Unless you are Jesus Christ reading this, you have some flaws. Deep, perhaps even fatal flaws. Everyone has them, but not everyone cares enough to do anything about it.
Maybe you’re ashamed of them and try to hide them, maybe you pretend you don’t have any, and maybe you’ve just accepted them and try to live around them.
A rare few have acknowledged their shortcomings and are actively trying to better themselves. If you’re one of them, good for you! Change is not an easy thing.
But improving yourself can be hard and incredibly time-consuming. If you’re like me, you try to use your flaws to your advantage in the meantime. Remember, not all flaws can be turned into strengths, and your time would be better spent trying to change them.
Let’s go through the steps and decide if your weaknesses can become strengths.
Identify Your Flaw
Obviously you can’t do anything if you don’t know what your flaw is. Sometimes facing your shortcomings can be difficult or even painful, but it must be done for the sake of bettering yourself.
For example, one flaw I (and many people) have is pride. Pride can be a good thing in moderation, but often times it gets out of control.
Figure Out the “Why”
Why do you procrastinate? Why are you a perfectionist? Why are you so blunt?
Answering the “Why” makes you dig deeper into yourself. It’s the internal reasoning. Maybe you’ll uncover something you didn’t know before.
This is also the step where you decide if this weakness is truly something you can turn into a strength, or if you should face the difficult task of changing yourself.
With pride, the answer to my “Why” is because I like the idea of people respecting me for the things I’ve accomplished.
Figure out the “What”
What makes you procrastinate? What is it about certain projects that makes you want them to be perfect? What is it about a person or a scenario that makes you blunt?
Answering the “What” forces you to look around you and face the external reasoning for your flaw. Sometimes there are more than just one “What” questions. Take your time, step outside of yourself, and really look at it from all angles
The answer to “What” makes me prideful is accomplishing something, especially if it’s a big project or something your average Joe wouldn’t have done.
Self-Manipulation
Now you finally get to try and make your weaknesses into strengths. Based on your answers to the “Why” and the “What” questions, figure out how you can use one or more of these three ways to turn something bad into something good.
- Make it productive. If you procrastinate because you’re afraid of failing and you’d much rather watch the game anyway, ask yourself if you’d truly rather fail by not even trying. If you must procrastinate, make your procrastination productive. Do the laundry, go for a walk, vacuum the floor.
- Make it beneficial. Turn your perfectionism into care and attention to detail, just make sure you don’t get stuck and never finish a project.
- Slightly alter it. Adjust your bluntness to become honesty. Add a little more love into your comments. I
nclude the good things as well as the bad. People will start to take your opinion more seriously and seek out your honesty.
I turn my pride into something productive. I make it a source of motivation. If I ever feel like procrastinating or giving up, I remind myself how good it will feel to have yet another thing to add to my list of accomplishments, and push through.
Remember, this is not an excuse to be a flawed person. I did not write this so you could claim any of your shortcomings are actually great things. This is simply a way around them while you work to improve yourself. Not all weakness can be spun into strengths, and if the beneficial spin you come up with isn’t strong enough, maybe it’s time to set yourself on the difficult path of self-improvement.
We all have flaws. Remember, the only person who can change you, is you.