Every day is a new challenge for all of us. We face many difficulties and problems as we go through each day one by one. Especially as a student, a day is filled with various tasks and events like finishing up an assignment, doing a presentation, or even taking up responsibilities for a particular job. All of us confront situations that require us to use all our capabilities to overcome them successfully. What exactly should we do in these types of situations? Let me walk you through one way of handling each challenge like a pro. And that is to focus on your strengths and utilize them effectively to suit each situation. As Gary Vaynerchuk, a famous entrepreneur and proud owner of VaynerX said, “Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses”.
What do we mean by strengths?
In layman’s terms, it’s something that we are good at. All of us have our own strengths that define how we handle a particular situation. In my own self, I believe that I have good communication skills that make me capable of communicating easily with others and building team rapport. These capabilities, skills, and knowledge that we have accumulated as strengths, empower us. Why should we choose to focus on our strengths? Strengths are what we are good at. Practicing them makes us more confident. They allow us to perform something in a better way. Therefore, It’s always better to focus on what we are good at. Then we just need to practice more on them as practice makes perfect.
So how can we exactly focus on our strengths? There may be skills and qualities that you may already possess or may not. The good thing about strengths is that we can always build upon them. If we did not have a particular skill before, all we need to do is focus on building it through various exercises and training.
Here are some tips on how you can focus on your strengths and accomplish success….
- Do a self-check
It’s always important to first look in your own self and reflect. What kind of things am I good at? What kind of things am I bad at? Take some time for yourself and identify your own capabilities. Reflect on how you built them. This may provide you insights into your current strengths and how you can perfect them as well as identify areas where you fall short in building them.
- Role models
One of the best ways to build upon strengths is to look up to role models. There are always key figures in your life or famous personalities who have faced many challenges in their lives. Their experience and story will inspire us to be better versions of ourselves. A role model will teach us how to build up our skills and expertise and motivate us.
- The learning process
Another key point to remember is that identifying, building, and focusing on our strengths is not just a one-time event. It’s a process. There are always going to be times when we recognize the new potential within us or recognized areas to improve. All we have to do is continue to build up on all these factors to better ourselves.
What of our weaknesses?
As said, we should always focus on our strengths. But aren’t our weaknesses important too? The main reason to focus on our capabilities is to build up our self-confidence. But this does not mean our weaknesses don’t provide us with more information. Humans are imperfect. There are areas where we may fall short in. These are our weaknesses. Rather than consider weaknesses in a negative manner, we should look at them as potential areas to improve. We can always develop skills and knowledge on what we lack. We may not show expertise in them particularly but will be better at them than before. The most important thing with weaknesses is not letting them affect us negatively. They should be considered as things that we can improve further.
AIESECers are energetic, enthusiastic youth who face many daily challenges. Balancing academics and work life together with social work and volunteering with AIESEC, can be hectic. But these are the situations or perfect opportunities given to us to develop our capabilities and skills. So, go ahead and focus on growing your strengths beyond your weaknesses through AIESEC.
Tags: AIESEC, Leadership, Strengths Last modified:
