3 Steps To Use Your Strengths and Weaknesses To Improve Your Performance

Step 1: Stop focusing on weaknesses

Focusing on weaknesses will set you on a downward spiral. It will lower your self-esteem, blur your vision, it might even get you focused in the wrong direction.
The truth is, you will never be perfect. You will always have weaknesses that will accompany you throughout your life. Should you completely forget about them? Absolutely not! Understanding what your weaknesses are helps you plan ahead, hire the right team, because where you are weak, somebody else might excel.

One of the reasons why people are doing what they're not good at is because they focus too much on their weaknesses.

Let's say that Larry is a business owner and he resists the systems. His way of dealing with problems is to avoid them and create shortcuts. But as an entrepreneur his business can't run without proper systems. Larry has a decision to make. He can either force himself to do what he's not good at and create lots of stress in his business and life by focusing on this task, or he can hire somebody who will thrive in this area while he focuses on his unique expertise.

Both options will cost him. First one will cost him his time, energy and probably well-being. Second option will cost him money. The question remains - how valuable his time, energy and well-being are to Larry.

Today I challenge you to stop focusing on your weaknesses and shift your perspective. Accept the fact that you will never be perfect and step on the road toward your life purpose. All it takes is a decision.

Step 2: Understand your strengths

One of the side-effects of focusing on weaknesses is loss of perspective. Most of the time weaknesses will block your view and cause you to not see your real strengths.
Is it possible that who you are is totally fine and you don't have to "fix" yourself to improve your performance? I strongly believe that the reason why you're not seeing the results you want is not because you need to strengthen your weak spots, but because you're not strengthening your strong spots!

Ask yourself these questions...
What am I good at?
What are my core strengths?
Where should my focus be?

Couple years ago I've learned what my core strengths are. It took me couple years to understand how ground breaking this information is, but once I did, my life was never the same. Suddenly I knew that no matter how much I want to do something or how much I know about something, there are things I will or will not do. I've learned that by being myself I will be able to not only do my best job, but to also avoid wasting my energy on tasks that can (and should) be delegated.

I invite you to take yet another step today. Click here to schedule a Freedom To Be You consultation with me to discover your core strengths and...

Step 3: Maximize your potential 

If you study the top performers out there, you'll notice that they have one thing in common. They're maximizing their potential in the area of their focus. They're not trying to be everything to everybody. And they don't pretend to know it all. So why should you?

Once you turn your focus away from your weaknesses and start discovering your core strengths, your next step should be to focus on expanding your strengths and maximizing your potential.
How do you do that? I wish the answer was as simple as 1-2-3, but it's not. Still, here are couple tips that might be helpful to you as you walk this life-long journey...

Think in terms of progress, not perfection. Life is about constant improvement. Take it easy, yet, challenge yourself.

Compare your performance on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. You've heard me right. When you need to compare, you compare your performance with your own, not somebody else's.

Ask for help. It's important to remember that nobody does anything great alone. You can't succeed alone. What makes a difference is a caliber of people you surround yourself with.

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What Are Your Strengths And Weaknesses? How Answering These Questions Can Help You Achieve Happiness

Often, especially when we're interviewing for a new job, we are asked "what are your strengths and weaknesses?" Some of us have an easy time figuring out what our strengths are; others have an easier time identifying their weaknesses. Whatever category you fall into, knowing who you are helps us discover our strengths and weaknesses, and how to re-enforce our strengths and mitigate or eliminate our weaknesses.

In order to find out what your strengths truly are, look at your talents. Are you a good chef, or a musician? What about an athlete or a good friend? What we often call as "talents" are actually titles that surround our talents. If we look at these titles you can discover the true underlying talents. For example, what denotes a good friend? Loyalty, compassion, and trustworthiness, are just some of the traits that I would use to define the qualities of a good friend. What makes a good chef? Their creativity, fearlessness, and passion are all things that come to mind when I think of good chefs. These adjectives are all strengths that when combined define the title of our talents.

Our weaknesses can be found in the areas of our life that inhibit us from achieving our goals. One seemingly positive weakness that many people have is that they're people pleasers. They will take on too much work in attempts to please others, which results in our inability to finish our work or an inability to produce the quality of work we typically produce. Another common weakness is procrastination. Many people today suffer from procrastination due to the ease of surfing the internet. There are even shortcuts built into computer systems that allow us to easily maneuver between windows allowing us to quickly hide the fact that we were just online instead of writing a report when our boss walks by.

Now that we know the answer to "what are your strengths and weaknesses?" We can now go about trying to figure out the best way of utilizing our strengths and either eliminating or mitigating our weaknesses. After identifying our strengths, we need to go about finding the best way for them to be utilized in our given profession, or in the various professions we are interested in pursuing. If one of your strengths is actually a trait that would not be accommodating to the job you're applying for or currently working, chances are you're not happy with where your professional life.

To mitigate or eliminate your weaknesses you're going to have to first acknowledge that they are in fact weaknesses, and second be dedicated to either mitigate them or eliminate them completely. For example if you're a people pleaser you're most likely going to want to mitigate this weakness so it doesn't impair the quality of your life or work you produce, but you still want to be able to please your boss or your significant other. Procrastination on the other hand is going to be one of those weaknesses you're going to want to eliminate. If you can't help surfing the internet instead of doing the work expected of you, you need to be disciplined and not even open up the web browser if possible. Eliminating the temptation to procrastinate often helps us in training ourselves how to be productive.

Ultimately in the end we really want to be able to answer the question " what are your strengths and weaknesses?" because it helps us understand who we are and what we should be doing with our lives that will bring us the greatest joy, happiness, and fulfillment. In the end, happiness is really what everyone is looking for, and you can only be happy once you know who you are, and take responsibility for your life by accepting all your strengths and weaknesses.

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