One of the most important things about understanding ourselves is finding that which allows us perceive our Selves as whole and complete. When we can see ourselves in this way, we begin to understand our potential, as individuals, and as part of the human race.
Whenever I begin working with someone new, the first thing I listen for is how my client views their strengths and weaknesses. How much time do they spend taking about them, what is the general attitude toward them, and what have they attempted in an effort to understand them more fully in the past?
When I ask my clients to describe an action that takes them out of their comfort zone, and what stops them from taking that action, the most common response is an indication of a deep fear that their weaknesses are more influential to their decision making and success than their strengths.
I believe that this is a product of continual and somewhat unintentional conditioning practices from our parents and teachers to us, from early childhood on, of bringing more attention to our flaws than our merits. This brings up adults who are always questioning their worth, or the value of their contributions to society.
It forces a great deal of negative internal dialogue to take place about things such as continual worry that a single mistake could have such a large effect that it could harm customers or clients, or when our flaws will manifest in such a way that they will outweigh our strengths and cost us our jobs, or worse, an entire career.
Such fears are generally irrational and unfounded in reality, and yet, these fears drive our decisions to stay within our established limitations, manifesting fears into reality, and keeping us from successfully moving forward. For those who have decided they can no longer live within these ideas, the hardest part of shifting their thinking of not knowing where our how to start.
I believe that the only way to make real changes in thinking is to focus on the positive aspects of our being. We are all very familiar, too familiar in fact, with the flaws we all have. Through continual conditioning, most of us have not been taught to really focus our attention to our strengths and flaws in such a way that allows us to feel wholeness within ourselves.
When we’re encouraged to accept our strengths as challenges to maintain, we immediately send a subconscious message to ourselves that our strengths are barely enough, and that we should fear personal flaws, because it is in the flaws that we fail to show the full effect of the strengths we possess. After all, those flaws keep us held back, right?
To that, I say no, absolutely not. I feel that focusing on our strengths as an undeniable fact, rather than our flaws being the only undeniable facts, we can then look at our flaws as what they are, which are simply a challenge to overcome, integrate, or change the perceptions of.
In this way, we can expand our comfort zones to accept more possibilities, more opportunities, and an find that we are, in fact, whole and complete sentient beings. When we find wholeness within ourselves, we learn to focus on our strengths and perceive our flaws as challenges to overcome, rather than to focus on our flaws, and perceive our strengths as challenges to maintain.
When we are whole, we know our strengths are more than good enough, they are as they should be, and possibly could be refined over time with wisdom through experience. When we are whole, our flaws are not what define us, buy merely that which propels us into forward action.
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