Book Reviews Archives

Note: This article appeared on my old website full-time-writer.com. As it most definitely applies to the theme of this blog, I’ve re-published it. Enjoy.

The idea that we should turn our weaknesses into our strengths is a common theme in the self-help community. There are countless books and blogs that tell us to focus on the areas in our life where we could do better and work to systematically improve upon these weaknesses so that they become our strengths.

This is a good idea, but it’s a good idea that has sadly been taken to its logical extreme. Because we have limited our focus to our weaknesses, we forget to recognize our natural abilities and talents. We adopt a kind of tunnel vision, seeing our lives a as checklist of things we need to fix.

If this philosophy could be summed up in one sentence, it would be this:

Determine what you’re bad at, and become less bad at it.

This isn’t the worst philosophy in the world, and it can help you get results to a point. I know that it has certainly worked for me. One of the weaknesses that I had worked to overcome was my shyness and introversion. When I was a kid, I used to be so shy that picking up the phone to call a store about whether they had or didn’t have a particular item in stock made me nervous. Eventually, through some effort, I overcame this weakness. Not only did I not have trouble picking up the phone, but I had grown to love cold-calling. In fact, when I became a corporate recruiter, I was making an average of 80 to 100 calls a day to complete strangers. I wasn’t calling them about store inventories either, but trying to persuade them to meet me at my office to discuss an opportunity in a different company. These calls were often done in Japanese, which is my second language.

Not only did I overcome shyness, but I became a better salesman (recruiting is basically sales). In my first year my ranking out of 100 recruiters in the company was near the bottom. By reading many books on sales and the art of persuasion and applying the techniques from these books in my daily work, I grew from being a terrible recruiter to an above average recruiter. My numbers proved it. I went from near the bottom rung to number 20 or so in the rankings.

As the above two examples show, focusing on overcoming weaknesses does help, but it has its limitations. Nothing made this more clear to me when a 27-year-old rookie, who had joined a year before I did, became the top recruiter in our whole company. He had astounding numbers and less experience than the veterans who had been there for years.

That consultant had a gift. He was a born salesman. He was naturally good at what he did and the more he did it, the better he got. Because I had subscribed to the “weaknesses into strengths” paradigm, I tried to convince myself if I worked hard enough, I would be able to reach his level. Over time, the fact that I had trouble getting even close to his level was a source of real frustration for me.

Because I was hung up on the fact that this rookie had more natural talent than me, I failed to acknowledge my own unique talents, which, although they may not help me become the top recruiter at a headhunting firm, could definitely help me become a leader in other arenas.

It wasn’t until I quit my job to work for myself that my perspective started to change. As I embarked on a new career path and devoted myself to doing what I love, I suddenly realized that, despite my lack of experience, things came much easier to me. My job was no longer a daily struggle with my weaknesses. Rather, I involved myself in work that made the best use of my strengths. Gradually, I moved away from the weaknesses-to-strengths paradigm and began to follow an entirely different philosophy:

Determine what you’re good at, and get better at it.

If you focus on turning your weaknesses into strengths, you’ll achieve a level of competency, maybe even become above average, but odds are you’ll never be the best. Being the best requires both talent and hard work. If you’re missing one of those ingredients, above average is as far as you’re going to get. If you know you don’t have talent in a certain area, stop pushing yourself in the hopes that you can manufacture it through sheer effort. Instead, focus on the areas where you do have talent, and work to develop them. If you develop your strengths first, your weaknesses will have a tendency to take care of themselves.

One book that helped crystallize the idea of “strengths first” for me was StrengthsFinder 2.0, by Tom Rath. The book is essentially an index of the 34 strengths that you can work to develop over the course of your life. Not only are the strengths well-described, but the book also provides action steps that you can take to develop them. In order to determine which of the 34 strengths are your top five strengths, you take an online test that requires a special access code that comes with every book.

