I have gotten the chance to share some talk time with a gentleman that comes to the store that I work at. It has been a very interesting experience getting to hear his thoughts that have ranged from superficial to very deep. The other day he turned the conversation on me and stated that we as humans really don't need each other, we are the ones that drive ourselves. I quickly declared that i only agreed with half of his statement. I do believe that we have to believe in and love ourselves to truly to succeed in this life. No one can do it for you. However, there are days where I need a little bit of a boost. My friend David describes it as "propping me up where I am sagging". There are two ways to take that. One is the that boost that I stated a couple lines ago. This need is temporary. These are the days where mentaly or physicaly we are just not up to par. The other way is permenant. We all have strengths and weaknesses and not everyone contains the same ones. Take a buissness for instance. There are people who are great at the administrative aspects but not really good at the selling part or dealing with the public. And there are people who are horrible administrators but obviously have the skill to deal with people. We all need one another. We are only a piece of the puzzle and not the entire puzzle it's self as we sometimes would like to believe
It is the easiest thing to admit our strengths. The weaknesses, not so much. Sometimes it seems easier to dig our heals in and announce to the world that it is not a weakness. Our pride is satisfied and that's all that matters. But to truly grow as a person we need to let go of our pride and let someone help us. When I was in college I took a position as a Note Taker to make some sort of money. The position was to go into another class that I was not taking and take notes for someone with a learning dissability or a physical one. Usually, it was the first of the two. Most of the time I didn't know who the student was but there were the special exceptions when the student would decide to tell me because they trusted me. When I took that position they never warned me that I would at times play therapist. One day one of the students came up and expressed to me how he felt stupid and inferior for needing a note taker. Having the chance to get to know him before this conversation I knew that he was far from that. He was amazing with his hands. He had shown me the car that he was rebuilding and it took my breath away. He also was an accomplished carpenter at a young age but he just had a hard time with academics. Thankfully I came up with the way to explain it to him that he could understand. I asked him to pretend that he was building something and was using some sort of power tool (my knowledge of tools is limited to a hammer, screw driver, screws and nails so please bare with me). Now the tool had an old battery that would do the job but it would take extra time and be slightly frustrating. While at work someone goes by and offers him a brand new, never been used, fully charged battery. I then asked him what would he do? He looked at me like I had just grown another head and answered that he would take the battery. Well, would you feel bad about taking it? He again answered no and the realized what I was trying to tell him. My help was just giving him the boost he needed. He was still doing the work but was just taking advantage of the help offered to him do it better and there was nothing wrong with that.
So all that fluff to say that there is nothing wrong with being who you are. That includes your strengths and weaknesses. It's what you do with them that shows the world the true you.
