A while back, I took a character strengths survey and got a report on how good I was at 24 key character strengths ordered best to worst. Like any normal person, I scrolled to the bottom to find the weaknesses – Self-Regulation, Fairness, Humility – I needed to fix. I completely disregarded my top strengths – Creativity, Perspective, Humor.
For a while, I tried being more humble, fair, and disciplined (better self-regulation). My productivity took a nosedive, my strengths diminished, and worst of all, my happiness declined. Sure, I had fewer weaknesses, but at what cost?
Eventually, I came across the concept of a personal swot analysis and this quote on Linkedin:
“Everybody has strengths and weaknesses; I’m fascinated by people’s obsession to pour all of their efforts into fixing their weaknesses, which is playing defense, and not tripling down on their strengths.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
It made me wonder, why do people focus so much on fixing perceived weaknesses?
What would happen if people focused on leveraging their strengths?
How can people best leverage their strengths?
All of those ideas turned into this article.
Why People Focus on Fixing Weaknesses
People focus on fixing weaknesses instead of leveraging their strengths for a few reasons.
- Negativity Bias. Negative stimuli (weaknesses) impact our brains more than positive ones (Strengths).
- Fear of Failure. Fixing your weaknesses is safer and has a lower chance of failure than acting on your strengths. If you only play defense, there is no chance of failing to make a shot because you never shoot.
- Negative Self-Image/Low Self-Esteem. You feel inferior to others causing you to focus on your perceived weaknesses. Your method of feeling better becomes fixing your perceived flaws.
- Culture/Conditioning. We have all heard something like this: “You are good at this… BUT you need to improve on this, this, and especially THIS. We are in a culture of giving negative feedback.
TLDR: People focus on fixing their weaknesses because of a negativity bias, fear of failure, negative self-image and culture/conditioning
Trying to Be Good at Everything
Another reason people focus excessively on fixing weaknesses is they try to be good at everything.
Basketball Hall Of Famer Shaquille O’Neal (Shaq) was a terrible free-throw shooter.
Legendary innovator Steve Jobs was a colossal jerk.
Necessary liquid water has no taste or personality. You can literally see right through it.
No one is perfect. You can try all you want, but no one is perfect.
Some people still try to be perfect by neurotically eliminating all weaknesses. These people are not playing offense by trying to be good at everything; they are playing defense by trying to not be bad at anything.
Healthy perfectionism is focusing on being the best you possibly can be at a few chosen things. Shaq chose strength, Steve Jobs chose innovation, and water chose life.
Neurotic perfectionism is focusing on fixing every possible weakness. Obsessive perfectionism makes people focus on flaws and gets them trapped in the infinite cycle of negativity, while significantly diminishing their strengths. Here’s Evan Carmichael talking about it.
TLDR: People cloak their neurotic perfectionism of fixing weaknesses by “trying to be good at everything.”
What Happens When You Focus on Fixing Weaknesses
As a fun challenge, try not to think of a pink elephant for a minute.
How long did you last? Most people do not make it past 5 seconds. How did this happen? When have you ever really thought about a pink elephant?
Social psychologist Daniel Wegner dubbed this phenomenon the “ironic process theory,” which states trying to remove/suppress specific thoughts actually brings them up more.
Similarly, trying to fix your weaknesses actually brings them up more. If you concentrate only on fixing or driving out your weaknesses, you necessarily must focus on weaknesses.
It’s like the infinite negativity cycle. You focus on fixing weaknesses -> You concentrate upon weaknesses -> You focus on fixing weaknesses, and the cycle continues.
This consistent focus on weaknesses also reinforces a negative self-image. You can start to notice more negative things about yourself and start losing your greatest strengths. This process only makes you feel worse and continues the infinite negativity cycle.
Sidenote: I’m not saying to never focus on fixing weaknesses. The issue is when people become more obsessed with fixing their weaknesses than leveraging their strengths.
TLDR: Focusing on fixing weaknesses puts you in an infinite cycle of focusing on weaknesses.
Why You Should Play to Your Strengths
Instead of playing defense by fixing your weaknesses, you can leverage your strengths and play offense. There are so many more benefits of playing to your strengths, such as:
Greater Happiness
Studies have shown that the more you use your signature strengths, the happier you become. A study mentioned in “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor encouraged 577 volunteers to pick one of their signature strengths and use it in a new way each day for a week. As a result, these people became significantly happier and less depressed than control groups. Even more amazing, their levels of happiness remained high for a full six months after the experiment.
