The Limit to Self Help

Everywhere you look there are gurus and self help readily available to help you tackle your weaknesses. For a long time, I fell into that thinking. I was once described by a friend very close to me as “self aware to a fault”, meaning  I have the tendency to become so obsessed with my negative personality traits that I would dilute my positive ones in the pursuit of muting them. In other words, the tendency to become so consumed by deficiencies that I lost track of what made me…effective (for lack of a better all encompassing word).

You see, a funny thing can happen if you get so caught up in addressing your weaknesses. Because they are always top of mind, you end up projecting them out into the world, thus defeating the entire purpose of being self aware in the first place. Your weaknesses become a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy over and over again.

This isn’t a blind decree to say “I am who I am”. If something in our life won’t stop popping up over and over again and preventing our advancement then it’s certainly time to take notice and fix that, but there is a limit. Otherwise, you’ll just end up a suppressed mess of kinda this and sorta that, an anxious stage actor playing an idealized version of yourself that isn’t real.

Your strengths are great. Use ’em.

-Dave