DO
YOU THINK THAT MAKES YOU WEAK?
Hi, I’m Sam,
One of the hardest questions
for me to answer is "What is your weakness?" Because I
find the question broad and most
times when I ever get to answer
that question I always ask for clarity, like give me
context. The answer to that question depends on the context, for instance saying that
I'm a slow reader as a weakness is irrelevant or not applicable if you were
asked that question in a military recruitment. No human has just one weakness and weaknesses
differ from Individual to individual. What you may consider a weakness in yourself, most
likely will be listed as a strength to another individual. A lot of young
people take their time to identify and focus on their weaknesses instead of
their strengths and they do it with another person's blueprint. They can list more than 5 weaknesses
they have off the top of their head but have to run through multiple
"Umms" before they can list 3 strengths they have and sometimes
it is not their fault but the society and what we've all collectively decided
to pay attention and give power to.
Social media is not even helping in terms of people focusing
on their weaknesses. Some have failed to understand that contents online are curated
to send a particular message and that those contents online are not real life;
granted some of them are part of someone's real life but it
is only a perfectly designed fraction and its irresponsible to compare someone's
fraction to your entire being. Someone
has also mastered using social media and extrinsic motivation and that
is a really helpful weapon
to yield while going through life in the century. Take the fraction of lives you see on social media and add it to
your being, not making it your entire being. Take
pieces from here and there and bring them together to help you achieve
something spectacular in your life. We cannot all see social media as a terrible
thing. Honestly, we can see whatever we want in anything and
anyone, so long as we're looking for it, we will find it.
What is your idea of being cool? And who decides what is cool
or not? You do! We have the power to decide what we like or don't and we
also have the complete power to term anything around us whatever we
want to term it. Life is not so hard,
whenever you think that life is
hard, think deeply about it and you'll find out that there's every chance that
you're focused or worried about the wrong things at that particular moment. I
remember when my mum passed for like a day I was more worried and hurt that people would
say I no longer had a mother or that I was now a motherless child, than
actually focusing on the important things at that time. Honestly, I had no idea
where that mentality was coming from, I still ask myself to date what made me think
in that direction and I don't think I have the answer yet; I had to
snap myself out of that thinking. We have complete control of our thoughts and if
we want to pivot we can but sometimes the things
we have considered to be our reality hinder us from changing our
thoughts even when we've identified those thoughts as faulty. Our inner self
affects our reality and our reality also affects our inner selves, it all depends on
the one we give the ultimate power to.
It is ok to carry out your SWOT Analysis but determine
what you focus on after getting your findings. Our different attributes make us
unique and different and that is not a bad thing and don't
let anyone tell you otherwise. Just as someone can try to say things to you to
be motivated and sometimes you still don't feel motivated until
the motivation is coming from the inside, also don't
let the words people say bring you down or throw spotlight on your weakness get
you either. Select what seeds or in the case words to
let germinate and select the ones to die on landing.
Your excitement for what seems little or cliché to people can
also make people see you as weak. When you're excited for the little miracles
in your life people look at you somehow because they expect
you to be that excited for something major like a dead person coming back to life. The
truth is that we don't decide how much excitement to attach to a situation, you can't
say If I pass these exams I will be this percent happy or that percent
happy and most times, the situation surrounding something also determines how happy we
will be but we still can quantify that excitement so don't let anyone belittle
you for something you have no control over
Think of 3 weaknesses you think you have right now... do
you believe those 3 things make you weak? We've engraved that lie at the
back of our minds that it’s like a checklist we must run through before we
decide to do anything because God forbid our weaknesses do not approve of
an outstanding thing that we are about to start. We can spin our so-called weaknesses
into strengths if we want to and that can
only work if we critically identify them as relevant in our purpose-driven
areas. For example, I can identify
not having a good singing voice as a weakness of mine but I don't have plans to become a singer so what
relevance is telling myself every day that I'm a terrible singer have with my
purpose in life, but by always telling myself that I'm terrible singer
subconsciously increases the number of "weaknesses" that I think that
I have. Trying to spin the terrible singing voice to strength by maybe taking
singing classes’ takes away time that I need to put into other things that will
help me live a purposeful life. These are some of the ways by which we waste
time and potential because we first make mistakes identifying the wrong things
and then waste more time and resources trying to spin them to strength when it
doesn't even have a lot to do with the life we are destined to
live here on earth.