Are you positioning yourself towards success?
This is going to be one of those posts guys, Tough Love Jimmy is back in the building and today we’re talking about Self Awareness. If you haven’t seen the video by Gary Vaynerchuk, I sincerely encourage you to watch it. It’ll help put this all into perspective.
Everybody can think of something that they know they’re not good at in a split-second. Most of us don’t even have to think about it. The answer reflexively leaps to the front of our minds without even spending the energy to think about it. However, we all have our blind spots.
Real You vs. Idealized You
There are things we want to do and things we want to be, and sometimes we’re blind to our weaknesses because we want that thing so badly. No matter what that proverbial carrot is, the idealized version of who we want to be doesn’t match up with our strengths and at the end of the day, it’s holding you back. You’re spending energy working in a direction to be something you’re not or do something you’re just plain bad at, but you aren’t aware of it so it’s tougher than it should be or you’re not seeing the gains you want to see.
Why is this so tough?
It’s difficult because you’re not ready yet. You don’t have the skills or the experience or the guidance to put the rubber to the road so you’re stuck spinning your wheels in the mud and if you never take an internal inventory of what you have going on, you’ll never reach the pavement.
Don’t Set Yourself Up For Failure
That’s not to say that you can’t or won’t achieve your goals, but you have to be honest with yourself. Maybe you don’t have the temperament or attention span to be an entrepreneur. Maybe that position you’re going after at work relies heavily on a skill that’s one of your weaknesses or requires experience you don’t have and may end up getting you fired in the long run. Maybe an old knee injury is preventing you from competing at a certain level of competitive sport.
These are hard questions you have to ask yourself and potentially life changing conclusions to come to, but it’s better to swallow an uncomfortable truth and find your true calling now than to waste years banging your face against a wall trying to be something you’re not. You have to identify, assess, and accept your weaknesses before you can better yourself.
Know who you are and play to your strengths
Find out what you’re good at, be it through self-analysis or getting feedback from other people, and go all in on that thing. When you play to your strengths, that’s when everything start clicking. That’s when things stop being tough. That’s when you start seeing success and bigger gains from your hard work because you’re just plain better at it. Find something that you love and that you’re good at and do that thing for the rest of your life. You may not have discovered that yet and it’s still out there waiting or you!
Look at where you want to go and take a good, hard look at the hand of cards you’re holding to see if they’ll take you there. If not, maybe it’s time to give them a shuffle and see what happens.