Strengths, Part Four - New Strategies for Life Management

In the first three posts in this series I have given an overview of the StrengthsFinder assessment and a summary of my strengths, I've talked about how this affected my overall view of myself, and how it affected my life at work. Now I want to talk about my new strategies for using my strengths to their fullest while also compensating for my weaknesses, especially as it relates to overall home- and life-management.

Just because I don't have any "executing" strengths in my top five does not excuse me from ever having to execute anything. The stuff of life must be done, strengths or not. I have laundry to do, bills to pay, dishes to wash, groceries to get.

In the past, back when I was really good at comparing myself to others, I often felt "less than" everyone else. I felt like everyone else had it together and could keep up with life while I was always just a few steps away from drowning in unfinished tasks.

I procrastinated terribly and was constantly overwhelmed by life. I would go through cycles where I worked up enough motivation to try and tackle all the unfinished business but I never fully caught up and I was left feeling exhausted by all the activity. I was a pendulum swinging between two extremes - the first was "I'm so overwhelmed I don't care" and the second was "if I just work hard enough maybe there is hope for me to be normal."

When I discovered my strengths, life didn't automatically change. The StrengthsFinder assessment didn't come with a cleaning fairy for those who discovered a lack of executing strengths. (What a disappointment.)

But there was a huge shift in my thinking and I could finally get off the pendulum. There is a monumental difference between "I ought to be good at this and I'm not" and "I know this isn't my strength but if I can learn this skill my life will be better." The first thought frames me as a failure. The second thought offers me an opportunity and recognizes that I don't have to compare myself to others. Making this switch was the first step in renewing my thinking and changing my habits.

The second step was understanding where my roadblocks occurred. I used to walk into a messy house and think, This place is a mess, I'm so behind, I'm a failure, I'm overwhelmed, and obviously the best course of action is to ignore all of this and instead focus on eating an entire bag of Doritos while watching Pawn Stars. You might think this is a plan for success but I will tell you it is not. (You're welcome. Feel free to throw a dollar in the tip jar in exchange for this ground-breaking piece of knowledge.)

But now I found myself walking into the house and thinking, This is a mess and I feel overwhelmed, but I believe that God desires for me to feel empowered. Why do I feel overwhelmed by this and what choices do I have that will empower me instead?

This led directly to the next step of changing the way that I think and act - I tried to look at my choices in terms of my strengths instead of in terms of my weaknesses. Instead of thinking about the 50 things on my to-do list that I ought to do and didn't want to do, I tried to envision what I would feel like once the house was picked up. I tried to think about what things I needed to address in order to feel at peace with my house and then focus only on those areas instead of thinking I had to address everything. I recognized my need to be creative and innovative and embraced the idea of doing things a little differently every time instead of thinking that I needed to be consistent. (Somehow I used to think that my gateway to being a "normal" person included finding one system and sticking to it all the time.)

I also began to think about systems that actually work instead of systems that are perfect. Example - having a perfect filing system for all of my bills vs. having a basket where I throw everything and then twice a month when I realize that bills needs to be paid, I rifle through the basket and find what I need. Is it perfectly organized? Nope. Is it organized enough? Yes.

Bye-bye perfectionism!

Many of these steps were easy for me to take because they embraced my strengths. But two really important steps weren't quite so easy - facing the stuff I was scared of and doing the things I didn't want to do.

The first category - stuff I was scared of - is kind of complicated. It involved some deeply rooted emotional stuff, along with some really irrational and dumb stuff, and some areas of sin and rebellious stuff.  I'm not sure if this really belongs in a discussion about strengths; perhaps it belongs more in a discussion about therapy and my relationship with God. But it was for sure a big part of my healing and being able to move forward. I won't go into any more detail than that right now, I just want to recognize this as integral to my growth.

The second category - things I didn't want to do - is pretty straightforward. I've had to learn that sometimes there is no amount of leveraging my strengths, no amount of innovation or creativity or envisioning the future that will propel me to a place where I want to do particular tasks. I just have to be a grown up and do them. (I think this novel concept is called self-discipline.) 


