WHERE ARE YOU WEAKEST?
Winning in any meaningful pursuit usually requires some high-level skill in a variety of important areas. You might think of it like a chain that connects you on one end to your success on the other. Each link of that chain represents a different piece of your performance. There’s a link representing your effort and one representing your attitude. There’s a link for your toughness, one for your competence, and one for your commitment. For each of us, there are many links in that chain, and real success requires us to be strong in each one.
That’s because the bigger and more important the achievement we're after, the more pressure there is on what we do and how we do it. You’ve probably experienced for yourself the burden that comes with competing for something meaningful and significant. You might call it the weight of winning. Each of those important areas of performance is routinely put to the test. It's part of ensuring that we are worthy of the success we say we're after. For anyone who falls short of their desired outcome, there’s one link of that chain that gives out first - one area where they just aren’t as strong as winning requires them to be.
So if we want to win, one of the first things we have to do is recognize the many different pieces that that make up our performance. Effort and attitude are so important. So are toughness, competence, and commitment. What else belongs on that list for you and the big, important things you're pursuing? Once you’ve clarified that, then it’s time for some honest self-assessment. There’s value in zooming in and evaluating each of those areas, and asking yourself the kind of question that most people avoid, but the kind of question that winning requires you to answer: where are you weakest?
Most people avoid that question because, let’s be honest, it’s not that much fun to dwell on our deficiencies. Our pride and our ego encourages us to focus on our strengths, to trust that we're good enough to get where we want to go, and to overlook, neglect, or downright ignore those places we have to admit aren’t as strong as they need to be.
But this is why I like that chain analogy, because the strength of one area is in many ways unrelated and irrelevant to the strength of another. A chain that's made up of 100 links - 99 of them made of the strongest steel, and one made of a thin sheet of paper - is destined to fail under any significant pressure. That’s a great illustration for many of the seemingly talented people who fail in their pursuit of success. Picture an athlete who’s big and fast and strong. They’ve got elite athletic ability and high-level sport skill. They appear to check pretty much each one of the boxes that winning in sports requires. But then some challenge arises, and it's evident that they just don't have much toughness. The weight and pressure of real competition exposes that weakness, and reveals that everything they possess can’t make up for the one really important thing they lack.
That's the way it works for each of us, including for you here today. You might be really good in a lot of really important areas, but of each one that matters to your success, one of them is your weakest. So one important part of becoming your best is actually working to improve what you do worst. That is of course difficult, uncomfortable, inconvenient work. It requires your time and your toughness. It takes some attention and some intention. But with the right approach, improvement is possible, and if you really want to win, it becomes more and more clear that it's really the only option you've got.
It’s much easier, of course, to do what your pride and your ego encourages you to do - to overlook, neglect, or downright ignore those places you have to admit aren’t as strong as they need to be. But I want to challenge and encourage you to take a different approach. To identify all the different areas that are linked to the success you say you're after. To recognize where you’re weakest, and to commit to the difficult but important work it takes to get a little bit better - a little bit stronger - in the places where you need it most.
