What I dislike about myself 🫥 and a little tip for the festive season 🎄
Puh, where to start 😜 Well, there is this habit I have.
Whenever I listen to a podcast (and I listen to a lot), I HAVE to listen until the very end, the last second, even if the only thing that happens in the last 2-3 minutes are useless goodbyes and end credits that I probably heard before.
I need to listen until the end because only then does my podcast player show the episode as "PLAYED" ✅ and not stopped at 54:13.
Now, one could blame it on my German-Swissness - but it is actually something deeply ingrained in me: I am diligent, I am orderly, I am disciplined.
Discipline is a strength of mine (according to the CliftonStrengths Assessment). I enjoy routine, structure, and precision! It helps me tremendously to be efficient and productive. Yet, occasionally it gets in my way. Even if minor and anecdotal like in the podcast example above, some of my strengths sometimes do hold me back (in this case just eating up precious time I could use for something better).
It has been such an eye-opening learning for me when I first started working with a strengths approach: My strengths can get in my way when I "overuse" them, when I turn their volume too high!
I was recently asked at the Q&A of a keynote: "But what if I don't like my strengths" (which is actually the whole reason for this letter - I promised to give a longer answer here 😉)
Well, this 👆🏽 is my answer: I bet you don't dislike your strengths per se, you probably just dislike what happens when you overuse it. And it can come in various shape and forms like:
➡️ You are super empathetic, but you often carry too much emotional weight from others on your shoulder.
➡️ You are extremely interested and fast in learning new things, but sometimes you spend hours reading up and researching things that are distracting you from your "real" work.
➡️ You are super bubbly and a well-articulated person, but people complain that you are monopolizing the discussion.
As with so many things: awareness is the first and most important step to change. So, if I catch myself doing some "overusing," I just try to be conscious about it and see how I could balance this out with some of my other super-duper personality traits and talents! (though, really haven't found a solution to my "podcast problem" yet 🤔 #nobodysperfect).
And as we are in the festive season of the year and a lot of us will gather with family and friends, maybe there is a little learning for these settings as well:
Next time you get "annoyed" by a loved one or family member at the Christmas dinner, ask yourself: "What is the underlying strength this person is just overusing in this moment?" - believe me, you will look at that person very differently afterward and maybe even dare in the most loving way to name that "strengths" along with a little loving hint to "turn it down a nudge" 😉.
With that: Merry Christmas 🎄 Thanks for being here and gifting me your time 🙏🏼