Here I am writing another weekly Blog catered towards my learnings for the year around my theme, ‘Passionately Failing Towards Success’. I have been learning so much along the way about myself and what I can, should, could and need to be working on. One area that has been highlighted recently, as I start to navigate new territories, is discovering what my strengths and weaknesses are. I have found value in recognizing what they are. Why? Because it helps me identify and utilize this knowledge to understand myself better and how I work. Understanding my strengths allows me to make choices in my life that best serve me as I achieve and work on my goals now and in the future. As my life has started to take flight, knowing my weaknesses has helped me in 2 ways:
1: It has helped me find & seek out more skilled people to do the work that isn’t my strength or seek advice from people that know better than me. This has helped me focus on working to my strengths and what I am really good at.
2: It has helped me reflect on what I can work on to improve my life at the moment. I truly believe, life is a constant learning process and we can always be improving ourselves.
So this week, I will be reflecting on a few of my strengths and weaknesses and how I find the balance to succeed.
STRENGTH - GREAT WORK ETHICS
I come from a family of hard workers and I am grateful to have been brought up in an environment where working hard and being dedicated was the norm. I see great value in hard work and I am grateful for developing decent work ethics. In order to succeed in our lives, we need to work and take action consistently. We have to do those things that we don’t want to do because that's how we progress and learn. Most times, people hope to achieve their goals without doing a whole lot. Then, they feel frustrated when they become stagnant and stuck with not doing what they really love. Doing what we really love does not come easy and we have to go to those hard places; places we have never been before and do the hard things that we have never done before. I have seen so many people who dream of big things but refuse to take a job because they say it is beneath them. They don’t want to work for anyone else yet, they don’t work on their dreams either. They don’t want to work hard or even put themselves out there. They spend more time dreaming of their “ideal life” than putting in the work to create what they desire. It makes me feel lucky and blessed that I am willing to do the work. To be up early in the morning until late at night. To do the hard work when no one is looking. To do the work when it seems as if no one cares. To put myself out there even if I fail, I’m judged, or not supported. It is chipping away at our goals daily that brings us closer to achieving them. We must also be consistent, take action and keep taking action.
WEAKNESS - BEING WORKAHOLIC
I am constantly working early hours in the morning until the late hours of the night. Creating, developing, posting, emailing, writing, delivering, facilitating, questioning, researching, etc. This can be a good thing but when it starts to take precedence over time with my girl, my self care time, sleep and other important priorities? That is not a good thing. Being burned out is the next step when we work too long and don’t manage our time better. When I dedicate too much of my time to over working, my priorities become skewered. Like when we are building muscles, Dr. Karns says “microtears are what happens after a muscle gets physically worked”. It is in the moments of rest that these tears heal. Specifically, rest is essential for muscle growth. Exercise creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. But during rest, cells called fibroblasts repair it. This helps the tissue heal and grow, resulting in stronger muscles. The same is true with our minds and our time. It is in the moments that we physically rest, take appropriate breaks and let our mind rest, that we grow stronger. Allowing for more moments of creativity to inspire us to come back stronger. Over working does nothing but deplete and drain us of energy and space to be at our best.
FINDING BALANCE
I am trying to learn balance and am spending a lot of my time scheduling my life lately. This is especially since my year is extremely full. My business is growing, my team is expanding, I’m performing solo shows and gigs throughout the year, and I am studying for my Psychology degree at Massey University. I want to spend more quality time with my daughter, dedicate more time to friends, and most especially to serve and praise God. So, I want to make sure that I utilize my time well to achieve my best. Yes, it is good to work hard but not at the detriment of my emotional, spiritual, mental, physical or emotional health. My balance is currently planning out my life through goal setting, scheduling, vision boarding, getting clear on my ‘Why' and planning my life so I am balancing all areas in it. This is a lifelong lesson but an area I am currently prioritizing and working on.
STRENGTH - SELF BELIEF
Over time, I have learnt the importance of valuing myself and having self belief. My journey in this area has been transformative. I remember many decades ago having an interest in wanting to rap, sing and beatbox. However, I didn’t know how to begin nor did I have the confidence to try. This was made harder by the fact that so many people told me to never try and so, I didn’t. So many areas of my life were like that. I didn’t believe in myself enough. However, if I was passionate enough about it, like I was, Acting and Storytelling comments about me wasting my time didn’t affect me in the same way. Over the last 5 years, I have learnt to continue to do what I love regardless of people's opinions because I love doing it. It has been truly empowering and freeing to do what I love because I love it. It is our responsibility to celebrate our own wins, let our light shine, to be our biggest supporters. It is our responsibility to back ourselves and not let anyone else tell us otherwise. I have seen my life completely change from having this kind of mindset. Everyday, I work on being my absolute best even in the moment of confusion, lack of faith in myself, fear and the unknown.
