strategies for weaknesses
There is so much efficient wisdom and advantage in playing to your strengths, predicting obstacles, and brainstorming ways to move through them.
Some things in life are just hard! How can we make them easier? How can we ready ourselves to face the hardship? How can we prepare and strategize so we’ll find success on the other side?
Sometimes this means doing the hard thing. Facing your fears and doing what you think you can’t, all the while giving yourself an opportunity of empowerment to prove yourself wrong and to grow. Noticing your areas of opportunity and getting better at your weaknesses by practicing them instead of avoiding them.
But sometimes — the best way forward is optimizing your strengths, really leaning into them, and shoring up your weaknesses through forethought and workarounds. Working smarter instead of harder.
You don’t have to be good at everything. Sometimes it pays to pick your battles. You don’t have to “fix” every weakness you find in yourself… some can simply be acknowledged and worked with.
When you’re chasing a goal or setting up a new plan, think about what tools you may be overlooking that could come in really handy and maybe even significantly change your outcome.
In the new year, I’m working on some health and nutrition goals, losing a bit of weight, drastically cutting back on eating out, and — most importantly — improving my relationship with food. As very busy people (a word that could describe most people who are alive and engaged, right?) and, symptomatically, chronic eaters out, I can see obstacles my husband and I will face the most will be lack of time and energy and an abundance of impulse to give in to cravings and convenience with take out.
It’s very, very important for a goal’s success to set up an achievable, practical, doable, Why-centered plan, with note and response for obstacles. It’s only naivety, denial, or poor planning to think there will be no barrier or bumps ahead of you.
This goal and habit/lifestyle change really matters to me, so I want to ensure it has its best chances and I’m giving it my best too.
Some useful strategies for shoring up my weaknesses, in this specific example, are utilizing convenience (but in the grocery store instead of drive thrus or restaurants) by getting ingredients that are ready to go or extremely easy to prep, picking recipes that are both capital E-easy and also quick, batch prepping/cooking for easy grab meals, and including plenty of treats and delights within the process and my goals. Basically, we’re working on removing obstacles (“this will take too long/require too much effort,” — it really won’t, I’ve ensured that ahead of time — or “I feel like eating something really yummy and fun that I will enjoy like an indulgence” — great! No problem. We put plenty of delicious favorites in the grocery cart and meal plan this week.) and making the change we want to implement as appealing as possible.
Sometimes we work to change or improve our weaknesses, and sometimes we find tools and strategies that allow for those weaknesses and respond well for our values and goals.
