Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses

I sat among a pile of papers and cried.

Everywhere I looked, I saw more work to do, and the longer I looked at it, the more overwhelmed I became. Finally, I burst into tears. “Why can’t I just figure out a system for all of this paper?” I said to myself. Here I was, an intelligent woman, and I could not figure out how to set up a filing system. I felt stupid.

Really stupid.

So I got up and tried again. And again. And again. Each time I attempted to set up a new system, something wouldn’t work, something I hadn’t thought of, and I’d have to start all over again. I sat holding one single piece of paper, trying to figure out what to do with it, when the phone rang.

It was an old friend – actually, an old assistant who had moved away to another state across the country.

“What’cha doin?” she asked.

“Trying to figure out how to file all of these @#$@#$ papers!” I exclaimed loudly.

She took a long pause and then said to me. “What are you doing that for? You’re a speaker – you don’t have the energy to spend on that kind of detail work – you’re a PEOPLE person!” Plus, you have ADD! Well, duh. Yes, I am a people person and here I was, taking a lot of time to do something that frankly, I’m not so good at doing.

But they don’t think about that in school! Remember back in school when you weren’t so good in a subject? What did they tell you to do? Try harder, right? Well, I say WRONG! We only have so many strengths and weaknesses, why focus on the weakness!

It makes a lot of sense to me to focus on strengths. When you focus on what you CAN do instead of what you CANNOT do, opportunities arise and people flow into your life to help you. I’ve experienced this time and time again in my own life, and always when I was working on what I do well.

So my papers? They are all nice and neat in a new filing system which I did not create, but I do follow. Someone else had strengths in organization and helped me out – truly a prosperous and profitable exchange of services. How about you? What are you focusing on today? What you do well or what you do NOT do well? I challenge you to work your strengths for a month and see what progress you make.

Let me know!

By Stephanie Frank