Focus On Your Strengths

Do you focus on your weakness or do you focus on your strengths? Have you heard of the SWOT analysis? It is a tool that is often used in business and stands for strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. You can also use the tool for other areas of your life. Many people will tell you to work on your weaker areas to turn them into strengths.

Why focus on your strengths?

In NLP we say focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. If you consistently focus on what you don’t want, then you inevitably bring more of it in your life. Example, keep focusing on the negative things in life and you can easily become a negative person to be around. Know any people like that? If you keep looking for your weaknesses, you will continue to find them. There will always be something that you can be better at and this can easily lead to people feeling unworthy or depressed.

I found another article in Psychology today about 10 reasons to focus on your strengths.

Focus on your strengths and become a super star

Malcolm Gladwell said in his book Outliers, that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in your field. Michael Jackson practiced day in and day out from a very young age to become the star he did. When you focus on your strengths, then you can become excellent in that area of your life or business. Standing out from the crowd. As you focus on your strengths, you will become stronger in some of your weaker areas anyway, or they simply won’t matter that much.

Think of an Olympic swimmer. They focus on improving their swimming and not their running ability. A CEO might have a wonderful ability to inspire and lead. He has very good personnel to run other parts of the business. You don’t think Richard Branson is good at everything and the 400 or so businesses he owns, do you?

When you focus on your strengths, then some of the things you are weaker at, won’t matter as much. They may become unimportant, or let somebody else take care of it if you must.

Delegating your weakness

Unfortunately you can’t delegate all the areas that you might weak in. Abdicating all your weaknesses and burying your head in the sand is not what is meant. Example integrity is something that you can only work on for yourself. You can’t delegate integrity. There are other areas in your life that you might have to work on for yourself. If you were weak at managing your staff, then that would be an area that you can focus on improving.

The idea is that you work on what is in your control and keep your focus on moving forward. If you were struggling to make ends meet, then you probably want to focus on making more money? That makes sense. The problem is that most people focus on not having enough money. In this case a person should focus on making more money. A subtle yet, major difference. People often rather complain about what they don’t have, than what is in their control. It is perfectly fine to want to get better at doing certain things. As long as it does not come at the expense of celebrating your strengths. Good goal setting can help you with this.

At the same time, over developing a particular strength can also become a weakness. An example is somebody who is really good at selling, might become really driven by doing deals. Or they may become obsessed with selling and then actually become weak in the area of empathy for clients. There is a fine line. One must have enough sensory acuity and be aware of what is going on in your life.

See weakness as potential areas for improvement

What are areas of potential weakness in your life?
What can you delegate to others and what are areas that you might have to work on yourself?
See the areas of weakness as potential areas of improvement. How will working on these areas increase your overall strengths?
Which of your areas of strengths, by making them even stronger, will naturally improve your areas of improvement?

Celebrate your strengths and consider those areas of your life that are effected by potential areas of improvement.

If you need any help with identifying or working on your strengths, then feel free to reach out.