he other day I got a comment on my blog from Amber Osborne, better known as Miss Destructo. Just read her bio below to see what it looks like when someone brags about their apparently negative qualities.
exaggerate your weaknesses; don’t eliminate them
If everything seems under control,
you’re not going fast enough.
– Mario Andretti
Many weaknesses are framed in terms of excess. We are told that we are too organized or too messy, too quiet or too loud, too critical or too kind. This chapter argues that this is usually incorrect. In fact, it is the opposite of the truth.
It is more likely that our problem is not because we have too much of any characteristic. Instead, we don’t have enough of that characteristic. It is not because we emphasize it too much but because we emphasize it too little. The goal of this chapter isn’t simply to help you accept your weaknesses; I want you to flaunt them, to parade them without shame.
We are so accustomed to disguise
ourselves to others, that, in the end we become disguised to
ourselves.
- Francois de La Rochefoucald
It can be difficult to amplify our weaknesses because we are often worried that we’ll be rejected for being different. So we often try to moderate and control our weaknesses. Unfortunately, this inhibits our distinctiveness and hampers our success. It also prevents us from achieving our potential and becoming our truest self. The danger in trying to be what everyone else wants us to be is that we can forget who we are in the process.
Seth Godin recently wrote about the danger of doing things within reason. “Within reason means, ‘without bothering the boss, without taking a big risk, without taking the blame if we fail . . . be reasonable!’ And so you do it half-heartedly and you fail. And who beats you? The people who did it without reason.”
Most people would agree with the ideas in this book, as long as you don’t take them too far. It is fine to build on your strengths, within reason. It is good to embrace your weaknesses, within reason. Go ahead and pursue your passion, within reason. Be yourself, within reason. But that is the problem. My point is that you need to go even farther in the direction that everyone is telling you not to go in.
Amplification is about being unreasonable, about doing things “without reason.” If you can avoid the trap of doing things within reason, then you dramatically increase your chances for success. Next time someone encourages you to be reasonable, just realize that they are really asking you to be normal, average, mediocre and unremarkable. In other words, they are being unreasonable.
Michael Bungay Stanier, author of Find Your Great Work, has a cool video called 8 Irresistible Principles of Fun. Three of the principles reinforce the importance of amplification.
● Stop hiding who you are. Figure out who you are, then turn up the volume.
● Stop following the rules. It's no longer about what you can't do, it's about what you can do.
● Start scaring yourself. Dip your toe into the bold, the outrageous and the unthinkable.
There are three basic ways to amplify your weaknesses. You can brag about them, joke about them or exaggerate them.
Sally Hogshead is a marketing consultant and author of Fascinate: Your Seven Trigger to Persuasion and Captivation. That’s right. Her last name is Hogshead. Here is how she explains it on her business cards and website. “A hogshead is a barrel that holds 62 gallons. So what’s your last name, smartass?” Sally didn’t change her name and she doesn’t attempt to gloss over it. She brags about it and when she’s done you wish that you had a name as cool as hers.
If you can’t fix it, feature
it.
- Gerald Weinberg, Secrets of
Consulting
Robert Merrill, author of the Be Useful blog, took me up on my challenge to define who he isn’t and what he doesn’t stand for.
He isn’t competitive or assertive. He doesn’t like telling people what to do, he doesn’t make a great first impression and he doesn’t handle stress well. He can brag about these weaknesses because they are clues to his strengths. For example, because he doesn’t make a good first impression, he is “persistent in relationships and doesn’t jump to conclusions.”
He includes the following message for potential clients on his website. “If you invite me into the executive circle of your software-intensive business, you will probably find that I am different from most of you. That’s precisely why I will be useful.” Amplification goes beyond an internal appreciation of your weaknesses. It is about broadcasting them to others.
I am the proud father of three girls and no boys. When my youngest daughter, Sophia, was 11 months old, she wore an I’m Not a Boy shirt from Wry Baby. This is an important disclaimer because my children stay mostly bald until their third birthday and this leads people to identify them as boys.
