I am flawed. I have weaknesses. And if you are anything like me there are times when your weaknesses hinder you in life. You have times when you feel paralyzed by things that you know are flaws. Things that you wish desperately that you could change about yourself but in many cases you just can’t or perhaps it is going to be a long process.
I’ve done a lot of reading and learning on the topic of dealing with weaknesses recently and in a quick two part series I want to firstly outline a strategy that I am confident will be effective in dealing and then I will put my money where my mouth is by putting it into practice. So the more I reflect and the more I really think about weaknesses, I’ve come to realize that what hinders us is not the weaknesses themselves. We are actually paralyzed by the thought of people discovering our weaknesses. We are terrified that we will be exposed to the world and that these weaknesses will come to define who we are. If this is how you feel, I completely understand. It’s scary to think that people may come to find out who you are at your worst. But this fear is what is causing you so much strife and so much pain. So what if instead of worrying that other people will learn of our weaknesses, we just tell them outright?
My favorite way I’ve heard someone explain this is by calling it the “8 Mile Rule.” If you’ve ever seen the movie 8 Mile with Eminem you may know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you haven’t, for a little context, at the end of the movie, when Eminem’s character walks up to the final rap battle instead of taking shots at the guy he’s going against, he takes shots at himself. He talks truth about his shortcomings and his weaknesses and this leaves the other guy with absolutely nothing to say. You see when you lay your weaknesses out on the table, people can’t use them against you anymore.
See I really believe that a weakness can only harm you if you are unaware of it. So by making yourself aware of your weaknesses and communicating them to the world, you free yourself of the harm they can do to you. Every single one of us has things inside of us that we hide from the world. Thoughts we have, things we feel, things that we’ve done. I can only imagine the freedom you feel when you lay everything on the table and declare to the world, “this is me.” It’s so easy to hide behind all the positive in our lives. It’s easy to put up a front but it’s just that, a front. We all have stuff and by internalizing it we only harm ourselves.
All of this weakness talk really fascinated me because by examining your own weaknesses and shortcomings you learn a lot about yourself. Why you feel the way you feel, why you think the way you think, and why you do the things you do. I’d venture to say that you learn more about yourself in your weaknesses than in your strengths. I know this to be true for me. Reflecting on my flaws has helped me get to know myself on a whole new level. These days I feel so in-tune with myself and as one of my friends told me today, I am so much more in-tune with my emotions than most people my age and especially most guys my age.
But one shortcoming that I will externalize today is that although I know and understand many of my weaknesses, I still internalize most of them. I keep them to myself. I worry that people will find them out. But like I’ve been preaching today, this is the worst thing to do. So stay tuned for my next post where I get real. Where I lay it all on the table. Where I face the reality that I am flawed. I tell the world of my shortcomings because I am done being a slave to them.