How well do you know yourself?

Daily I work with individuals that are seeking to understand how to overcome the obstacles of growth, personal development, leadership, relationships and hiring. It’s an interesting journey once they agree to meet with me and allow me to peek inside their heads. Over the years, I’ve become abundantly aware that collectively we are severely lacking in knowing truly who we are, but times are changing, and people are more interested than ever before in unlocking their own purpose and potential!

Identifying the Strength

I’m not sure why so much emphasis is put onto what we feel is lacking, but it’s a chronic problem. I too suffered from this for many years of my life. I’ve always struggled with wanting to improve certain things that I felt really created struggles in many areas for me. My “short fuse” and reactivity made me feel like I couldn’t trust my own judgment. Unfortunately, this led me to believe that there was something wrong with me and I would fight the urge and feel frustrated often in a variety of life situations. I also felt unheard often and was extremely uncomfortable when others weren’t responsive to me.  These two areas of my life often confused me and made me feel as though I should work harder to be different. The overwhelming majority of the time, that very approach is the one that worked the worst. 

It wasn’t until later in my life, as I matured and then also found the amazing assessment tool that I use today (AcuMax Index), that I had the gift of truly understanding myself on a new level. As I worked through understanding the results offered by this comprehensive tool, I began to make some important connections. Both of those areas of struggle that I had worked so hard to “turn off” were the two areas that in fact fueled my strengths. 

My “short fuse” and “communicative” aspects were innate parts of my make-up, and they were powerful and an energetic pathway for me. My strengths were in my ability to handle pressure, multi-task and in communication of all sorts. Through self-coaching and self-awareness, I have learned that the struggle housed the strength. This knowledge allowed me to better use the tools I had, and temper them when necessary. 

Struggle… it’s good for you!

It’s taken many years to work through my dynamic attributes of low patience and high communication…amongst other things, but the struggle I’ve had in even understanding it, and being my own coach has grown me in massive ways. Because I can see clearly when my “strength” is leaning too far and taking full control of the wheel…I am able to make an intentional shift in myself. In my world we call this “adjusting”, but that’s the same thing as “self-control”. Because the struggle will remain no matter what, I’m able to identify it for EXACTLY what it is and why it’s there…tie it to my strength, appreciate what that brings and then choose to engage it when necessary. 

It all comes full circle to self-awareness. 

Remember, without struggle…there is no strength.