Being the personality test addict that I am, I paid my $13.47 plus shipping and handling for the book, tore open the envelope with my super-secret access code and went online to take the test. My top 5 strengths were as follows:

Intellection – Having a need for mental activity, whether it be solving a problem, developing ideas, or philosophical reflection.
Ideation – Being fascinated by ideas and new perspectives. Viewing phenomena from new and different angles.
Futuristic – The ability to have a clear, detailed vision of what the future might hold.
Connectedness – Understanding that we, all of us, are a part of something bigger. Being aware of the subtle forces and patterns which govern all things.
Learner – Having a love of learning.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by my results, other very good personality tests I had taken had basically informed me of my strengths (and weaknesses) in a similar way. What was different was how the StrengthsFinder book encouraged me to develop my strengths. The book stressed that although these were my natural talents, I had to work to develop them or they would deteriorate.

Thinking back to my career as a recruiter, I realized how true that was. In the effort to eliminate my weaknesses, I had neglected many of my natural strengths, almost to the point of making them weaknesses. Because I was too busy making calls and answering emails, I gave myself little time to think things through, thus neglecting my abilities of intellection. Because I was so busy gobbling up other people’s ideas about how things should be done, I had spent little time developing my own ideas, thus neglecting my abilities of ideation. Because I didn’t allow myself see past my sales figures for the next fiscal quarter, I failed to think about the future–the long term consequences of my actions and inactions. I was so preoccupied by narrow concerns that I failed to tap into my ability to see the connections between things. Finally, because I let myself work 50 to 60 hour weeks and partied all night on the weekends to blow off steam, I spent very little time learning anything new.

I realize now that I could have worked to develop my strengths even as a recruiter, but because the job was such a mismatch for me, it made me more aware of the weaknesses I had to improve upon than the strengths I could capitalize upon. Now, because I’ve decided to work for myself I find myself gravitating toward business opportunities that take advantage of my strengths rather than making me aware of my weaknesses. It’s amazing what change in perspective can do.

How can you find your genius? How can you find the one thing that you do better than other people and exploit it?

This is a common theme in the personal development world. It’s the concept that everyone has innate talents that lie at the core of their being. Once you determine those talents it’s your obligation to let them grow to their fullest potential.

The first time I was confronted with this idea was when I was listening to the Power of Clarity tapes by Brian Tracy. He instructed me to make a list of core strengths and find situations where I could develop them to their fullest extent. Dutifully, I got out a notepad and came up with the following list:

Writing
Public Speaking
Music
Learning Languages
Memorization
Research

Although I believe Brian Tracy is one of the best voices in the field of personal development, especially when it comes to developing skills as a salesperson, I felt there was something lacking when listening to his tapes. These were all things that I felt pretty confident I was good at, but writing them down didn’t provide me with any clarity. They did nothing to excite me or spark my imagination. Nothing incited me to take any real action.

Several months later, I stumbled upon the remarkable book “Is your Genius at Work?” by Dick Richards. In his book, Richards argues that everyone not only has unique talents, but there’s a core talent, a “Genius” that’s unique to every individual. According to Richards, Our “Genius” is the one thing that we do better than anyone else on the planet. It was a bold statement, but in reading the many testimonials about how people had found their Genius and how it had helped them, I felt that I should give this book a try.

The book led me through a series of exercises which forced me to reflect deeply upon those moments in my life where I excelled. It also made me take a hard look at the areas in my life where I had failed. About halfway through the book I got a very real sense that there was an underlying “theme” that pervaded my life. There was a reason I was attracted to some things, and not attracted to others. There was a reason I got into writing, and not gardening. There was a reason why I left my job in Tokyo and decided to return back to the States.

The reason for leaving was simple: there was a deep seated feeling somewhere inside me that told me my Genius was not being exploited to its full potential, and every exercise I finished, every page I turned in this remarkable book, I got closer to understanding that feeling, to understanding my Genius.