The shirt was a gift from her aunt Amanda. Other shirts in the WryBaby collection proclaim proudly:
● I can’t read
● I eat dirt
● I don’t floss
This got me thinking. We need similar shirts for adults. We should be able to proudly proclaim what we are not. We should have t-shirts that brag about our weaknesses. Here are a few suggestions:
● I’m messy
● I’m not an athlete
● I can’t do math
● I forget stuff
● I’m not creative
● I don’t see the big picture
● I hate meetings
● I’m probably not listening to you right now
● I didn’t shower today (or yesterday)
● I pick my nose (admit it, so do you)
● I don’t have an iPhone
● I’m a nerd
● I talk with food in my mouth
● I eat dirt
What aren’t you? What don’t you do? Are you ready to brag about it? Are you ready to put it on your website or a t-shirt?
My friend, Stosh Walsh, is a trainer and coach for The Gallup Organization. Here are some of the quirks that he suggested for his t-shirt.
● I'm a perfectionist: I'm rarely satisfied.
● I'm too serious: I don't celebrate my accomplishments (or yours).
● I'm greedy: I think I can have my cake and eat it too.
● I'm selfish: My family is more important to me than my career.
● I'm an egghead: I want to know more, be more, and do more.
● I lack fashion sense: I wear nice suits, but I am not ashamed of my beard, even though it is not the same color as my hair
T
he other day I got a comment on my blog from Amber Osborne, better
known as Miss Destructo. Just read her bio below to see what it
looks like when someone brags about their apparently negative
qualities.
“Hailing from the swamps of Florida, currently starting a blue-haired revolution, in the mountains of Greenville, South Carolina. I am an ultra tall, sarcastically crass, swank, classy dame of the creative persuasion. My twenty plus odd years has formed me to be a world traveler, college graduate, award-winning writer, photographer, radio DJ and artist/event promoter. Also highly uncoordinated, somewhat of an insomniac, with a slight addiction to caffeine and music videos.
Six feet tall, blue hair, can type with my toes. My skin replicates faster than a normal person. Fully able to bend my thumbs and legs sideways and I have a rare bone in my sinus cavity. I am officially a mutant. When I was three I swore I had a computer in my head. I believed this till I saw an x-ray of my brain. That was only a few years ago.
Almost died at least twice. Once in a car accident, once by drowning. I don’t drive and still hate the taste of saltwater. I can wake up without an alarm clock at an exact time. Most bathroom lighting hurts my eyes. I took chorus for most of my childhood. Piano for three years and I own a dulcimer. Out of all of this I can produce one hell of a rendition of Mary Had A Little Lamb.”
In her recent blog post, Embrace the Pale, she encourages us to “love that part of you that is unique no matter how strange it is.” If you’ve ever felt strange, Amber makes you wish that you were even stranger. Check her out at MissDestructo.com.
It’s a good thing when people make fun of you. When I was a kid I got teased a lot. Other kids made fun of me because I was grotesquely skinny and looked like a candidate for a hunger relief poster. You could see my heart beating, even when I had a shirt on. My nicknames, in addition to those I’ve already shared, included doc, melvin, octopus, and many others. At the time, I didn’t like having people make fun of me. I would guess that most people feel the same way, except for Scott.
Scott Ginsberg, author of Hello, My Name is Scott, is famous for wearing a name tag 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He even had one tattooed on his chest, just in case the other ones peeled off. Scott believes that “parody often leads to profit.” He argues that there are a lot of benefits to having people make fun of you or your business.
It is very difficult to get people to pay attention to you. Even though being teased might seem like a negative experience, it is still attention and attention is very valuable. As Scott explains, if people are making fun of you, it means that you are being:
● noticed
● remembered
● talked about
● imitated
● marketed
Is anyone making fun of you? Are you ready to encourage them, instead of trying to make them stop? How can you take advantage of the attention they are creating for you?
If no one else is doing it, are you willing to make fun of yourself? What is wrong with you? How can you show it off instead of trying to hide it?
