Let It Go

I am not an inherently organized person. I have never been accused of being “detail-oriented” or “meticulous”. When making plans, I don’t review past experiences or anticipate what could go wrong. I am not always practical, and I will absolutely leap before I look.

For a lot of my life, these things were pointed out to me as “weaknesses” — character flaws that I was encouraged to overcome, skills I was lacking and needed to develop. But eventually I realized that, though the criticism was well-intended, it was ultimately fairly terrible advice.

You see, there’s a difference between a weakness and the stuff you’re just not naturally good at. A weakness is something that gets in the way of your success, and success is something you get to define for yourself.

So if I define success for myself as being disciplined, deliberative, focused, and consistent, I’m going to feel like a failure pretty much all the time. Because no matter how hard I try, I will never be great at those things.

I’ll let you in on a secret that changed my life:

It’s not a problem to be bad at stuff. We’re all bad at stuff. The problem emerges when you pour all your effort into trying to be good at the stuff you’re bad at.

When you let go of trying to be good at things that other people are great at, you suddenly have all this energy to invest in what you are naturally great at! Sure, I’m an undisciplined, inconsistent flibbertigibbet — that’s because I am creative, spontaneous, optimistic, and willing to take risks — of course I can’t be both.

And I’m not saying that we get to do *only* the stuff we like and we’re good at — but it is a heck of a lot easier to figure out how to get done what needs to get done if we don’t feel like a failure every time we fall short in those areas. Plus, not labelling these shortcomings as “weaknesses” makes it much easier to ask for help — for me that looks like lots of reminders (thanks to Grace for helping me get this article written!) and seeking out helpful perspectives I might not be aware of (thanks to my husband Luke and my coach Marc for always helping me avoid disaster!).

So, tell me: what’s something you suck at that you’re going to let go of fixing? And how can I help?

Email me at Hanna(at)RingmasterConsulting.com.