Making Lemonade
by Vic Wiens
I'm sure you have all heard the saying that "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." We often apply that to our circumstances, but what about our personalities and abilities?
A few of you know me well enough to understand that my successes as an educator, administrator, and consultant were not anticipated by my elementary school teachers. But do you know that a few of my current areas of strength used to be my areas of weakness? We have an amazing capacity to grow!
For example, this Spring I took the StrengthsFinder test (see www.strengthsfinder.com) and was encouraged to find that Focus was listed in my top five strengths. In elementary school my report cards generally made a comment about my lack of focus and attention. Over the last 35 years I have worked hard to develop systems (habits) to organize my life around carefully thought out goals. The result is that my weakness has become a strength.
A few years ago I took another "gifts" inventory which suggested that one of my predominant gifts is Wisdom. That was also a pleasant surprise, since I was not known for my wisdom in my youth. In fact, one day the camp director who had hired me to do some program development work for him, pulled me aside and informed me that he thought I was not wise. When I asked him if he had a solution to my lack of wisdom he recommended that I read a chapter of Proverbs in the Bible every day. Since there are 31 chapters in Proverbs, I began to read the chapter that corresponds to the day of the month. That habit has been part of my life now for 30 years and it has make a very significant difference in my life.
It is often our areas of conquered weakness that become our greatest mentoring strengths. We all need to tackle some of our critical areas of weakness and turn them into our greatest mentoring strengths. These areas of conquered weakness often open up doors for capitalizing on our inherited strengths.
By combining my conquered weaknesses with my natural strengths I have been able, not only to graduate from high school (to the amazement of my elementary school teachers) but also to obtain three university degrees through 11 years of college and university. This combination has also helped me experience success as an educator and school administrator and I am drawing on this same combination to provide value to businesses and non-profit organizations as a consultant. I continue to work on certain critical weaknesses that tend to undermine my ability to capitalize on my natural strengths.
The combination of conquered weaknesses and inherited strengths makes for great lemonade! How are you doing at making lemonade out of your strengths and weaknesses?