Jimmy Vee is a consultant and the author of Gravitational Marketing. But he is known to most people as “the five-foot high marketing guy.” He isn’t ashamed of his height and he doesn’t apologize for it. He doesn’t see it as a weakness and he uses it to his advantage by calling attention to it. He paints a caricature of himself.
Another example is from Buckley’s. Their cough syrup is nasty and they are proud of it. They aren’t trying to hide it. Instead, they made the bad taste the focus of their advertising campaign by comparing it to trash bag leakage and sweaty gym socks. The tagline is “It tastes awful. And it works.” However, the implicit message is that it works because it tastes awful.
It takes courage to call attention to existing weaknesses but takes even more courage to make those weaknesses worse, to exaggerate them. That is what Hardee’s did and it saved their company. I recently found this letter from Andy Puzder, President of Hardee's, on the back of the bag for my Philly Cheesesteak Thickburger.
"A few years ago when I became president of Hardee's Restaurants, we were selling so many things that we had truly become a 'jack of all trades and master of none.' Unfortunately, in today's competitive fast food world, that wasn't cutting it.
The chain needed to become known for doing something really well again . . . So I challenged my menu development folks to come up with a new line of burgers that would make people say 'Wow! I can't believe I can get burgers that good at a fast-food place.' And they did. They came up with 'Thickburgers.'"
It is important to note that Hardee's was going out of business and closing many of their stores before developing this new line of burgers. Even more importantly, most other fast food companies were furiously adding healthy options to their menu. In response to criticism about the negative health effects of their offerings, fast food outlets were offering water, fruit and salads. Hardee's moved in the opposite direction.
In essence, they were saying, "our food is fat and nasty and will make you fat and nasty." And it worked. They succeeded by amplifying the weaknesses of fast food while everyone else was busy trying to moderate those same weaknesses. They took fast food, which was already tremendously unhealthy and made it unhealthier. They took fatty foods and made them fattier. They took nasty food and made it nastier. And it worked.
Hardee's is not ashamed of the nutritional content of their food. They have embraced everything that is wrong with fast food because it is inseparable from everything that is right with fast food.
What would happen if you followed the example of Hardee’s? What would happen if you started exaggerating the characteristics that others tell you to repair?
● Too loud? Do people tell you to quiet down? Don’t. Get louder.
● Too organized? Get more organized.
● Too intense? Don’t settle down. Get more intense.
● Not good at following orders? Find ways to be in charge.
● Too silly? Don’t get more serious. Get sillier.
● Too childish? Don’t get more mature, be more juvenile.
● Too nice? Don’t get more assertive. Get nicer.
● Too messy? Don’t start cleaning up. Get messier.
● Too controlling? Find more stuff to control.
● Too stubborn? Don’t work on flexibility. Become even more committed.
● Hyperactive? Don’t become calmer. Become even more active.
● Too lazy? Don’t work harder. Find ways to do even less.
If people tell you that you do too much of anything, search for ways to do even more. If people tell you that you don’t do enough of something, search for ways to do even less. Exaggerate your weaknesses.
You can only be young once. But
you can always be immature.
– Dave Barry
J
oe Heuer is the Rock and Roll Guru. As he explains on his Twitter
profile, @RockandRollGuru,
he is an author, speaker, humorist, rocker and nonconformist. If
anyone has ever told you that you have to grow up in order to be
successful, don’t listen to them. Joe’s story proves that you can
grow older, wealthier and happier without growing up.
“My flaws are many, but I’ll just share a few highlights. First, I’m psychologically unemployable. Among other things, that means I can’t take orders. I come and go as I please and I only do stuff I consider fun. In other words, I do what I want when I want.
My mantra, as well as my business plan, is ‘If you always do fun stuff, there will always be plenty of fun stuff to do.’ This works incredibly well for me, as I’m allergic to doing stuff that’s not fun. Consequently, I have the grooviest career, business and life I can imagine as the Rock and Roll Guru.
Another significant ‘flaw’ is my attention span, or lack thereof. The strength here is that I’m working on so much cool stuff that I never get bored. There’s always another fun project to which I can turn my attention, however briefly. And since my maximum attention span is 90 minutes, I can harness my energy to deliver one of my two keynote addresses for that length of time.”
