US singer and songwriter Johnny Mercer wrote more than 1,500 songs during his storied career. One of his many popular songs from the 1940s was titled “Accentuate the Positive”. He got the idea for this particular tune after listening to a preacher mention in his sermon that you should “… accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative” to have a more fulfilling and successful life.
The idea of that sermon was that if you focus on doing positive, good things and stay away from negative influences, you will be more personally, spiritually and emotionally fulfilled. Is this something we should all practice?
Should we all attempt to identify our strengths and weaknesses, and then spend time making our strengths stronger, while spending little or no time working on the things we are not very good at?
Should we instead agree to follow half of that advice, building our strengths, but also planning time to work on making our weaknesses better? If we are already really good at something, should we spend any time at all trying to improve something where we already operate at a high level of production?
These are all good questions.
In an attempt to achieve your true potential, enjoy successes and realize your dream reality, it is indeed important to understand what you are good at, and what you need to improve upon. That is what this report on attaining success in any endeavor is all about.
You will first learn how to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses. You can’t take advantage of your abilities if you don’t understand exactly where it is you excel.
Once you identify personal traits and characteristics where you are good, as well as where you are not so good, you can use this information to finally achieve all of the goals you have been pursuing for so long.
In this report you will find out why knowing your strengths and weaknesses is so important for you to achieve your true potential, whether that be in your business or personal life.
Finally, you will use all of this information to discover what it is that truly fulfills you and makes you feel complete, successful and happy. You may think you already know what drives you, and what is the underlying reason for all of your actions.
In some cases though, you may be surprised to discover that the driving force behind your life is something different than you imagined. Let’s get started helping you realize your full potential and achieve success by explaining exactly how an understanding of your abilities and inabilities can make your life better.
How Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses Can Improve Your Life & Work
You have your personal life, and your career or job. Even if you don’t work at a job and are independently wealthy, you still must spend significant time managing your investments. The same is true when you retire, as you have to diligently monitor your finances and expenditures. So basically, you have two lives – personal and business.
When you identify what you are good at and where you need to work a little harder, you can get the most out of both of those lives.
Power Up Your Personal Relationships
Are you good at paying compliments to others? Do you have trouble taking complements yourself? Do you talk too much or not enough? Are you a “me, me, me” person, or do you spend most of your time in your personal life doing for others?
Understanding the areas where you excel and need more work regarding your personal relationships can make them much more complete and fulfilling.
When you identify that you spend too much time getting the important people in your life to give you what you want makes you realize that maybe you are stingy. This can lead to a change in behavior, you can start focusing more on others in your life rather than just yourself, and the people around you will appreciate that effort.
Accordingly, your personal relationships become much stronger and more complete.
You can also use your inherent strengths to make every area of your personal life better. You might be very good at teaching, training and instructing. Once you know this, why not use that skill of yours to make your loved ones more capable in areas where they are trying to succeed?
You will get a great feeling out of helping the people you care about, and they will appreciate you that much more.
Improving Your Skill Sets to Get Ahead in Business
Identifying and working on both your strengths and weaknesses can help you realize a more successful business life as well. Whether you are the head of a billion-dollar company or you are an entry-level employee working for someone else, sit down and think about what you are really good at. What areas of your job or career do you need to improve upon?
If you are currently earning a minimum wage working for someone else, what do you want to change about that situation? Realize this desire, and then think about how your strengths can be exploited to help you create that reality.
If you are extremely punctual, don’t mind working late, and never miss time at work, perhaps you could offer to give a class on simple ways to develop better work loyalty and attendance.
Even if your employer doesn’t decide to let you give such a class, you are illustrating to that person that you are willing to do much more than what is required of your present position. By offering to use your strengths to grow that person’s company you can’t help but get noticed, and this will certainly assist you the next time you go for a performance review.
Being honest with yourself about areas where you need to improve in your business life is important too. If you simply turn a blind eye to what you know you need to improve upon at work, your employer is never going to see you as a complete employee. Not willing to change what is an obvious weakness may even result in you joining the unemployment line.
Don’t be happy with today. Work on your strengths. Identify and improve your weaknesses. If you are one of those individuals who knows you deserve more out of life, you can achieve whatever it is you believe you deserve in your business and personal lives as long as you boost your current abilities, and work on your inabilities.
