Strenghts Vs Weaknesses Options

[Cosmin Lupu]

All our lives we have been educated and sometimes forced to overcome our weak points and get better at some things. There's an American dude, who's living here in Romania, old friend of mine and he aims to start a project based on career re-orientation for young people working in environments not allowing them to express their full potential, based on their real strengths and talents.

In a nutshell, his concept is based on the fact that in our society, folks are always forced to work on their weak points and in this way, they totally neglect their strong ones, ending up doing things which maybe they were not meant for, thus never achieving their full potential as human beings and of course, not being happy.

He is very fond of artists and he likes to talk to a lot of us in some of the bands here, as he thinks we are a good inspiration source for the people he aims to help.

Now, I took a test based on answering 180 questions, each of them having 20 seconds to be answered - this lead to discovering my top 5 strengths:

Cosmin's Top 5 Strengths

That doesn't mean that others not present, but these 5 are supposed to define you in a greater amount than any other of a total of 34.

I don't know how much I can believe these but, what I can tell you is that I was very honest with my answers in the test - for more insight, visit www.strengthsfinder.com

If i am correct, I remember a little movie with Steve Vai (posted here on GMC) underlining that we should work on developing our strong points not our weak ones as players and I think that now I understand what he meant and I can agree.

What do you guys think about strengths vs weaknesses?

Cosmin

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This post has been edited by Cosmin Lupu: Jun 12 2012, 10:13 AM

[Nihilist1]

All our lives we have been educated and sometimes forced to overcome our weak points and get better at some things. There's an American dude, who's living here in Romania, old friend of mine and he aims to start a project based on career re-orientation for young people working in environments not allowing them to express their full potential, based on their real strengths and talents.

In a nutshell, his concept is based on the fact that in our society, folks are always forced to work on their weak points and in this way, they totally neglect their strong ones, ending up doing things which maybe they were not meant for, thus never achieving their full potential as human beings and of course, not being happy.

He is very fond of artists and he likes to talk to a lot of us in some of the bands here, as he thinks we are a good inspiration source for the people he aims to help.

Now, I took a test based on answering 180 questions, each of them having 20 seconds to be answered - this lead to discovering my top 5 strengths:

Cosmin's Top 5 Strengths

That doesn't mean that others not present, but these 5 are supposed to define you in a greater amount than any other of a total of 34.

I don't know how much I can believe these but, what I can tell you is that I was very honest with my answers in the test - for more insight, visit www.strengthsfinder.com

If i am correct, I remember a little movie with Steve Vai (posted here on GMC) underlining that we should work on developing our strong points not our weak ones as players and I think that now I understand what he meant and I can agree.

What do you guys think about strengths vs weaknesses?

Cosmin

Maybe I misinterpreted what Vai said in that video, but I disagree with him. When we first start out, everything is our weakness. We only turn them into strengths because we practice the hell out of those techniques. There is always room for improvement and a broadening of technical horizons. I think if we just work on our strengths and ignore our weaknesses then we would miss out on a whole world of knowledge we didn't have beforehand.

I try and practice everything no matter how much I suck, because eventually, I will master it all

I guess this is where the Doughnut Master would say:

"From one thing, learn 10,000 things."

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[SirJamsalot]

When we first start out, everything is our weakness.

I strongly disagree. One of my twin sons was born with a gentle spirit, always wanting to give and able to sympathize with others and quite willing to sacrifice for the benefit of his brother. The other twin was (and is) dominant, self confident and striving to achieve goals. My daughter when she was born had an acute awareness of her surroundings - at 6 months old, she picked up a single hair, stretched it between both hands and carefully studied it, whereas both boys at that age would have been oblivious to something so small.

These gifts they were born with - they certainly didn't learn them from my wife, myself or each other. Those strengths came natural to them, and because they had them to begin with, it was the easier path for them to take into adulthood - they practiced their strengths because they were already acquainted with those tools/gifts.

The sympathizing, gentle nature'd son (Tim) just graduated from Pepperdine with a religion major and seeks to be a missionary.
The self confident achieving son just graduated Cal Poly with a Computer Science degree and landed a job with Cisco.
My daughter, 13, works with my parents who are artists - she is an avid drawer, loves to read and write fiction and is drawn to all things creative.

My point being - when we start out, we start out with certain gifts, whether physical, mental or spiritual (kindness, loving, etc.) that are very much more apparent than our other traits. I saw this in my sons and my daughter before they were walking. And because our natural tendency as humans is to follow the path of least resistance, we use those gifts we start out with as tools to understand and manipulate the world we live in, while ignoring the other ones that don't come naturally (because it would be a struggle to start a new gift from scratch when one is already available for use). And as is the case with all things, the more you use a gift/talent, the better refined you become at using it.

What many people have a hard time with (ironicallY) is identifying their own natural gift. Why is that? Perhaps because we have grown up with it. It's kind of like air - we are born breathing it, surrounded by it, in constant contact with it - but how often do we pay attention to it unless it is blowing in our face, making itself apparent.

If you want to know your natural gifts - ask your parents and friends. They see it much better than you do, I guarantee it.

I try and practice everything no matter how much I suck, because eventually, I will master it all

I strongly AGREE with this!

Many regards, and keep rockin!
Chris

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This post has been edited by SirJamsalot: Jun 12 2012, 03:58 PM

[Ben Higgins]

I strongly disagree. One of my twin sons was born with a gentle spirit, always wanting to give and able to sympathize with others and quite willing to sacrifice for the benefit of his brother. The other twin was (and is) dominant, self confident and striving to achieve goals. My daughter when she was born had an acute awareness of her surroundings - at 6 months old, she picked up a single hair, stretched it between both hands and carefully studied it, whereas both boys at that age would have been oblivious to something so small.

These gifts they were born with - they certainly didn't learn them from my wife, myself or each other. Those strengths came natural to them, and because they had them to begin with, it was the easier path for them to take into adulthood - they practiced their strengths because they were already acquainted with those tools/gifts.

The sympathizing, gentle nature'd son (Tim) just graduated from Pepperdine with a religion major and seeks to be a missionary.
The self confident achieving son just graduated Cal Poly with a Computer Science degree and landed a job with Cisco.
My daughter, 13, works with my parents who are artists - she is an avid drawer, loves to read and write fiction and is drawn to all things creative.

My point being - when we start out, we start out with certain gifts, whether physical, mental or spiritual (kindness, loving, etc.) that are very much more apparent than our other traits. I saw this in my sons and my daughter before they were walking. And because our natural tendency as humans is to follow the path of least resistance, we use those gifts we start out with as tools to understand and manipulate the world we live in, while ignoring the other ones that don't come naturally (because it would be a struggle to start a new gift from scratch when one is already available for use). And as is the case with all things, the more you use a gift/talent, the better refined you become at using it.

What many people have a hard time with (ironicallY) is identifying their own natural gift. Why is that? Perhaps because we have grown up with it. It's kind of like air - we are born breathing it, surrounded by it, in constant contact with it - but how often do we pay attention to it unless it is blowing in our face, making itself apparent.

If you want to know your natural gifts - ask your parents and friends. They see it much better than you do, I guarantee it.

Brilliant post Chris ! You've described something eloquently that many us struggle to put into words

And congrats to your children for their achievements

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