We are all agreed that your theory
is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy
enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it
is not crazy enough.
- Neils Bohr to Wolfgang Pauli
Are you a bad singer? Maybe you’re not bad enough. Will Hung achieved fame as a contestant on American Idol, a reality show for aspiring singers. His singing was so bad that he caught the attention of the judges and the rest of America. He subsequently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Today Show. Hung went on to record an album that sold almost 200,000 copies.
Are you too cynical? Maybe you are not cynical enough. The people at Despair.com have turned cynicism into a business by creating de-motivational posters, which parody the inspirational messages that decorate corporate conference rooms across the country. One of their posters caught my eye during the World Cup soccer frenzy. Below a photo of an injured soccer player it said, “Whining – If you expect to score points by whining, join a European soccer team.”
Do you shop too much? Are you a shop-a-holic? Maybe you don’t shop enough. Maybe you should find a way to shop more.
Maybe you should become a personal shopper. Work for people that are too busy to do their own shopping. Instead of spending your money, you could earn money, while spending someone else’s money.
Do you eat too much? Maybe you don't eat enough. Do you eat too fast? Maybe you don't eat fast enough. Takeru Kobayashi has made a living out of speed-eating. He has set world records for eating hot dogs, hamburgers, bratwurst, lobster and dumplings. Kobayashi has turned gluttony into a career as a member of Major League Eating. I’m not making that up. There really is a professional association for speed eaters.
When the going gets weird, the
weird turn pro.
– Hunter S. Thompson
Do you drink too much? Maybe you don’t drink enough. Do you have a drinking problem? Maybe it’s a drinking opportunity.
Zane Lamprey’s new television show, Three Sheets, follows him “around the world, one drink at a time.” He’s getting paid to get drunk. Maybe you can turn your problem into a career, or fame, or both.
Are you too neurotic? Maybe you aren’t neurotic enough. When Chris Martin of the band Coldplay was interviewed on 60 Minutes, the interviewer explained that Martin has a habit of making rules and writing notes and lists on everything, including his body and furniture. He concluded his description this way. “Like many artists he is openly, gloriously neurotic.” Shortly after the interview, Coldplay won Grammy Awards for song of the year and rock album of the year.
It is tempting to believe that Chris and his band are successful despite his neuroticism. However, I think he is successful because he embraces and flaunts his neurotic impulses. I think we need to follow his example and be “openly and gloriously” weak. Just replace “neurotic” with your particular weakness and then ask yourself what you would do differently if you were going to do it openly and gloriously.
For example, I’m openly and gloriously hyperactive. After I ran my first 40-mile ultra-marathon, my brother-in-law told me that I was crazy and awesome. One of the main lessons of this book is that being crazy might be an important part of being awesome. But there is another important lesson in this example. Millions of children, mostly boys, spend their childhood being criticized for being hyperactive. I was no exception. I wished I could sit still, but I couldn’t. I loved recess. I loved gym. I loved athletic practices and games. But my love of activity was considered a weakness.
Now, as an adult, I run marathons and ultra-marathons and compete in triathlons. When most people hear about my accomplishments, they say “Wow! I could never do that.” Instead of seeing my hyperactivity as a problem, they see it as a strength they wished they had. This is an important turning point.
You will know that you have gone far enough, that you are amplifying your weaknesses, when people start to praise you for the very things that they used to criticize you for. You just have to go farther in the direction that everyone is telling you not to go.
Are you too fat? Maybe you aren’t fat enough. Emme, Mo’Nique and Christina Lewis are openly and gloriously fat. Emme is a plus-size model that is proud of her appearance and has had considerable success because of it. Mo’Nique was the very large host of F.A.T Chance, a beauty contest and reality television show where full-figured women competed for the Fabulous And Thick (F.A.T) title. Christina Lewis runs the Musings of a Fatshionista blog and she describes herself as “fat and fancy as it gets.” She never apologizes for her size and she shows other large women that they can be fat and still look fabulous.