How to Identify Your Strengths
Here are a few simple ways to honestly identify those areas in your life where you excel. In identifying your weaknesses, it is important to be honest and open, and the same is true if you want to reveal things you are already very good at.
- Ask your friends. Not everyone understands what they are good at doing. Some of your greatest talents and abilities may be hidden to you, but your friends can quickly and honestly tell you what they believe are your strengths.
- Monitor yourself. Spend a few days or an entire week actively viewing your accomplishments and behaviors. Honestly view yourself and your activities, and write down where you achieve greatness.
- Look for events and occasions where you get excited. When your excitement is high and your emotions are charged positively, you are likely engaging in or witnessing something that relates to one or more of your personal strengths.
- Look for areas where you are unique. You have personal traits and abilities which may stick out in a crowd. These are often your strengths.
- Talk to your boss or employer. Tell them where you believe you are strong, and then get their input.
- Think about areas in your life where you need to improve. Many times, the exact opposite of your weaknesses are your strengths.
- Stretch your boundaries. Learn new things. Expose yourself to new experiences. Grandma Moses did not begin painting until she was in her late 60s, and is now regarded as one of the greatest US southwestern painters of all time. You may not know what your ultimate strengths are if you haven’t experienced them yet.
How to Identify Your Weaknesses
Sometimes, identifying areas where you need to improve is similar to spotting your strengths. Other times, you need to do different things to identify your weaknesses. Here are a few simple ways to spot those areas in your personal and business lives where you need to get better to achieve success and experience fulfillment.
- Ask your friends and coworkers. Input from those around you cannot only identify your strengths, but can also point out your weaknesses.
- Have an honest conversation with yourself. Most people know at least one or two different areas in their life which are important, but which they unfortunately are not very good at.
- Look at a recent performance review from your job. Your employer wants you to be the best you can be, so your effort provides the most possible success for his or her company. Your performance reviews put forth in writing exactly those areas where you need to improve.
- Identify areas in your life where you wish you had more. If you are not as wealthy as you would like, this could point out the fact that you need to improve on your financial skills.
- Think about a failed personal or business relationship. What caused it to fail? Answer this question honestly and you could unveil one or more of your biggest weaknesses.
- Ask yourself where you want to be in your life and in business in 1 year, 5 years and 10 years. The answers to these questions can expose opportunities for growth that can help you get to where you want to be.
How to Boost Your Strengths to Their Full Potential and Improve or Eliminate Your Weaknesses
Take the list of strengths and weaknesses you just developed. Some of your weaknesses need to be avoided entirely. If you are habitually late at work, that definitely needs to change. If you are emotionally abusive to the ones you love, you need to avoid acting on that weakness at all costs. Some other weaknesses simply need to be tweaked, improved or managed.
Regarding your strengths, you should be able to spot those that you should concentrate more effort upon. Identify the strengths that will bring more value to your life if you make them even stronger, and work on improving them first.
Identify the Easy Fixes
Look at your weaknesses list, identifying those things you can change immediately. Setting your alarm 30 or 60 minutes earlier each morning is a simple way to make sure you get to work on time. If you know that one of your weaknesses is a tendency to lay around the house and be physically inactive rather than active, this is easy to change. Stand up right now, go outside and enjoy a brisk walk or take a jog.
Write down a list of the things you can do instead of practicing these weaknesses. Incorporate these into your personal calendar or day planner. If you don’t have a journal or calendar where you plan your daily, weekly and monthly activities, purchase one. This is where you are going to remind yourself of your weaknesses, and plan activities that improve upon them
Do the same with your strengths. Look at the list of things you are good at doing. Is there any “quick fix” you can make to improve one of your areas of excellence? If you are good at saving money and you get your paycheck today, is there any way you could save even more money than you already are? As you did with your weaknesses, actively plan for daily steps to work upon those strengths which are the easiest to improve upon.
Spot the Hard Changes
If you realize one of your weaknesses is an inability to save money, this is not going to be something which can be changed overnight. Take a look at the weakness list you developed, and identify where you think it may be tough to realize some significant improvement. Remind yourself that small, gradual, daily change eventually leads to a massive change.
This means if saving money is difficult for you, start actively putting aside $1 or $5 or $10 each and every day. This may seem like a small step, but what you are doing is programming your brain for lasting change so it will unconsciously act upon money-saving opportunities whenever they present themselves.
