Strength & Weakness

I had the opportunity to participate in a seminar on Friday called “Strengths Finder”. It’s a Gallup University Class that tells you to answer a set of questions and it gives you you’re top 5 of 34 strengths. It was not the first time I’ve taken a test like this. I’ve done the color ones and the personality type ones… this was slightly different because it called into play the very logical side of you. How does your brain work? (At least this is what I got out of the class.) All of my strengths were really great and it was interesting to see how my brain worked from this perspective. Overall nothing was super surprising as far as my top five strengths but I had the epiphany while in the class.

One exercise that he had us complete was to list “Something Very Important to You”, “Something at Which You Excel”, “A Challenge”. My lists were as follows:
Importance: Family, Relationship with God, Hard Work or Good Work Ethic, and Achieving my Goals.
What I Excel at: Puzzles/Problem Solving, Numbers/Math, Strength Training, Communication, writing, reading, Crafts and Prophetic Vision.
My Challenges: Losing Weight, Spelling, Patience, Organization, Tardiness, Procrastination, Listening, and Tolerating (my definition of) Stupid People.

So we went over all of our lists and then he did something that caught my attention.

He told us to cross out our Challenge list

AND

highlight our Excel or “strengths” list.

This surprised me the most because I think as a society we always look to our weaknesses and try over and over, often to no avail, to make them better. From the studies conducted with this class and others at the University they have found that if you focus on your strengths your success is exponentially greater than if you focus on your weaknesses. FACINATING!!!
They used the example of children who were learning to read. They took a control group where the average reading level was 90 words per hour and another group that the average level was 350 words per hour. The second group obviously had a built in talent or “strength” for reading the first did not. They then provided educations for increasing reading ability and found that the first group went from 90 words per hour to 300+ (can’t remember the exact number) and the second group went from 350 words per hour to 2900 words per hour!!! The difference was INSANE!!! Then he said, “if you were investing, where would you put your money? Group number one, “building weakness” or group number two, “building strengths”?

DUH!!! Where do you think?

Then he said the thing that struck home:
A focus on fixing weaknesses prevents failure.
A focus on building strengths leads to excellence.

I took the information that I had and applied it to what I’ve been doing with my weight loss. I made a list of my weaknesses; at the top of that list: Food Addiction. Then made a list of my strengths; top of that list: Strength Training. Here’s the thing. I’ve been focusing SOOOOO much on trying to get my food cravings/addictions under control and I haven’t been strength training AT ALL! I’ve been so picky about food and when I mess up I’m frustrated and aggravated because I’m a big loser. (I’m exaggerating a bit I’m not hating myself or anything, I just realized where my focus has been.)

So, I’ll stop rambling now because I’m thinking you all get the point. From here on out I’m focusing on my strengths. I made a list of all the things I’m good at and this is where my goals are going to be focused in April. So far I’ve been working away at this weight by focusing on improving my weakness. Let’s see how things go when I start to improving my STRENGTHS!

Alright, my challenge to you is to answer these questions:
WHAT ARE YOUR WEAKNESSES?
WHAT ARE YOUR STRENGTHS?
WHICH LIST ARE YOU FOCUSING ON?
HOW’S THAT WORKING FOR YOU?


P.S. In reference to my “Balance” entry I LOVE, LOVE, LOVED the idea to make a list each night of the top 6 things I MUST get done the following day. It took me about 5 days to implement the process… had to put making the list on my list! LOL! But now I’m on a roll and feeling MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more relaxed and accomplished. Thanks Jacqui!!!