I was looking for something to watch on TV last night and I couldn't help but notice a show on the Food Network called Two Fat Ladies. The show was exactly what you would expect. It was two fat ladies helping you make food that would make you fat.
One critic described the women as "overweight, badly dressed, and incapable of political correctness” making “dishes with bacon, lard, and fat." This description reminded me of Paula Deen, the famous and full-figured purveyor of southern-fried delicacies. When people criticize her because she uses such unhealthy ingredients, she has a standard response. "I'm your cook, not your doctor."
It also reminded me of a proverb that says, "Never trust a skinny chef." In other words, if the chef’s food was really that good, they'd be eating more of it and it would show in their waistline.
It is important to remember that standards of beauty, as well as the value of many other characteristics, are artificially defined by society and have no basis in objective reality. A few hundred years ago, an attractive woman was fat and pale with black teeth. Being fat was considered beautiful because most people were thin and gaunt from a lack of food. Weight denoted wealth and health. Similarly, being pale meant that you didn’t have to work outside in the harsh sun. Whiteness was so valuable that many people attempted to artificially whiten their skin, sometimes using lye and other toxic chemicals that eventually killed them. Black teeth were prized because they signified that you had access to sugar, an expensive luxury.
The new standard of beauty is skinny and tan with white teeth. Being thin denotes self-control, access to healthy food and the free time to devote to exercise. Bronze skin indicates that a person has free time to spend in the sun, instead of being trapped in a cubicle all day. It might also mean that they can afford artificial tanning services. White teeth show that a person is healthy and wealthy enough to afford good dental and orthodontic care.
Additionally, even though there is a general standard of beauty in society, there are certainly many people who are attracted to people who don’t fit that mold. Just because everyone doesn’t consider you to be beautiful, doesn’t mean that no one does. This is just another example of why we can’t allow other people to determine how we feel about ourselves. No one is perfect and sometimes we need to be the worst in some areas to be the best in others.
Conventional wisdom says that we need to be balanced and well-rounded. We need to be strong in all areas in order to succeed. However, that isn’t true. In fact, in order to be the best in one area you have to be willing to be the worst in others.
For example, while I was writing this book, Anthony Kim won the Shell Houston Open on the PGA Tour even though he had the worst driving accuracy of any golfer in the tournament. He wasn’t just below average; he was the absolute worst.
Similarly, the two teams in the 2010 Super Bowl were the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. The Colts had the worst running game of any team in the NFL and the Saints had one of the worst defenses. However, the Colts also had one of the best passing offenses and the Saints made up for their poor defense with a league-leading offense. Both teams were the best in one area and the worst in another.
Shaquille O’Neal is more than seven-feet tall, weighs over 300 pounds and has missed more free throws than any other player in the history of the NBA. Because of this weakness, he has spent endless hours working with coaches to improve his skills. And he is still terrible.
He’s so bad at free throws that other teams have developed a strategy for capitalizing on his weakness. They call it Hack-A-Shaq. They foul him before he has the opportunity to shoot so that he will have to score his points from the free throw line.
Since other teams implemented this strategy, O’Neal has led two different teams, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat, to four NBA championships and has been an All-Star in each year of his career. In other words, Shaquille is one of the best basketball players of all-time, even though he is the worst free-throw shooter of all time. Actually, another player holds the record for the lowest free-throw percentage. His name is Wilt Chamberlain and he’s considered by many to be the greatest player in NBA history.
Shaquille’s gigantic hands make it very difficult for him to shoot effectively. However, his tremendous size also allows him to physically dominate and intimidate other players on offense and to block shots and get rebounds on defense. He is good at basketball because he is so big. He’s also bad at free throws because he is so big. What makes him the best is also what makes him the worst. Similarly, if we want to be the best in one area, we need to allow ourselves to be the worst in other areas.
Brett Favre, former quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award three years in a row. He also holds the record for the most consecutive starts as a quarterback. Additionally, he set the all-time NFL records for most touchdown passes, most completions and most passing yards in the same season that he set the record for the most interceptions. Like Shaquille’s record for the most free throw attempts, Favre also has the most passing attempts of any quarterback.