With any difficult improvement, daily pursuit is the key to success.
Maybe one of your strengths is physical strength. You are very good at working out and staying fit. If so, and this is something you do all the time, you may have plateaued, and find it very difficult to exceed your personal bests. If you recognize this, understand that this strength may take some time to improve upon to a significant level.
Get Some Training
You have before you a list of those things which you are good at and need to improve upon to help you achieve what is important to you. One of the simplest and quickest ways to achieve change is to find someone whose strength is your weakness, and get them to coach or train you. This can come in the form of an online course, one on one instruction or learning in a group setting.
You can also improve your strengths the same way. Find someone who is currently achieving at a much higher level in an area where you already excel. The greatest athletes in the world have trainers. The best actors have acting coaches.
These people are not happy with just being very good, and they are constantly striving to achieve some higher level. They do this by hiring coaches and trainers to help them improve their strengths.
Keep a Journal
When you measure something, you have a chance to change it. This only happens if you record your results. Keeping a daily journal where you record and monitor your strengths and weaknesses, and your efforts to improve them, is a guaranteed way to keep daily positive change first and foremost in your mind.
Ask for Input
Do you remember earlier where you asked your friends, family members, coworkers and boss to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses? As you are actively trying to improve your skills to help you achieve what you really want, schedule regular input sessions with those same people. Sometimes an outside set of eyes is all that is needed to identify if you’re headed in the right direction.
Understanding What Fulfills You and How Your Strengths & Weaknesses Play Into That
Think about the greatest times in your life. Relive mentally those events and occasions where you felt joy and fulfillment at the highest levels. What was going on? What activities were you undertaking? Were you engaged in a singular or group effort or event? Did you experience a high level of fulfillment because you worked very hard to achieve some goal?
Asking yourself these types of questions can help you identify what truly moves you.
Another quick way to discover your true passion is to ask yourself why you are engaged in chasing a particular goal? Are you trying to become a millionaire simply because that is what you see other people doing, and is what society preaches you need to pursue? Be honest with yourself. Is this really something that you would need or want?
Question your goals rather than assuming you are correct. Write down each and every one of your current desires and goals. Then be honest with yourself and go down the list, questioning whether or not these are things you truly desire.
It could be that you discover you have been spending years of your life and significant effort chasing after dreams that don’t relate to your core values.
Stop playing the comparison game.
Make a List
You don’t have to be wealthy, or beautiful, or heavier, or skinnier, or faster or bigger or funnier than you already are just because you see other people that are different than you in some way. Your values are your own. Stop comparing yourself to other people and their situations, and make a list of your core values.
This list should be those things that matter the most to you. If you prefer an evening at home alone with a good book to attending an crowded, noisy event with lots of people, quality time alone is one of your core values.
Listing the values that are important to you can reveal opportunities where improving your strengths and weaknesses can add fulfillment to your life.
The Relationship Between Strengths, Weaknesses and Values
Looking at your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those things you value highly, you may notice some obvious relationships. Many people become very good at doing things they value highly. If you are passionate about fitness, you are probably above average at working out, nutrition, and other activities which help you keep fit and in shape.
The opposite is also true. Many times your weaknesses exist because they are related to things you don’t care much about. Even so, if you are going to realize your true potential, you may have to focus some time and energy improving your ability in those areas which may not rank at the top of your values list, but could provide fulfillment, success and joy in your life.
Unlocking Your Full Potential
What is “potential”? What is this word that we always refer to when we speak about getting the most out of our efforts? Is this a new word, or does it have its origins in ancient times?
Actually, the root of potential, “potent”, is an old Latin word which means “being able”. This was later converted to the word “potentia”, which meant “power”. In modern times the word potential refers to what can possibly be. Dictionary.com defines potential as …
“Capable of being but not yet in existence; latent; the inherent ability or capacity for growth, development, or coming into being.”
The famous Merriam-Webster’s dictionary tells us potential is …
“Expressing possibility, liberty, or power. Having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future.”
This tells us that potential is what is inside you now, or something that you can add to your current list of abilities and characteristics, which can be used to create a reality which does not exist. That is a wonderful idea, isn’t it?
Wouldn’t it be great to dream of and then achieve any outcome your heart desires? This is exactly what you can do when you unlock your full potential, and discover what you can achieve.
