Episode 118 – Exposing the Weaknesses

This is Rebecca Clark Episode 1 18 exposing the weaknesses. This podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work. But are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk? Mm hmm. Growing up, I often heard a quote talking about how our weaknesses are shown to us by our creator so that we could work through them and turn them into strengths. And so this was scriptural, this was from profits of the past. And I’ve thought a lot about this lately as I’ve been exposed to more of my weaknesses and perhaps created new weaknesses in myself. That used to be strengths because I haven’t been practicing certain things in the way that I had in the past. And so I’ve contemplated this as I coach people on how to figure out their strengths and weaknesses and figure out whether they want to keep making something stronger or if they’re okay if it just stays a weakness, Right? And I talk about this, especially when we look into our past life experience and find the nuggets from that. What did you learn from mowing lawns every summer? What did you like about what you learned? What did you not like about what you learned? What do you want to apply going forward as you go into new work? And I’ve thought a lot about this? And I’ve mentioned before that I believe that if you are weak in communicating there’s no harm done by spending a lot of time. Learning how to become a better communicator Because that is something that allows us to interact with the world, right with the people around us, with the people we know and love with the people we don’t and to figure out what’s the best way to influence and to thrive and to work through challenges because we know how to communicate effectively. But what I think is very fascinating is that often we do not get exposed to our weaknesses until we try new things where we allow ourselves to experience something different and we don’t have to like that thing that’s different or we don’t have to desire it, but we can allow it and find out what we learned from it. And there are some things I have learned in this last year or two about myself that I had forgotten or didn’t know in the first place because I have a lot of different experiences. One of the experiences is spending far more time with my siblings, parents and nieces and nephews than I ever have in my life now periodically, some have lived with me and periodically we’d visit and that kind of thing. But for the most part, we were in all parts of the United States and so it takes some money and time and travel to see each other and during this virus period I’ve been able to travel and see a lot of them. I’ve been able to take care of nieces and nephews. I’ve been able to take care of dogs and chickens or just take care of a house on behalf of family members. So I’m always in different locations, doing different things and then of course this will calm down in the next month or so. But for right now I’m in the middle of all this lesson learning and in that there’s been great joy and happiness having these interactions with family and some friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time, but there’s always an opposite right? There’s always a hard part, there’s the difficulty of sharing space with people. There’s the difficulty of hearing the opinions of so many people and once in a while you agree with some of those opinions and once in a while you do not. But of course they’re all presented as facts right? Because of course our opinions are all very well thought out and just information that we’re sharing at least that’s what we may think, but it’s mostly opinions and there’s very few facts in the mix. You also have in this mix how nieces and nephews interact with aunts and uncles and that’s different than how I interact with my aunts and uncles. Times have changed but there’s also different personalities involved. We’ve grown up in different places and have different expectations, different things we agree on or disagree on. And we’ve been raised up around people that have influenced our decision making and our behaviors and our values whether we like it or not. And the only way to become more aware of that is often to immerse yourself in these different situations and you start to notice that even in the same families, we all have different lifestyles, varying beliefs about the same beliefs, if that makes sense. And there can be struggles in the mix. I have learned a lot about how I would love to live through this experience. I have learned that I very definitely am someone that needs a home with a walkout basement with a few acres and space, right? Some people love to be enclosed in trees. I love to have space. I want to see who’s coming, who’s going, what weather is coming and going like I want to see it all at the same time I noticed that I I am more susceptible to my A. D. D. Tendencies now that I’m not in full time employment because in full time employment I had meetings every hour I had to be at a certain place at a certain time and you just kind of marched through it all. And what I feel is very lucky with my approach to my A. D. D. Is that I would have so many projects that if I was getting to a rough spot on a project or I couldn’t focus, I just switch projects, I just go work on something else the next hour when that became boring I just immediately switch to something else. So I tell people I’m never bored. I’ve had very few boring minutes in my life and that’s because I made a conscious decision years ago. This was in college that I would just switch to something else. Well there’s pros and cons to that aren’t there? Because you can run from yourself but you can’t hide at least not forever. And so I’ve realized that I am very distracted by knowing that there’s other people in a house, other people coming to the house, people in a backyard and having a view that may have a few distractions. And what’s interesting about this is realizing that it’s not a distraction to have millions of people in a view. It’s a distraction to have one or two, right, millions of people. It’s just noise kind of like a busy coffee shop, right? You go to work at a Starbucks or at Panera or one of those places. There’s enough people where usually I can just tune it out. People are coming in and out, that kind of thing. But if there’s only one or two other people in that room, I become extra observant and focused