Greater Confidence
According to the author of The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg, Keystone habits are “small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.” Leveraging a strength can help you build confidence in one area of your life. This newfound confidence acts as a keystone habit, improves your self-image, and helps you become more confident in other areas of your life.
More Opportunities
Out of 73 Heisman Winners (the most prestigious award in College Football), only one primarily defensive player has won the Heisman. The winner, Charles Woodson, did not only play defense, but he also returned kicks and occasionally played receiver. Would he have won only playing defense? Experts doubt it. When you leverage your strengths and play offense, you have greater opportunities available to you.
TLDR: Leveraging your strengths leads to greater happiness, greater confidence, and more opportunities.
How to Use a Personal SWOT Analysis to Leverage Your Strengths
A personal SWOT analysis consists of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You can use the analysis to identify your main strengths and leverage them into opportunities. You can also use the analysis to become aware of how your weaknesses can turn into potential threats.
Identifying your strengths is the simple part. Leveraging your strengths and acting on your opportunities is the real challenge. To help you stay accountable, I created an activity on our happiness course website to help you perform a personal SWOT analysis, make daily entries to see what you are focusing on, and an option to view your progress to make adjustments. The site is completely free.
Now let’s see how to do the activity.
Personal SWOT Analysis Activity
The 1st part of your personal SWOT analysis is answering these questions on the site.
Identify Your Strengths
What do you do better than anyone else?
What are your highest values?
What do other people (friends, family, colleagues) see as your strengths?
You can also take the character strengths survey I discussed at the beginning of this article. After taking the survey, you will get a report on the main 24 character strengths in order of strongest to weakest.
Become Aware of Your Weaknesses
What will the people around you see as your weaknesses?
What tasks do you usually avoid because you don’t feel confident doing them?
You can also scroll down on the strengths report to find your main weaknesses.
Remember, you want to be aware of your weaknesses. Not excessively focus on them. You are aware of cars when crossing the street; you do not focus on them.
Leverage Your Strengths Into Opportunities
What are the possible opportunities for your skillset?
What are people with similar strengths to you doing?
How can you use your strengths to take advantage of current business trends?
How can you combine multiple passions into unique opportunities?
(I combined my love of software and personal development into creating a website for Happiness at Work)
Understand Possible Threats
What obstacles might you face?
What is your competition doing that you are not the best at?
How are trends changing that might highlight your weaknesses.
In the 80/20 Principle, Richard Koch says, “Instead of training yourself not to be afraid of snakes, avoid them altogether.”
Remember, you simply want to be aware of threats, not become good at dealing with them. We have an Avoiding Downers activity where you simple avoid downers/threats.
Making Daily Entries
Performing a personal SWOT analysis is a one-time event. Leveraging your strengths into opportunities is a life-long practice, which is why the 2nd part of your personal swot analysis is making a daily entry by simply marking how much you focused on:
- Enhancing your strengths
- Fixing your weaknesses
- Acting on opportunities
- Dealing with threats
It is a simple practice with a small time investment. Done daily, it will pay enormous dividends for your happiness and success.
Here is what my daily entry looks like:
Viewing Progress
The purpose of the daily entries is to feel good about regular short-term success. For long-term success, it’s essential to see your progress on your personal SWOT analysis and make adjustments. In the view progress, you can pick the individual SWOT elements and compare how much energy you gave towards each one over different periods.
While seeing the analysis by weeks and months can give insights on the progress you have made, viewing your progress by Days of the Week gives you the most actionable insights.
Using the Days of the Week Personal SWOT Analysis, you can find when you are at your best. Let’s say you enhance strengths the most Monday and Wednesday, helping you leverage the most opportunities. What were you doing on those days? Double down and do the same Tuesday and Thursday. Then triple down and do it Friday and Saturday.
When did you focus the most on fixing weaknesses? Let’s say you put yourself in positions of weakness Tuesday and Thursday, causing you to face threats. Avoid those situations. Better yet replace them with that you were doing Monday and Wednesday.
Conclusion
Everyone has unique strengths and weaknesses.
Focusing only on fixing weaknesses is playing defense, it’s easy, and you are not taking any risks. You are also not living. Playing such great defense with no offense, you might as well not play at all.
One of the keys to happiness and success is playing to your strengths and leveraging them into opportunities. By using a personal SWOT analysis, you can identify your strengths and leverage them into opportunities and become aware of your weaknesses and the potential threats they pose.
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