For many of us, since childhood, we are being taught by our parents and teachers to focus a lot on improving our weaknesses.

During my childhood, whenever I had poor grades on some subjects, my parents and teachers would ask me to put more efforts and time into improving those grades.
And for those subjects I did well, mostly they put little attention on and gave more emphasis and advice to improve my poor grades.

Over time, I grew with more awareness about my weaknesses.
Whenever someone asked what my top strengths and weaknesses were, I'd easily fill in my weaknesses with an endless list of attributes, while I'd often struggle to fill in and describe my strengths.

However, a paradigm shift started happening when I read the StrengthsFinder book five years ago.
The book strongly suggests that we should put a lot more focus and effort into improving our strengths and to manage our weaknesses so that they don't get in the way and hinder our growth.
It also cautions that if we spend our life trying to be good at everything, we will never be great at anything.

I took the CliftonStrengths assessment, and it revealed to me a few strengths I never associated myself with before.
I became more self-aware of my strengths and my weaknesses and always tried to look for opportunities and roles where I could exercise my strengths better.

By having more self-awareness and then self-acceptance to accept who I am, I build new skills, habits, and eventually confidence knowing that I can excel in areas where I am naturally good at.
I can also accept there are areas I am not good at and try to complement myself with people who are better than me.

All of us have our weaknesses.
And there are too many of them compared to our strengths.
But we only have so much time and energy in our life.
We should not spend our lifetime trying to improve our weaknesses at the expense of neglecting our strengths.

I believe we could realize our potentials, increase our confidence, and eventually live a more successful, fulfilled, and happier life by discovering and developing more of our strengths.

And if you have a similar experience like me, I'd highly encourage you to start exploring your strengths and live your life by aligning more towards your strengths.

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🔹 I recently discussed this strengths-based approach with Brandon Miller in Tech Lead Journal podcast episode 109.

Check out the episode to learn more about how to apply it to personal life, work, and parenting.
https://techleadjournal.dev/episodes/109

🔹 I recently did another assessment and here are my latest top 5 CliftonStrengths: learner, achiever, relator, intellection, input.

🔹 If you haven't done the assessment before, you can reach out to Brandon, referring to the podcast episode to get a free assessment discount code.

🔹 And if you have done the assessment before, share your top 5 strengths below.