Sunday, January 23, 2011

Why it is necessary to know your weakness and guard it

No matter what our many strengths, just one weakness can prove more powerful than all of them!

A person’s single weakness is stronger than all his strengths! so true! Think about it. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, our strength is defined by our vulnerabilities, not our strong points. Not all the preparation in the world or intelligence can help you with any exam if you have an indecipherable handwriting that the examiner cannot figure out! Here your handwriting rather than your intelligence and hard work decide your future.

Similarly, you may have worked out a superb project with deep research and smart inputs, but if your timelines are not worked out and you cross the deadline, it is those couple of hours of delay that become the decisive factor! Similarly, you may be a great worker and a superb professional, but your loose tongue at an inappropriate moment may put paid to the rest of your capabilities! You will always find plenty of people around you not just willing, but eager to exploit your negative potential as displayed through that one weak link, that one vulnerability!

There is a category of people who get info after putting you at ease and assuring you they are totally with you. Most of us have in office a pseudo sympathizer who always emerges soon as he smells your moment of insecurity or misery. He always knows, for he is on the lookout. And sure enough, there he appears with oodles of sympathy and a smile, pumping you subtly for information. He gives subtle hints and encourages you to speak up. In a moment of weakness, you are most prone to let go and spill it all out. Satisfied, he runs back where he came from and uses the information to his own advantage before you realise! It is only later you realise he got you to bare all but never ever shared any of his or her own troubles! Your one weak moment could have done you a lifetime of harm!

Consider the power of weakness! Even the power of a relationship it is rightly said, lies with the one who cares less…never with the one who cares more and so has more at stake! So the weaker your love, the more powerful you are to mould or manoeuvre the relationship and your partner as and how you wish to! And yet, what a miserable power when the partner’s weakest link, his/her strong love for you, would be the biggest weapon you would use against them!

It is indeed our moments of weakness and weak points that we need to guard. It’s when you are most comfortable that you should be most guarded too. We are born with strengths that we can at best hone and understand, but an equally important task is to understand our weaknesses and work hard upon those. For these, our greatest weaknesses, if guarded and worked upon, have the potential of becoming our greatest strengths! Remember, the great Achilles was only as strong as his weak heel! Had that not been known, who could have killed him?

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