One Minute of Weakness

I know that some people that I listen to aren’t for everyone. Some people have a specific area that they talk a lot about, and it doesn’t always make an impact on everyone. Other people though I really believe were made for everyone. One of those people is Gary Vaynerchuk, or as most people know him by, Gary Vee. He is very blunt, but also says things in a way that makes sense to everyone. If you ever need a little motivation, he’s your guy. Most of the time when I listen to him, he is in front of an audience, and people get to ask him questions. I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago where he was the guest and he had this bit of advice based on an audience members question. He said that he wanted everyone when they left or were done listening to pull out their phones and make a one-to-two-minute video about their weaknesses. The whole point of the exercise is that once everyone knows your weaknesses, they can’t use them against you. So many people struggle with imposter syndrome, they worry that someone will find out something about them and they will lose all their credibility. For people who are around my age, he compared it to one of the final scenes of the movie 8 Mile. Instead of waiting for people to come after him with his weaknesses, he said them out loud, after that, no one could say anything because he had already said it all. So, the question becomes, would we be willing to do something like that? I know as of right now we don’t do anything in video format, so can we just spend some time listing some of the things that we feel like we struggle with? I’ll go first!

I wish I was more consistent. The easiest example would be getting this article out by nine am every Monday. But, I have so many other examples of things that I do that I wish I could do on a regular basis, but instead I do it once a week or once a month instead of daily.

I do a great job of getting information, but I need to do a way better job of using the information. I think I’ve talked about this before, but if all I do is read and or listen and I never put it into practice, then I’m not really doing much.

I want to do things my way! I think I do a good job of listening to certain people when they give advice. In most cases I think I seek out advice before I go forward with something. But, once my mind is made up about how I want to go about something, I won’t change my mind unless it’s not working once I’ve tried it. If you weren’t around when I was deciding what I wanted to do, then you don’t get any input. 

I must admit, I have given up on people. Two types of people drive me crazy. The first type of person is the type of person who doesn’t ever try to improve themselves. What I mean by this is that they aren’t happy with where they are at, but they have no intention of even trying to do anything. They don’t want to listen to a podcast or hear any advice from anyone. The second type of person that drives me crazy is the person who has a weakness, they know it’s a weakness, they say want to improve it, but they don’t. These are the people who come up to you and ask you your advice on something, you spend the next thirty minutes going over everything you can think of to help them and then they never even take step one. A few months later, they come up to you again and you waste another thirty minutes. In the end, they never even take step one. Those are the people that I usually just end up giving up on and in the end, at some point I just decide that I will no longer waste my time with them.

I love people, and I want to see EVERYONE do well. This may sound like a contradiction to what I just said. But not everyone fits on your team. Once you have decided that someone fits on your team, I want you to do well.  If you don’t love people or don’t want everyone to be successful, then you don’t have a seat on my bus. I always have this picture in my head of a house divided. If a house is divided it will never be successful. If you have people on your team who are openly rooting for others to fail, one of two things need to happen. One, you need to get them off your team, or two, maybe it’s you that needs to leave the team. I’ve always wanted to be on a team that is a complete underdog that is going up against the most powerful team in the world. I believe if the underdogs all work together and root for each other, they can beat the powerhouse every single time.

I really feel like I could keep going, maybe at some point we can come back to this. A few things that I notice as I look over my list. One thing I’ve said over the years is that in most cases for most people, your strengths and weaknesses are always at war with each other. One of your strengths can quickly become a weakness if you aren’t careful. I love people, but if you act in a certain way, I move on. It sounds rough, but I also think it’s the right call. Again, you can’t be successful and have people working against each other. If I decide to move on, I want you to be happy, I just want you to be happy somewhere else. My goal has always been to improve myself and find ways to do it my way. I think I’m that way because over the years I just don’t like what I have seen from the people who are the leaders. I’ve always dreamed of being a part of a team that helps each other and motivates each other. That is an impossible dream with the way most people lead. 

Focus for the Week

Go out and focus on your weaknesses. After you have noticed a few, look at them and figure out if they actually align with what you want to accomplish, or if it’s something you need to look to improve on right away! Also, please feel free to email me with any of your weaknesses, we can work on them together!