In the last post I wrote about strengths and talents. I, and a couple of Reader’s, shared what we believed to be our talents. Now one of the reasons why I wrote that post was to demonstrate that whatever your strength is, it is made possible by your weakness.

I get so many people telling me how they can’t do this or are hopeless at that, but they don’t realise that their weakness is what makes their strength possible. I’m going to expand by using myself as an example.

I said that I believe my talent is my ability to understand ideas and then put them together. I’m able to do this because I have a very fluid mind. I have very little fixed ideas and few strong beliefs. This enables me to accept almost anything and then reset my brain to include the new idea.

I love the ability to learn quickly and continually develop new combinations of ideas, but it has it’s downsides.

I drive my wife mad. I suggest we eat out somewhere. Then as we are on our way there I think of other options. I find it very difficult to make a decision because I must make the very best decision and there is always more information to include.

Even when people ask me if I want tea or coffee, I’m stumped for a while before I work out the ramifications. It’s because I hate to commit to a decision. Once I’ve said I’ll do something, I have to do it. And so I want to be sure what I’m committing to the best option.

And when I’m doing any kind of job it’s like watching a drunk grasshopper. Start this, no this would be better done first, oh should start this, ‘Now what was I doing’. All because my priorities and plans are constantly changing.

Which leads to the next weakness. I live in my mind. This means I can deal easily with abstract ideas and concepts. However it also means that by the time I determine a plan of action I’ve lost interest because it’s resolved in my mind. I don’t have to physically see something, once it’s done in my head, for me it’s done.

If I could be interested in the physical results I would be magnificently rich, instead I move on from projects before they make money because in my head they are completed.

Connected with living in my mind is the fact that I’m pretty disconnected with my emotions. Sometimes, Lisa my wife, has asked me how I feel about something. And it throws me. I search for the truth, but I’ve never really stopped to consider how I feel about the truth.

People often write that I must have suffered to be so concerned with finding happiness and overcoming stress, but really I have never had a problem that I couldn’t resolve after a few hours thought alone. Generally I can think clearly and with little bias, so I can see solutions relatively easily. It doesn’t mean I live without problems. It just means I understand them and so they stop bothering me.

However that makes me a little like Spock from Star Trek. People are often a puzzle to me. Why do they torture themselves in prisons of their own minds? Why do they trust others so much and themselves so little? Why do they need others so much?

And so I know I’m a little odd. And I know that I have some of the compassion and humanity missing from my DNA that someone more emotional has and so I have to study carefully to become sensitive because it doesn’t come naturally which makes me a little uncomfortable in social groups. Because I know there’s stuff that I just don’t get, that other people find very important.

So to many people I may seem odd. But I have long ago accepted and embraced my oddities. For it is these that give me the ability to think clearly and deeply. It is in these abilities that I can live peacefully and yet find adventure everyday.

So what about you?

How does your weakness connect to your strength?

Tags: Finding Yourself // 2 Comments »