Using Your Strengths and Understanding Your Weaknesses

Even the strongest person in the world, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsso, has weaknesses they must overcome. Diagnosed with Bell’s palsy in 2017, Hafþór has continued to work on Game of Thrones and through Strongman competitions with the disease and through the support of his colleagues, family, and friends, is STILL the World’s Strongest Man titleholder. His story shows that by knowing your strengths and understanding your weaknesses along with support, you can continue to be the best that you can.

Finding your strengths and using them

Understanding the tasks & ideas that you excel at can help you to position yourself to grow and be successful. Knowing what you like to utilize within your tool belt of skills while understanding your weaknesses can allow you to focus on using your strengths and take you to the next level of success.

Start with listing out anything that comes to mind to answer the question of what do I do well. What are your favorite hobbies and how you like to spend your free time? What you feel passion around and what other people have said you do well. All of these questions can help you develop an idea of your strengths and can assist you in listing them out to keep them top of mind when approaching different situations that may arise.

Now that you know your strengths use them to the best of your ability by referring back to them when approaching new situations and ideas. Think about where you could make the most impact within a case and use your strengths to show new ideas and approaches others may not see.

Understanding and accepting your weaknesses

Weaknesses are usually even tougher to find because the majority of people don’t want to seem weak or to lack in their skills. There are a few questions that can help with finding weaknesses for you to improve upon:

• What tasks do I consider dull?
• Do I avoid doing anything in particular?
• What tasks do I frequently require help with?

Determining what you can improve upon is the first step but accepting your weakness can be hard to do. Once you know your flaws, working to understand the tendencies within your internal mental roadmaps can help you grow and turn your weakness into a strength. These skill gaps can be overcome with the help of our great abilities as humans to learn and socialize and allow us to somewhat make up for our deficiencies.

Improving a weakness is easier with friends

Talking with your colleagues, friends, and family can help with your goal of improving your weaknesses. Asking for advice from people with different strengths can give you a different perspective of a situation or show you an alternate solution previously not thought.

Work with people who have the strengths that you are looking for and see what they do to get that trait. Make sure to seek out other knowledge from the web, books and other resources from people who have gone through change and how they approached it. The preparation you do before you enter situations you may find trouble in handling can also help compensate for your weaknesses while you work with others to develop them into strengths.

Knowing what you need help with and what you excel within will change your life as you can mentally approach situations with a mindset that is conducive to what you do best and allows you to collaborate and connect with others who can support your flaws to progress beyond them.