Richards helps us focus our thinking about Genius by defining it as a gerund followed by a noun. Examples of other people’s Geniuses used in the book include “Engaging the Heart,” “Charting the Course,” and “Maximizing Opportunities.” These Geniuses weren’t predefined. They weren’t determined by choosing the best Genius among a list of options but rather they were to be named by the person doing the searching. In this way, the name for each Genius is as unique as each individual. Among the hundreds of people whom he had personally helped find the names for their Geniuses, Richards says that no two were exactly alike.

As I went through the exercises, the first name for my Genius that I felt good about was “Finding Significance.” I could see the thread of Finding Significance throughout my life. Finding Significance was the main reason I felt compelled to write certain stories and not others. It explained why I was sometimes not motivated to finish a writing a story even though on the surface it seemed funny, witty or engaging. If there was no meaning, no significance, then what was the point?

Finding Significance also explained why I was probably the best researcher at our headhunting firm. I loved coming up with new methods to find business professionals and their contact information. To me, finding people who had never met a headhunter before and exposing them to the opportunities of the job market was more meaningful to me than convincing candidates to take a job which I wasn’t sure was right for them.

Finding Significance stuck with me for about five days. It felt pretty good, but there was a nagging feeling that it wasn’t quite right. Eventually, I realized that it wasn’t enough to just find significance, I had to convey significance to other people. After some reflection, I was able to revise the name for my genius as “Delivering Significance.”

Finding my Genius: Four Months Later

The name stuck, and ever since then I’ve made sure that whatever opportunity I pursued, Delivering Significance was a core part of it. Because my Genius was “delivering” and not “creating” significance, I realized that I didn’t have to come up with the mind shattering insights by myself. All I had to do was find that which was significant, and deliver that same significance to those who most needed it. If, for example, I came across an interesting idea from a science or business blog, I could see how the significant ideas in those fields could be applied to other fields (like personal development and career creation, for example). Furthermore, I’d be able to find the best way to communicate those ideas in a way that they could be understood clearly.

No More Labels

After a while, I realized that I didn’t even have to be a writer to deliver significance. Even though I had always thought of myself as a writer and was a creative writing major in university, I didn’t necessarily need to write in order to deliver significance. The medium was not as important as the message. I could be a psychiatrist, salesman, teacher, public speaker, career coach, computer programmer–I could even teach zumba classes. I could do all these things and still deliver significance.

When got an idea for a web application, I decided to learn how to create it because it seemed an effective way to deliver significance. Because I no longer imposed a label upon myself as a writer or a blogger, but as a “deliverer of significance,” I felt more open to opportunities I might have never considered before, web application development being one of them. In university, I had no interest in programming because it seemed to be the the polar opposite of writing short stories and novels. Now, because I no longer think of myself as just a writer, I decided to start learning programming to see if I liked it or not. To my surprise, I found programming to be a very rewarding experience.

Finding my genius was partly the reason why I shut down my old website full-time-writer.com. To market myself as a knowledgeable freelance writer, I wrote articles on the nuts and bolts of writing like: “How to write an outline” and, “Examples of tone in writing.” These were articles that I wrote simply to increase traffic to my website and were hardly focused on delivering significance. As a result, I didn’t enjoy writing them very much. Now, because the articles I write are 100% focused on delivering significance, I find myself enjoying writing more. Not only that, but I find myself in the flow of writing much more often.

My work these days have been a balance between writing the articles for this blog and working on the web application. Because the web application has the highest potential to make money, I’ve been spending more time programming than writing. In a way, since both of these pursuits are linked to “delivering significance,” you could say that they’re but different aspects of the same job. I’m confident that my effort in both areas will complement each other down the line.

I’ve read many personal development books that had exciting ideas that I eventually forgot about or failed to implement. As you can see, “Is Your Genius at Work?” is a rare exception. I highly recommend Dick Richard’s book for anyone who feels a need for direction in their life. It certainly has helped me. Richard’s own Genius, by the way, is “Creating Clarity,” and considering how good of a job he did to create clarity for me, I firmly believe that to be the case.

Forget Your Weaknesses. Develop Your Strengths.

How Finding Your Genius can Open up Career Opportunities

Finding my Genius: Four Months Later