses. More and more, I see that assessing people’s weaknesses and strengths says more about how I see the world than about other people.
What do you see as your most important strengths? What are your weaknesses that you most passionately want to change?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In