You
can’t achieve greatness focusing on your weakness. How often have we heard this
statement made? How often have we even said it to ourselves only to be snared
by our own failures? More important, how do we bypass the blockades that
failure erects and which we unconsciously expect when success exposes us to our
weaknesses? The purpose of this article is to help you adjust your approach so
that you can realize your hopes by highlighting three simple yet effective
correctives to equip you in your quest for greatness.
Weakness versus
Failure
We must first
realize that failure and weakness aren’t synonymous. Yet how often do we
confuse the two because we blame our weaknesses for our failures. Even so,
failure is the temporary inability to accomplish a peculiar task according to our
conception or expectations. Weakness, in contrast, reveals a need to take
deliberate steps to overcome specific limitations when possible, whether environmental,
emotional, circumstantial or practical. Making
these distinctions allows us to see that weaknesses may cause failure but they
don’t make us failures unless we choose to call ourselves so.
A healthy
attitude is always optimistic at base even when circumstances best for the
moment. In this regard, Billy Joel captures the crux of this characterization
between failure and weakness when he responded to lavish praise regarding his
musical style. Joel said, “My style is a result of my limitations because there
are some things that I just can’t do.” Wow! How much further would we go
(enjoying the journey) if we employed Joel’s genius in facing our own
limitations and weaknesses? How closer would we be to achieving our dreams? What,
moreover, if we understood how to respect the relationship between time and
timing discussed below.
Time and Timing
Time is perhaps the biggest harassment
we endure, especially when we reach a certain age and have yet to grace the
stage youth envisioned. Then we are apt to see ourselves as imprisoned despite
our best efforts to be paroled and to prosper as we pine to. When we see time
this way, it becomes a tormentor rather than the mentor that it is to those who
ultimately achieve greatness. These achievers understand that the right
sentiment is essential to success and greatness. They understand (and honor)
the inevitable rotation of greatness, which brings every soul to its season if
it stays centered in itself, making adjustments and growing endowments
accordingly. Keeping this attitude enables them to negotiate the often nebulous
relationship between time and timing.
Unfortunately,
however, most of us focus on time –how long we have been working or waiting,
for example. We seldom consider timing in a way that tempers or comforts us. If
we are to succeed, however, we must acknowledge the fundamental, metaphysical
fact even, that there is a time for every purpose under the sun. If we ignore
this fact, we allow haste to hinder and our hunger to wither because we aren’t
getting the results we desire. Timing is
about knowing when to plant, plow or to place our work and ourselves into
success’s soil. We increase our sensitivity by developing our weaknesses,
accepting setbacks rather than cursing them or ourselves. The greatest benefit
in taking this approach is that it enables us to reset our success clocks to be
more in sync with the cycles that bring every soul to its season. These seasons and cycles are the subject of
the next section.
Seasons, Cycles and
Success
Much is
revealed about us based on how we handle hindrances. Some people get defensive
and feel a need to justify their circumstances or deny them. Others, in
contrast, resist them in ways that lead to exhaustion, despondency and
depression. Yet none of these people would behave this way if they went and
into their gardens and observed nature, which is the ultimate nurturer of
success and greatness. This is
especially true if they understand that seeds can’t be forced to grow except at
their own pace. Of course today we do have all kinds of supplements and science
that can bypass this process and rush to market what hasn’t finished making
itself. Yet we pay for it ultimately with bad diets, digestion and death in
some cases. Yet these same people often seek to elude nature’s cycle by working
around the clock rather than with it, as if this is enough to rush success or
beguile greatness into coming sooner than it does. I’m not saying we shouldn’t
be diligent, driven even.
But
I am saying that success comes in seasons according to the cycles set by the
same nebulous nature that controls time and timing. We forget this, however,
because we are deluged daily with some example of overnight success, which is
what most people want. Success can come over night; but what if it doesn’t.
What do we do then? How should we respond when we have waved our wand seemingly
to no avail? Does this mean that we have failed? Or does it mean that we should
respect the same invisible and inviolable laws that regulate the natural world?
This question isn’t a matter of violating principles or ignoring them. On the
contrary, the best approach is to be mindful rather than moody, as we strive to
do the duty we have prescribed for ourselves. If we do this, we can improve our
weaknesses, accept our limits, and improve our relationship to time,
which will help us to be in sync rather than out of sorts with success or
ourselves!