WEAKNESS - BEING HARD ON MYSELF
I definitely used to be really hard on myself. I had huge expectations and my standards were so high that it was extremely hard to reach them. This was definitely something I had been told by others over the years. I used to feel as if I never met the mark, that I was always so far from where I believed I should be. I have learnt to be kinder to myself over the years and appreciate all the work and effort I put in. What has changed is that when I used to be hard on myself, it is because I really wasn’t working consistently enough. I would do good work and then stop. It was like I would begin this momentum of success like a ball about to roll down a hill but, it stopped and put on the other side. Then, I would work again, the ball would begin to roll down hill, and then stop. It was a vicious cycle. So I never got to see my potential or growth because they halted before they began. So I judged myself harshly because I didn’t realise it was my inconsistency that hindered me from really growing and progressing - not because I wasn’t good enough.
FINDING BALANCE
I'm grateful to learn to appreciate and celebrate myself more. I acknowledge that anything I do could always be better. And so, the next time, I do it better. Now, I have learnt and understood that if I try my best, then that is good enough. One of my affirmations that go off every hour is "I am beautiful and I am enough". Not tomorrow, or in a month from now - right at this very moment, I am enough. This has taught me to appreciate where I am in my life journey. I know that if I try my hardest, give it my best, put in the effort, then I can confidently say "I AM ENOUGH".
STRENGTH - GENERATING OPPORTUNITIES
One of the greatest lessons I learned is to seize opportunities. Don’t wait for them to happen. You need to seek them out, create them, ask for them and generate them. One of my affirmations that I also repeat hourly is ‘I have so many financial and career opportunities pouring into my life’. And boy, are they constantly pouring in! I realize that the more opportunities you say yes to, the more opportunities you manifest. So, it is a reciprocal cycle of give and take. What you put out into the world is what you get back. I learned to be open, to always see where I can be of need or where I can serve others. There are many opportunities, you just have to be willing to see and be ready to accept them.
WEAKNESS - MULTI-TASKING TOO MUCH
I recently performed my solo show ‘A thousand Thoughts A Minute’. It was named as such because I have a thousand thoughts a minute and I am multitasking way too much. So much so that it hurts my head at times. I flit from one thing to the other and would be juggling so many balls that I am not getting enough things done. I should be focusing instead on one thing and completing it so I can take it off my list. It has been great to sort out my priorities and hand over tasks to my staff who are more skilled in that area than I am. We should never be multitasking so much that we are drowning in it all. That is when we know we have to stop and take a breath. When we multitask, we don’t allow ourselves to do the best that we can. This can hinder more opportunities coming into our lives. I am learning to be conscious of what I am doing and letting the non important areas fall away on the wayside.
FINDING BALANCE
What I have learned is that we should not take on every opportunity presented to us. There is a talk by Dallin H Oaks that talks about Good, Better, Best. He said, "We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good, it isn't sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives". So, I am learning to view opportunities more selectively. I need to choose things that are the best for me and also make sure not to multitask too much.
STRENGTH - STICKABILITY
I am not the most talented, the most beautiful, nor the smartest person in the world. But, the one thing I do have is stickability. When I am committed to something I will see it through to the end. I look at the Confident Me Programme and I have been working on it for 12 years now. I have stuck with it even when I wasn’t sure what we were doing, or if we were even helping our children and youth to grow in confidence, when we weren’t valued, when no money was coming in and funding was pulled. When I sat in my car crying of exhaustion and shock from the session I just delivered. I never gave up and I am willing to encounter struggles and obstacles to achieve my goal and fulfill my vision. As with many areas of my life, I will never give up on the things I believe in and those that I am passionate about. I will not stop until I have reached my goals.
WEAKNESS - IMPATIENT
I have always been rather impatient. I keep hoping things would happen faster than they actually do. Getting easily frustrated when they don’t happen on my timing. Many times throughout my life, I have given up on things because I didn’t see any results at once. Then, I would vent to people about it and whine and moan. This definitely doesn’t help me or anyone else to whine when we don’t see things happening just yet. As I said previously, as long as we stick with things, we will achieve our goals. So, we may as well do it patiently which is way less stressful and less pressure.
FINDING BALANCE
I definitely learned to be more aligned in my life. I have learnt that things don’t happen in my timing for numerous reasons. There is more to be learnt, the timing is not right, we haven’t met the right people. For example, with the Confident Me Programme I had hoped to have been further by now. However, during this time, we have learnt to put better systems in place, learnt more tools to deliver the programme, found ways to develop the programme, learnt how to achieve more outcome per student. If things had taken off or grew further by now, then the things that have strengthened the programme we may not have learned. Patience is a virtue and I am starting to understand the importance of waiting on the right timing.
Our strengths and weaknesses can be a great indication of where we are in our lives. This can help us use our strengths to get us through experiences. Our weaknesses can help us know what we need to work on. One quote I have been saying to myself a lot recently as life, career & business gets busier is, "I can only do what I can do". I am driven, obsessed, relentless and at times, I am impatient and lack faith in myself. However, I realize that I set the pace in my life. Not long ago, I found out that I am exactly where I am meant to be with who I am meant to be - doing what I am meant to do. I always thought I was meant to be someone different, and acquired particular things in life. I also thought that if I hadn’t done certain things by now, it would be too late to start or begin. But it is never too late to begin. We are not obligated to run any faster than we can. This has allowed more space to align to what life has installed for me. I am embracing my strengths and weaknesses and they are guiding me to be the best that I can be. Acknowledging them helps me because it gives me the peace to continue finding balance between my strengths and my weaknesses.
Looking beautiful (as ever)...