Wednesday, November 07, 2007

A Matter of Priority

In life, it is far more important to develop your strengths than to compensate for your weaknesses.

9 comments:

rebecca said...

doesn't this say it all. i believe this will by new mantra.

Paul Sunstone said...

Hi Rebecca! Welcome to the blog! I'm glad you've found something you like.

Anonymous said...

umm.. sorry I'm not sure if I got this one right. Could you write few lines more? Thanks

Paul Sunstone said...

Sure, Priyank! Our strengths -- the things we excel at, or at least do best -- are usually what we should focus on developing in order to succeed in life or be happy. Our weaknesses -- the things we do less well -- are usually not what we should devote most of our time and energy to correcting.

Sometimes people encourage us to focus our time and energy on correcting our weaknesses. But that's often less productive than focusing on developing our strengths.

For instance, suppose a student was gifted in math but a poor speller. Further suppose the student's teacher spent all of her time with that student on trying to get him to spell better. The message she most likely would be sending to the student is that correcting his weaknesses (spelling) is more important than developing his strengths (math). But that's the wrong message to send!

It's the wrong message to send because most people are successful and happy when they play to their strengths rather than when they play to their weaknesses.

Does that help answer your question?

Anonymous said...

I agree!!!

Anonymous said...

Not sure I agree entirely. I think you are right in that developing your strength might be the route to happiness and fulfillment but I think a well rounded life comes from doing a few things you might not be good at.
Sometimes you can learn a lot about yourself when you put yourself into situations where you do not excel. Its not a matter of correcting but of exploring, and sometimes you find you were wrong; you actually had a talent in an unexpected direction.

Anonymous said...

Indeed. Wish I could always remember that, though :)

Anonymous said...

Yes, it makes sense now. Incidently my thoughts were naturally aligning to what you said!. Now I know why I like your blog.

Unknown said...

Veru well said Paul... and we have already seen success using this techniques - Tiger Woods used to suck at sand bunkers. He worked on it to make it satisfactory while working on the strengths to make them best.