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, CEOs and presidents, 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. People in charge often have felt others trying to control them. 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, even if there is a reason for the accomplishment in your past, it should in no way diminish your efforts or the accomplishment 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 become for others, and ourselves, who we want them to see, and who we want to be.
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.
When looking at our strengths and weaknesses, 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 and mentally healthy adults, and if 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 at all. It must be acknowledged that the psychological problems we face lead us to our greatest accomplishments. Likewise, it must also be acknowledged that our greatest accomplishments are, nevertheless, truly great accomplishments, indeed.
