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People are not who you want them to be. Kill your idols. Sure there are things we can learn from people — but people aren’t going to be what you think they are — what they should be. People, even those people you have put up on a pedestal, are going to be faulted, weak, egomaniacal, condescending. They are going to be lazy, entitled, shortsighted. They will not be perfect. Far from it. That’s fine. Learn from their weaknesses. Of course: Learn from their strengths and mimic and copy them in what they do well. But equally as important: Learn from their faults.
Knowing one’s flaws is necessary, but knowing one’s strengths and having courage to use them is also necessary. To talk about one’s weaknesses to friends is frank and honest, just as talking about one’s strengths should also be seen as frank. Modesty is an important virtue, but practicality should also be valued.
Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It’s difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won’t enjoy the process. If you don’t find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then — unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin — you’ll soon give up. But you don’t really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness.
Knowing Yourself ...We also seldom know what gifts we are not endowed with. We will have to learn where we belong, what we have to learn to get the full benefit from our strengths, where our weaknesses lie, what our values are. We also have to know ourselves temperamentally: "Do I work well with people, or am I a loner? What am I committed to? And what is my contribution?"
When encountering your weaknesses you have four choices: 1. You can deny them (which is what most people do). 2. You can accept them and work at them in order to try to convert them into strengths (which might or might not work depending on your ability to change). 3. You can accept your weaknesses and find ways around them. 4. Or, you can change what you are going after.
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