If You Want To Become Exceptional, Focus on Your Strengths Rather Than Your Weaknesses

Don't make the mistake of those who become average everywhere, but exceptional nowhere.

Just as you are imperfect, I am imperfect too. This is quite normal since we are humans, and humans are all imperfect in one way or another. This is what makes us unique. The beauty of life lies in how we use our imperfections to make our differences shine and achieve great things.

Although everyone agrees with what I just said, no one likes to have flaws. You will always hear people telling you to strengthen your flaws by working them twice as hard as your strengths.

In school, you may have been stronger in math than in biology. Your teachers or parents probably told you to work twice as hard in biology to become as strong as you were in math.

If you played sports in competition when you were younger, your coach also told you the same thing about your weaknesses. Let me use the example of a basketball player. Knowing how to use both hands, in the same way, is an advantage. So if you could only make layups with your right hand, your coach must have told you to work more on your left hand.

You listened to your coach or teachers. So you redoubled your efforts on your weak points. By redoubling your efforts, you probably managed over time to make your biology level equal to your math level, and your left-handed layup as strong as your right-handed layup.

Unfortunately for you, by focusing exclusively on your weaknesses, you have neglected your strengths which have become average. You have become average overall when you probably had the chance to be unique by fully exploiting your strengths.

This is where the limits of versatility come to light.

People who achieve great things are usually people who excel in certain areas, and who have chosen to focus on their strengths. Rather than trying to be good at everything, these people quickly decided to specialize.

To figure out what they needed to specialize in, these people simply leaned even harder on their strengths. If you had focused on your math skills early on rather than trying to catch up in biology, who knows what you might have done since.

When you were playing basketball, if you had continued to develop your strong point without necessarily trying to make your weak point as strong as your strong point, you might well have had a career in competition. Who knows after all!

What I want you to understand here is that your best chance to become exceptional in life is to focus fully on what you naturally do best so that you can dedicate yourself fully to it. Use your intrinsic qualities by making sure you develop them to the maximum. This will allow you to stand out from the crowd and exploit your uniqueness.

There are plenty of average people everywhere but exceptional nowhere. These people do average things. Nothing wrong with that. However, it's a shame to think that they could have done much better if they had let their strengths shine through.

That's what you're going to have to focus on in the future to do great things.

The last example that comes to mind is people in large companies who end up becoming managers thinking it's a necessary step to advance in their careers. Not everyone is cut out to be a manager. Some are made for other things. Rather than becoming an average manager, strive to become exceptional in the areas you are most proficient in and enjoy.

By following this approach, you will be able to lead a much more fulfilling life, because you will respect who you are and what you want to do. It is up to you to make this paradigm shift as soon as possible.