Is There a Limit to Your Potential?
Though we have incredible technology, we cannot create a computer that is as powerful, capable and versatile as the human brain. Our experiments with artificial intelligence have grown by leaps and bounds in the early 21st century, but we are nowhere close to being able to replicate the complex workings and abilities of your brain.
Since we learned earlier that potential is something that could possibly be, this means you might not currently possess the things you need to achieve all your goals. Alternately, you may already have skills and abilities that simply need fine-tuning and exercise for you to harness them for the greatest achievements.
Think of the situation as a toolbox. Just because you don’t own a tool to do a particular job right now, that doesn’t mean you can’t go out and get that tool and add it to your collection.
When you take those statements together, you realize that no matter what you currently can and cannot do, because of the learning power of the human brain and the strength of your desire, there is no limit to the things you can achieve if you set your mind to them.
You simply need to do what was discussed earlier – identify your strengths and weaknesses, work to make them both stronger and more capable, focus on what truly drives you, and spend every day working in direct pursuit of the goals that mean the most to you.
Examples Where Potential Was Realized for Incredible Achievement
Sometimes looking at what others have done can inspire us. Some great achievements may appear to have been realized rather easily. People say things like “He was born for that” or “Everything she touches turns to gold”. There is a mindset with those statements that achievement is easy for some people.
On the other hand, there are those that have worked on both their strengths and weaknesses after identifying them, and made unbelievable achievements in the face of adversity. Here are 3 examples of people that identified very specifically what they really wanted, and then worked to build a skill set that made the achievement of those dreams virtually guaranteed.
Franklin Roosevelt – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a US president that served a record 4 terms. Politics is often a visual thing. If a person appears physically powerful and commanding, that presence can influence voters. History shows us that routinely, the taller of two US presidential candidates usually winds up with the most votes.
Roosevelt was paralyzed by polio from the waist down before he ever ran for the office of president. He understood that his physical condition could make him look weak in the eyes of some people.
He also realized he was very good at public speaking and at understanding the issues that were facing America at the times he ran for president. He used his strengths to hide what was perceived as a weakness, his physical state of health, and no president before or since has served as many years in the White House.
Albert Einstein – Albert Einstein is universally known as one of the smartest men who ever lived. His intelligence was so respected that people call you an “Einstein” as a way to tell you they think you are ultra-smart. He was a Nobel prize-winning physicist who discovered and explained the Law of Relativity, even though he had difficulties with math in school as a child. He could not even get a job for years in physics, his true love, after he graduated from college.
He worked for many years as a patent clerk, frequently passed over for promotion. He didn’t let any of those adversities keep him from studying quantum physics, which was his true passion in life. He worked on his strengths, research and hypothesizing, and almost single-handedly changed the entire field of physics.
Oprah Winfrey – Born in extreme poverty and raped at the age of 9, Winfrey became pregnant at 14. Her son died as an infant, and she faced adversity and hardship all of her young life. She knew she desperately wanted out of her situation, so she began to work on one of her strengths, communication.
She eventually got a job as a broadcaster for a local news channel, and early on in her adult life, focused on a never-ending dream to become a talkshow host. You may have heard that Oprah Winfrey became the world’s first black billionaire, and she now was regarded as the most influential woman in the world by entertainment industry experts.
These people realized their true potential by first identifying what they wanted. They understood what truly drove them, a passion or love that was constantly on their mind. Rather than simply going through life haphazardly hoping their dream would come true, they eliminated their negatives and built their strengths so powerful that they simply could not be ignored.
You have the same potential.
Einstein, Winfrey and Roosevelt had plenty of excuses for not realizing great achievements. If anything, living a normal life by a typical person’s definition would have been seen as an incredible achievement for all three of those individuals.
However, that was not good enough for them. They first dreamed of what could be, and instead of looking at what was holding them back, they developed strengths that allowed them to push past any set of obstacles. They kept their true passion at the forefront of their minds at all times, and worked to achieve their dreams each and every day.
That recipe virtually guarantees you are going to get what you want. Stop thinking about what is possible by looking about what currently exists. The true meaning of potential, “capable of being but not yet in existence”, proves that you can create any reality you desire.
Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Identify your strengths and weaknesses, work on them both, have a laser focus on what it is that truly drives you, and nothing is truly impossible.
