CREATING STRENGTH FROM
WEAKNESS
by Dr. Dan Bochner
To find out what your greatest strength might be, maybe you need only
look at your greatest weakness. I know that sounds weird, but it's generally
true. Those people you admire most are typically driven by what bothers
them most. Doctors and lawyers, priests and rabbis, animal rights activists
and veterinarians, all find their strength in the things that bother them most
about themselves and/or about the world. So, when you're thinking most
about your suffering, or when your self-esteem is at its lowest, try to think
about how your accomplishments are inextricably connected to the way
you're feeling now.
How could this strange phenomenon possibly be true? It's really a very
simple process. Successful people are often attempting to overcome the
feeling that represents the opposite of their success. Wealthy people are
often trying to overcome the feelings engendered within them as
impoverished children. Individuals with great intellectual accomplishments
are often proving their intelligence. Sports stars, actors and actresses, and
musical artists, are often looking for special attention to counter a feeling that
they are far too ordinary. In addition to being spiritually minded, clergy
members are all too often beset by tremendous guilt and have a need to take
responsibility in order to appease that guilt.
Although our successes and weaknesses are invariably connected, that
connection should in no way diminish our accomplishments. If you were to
start talking to your physician and he told you about how he felt foolish
when his father challenged him as a boy, would you feel he was any less
intelligent? If a member of clergy discussed with her congregation the
oppressive guilt she felt having observed her younger sister being maimed in
some terrible way, would she be any less moral or giving? Likewise, if you
are proud of something you have accomplished, the reason for the
accomplishment should in no way lessen your efforts or the thing itself.
The fact of the matter is, when we fight to overcome something due to
the pain it has caused us, we work very very hard. Typically, if you are to
observe the great accomplishments of society, you will see that hard work
was far more important to those accomplishments than was intelligence,
strength, or even luck (although certainly those factors do have a great deal
of influence). And if you look for reasons that people work hard, you'll see
that hard work is far more related to the process of overcoming than it is to
any other factor.
Simply put, people have to have motivation. Motivation typically
comes in the form of some kind of unmet need. Need itself typically means
that there is something inside us that must be satisfied. When satisfaction
merely means you need a drink or something to eat, in our current society,
that doesn't require much hard work. Hard work in today's society is
typically motivated by the need to show others, and ourselves, who we want
them and ourselves to see.
The impression we make on other people is a huge motivator, even in
those who believe they don't really care. In fact, most people who feel
they're sure they don't care what others think are most motivated by a fear
of being pawns to the wishes of others. Likewise, thoughtful people are
often either afraid of being perceived as selfish, or are overcoming how hurt
they themselves have been by others being insensitive. Good people are
afraid of being bad, or have too often been the victims of others being bad.
Mean people are afraid of being treated like chumps if they were to act too
nice. Hard workers often fear the appearance of being lazy. The list goes
on and on.
Of course, that doesn't mean it's really that easy to figure out what
makes other people tick. For sure, there's great overlap in the many
dominant traits that can be perceived in others, and many different reasons
those traits exist. We might be able to figure out others over time or with
their help. On the other hand, people are really quite good at knowing about
themselves what motivates them when their asked to (or motivated to)
explore the things they do. More or less, the only reason people sometimes
don't know why they are especially good at a particular thing is because they
have no motivation to figure it out.
Primarily, the reason it is important to understand that our weaknesses
are directly related to our strengths is that it helps us understand ourselves.
We can benefit from appreciating our weaknesses when we're most ashamed
of them, or when we're feeling really down. We can also benefit from
acknowledging our weaknesses when we're at our most overconfident lest
we become overconfident and maybe even cocky. As indicated in many of
my other articles, balance is really the key. When some problem within
ourselves is especially poignant for us, we need to compensate by achieving
in a direction that we feel proves the problem moot.
Of course, achievement, or any kind of behavior aimed at
compensating for an unresolved psychological issue, doesn't actually resolve
the problem. Resolution of the problem requires that it be fully
acknowledged and understood and then relieved through maturation and
perspective. Compensation for a psychological issue with behavior designed
to prove that its the furthest thing from being a problem actually allows for
the problem to be denied. Although people partly use compensating
behavior to prove to others that they are not what they fear others might see,
they try hardest to prove it to themselves. Typically, people are quite
successful in doing so. Most of us believe we have successfully become the
opposite of what we fear most within ourselves.
Strangely enough, when we have tried to overcome our inadequacies
with achievement, the achievements are truly positive. Hard work leads to
success and there is nothing as powerful as the need to overcome
psychological problems when it comes to motivating hard work. Great
success can be continued when problems are genuinely dealt with as well,
because the talents we gain while overcoming our problems continue to be
significant. As you might imagine, for example, the person who tries to do
things perfectly, in order to overcome the fear of things falling apart in their
lives, will continue to do things exceptionally well even when the fear of
things falling apart is adequately diminished.
The truth is, society has advanced at least as much because of its
psychological problems as it has for any other reason. If we were all raised
perfectly in a world where everything was provided, and if our challenges
merely led us to become responsible, but mentally healthy, adults, and we
never felt the pains of inadequacy, loss, embarrassment, and all sorts of
fears, it is extremely unlikely that we would accomplish anything very
special. It must be acknowledged that psychological problems lead us to our
greatest accomplishments. Likewise, it must also be acknowledged that our
greatest accomplishments are, nevertheless, truly great accomplishments,
indeed.