Acknowledging Your Weakness Could Turn You Into Success
How to turn your weakness into strengths
On my first day of college, I was introduced to the Political Sciences subject; before the lecturer start the course, he gave us a speech congratulating us for had the chance sitting there, then he asked us, “who’s here from the social major?” A few of my colleagues raised their hands, then he asked us another question, “who’s here from science major?” and more than half of the class raised their hands; my hand was among one of them.
To see what’s happening here, you have to understand that in my country, the government mostly split the education in high school, one focusing on science, another one focusing on social. It makes the student easier to determine the major when they’re continuing to the higher level education — to college — basically, when you’re taking science in your high school, you’re not getting any social studies subject, vice-versa. Most of the Science students preparing themselves to become Doctors, Engineers, and any other major in the university involving calculations. While the Social’s students aiming to be Psychologists, Historians, or studying International Relations — Which the major I enrolled in the university.
So how come, a Social major enrolled by full of Science’s students?
Another story came from Josh Waitzkin when he was a kid, he often went to the park, but instead, he went for swings and slide, he was obsessed with chess, he saw so many people playing chess at the park, he memorized their every movement, slowly he growth a love for playing chess, over his entire teenager's life, Josh devoted himself to be an international chess player, and has won a lot of international tournaments, but the story had just begun, at the age 21, instead of pursuing playing chess even more, he took 360 degrees into something that’s not connected to moving a Knight, a Bishop or even a King at all, he went for martial arts, again devoting himself but this time into Tai Chi Chuan, several years later he won two world championships.
Another question lingers on our minds, how one chess player could win an international martial arts championship? not just once, but twice.
Research conducted by professor Carol Dweck and Dr. Lisa Backwell from Stanford University told us that IQ is not the only one to measure whether someone is smart or not.
Their study found something amazing to distinguish why some people could make a lot of improvement while others tend to be stuck or — even worse — shows decreasing performances.
So what distinguishes great students from other average students? What makes Science’s students have more probabilities of getting accepted in one of the most favorite majors for Social’s students? And how Josh who had the basics of playing chess beats hundreds of martial arts masters and won international championships?.
Stephen Duneier has always been this C- student, from kinder garden to 2nd of his college years, his grades don’t show any improvement, every report cards from his teachers saying the same time, “Stephen is a very bright young boy if only he would just settle down and focus,” but no matter how much his teachers wanted him to be more focused, Stephen wanted it even more, but he just couldn’t do it, his brain not allowed him to achieve that. One day he said to himself that he had enough, he acknowledged his weakness that he couldn’t simply focus for more than five minutes, and to achieve that, he had to take a different approach than before.
Acknowledging that his brain couldn’t just sit and not wandering to any other things for more than five minutes, Stephen didn’t force his brain to do it. Instead, he broke his learning into just five minutes, as I quoted him in his talk,
If I would get an assignment, let’s say, read five chapters in a book, I wouldn’t think of it as five chapters, I wouldn’t even think of it as one chapter, I would break it down into these tasks that I could achieve, that would require me to focus for just five or ten minutes at a time. So, maybe three or four paragraphs. That’s it. I would do that and when I was done with those five or ten minutes, I would get up. I’d go shoot some hoops, do a little drawing, maybe play video games for a few minutes, and then I’d come back. Not necessarily to the same assignment, not even necessarily to the same subject, but just to another task that required just five to ten minutes of my attention.
With that approach, he had succeeded through his college years, and throughout his career,
It helped me deliver top-tier returns as a global macro hedge fund manager for 12 years and to become founder and CIO of two award-winning hedge funds.
Back in my first college year, I was asking the same question as my lecturer asked, I was as curious as he was that day, but I forgot that I was one of the subjects that created the question in the first place, so all I had to do was to ask myself.
When I graduated from high school, I knew that I had no chance at all to compete with Social’s students, I was listening to my teacher giving a lesson about the bone structures which had nothing to do at all with my incoming test to enroll as International Relations student, while the Social’s students rapidly consuming educations providing themselves for that incoming university’s test. Acknowledging that I was not special — I didn’t know a single bit about histories or even economics — has helped me, knowing that I had left far behind from the Social’s students, I had to catch the gap between them and me, I devoted myself as Josh devoted himself to chess, I began to set my study schedule, I must have studied for more than 7 hours per day for the last 6 months before the exam held.
Josh did the same thing, and he was grateful when he lost his first chess championship, he said,
“losing my first national chess championship helped me avoid many of the psychological traps”
Losing the first national chess championship has helped him; he made a mindset that he was not gifted, he realized that he wasn’t special, he wasn’t that kid who had granted the amazing ability by God. He avoided the psychological traps that believed he was gifted and smarter than any other people, which makes him don’t have to work harder than anyone else. By acknowledging the weakness of himself, he devoted himself to work harder than his competitors. That mindset has served him well — even too well — he applied the mindset not only for Chess but also for martial arts.
The research conducted by two professors from Stanford told us that, there are two types of people.
The ones with a fixed growth mindset — people who believed that intelligence and abilities are fixed.
And the ones with a growth mindset — people who believed that qualities can be developed.
These two different mindsets lead to different behaviors and results, over the past two years, they followed the participants. They were stunned by the outcomes, the two different groups have a wide gap between them, the one group with a growth mindset shows improvements in their grades over time, while the other group showing stagnation or decreasing performances.
Acknowledging our weakness, knowing that we are not special, knowing that we have to work hard and try our best is one of the paths to success, they have proved it, and now it’s our time to apply it to ourselves as well.
Society has made a new way of thinking.
They worshipped the winners and abandoned the losers.
As much as we want to be appreciated, we also want to appreciate others, but our willingness and kindness sometimes lead them into a destructive path that we didn’t realize.
The next time we want to appreciate others, we have to be careful either our appreciation will make them feel special or not, because that’s the last thing that we wanted to do when appreciating others, don’t make the same mistake as I did a few years ago,
It would be better for us to be more focused on the process than just the outcomes themselves, even when it comes to appreciation.
As much as my post wanted to be recognized, I don’t like it when people appreciated me too much when people use gifted or talented words. That will lead me to believe that I’m special and stop improving myself.
