Man-made labels.
Strengths. Weaknesses.
(I am using “weaknesses” loosely. The mindsets, mentality, inner narratives, habits, and patterns I had, made me weak. They didn’t serve me.)
English is a man-made language intended for communication. Knowing this, I’m always fascinated by our relationship with words and how it affects us.
I used to hide behind the words. I used to fixate and stick to the labels. I used to identify and deeply understand the meaning behind the words and the connotations associated with them.
And at some point, I evolved.
I began to ask myself, “Does this word serve me? Does my connotation serve me?”
When I say “serve,” I mean, does it assist, strengthen, or help me in my vision for my life.
If yes, I keep the meaning.
If no, I change my perception of the word, because my perception affects my experience.
Sound silly?
Kelly McGonigal, a stress researcher, concluded in a TEDx talk that our beliefs about stress affect the way we experience stress. Believe stress is good for you? Live longer. Believe stress is bad for you? Die sooner. Simple.
When I think of strengths versus weaknesses, I think about the connotations commonly associated with these things.
Strengths are good, attractive, and helpful. Weaknesses can be detrimental, preventative, and bad.
Remember, the English language is a man-made construct intended for communication.
The idea of good and bad is a man-made concept, as are strengths and weaknesses.
Now, here’s the kicker: which word, strength or weakness, creates resistance, friction, and conflict?
Answer: weaknesses.
They’re typically not attractive.
Often, we avoid them.
We don’t think about them.
Some people feel shame around their weaknesses. Shame is the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging (as defined by Brené Brown).
It’s not a strength, it’s not something we’re good at, so why give it attention?
Popular tests like the StrengthFinders paint a picture of a world where we all execute against our strengths. But what if we reframed them?
What if we reduced the friction in how we think about our weaknesses so that our weaknesses served us better?
When we don’t reframe our weaknesses they can control us in ways we don’t understand.
Left in the subconscious mind, oblivious to how it affects us, we may experience pain because we don’t understand our “weaknesses.” It’s like the blind spot you have when driving a car. Do you want that?
I don’t. I want my language to serve me so I can better master my psychology and perform as a CEO when I need to perform. My decisions affect the livelihood of my team and those around me. After all, since legacy is my greatest why, I want to understand myself so that I can mindfully understand how I affect others.
In order to help myself understand my weaknesses, I first needed to reframe them to reduce friction. When I say “friction,” I mean, the way I think about myself affects how I transcend and move beyond different behaviors I have. I changed my thinking and shifted my weaknesses over to the positive category.
This is not an overnight process. This takes time.
According to the conscious competence learning model, there are 4 psychological states involved in moving from incompetence to competence:
1. Unconscious incompetence: As a 2-year-old, you don’t know that one day you’ll probably drive a car.
2. Conscious incompetence: Early teens, you realize that one day you’ll likely learn how to drive a car and you acknowledge you don’t know how.
3. Conscious competence: You’re in driving school learning to refine your driving competence. Much mental effort is required as the new skill is being learned.
4. Unconscious competence: You’re able to drive while texting and eating simultaneously on the freeway driving at speeds a few miles above the speed limit. Of course, I’m kidding, but I imagine you get the idea. ;)
As a result, this truth I am sharing takes time to fully realize. This process has taken me years of great self-investment.
Now for my weaknesses. Ahem, I mean, my strengths.
1. Self-doubt, reframed to strong conviction
In the past, I used to doubt myself. Doubt is a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction. I define conviction as the intensity of understanding. In computer learning, “deep learning” is referred to as learning through patterns. If someone were to build a computer robot and say, “go online and tell me what you find through deep learning,” the computer robot would return and say, “I found these types of images, and they’re called cats.” Instead of learning from a single data source, a computer learns from many many patterns.
Why am I sharing this?
Because this is how I learn. My conviction of understanding does not come from a single life experience where I had an agenda to prove. My understanding comes from hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of experiences. Mind you, these are experiences where I had no agenda. I’ve seen patterns between thousands of people I’ve engaged, books, podcasts, TED talks, articles, events, and the like.
