We often find ourselves dividing our traits into two distinct categories: our strengths and our weaknesses. It’s like observing a school dance, where strengths are boogieing on one side of the gym, and weaknesses are sulking by the punch bowl on the other. But what if I told you they’re not so separated, that they’re more like one solo dancer, just waiting for the right song to start?
Let’s imagine for a moment that one of your strengths is being incredibly organised. Your socks are paired by colour and season, and your spice rack? Alphabetised and possibly sub-categorised by region and flavour profile. Fantastic! But pause for a moment and look again. You’ll find that this strength, when tilted slightly under certain lighting, can reveal a weakness: you might be a tad inflexible when unplanned changes crash your well-sorted party.
Now, before you toss this aside and go check that indeed your socks are rightly ordered (they are, I promise), consider this: your weaknesses are not so much dastardly villains lurking in the shadows; they are your strengths, just wearing their capes backwards. They’re connected, you see. Like links in a chain, or peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich that got a bit squished in your lunchbox.
That same trait that makes you a stickler for details, causing mild panic when someone rearranges your desk items, is also what makes you a superb project manager, or a reliable friend who never forgets a birthday (because forgetting would be chaos, and chaos is the enemy).
So, why be hard on yourself for the party slip ups of your personality? After all, no one reasonable got thrown out of a party for spilling a drink (or for organising an emergency clean-up afterwards). Mistakes are merely opportunities to see where our strengths get a bit overzealous.
And just as we shouldn’t flagellate ourselves with wet noodles over our stumbles, we also shouldn’t shy away from strutting a bit when we do something spectacularly well. If you’re a wizard with numbers, then by all means, let that spreadsheet sing at your next presentation. Excel at comforting friends? Don’t hold back when the next emotional crisis hits your social circle. Be the hero with a shoulder to cry on and an uncanny ability to remember everyone’s favourite comfort food.
In the end, seeing strengths and weaknesses as two sides of the same coin helps us become more forgiving of ourselves and more confident in our own abilities. Especially in a tech-filled world that primes us to be, probably just a pinch too self-critical?