on that and that’s not what I intend to be focused on, right? So it does not serve me or anyone else. I’ve learned that I enjoy having privacy. Not that I’m doing anything crazy or illegal. I just like some privacy. So I view that right now as something to notice and consider maybe it’s a weakness because other people don’t have that same need as I do as is evident by what they do in the same situations. Some are completely find offer up their best self and that kind of thing. I am not, I need to have that alone time that space away from others. So I choose to view it as a weakness that I want to work on a little bit. But I also have decided that there’s a point where I don’t need to work on it in the way of trying to get way more comfortable with it. There’s a way to work on it where I will just plain change my circumstance, right? I will stop traveling around and I will find a place to have privacy where I can offer up my best work. It’s been very interesting talking to some clients and in my consulting and coaching and some are surprised that I’m showing up in a different room every time I get on zoom and that’s because I’m in different locations and of course when you’re in those different locations, you’re setting things up and trying to make it work for you. And I already talked about this in another episode where you realize, oh, you really do need your own kind of office and I appreciate one of my listeners and clients Cecilia Evans pointing out to me that there are cheaper options now in these we work spaces and places to rent because Covid kind of change some things right? It created vacancies that weren’t there. It created different rates for renting space away from the home to do work. And that’s something that I can look into and I hadn’t even been thinking about looking into that honestly because I’ve been to those places before and my whole goal was to work at home and then to realize oh maybe I have an overarching value that some would view as a weakness of having some privacy while I work. Maybe that is an option in my future to have a little spot I can go to. That has a key No one knows I’m there and I can offer up good work. Some of our weaknesses may not be thought of as weaknesses to others, but we can choose to think of them as a weakness and choose whether or not to work on that weakness. There’s also an awareness factor here of deciding to be aware in our lives of how we show up with others, how people respond to us and we always choose how we show up and how we respond and so does everyone else. And so if they’re acting like a jerk for example that may be just their problem but why not take a moment and go am I showing up in this interaction in a way that is preventing us from being able to have open and honest communication and if so what is that that’s going on? I have noticed with interactions with my family especially that often the times that we keep pointing out certain things about others, we are noticing it and it’s bothering us. But some of that same weaknesses going on in ourselves, right, were quick to notice it and others. And of course we are because it’s easier to see what’s going on outside of us than what’s going on inside ourselves. And so of course it’s blatantly clear that there’s a certain behavior taking place that isn’t serving a person. And that’s great to notice that. And maybe sometimes it’s great to point it out. I’d highly recommend if pointing it out, not thinking that you have the solutions because often we are unaware of what the correct solution is for someone else, despite our smartness, right? That’s for them to figure out. And it may be different than what you think, because you may be coming to that situation with your own self serving motives and not even realize it. But if people are acting a certain way towards you, it may be worth wondering how am I showing up to the situation? And I have noticed a few times that I am not showing up in the way I want to with my family, my extended family and I want to do better and I want to be different and as I strive to do better and be different. I notice how off I was from how I thought I was showing up. If that makes sense, I would think I was showing up just fine. But when I made a concerted effort to do it differently, I realized that it felt difficult. It felt unnatural and hard. And then I realized, oh wow, I have a weakness that I didn’t even know I had. And how do I work on this and how do I work on it in front of them? That’s particularly hard for me, right? It’s easier for me to go off somewhere different, work on it, change come back and just be changed. But often we have to work in front of our spouse, our teacher, our coach, our organization, our boss, our co workers right in front of them and that is humbling and that is hard. And yet it makes all the difference. Today, I would offer to you to think about how you may have a weakness that you’re not even aware of going on in your life. And to identify one area that you’re having a problem interacting with someone or doing your work and try to look at yourself through different eyes and see if you are showing up differently than you think you are or you are approaching it in a way that’s not serving you. And if you have the courage, ask someone close to you if they notice or if they are willing to tell you the truth about how you come across or something that you may want to contemplate working on. We all have weaknesses. We’re humans, that’s part of the deal. But as they say, no pain, no gain, right. If we take the time to work on those weaknesses, some of these things will become strengths, some of these things, you will just not decide to work on some of these things. You will just let go. I say it’s okay that I’m weak in that area. I’m so grateful that there’s people that are strong in that area all around me. But I encourage you that when you make those decisions, you do it from a thoughtful place and not from a place of trying to shirk the work that it takes to plow through a weakness and make it a strength. Have a great day. My friends have the courage to expose your weaknesses to yourself and then work on them. And of course, I’m here to help talk to you soon. Mhm. Yeah, Thanks for listening to the show today. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d write a review and share the show with your friends, sign up for a weekly nudge at move your desk dot com. Mhm