The funny thing is that the more freedom I get in my expectations and the more I let go of perfectionism, the more I have the mental fortitude necessary to do the things I don't want to do. It used to be that everything was in the category of "things I don't want to do," but now there are truly only a few things on that list. Freedom in the other areas gives me the momentum I need to be self-disciplined in the areas that count.

Oh yeah, and speaking of areas that count, I've re-prioritized what counts. There are some things that I just refuse to lose sleep over anymore. It's easier to address the list of "what counts" when it contains ten things instead of 100 things.

I'm sure there are a few other strengths-related strategies for life management that I could share, but I think I've hit on the ones with the most impact. I have one more post I want to write in this strengths series, one that wraps it up and gives me a chance to share a few final thoughts.

What would happen if you stopped expecting yourself to be good at your weaknesses? Are there some things that are currently on your list of "things that count" that you need to let go of?

Strengths, Part Three - Freedom at Work

I woke up this morning and discovered that the blog post I finished writing last night had been deleted. Grrrr. I set the post to publish for this morning, went to relax in the living room, and had a thought that I wanted to record for my next blog post so I used the newly-downloaded Blogger app on my phone to record the thought. Apparently I also opened a version of my completed post and saved it as a blank post.

Sigh.

Now I will attempt to rewrite the post and hope that it will come out better than the first version so I can feel like something redemptive came from the accidental deletion.

In part one of this series I gave some background about the StrengthsFinder assessment and summarized my strengths. In part two I talked about how knowing my strengths allowed me to redefine failure and success, and completely shifted the paradigm for how I view myself. Now I want to share how this affected how I work.

My entire office took the StrengthsFinder assessment at the same time, and it was really enlightening to see our results laid out side-by-side. There is a chart that divides the 34 strengths into four main categories - executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. Of the five people who worked in the office at the time (we now have six) everyone else had 2-4 strengths in the executing category. I had zero.

ZERO.

All of my strengths are in the relationship building and strategic thinking categories. This gave me some wonderful "Hallelujah!" and "Aha!" moments about the way that I work.

For a long time I had been comparing myself to people who were executors. I would go to staff meetings and hear everyone rattle off their list of completed tasks and inside I had this panic - what had I accomplished that week? I would see everyone in the office being productive and checking off projects left and right, while I felt like I was chasing my tail and had nothing to show for it.

I would go through periods of feeling motivated and productive - for several weeks in a row I might feel like I'd finally "made it" because I was crossing projects and tasks off the list - but inevitably I would hit a wall where I was sluggish, unproductive, and dreaded the simplest of tasks. In those moments I struggled with comparing myself and wondering what in the world was wrong with me? Why couldn't I keep pace? Did others struggle with this sustained sluggishness? I know that they had days where they felt unmotivated, but did they go through whole weeks or months of it?

When we discovered our strengths and I saw that three of my four coworkers have the Achiever strength - which means that (big surprise) they are highly driven to achieve things and accomplish a list of tasks - it brought me a whole new level of freedom!

I could finally stop comparing myself to them. In moments of feeling unmotivated and sluggish I began to ask new questions. Instead of wondering What is wrong with me? I asked these kinds of questions:


Is my lack of motivation a result of using all of my momentum in the past few weeks and now I need to allow myself time to recharge? 


Do I feel overwhelmed because I've committed to executing too many of my ideas?


Where am I holding unrealistic expectations of myself? What tasks can I let go of and what tasks are really the priority today?


It's amazing what happened when I stopped assuming that something was wrong with me; when I started seeing the circumstances as the problem instead of seeing my deficiency  as the problem. I now feel empowered instead of guilty.

One thing to note, and I hope to hit this in more detail in my next post, is that my lack of an executing strength doesn't let me off the hook from having to do stuff. We all have to face tedious tasks and just because I am not naturally motivated to tackle a to-do list doesn't mean that I can coast through life in my little idea bubble. Knowledge really is power, and knowing my strengths (and my non-strengths) has given me new power to address my weaknesses, especially at work.