If you want to understand conviction better, it is more powerful than passion. Read this.
I’ve turned my self-doubt into an opportunity for deep understanding of people, business, and technology. This gives me a unique perspective when it comes to connecting the dots and creating insight for others.
Knowing that I experience life as I am, not as it is, I am mindful of projecting my reality onto others. Understanding my self-doubt empowers me to not doubt others but to be mindful of what others are saying.
2. Self-esteem, reframed to the ability to empower
As a high achiever, I have always put in the effort to achieve. From the time I was in middle school, to high school, to college, to various clients I’ve worked with over the years, I’m always pushing. I’m always achieving.
In 2011, the StrengthsFinder 2.0 test nailed my second highest strength as being an Achiever. As of 2014, this is no longer something I identify with (and a new StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment affirms this).
If not consciously understood why we do what we do, high achievement may have roots in low self-esteem. What causes people to be a high achiever? There are many different narratives, reasons, and stories people tell themselves. I never became conscious of it until I dug deep on understanding my psychology. Usually, such high achievement runs at the subconscious level and we cover it up with various inner narratives. The challenge with this is when we’re controlled by the subconscious, we’re not mindful of the side effects to ourselves or impact on others.
I reframed my weakness into a strength because now I have the ability to recognize this in others and encourage or affirm them appropriately.
There is a theory around mirror neurons in neuroscience which states that what we cannot produce and understand internally we cannot understand in others. Because I am mindful of my past challenge with low self-esteem, I know the language, I know the body posture, and I know the belief systems around low-esteem.
3. Self-acceptance, reframed into an ability to accept or deny
I’ve always challenged different paradigms and constructs in life. Since we experience life as we are, my life reflects this. I’ve done things that do not fit with the traditional route. I refuse to accept what is given to me if I don’t want it and I’m willing to fight for it. Similar to most leaders who are willing to fight for a vision, so am I.
Earlier in my journey, I realized that I didn’t accept certain parts of myself. The result was not accepting my environment or the “traditional route.” The root was self-acceptance.
Now that I know I do this, I’m able to mindfully accept or reject certain realities and I’m willing to fight for what I want to accept and/or the future I want to create.
I refuse to lay off people on my team if we’re going through a difficult time, so we have had a month in the past where everyone took a lower salary to get us through a difficult stretch.
I refuse to accept unsolved problems with my team or internal conflicts. As a result, whenever there is tension on my team (although it doesn’t happen too often), we always come together and discuss whatever needs to be discussed. Regardless of how difficult the conversations may be, we always walk away with new insights (myself included).
As it relates to self-acceptance, I accept myself, and it is through accepting myself that I am able to implement sustainable change. For example, when I don’t accept certain realities (eg. that I have anxiety), I don’t invest the time to learn about it or work through it. The mind is like a magnifying glass and since we get what we focus on, I want to focus on what is real so that I can better understand how to implement changes.
Understanding my ability to accept or deny myself, others, and environments, allows me to mindfully accept or reject different truths.
4. Perfectionism, reframed into a superpower
Perfectionism is a gift. I used to demand perfection in everything. As I learned to loosen up and better understand perfectionism, I learned to become more mindful of what requires perfectionism and what does not require perfectionism.
I have perfection. Perfection does not have me.
The difference is very significant. One implies I have control over my ability to be perfect versus always striving for perfection in everything.
And so we’re clear, perfection has roots in shame. Once again, shame is the intensely painful feeling that we’re unworthy of love and belonging. This is a very real human emotion. Perfection is a way to avoid shame. The belief is that if we are perfect, we are worthy of love and belonging. One behavior that contributes to shame is identifying who you are with what you do. When we attach identity to the things we do we strive for perfection because we’re afraid of identifying with anything less than perfect. You can transcend this.
How do I reframe this? Mental understanding of this allows me to be able to be perfect when I need to be (eg. creating a customer experience, critiquing a design, etc), but not be perfect all the time. This serves me well.
