Weakness

What if your weakness did not need to be a secret—or a battle?

You could look at it, understand it, and decide what to do without using it against yourself.

I want you to stop being afraid of your own weaknesses.

Self-awareness includes the parts you like and the parts you consider negative. When you can acknowledge all of them, you have more opportunity to show up deliberately rather than react from conditioning you have never examined.

Start by noticing your current approach

When we are not conscious of our weaknesses, we often project them onto other people.

We see something in them that we do not acknowledge in ourselves. We criticize it there instead of recognizing our own experience.

That can create problems in relationships and leave us thinking the other person is the cause of what we feel.

To change something in yourself, you need to be able to see it in yourself.

Acknowledging it gives you authority to work with it.

Meanness makes honesty harder

Another approach is to resist weakness and beat ourselves up for having it.

Think about what happens when you attack someone for a weakness. They become less willing to acknowledge it and more interested in hiding it.

The same thing happens when you are mean to yourself.

You know your own secrets, so you can be very effective at hurting yourself emotionally.

But feeling beaten up does not help you become stronger. It makes you want to resist and hide more.

That is not the kind of self-awareness that leads to living effectively.

Willpower and hiding are not your only options

You may see procrastination, fear of criticism, or difficulty speaking in front of people and immediately decide you have to fix it.

You confront yourself and try to force change with willpower before becoming curious about what is happening.

Or you hide the weakness and avoid any situation in which it might appear.

Hiding can perpetuate shame. You do not give yourself an opportunity to understand the weakness or see that having one is part of being human.

You treat it as proof that something is wrong with you.

I want to offer a different approach.

My experience with eating became clearer when I looked at it

I used to feel ashamed that I could not control my eating.

I looked at other people who seemed able to stop when they were full or leave part of a sandwich. I felt as though I could not do that.

I did not really talk about it or explore it. I hid it.

When I became willing to acknowledge and understand it, I gained more authority over it.

I could see that what I had called a weakness around food was connected to not knowing how to feel my feelings. I had never been taught how.

That understanding was available when I looked, not when I treated the whole thing as something shameful to keep hidden.

Define weakness in a way you can explore

What we call a weakness is subjective.

We may label ourselves undisciplined, unambitious, or not good socially because of ideas about how we should be.

I find it useful to think of weakness as an area where you are not as strong, effective, or efficient as you would like.

I am not equating softness with weakness.

And recognizing an area where you wish you were stronger does not require you to decide immediately to improve it.

It gives you something to understand.

Embrace it before trying to change it

Embracing what exists has been one of the most powerful tools I have developed.

Instead of arguing with, projecting, resisting, or hiding something, I can acknowledge that it is here.

An embrace allows connection, understanding, and compassion.

Think of weakness as an ingredient in the recipe that is you.

You are not supposed to be strong, excellent, and perfectly effective all the time. Your humanness includes the other side.

From that acceptance, you can explore.

Ask curious questions. Look at the parts you have avoided. Allow yourself to know what is there without treating it as an exception that should never have existed.

You do not have to improve every part of yourself

I spent a lot of my life thinking I had to get better, improve, eliminate weakness, and be strong all the time.

Giving myself permission simply to be who I was brought relief.

I want you to consider that option, too.

You may choose not to turn a particular weakness into a self-improvement project.

Using it for self-awareness and compassion can itself create strength. You become more accepting, loving, and honest with yourself because you are willing to see it.

You do not have to make a list of ways to fix every part of your humanness.

If you choose change, begin with compassion

You may decide you do want to develop a skill or become stronger in an area.

Perhaps you struggle to manage anger and yell at other people.

Even when a weakness has a negative impact, I recommend pausing to acknowledge and embrace what is happening before trying to change it.

That makes it easier to gain authority over yourself and choose a different way.

Trying to strengthen yourself from love, compassion, and understanding is more effective than being mean to yourself.

An aggressive confrontation can create resistance. Curiosity gives you room to understand and then work on the change.

You may even enjoy a weakness by delegating it

Another option is to have someone strong in that area do the work.

I enjoy being able to delegate things I am not good at rather than spend all my energy trying to improve them.

If numbers do not come naturally to you and developing that skill is not important to you, you may be able to hire an accountant or bookkeeper.

You can have effectiveness in your life without personally doing everything well.

Dan Sullivan taught me to approach business this way: hire people to spend their time using their strengths and unique abilities.

We cannot delegate every weakness, and we do not need to. But where it is possible, you may pay someone or make an exchange that lets each person use their strength.

Use awareness for yourself

Tell yourself the truth about where you feel weak.

Notice where you project, hide, resist, or aggressively confront it.

Then consider what it would be like to explore and accept it.

You may choose to develop that area. You may choose to delegate it. You may simply choose to stop treating it as something shameful.

Understand your weaknesses without using them against yourself.

They are part of being you. You can work with them—and even enjoy that you do not have to be strong at everything.