Another area where knowing the strengths of everyone in my office has helped me to have a new perspective is when I'm collaborating with my coworkers. For example, I used to get annoyed when I would throw out a great idea and Matt would start asking questions, questions and more questions. He'd ask about goals and strategies and purpose and blah, blah, blah. Goals and strategies are nice, but wouldn't it be so much more fun to float off on a cloud of ideas??

But when I saw that his top strengths are Strategic and Focus, I could appreciate his questions. He wasn't trying to squash my ideas, he was trying to make them better. He was trying to help me filter out the bad ones and find the ones that were feasible. He was trying to focus our energy as an office on the things that would truly make a difference and provide the most value.

It's amazing what can happen when there is a work culture that celebrates strengths instead of trying to avoid weakness. When I am concerned about my weaknesses I 1) try to hide them and/or 2) exploit the weaknesses of others and/or 3) over-compensate by flaunting my successes and strengths.

However, when I can rest in the security that I have strengths that make me a valued part of the team, and when I value the strengths of others, I don't have to try and create smoke and mirrors to puff up my job performance. I don't have to compete with others and I don't have to compare with them. I can tell them that they do a great job, and I can mean it. And I can genuinely feel joy and pride (the good kind) when my boss or others on our staff compliment me on a job well-done.

Do you ever think about the strengths of your coworkers and how they affect the roles you play in the office? If you are a supervisor, do you take time to focus on (and celebrate) the strengths of those under you? How can we contribute to a culture at work (or at home, church, school, etc.) that celebrates and honors each person's strengths?

Strengths, Part Two - the Freedom to Redefine Failure

In part one I gave some background about the StrengthsFinder assessment and summarized my strengths. Now I want to share how this transformed my life.

Ideation, Futuristic, and Intellection: seeing those three strengths at the top of my list suddenly brought so many things into focus. I now understood why I spent so much of my time thinking (intellection) about possibilities and envisioning what could be (futuristic) and coming up with a million ideas related to all the possibilities (ideation.)

I would see one good idea - for example, a friend using her creativity to open an Etsy store - and it would spark lots of ideas and possibilities. I envisioned what I might sell if I had an Etsy store. I came up with some really good ideas. I executed one of them - I put significant time and effort and a little bit of money into starting one. I had lots of great visions for this particular idea.

But then, like so many of my ideas, it fizzled out.

And I felt like a failure.

And I cried some tears.

And I felt like all my excitement about the idea was now foolishness in the eyes of everyone who had heard me talk so enthusiastically about it.

I felt this way about at least four other major projects that I'd undertaken in the past six years - like a big, fat failure.

Sometimes I would lay in bed at night and think about my failures. (I don't recommend this. It's a lot like looking up your health symptoms on Web MD - it only leads to trouble.) The reality of failure would wash over me and I had the thought that I just wasn't good at follow-through and I never would be. Ever. Period.

I thought this was a major character flaw that would keep me from being successful. If I could only fix this character flaw, then maybe I would have a chance.

And so I would begin anew, finding another idea that was better than the last, determining to have the willpower to follow through this time. This time would be different. It had to be.


But it wouldn't be different.

And there would be tears.

And more late night musings and prayers and questions.

And then one day I discovered the amazing truth that my perceived character flaw was actually my strength.

It was MY STRENGTH!

Oh hallelujah!

I cannot tell you the joy I had when I found out that my strength was having ideas, not carrying them out. Up until that point I had assumed that every good idea that came into my brain was given to me so I could see the idea realized. It was as if each of my ideas was a ball, and with every new ball that came at me I thought it was my job to keep it in the air. Keep juggling, Erin.

I assumed that everyone had ideas, all the time. And I assumed that everyone did a better job of juggling them than I did.