5. Anxiety, reframed into conviction for variety
Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease. In “Dancing with Fear,” author and psychologist Paul Foxman elaborates on the 3 ingredients for anxiety: genetic traits (such as “biological sensitivity,” or being sensitive to others around you, music, and nature), family influences (which affect personality traits), and stress (the condition in front of you). Foxman says that anxiety is a learned response in sensitive people.
The result of anxiety is panic attacks, phobias, avoidant behavior, worrying, unwanted obsessions, and body symptoms such as racing heart, shaking, breathing problems, sweating, nausea, and weakness. (I’ve personally dealt with breathing problems and eczema due to anxiety and stress)
Guess what the root of anxiety is? Fear. Smart CEOs lead with trust.
Anxiety is when the survival mechanism in the brain responsible for fight or flight instincts, also known as the amygdala, is overworked. As a way to overcompensate for the future to avoid the feeling of anxiety, many try to control things outside of their control. Non-stop thinking about the future, replaying certain events obsessively, are the result of anxiety.
Fear is a survival instinct. Fear enables survival. Trust empowers living.
I reframed my anxiety as fuel to remind me to bring variety in my life. Consistent mountain biking, yoga, meditation, night time walks, bouldering, journaling, all things I already do... I now do more consistently because my anxiety helped remind me how important variety is.
6. Overthinking, reframed into a gift I can turn off/on
Many CEOs overuse their dominant strength. For me, it’s thinking. It could be said that my gift is my curse. Since I am mindful of this, I’ve reframed my thinking ability into something I can do if needed... but it’s not always needed. Often, I let instinct take over and I quickly decide. Other times, I think through what the options are, which options seem like the best, and why. It depends on how easily something can be changed, or the investment required in a decision.
When talking with my team, I’m able to ask questions of them which helps them think through things as I may think through things. Different questions raise different levels of awareness on different solutions for various decisions made daily.
7. Addictive personality, reframed to a state of flow
In the past, I have had workaholic tendencies. Different life situations have forced a surrender, though. From falling asleep at the wheel, to physical symptoms of too much work and not enough play. When I get involved in something, I get fixated on it. Now that I’m mindful of this, I allow myself the power to take a break, walk away, or put something on hold for later. I do this if I find I’m getting too attached to a project or task.
I know my addictive tendencies begin when I find myself checking my phone too often, or checking e-mail/social channels too often. This becomes an issue when my willpower is low (willpower is a finite resource). To counter addictive tendencies, I add friction to the process. I log out of e-mail and social channels so that when I instinctively visit them I have to login. This friction reminds me to proactively step away from what I am doing. Meditation has helped here also.
I reframed addictive personality to a deep understanding of knowing that if needed, I can get fixated on something and finish whatever is required.
8. Over-controlling tendencies, reframed into self-control
In the past, I’ve struggled with over-controlling. I’d try too hard to control those around me, to control my environments, and to prevent mistakes and/or failure (sometimes). I typically did this if I was fixated on an outcome. I may have been overcompensating for a feeling of insecurity in past companies I didn’t truly align with. That is, a deep feeling of insecurity manifested in overcompensating by trying to control. Or, it could have been because programming at age 9 left me thinking the world is black and white and rigid and that I could control everything. I didn’t do this too much, but I know I didn’t like myself when I did it (not to mention the amount of mental effort and stress I created).
How did I reframe this?
I changed my belief systems and inner narratives to make sure they served me. I may not be able to control external circumstance, but I can change my beliefs and stories I tell myself about life.
I accept that I am always doing the best I can, with what I’ve been given, with where I’m at. My self-acceptance of this truth has me accepting this reality for others, too. I cannot give to others what I cannot first give to myself.
Here’s another angle to this article...
Objectively speaking, I can look at my life as strengths and weaknesses, or I can look at my life in terms of existing in this moment and having these certain characteristics. No labels, only objectivity.
Only the real reality that right now, this is how I am.
Then, I can ask myself, is this how I want to be?
This belief and mindset allows me to remove all negative constructs of who I am. It allows me to remove friction and resistance to deep inner change. It allows me to metacognitively think through my behaviors.
What "weaknesses" do you need to reframe?
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