But when I discovered my strengths and I saw that my gift for thinking about ideas and possibilities was not the norm for everyone, I suddenly had the freedom to drop all of those balls. I had the freedom to filter them - to throw some away, and to put some aside for later, and to pass some of them on to other people. I could end the exhausting three-ring circus act of trying to keep them all in the air.

I've learned to redefine success, which in turn has allowed me to redefine failure. I can be okay knowing that I have limited momentum for each of my ideas - I no longer expect to have the momentum to carry them all the way through. Failure to execute no longer constitutes failure for Erin. Success now looks like having lots of ideas and allowing myself time to think and the confidence to share my thoughts and ideas and visions of the future with others.

This changed the paradigm of my life, and in the next two posts I'll talk about what that looks like at work and at home.

I am so thankful that Jesus takes my failures and tears and the broken areas of my life and he makes beautiful things out of them. Here is one of my favorite songs - it's a celebration of what Jesus has done in my life, and also a prayer for the areas that still feel messy and dusty and old and hopeless. "You make me new - you are making me new." Hallelujah!

Why I decided to blog again - part one

When I started my blog on March 1, 2008 it was because I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed the other "mom blogs" I was reading, and I liked the idea of taking all the thoughts running around in my head and sharing them with others. I saw what other bloggers were writing and thought, "I can do that too!"

And I did. And I enjoyed it for a while. But here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Creating consistent content for a blog is harder than it seems
• After I've spent time writing and editing a post, hitting "publish" is scary and sometimes paralyzing
• I highly underestimated the agony of "this post is either brilliant or the dumbest thing anyone has ever written"
• I also underestimated the agony of "no one is reading or commenting except for my mom and sisters - this is awful" versus "oh my gosh people are starting to read and comment - what do I do now???"

Now that I am here, four years of personal growth later, I also realize that I was putting unrealistic expectations on myself and I imagined that others had expectations of me. Failing to meet those expectations led to feelings of guilt and shame, which prevented me from posting for long periods of time, which, in turn, made me feel like a failure. Eventually I would miss all the good parts about blogging and think, "I'll start again and this time I can do it - I just have to be more diligent." All of this was due to nonexistent expectations and some ambiguous standard that lived somewhere in my head.

The expectation issue was intensified because I had no plan or direction for my blog so I was trying to imitate EVERYONE. I had zero filter for my ideas - every idea was a good idea, and every time I saw another blogger write/do something that I thought I could do, it became something that I should do.

And, if I'm honest with myself, I also see that I wasn't confident in my own decisions. I was sure that other people knew the right thing to say or do or write, and my way was always a little bit shaky. So I would put something out there and then see someone else do the same thing but (in my opinion) ten times better, and I would think, "Oh no! That's what I should have done - it was so obvious!"

My lack of confidence came from not understanding that other people don't know what the heck they are doing either, we all just take our gifts and use them the best we can. Others will always be better at some things than I am, but that doesn't mean I'm inferior. It just means I have to have confidence in my unique perspective and giftings.


In the past few years I've come to understand that there are very few black and white, wrong or right decisions in this life. Of all the decisions I will ever make, a small percentage of them will be ones that I need to agonize over and pray about. The rest of them - especially when it comes to being a writer/blogger/artist - don't matter as much as I once thought they did.

What matters more than making a perfect decision is moving forward. Having 5 perfect blog posts that are published and 95 not-quite-perfect posts in the hopper is absolutely backwards. It doesn't allow me the chance to grow; the opportunity to make mistakes, to learn, to get feedback from others, to have to clarify what I meant when something is taken the wrong way.

And so, I am learning to embrace my imperfection.

This blog post has taken a turn I didn't expect; everything I have written was supposed to be part of my introduction for why I decided to blog again but it appears to have taken on a life of its own and morphed into its very own post! Consequently, I will save the rest for another day and will work on writing part 2 of why I decided to blog again.

Are there areas in your life where you've created nonexistent expectations? How is that holding you back? What if you decided to let go of them?