Favre’s gunslinger style, intensity and improvisation are what helped him set the touchdown record. Those same characteristics also led, inevitably to the interception record. Favre’s strengths are his weaknesses. When you get one, you get the other.
Favre and O’Neal were the best in one area but the worst in another. Are you willing to allow yourself this same opportunity? You’ll never become the best by fixing your weaknesses. Excellence requires you to amplify your strengths and allow your weaknesses to get even worse.
22-year-old Matthias Schlitte offers an even more interesting example of this principle. He began practicing arm-wrestling when he was 16 years old but has only been training the muscles in his right arm. When you see a picture of him, it looks like he has some sort of genetic deformity. His right forearm looks like Popeye’s. It is nearly 18 inches around. But his left forearm looks like Olive Oyl’s. It measures only measures 6 inches. It seems like the only muscles that he has are in his right arm.
This is a huge advantage in arm wrestling because his opponents are determined by weight class. His wrestling arm is much larger than that of his competitors because they have bodies with normal proportions. Unfortunately, this means that much of their weight is in parts of their bodies that don’t help them with arm wrestling.
Schlitte can spend additional time and energy exercising his right arm because he doesn’t have to bother with building the rest of his body. He is weak in many areas so that he can be incredibly strong in the area that is the most important. This makes him unbalanced but it also makes him successful.
Put all your eggs in one basket,
and watch that basket!
- Mark Twain
Obsession is a word that has gotten a bad reputation. We use it most often in a negative way. The most notable example is the psychological diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which is so well known that most people just use the acronym OCD.
However, just as with the term freak, I think obsession can be a very positive thing. Successful people are obsessed with what they do.
In a recent Best Buy commercial an employee explains that he is a phone geek and he wants to help you understand what new communications technology can do for you. Who do you want helping you with your new phone, a geek that is obsessed with phones and technology and spends an inordinate amount of time learning about it, or someone who is just casually interested and has a variety of other pursuits? My guess is that you want the geek, the person who is obsessed with technology, not the well-rounded employee.
Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, recently posted 12 rules for start-up businesses on his blog. The first two rules are, “Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love. . . If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.”
While I was running today, I got some inspiration from I'm Not an Addict by K’s Choice. One of the most powerful lines comes near the end as the singer finally admits, "I'm not an addict, maybe that's a lie."
The lyrics reminded me of a story that I read in Runner's World magazine. The article explained how Rosie Coates, a six-foot tall, 300-pound, corrections worker, lost 110 pounds by running each day at 2:30am before leaving for work. She described her new passion for running this way, "it became an addictive thing for me. My ego totally rocks when I'm in motion--I feel healthy, empowered, happy, sexy and vibrant."
On the same page was a short feature, called Treadmill Junkie, that explained how Eminem has used running to help him get sober. "I was running twice a day for a while. It's like you go from one addiction to the next."
The next page included a short interview with Nate Jenkins, a runner who competed in the marathon World Championships on August 22, 2009. Jenkins runs three times a day and, at his peak, completed 190 miles in a single week. To put that distance in perspective, I also run marathons and I've run 250 miles . . . in the last seven months.
Coates, Eminem and Jenkins illustrate an important point. Addiction can be a very positive force. In fact, addiction might be an absolute necessity for world-class performance.
In his book, Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin explains that the superstars in every field, from sports to music to art, have one thing in common. It took at least ten years, or 10,000 hours, of intense and deliberate practice for them to become the best. In other words, they had to demonstrate and obsessive discipline in order to rise to the top. They had to become addicts.
I saw this obsession demonstrated vividly in the documentary, Comedian, featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Orny Adams. The film follows Seinfeld as he begins to re-build his stand-up comedy routine, with all-new material, after the phenomenal success of his TV show. Before touring with his new routine, Seinfeld spent more than six months perfecting each line late at night in basement comedy clubs throughout New York City.
And he wasn't alone. The most stunning part of the movie was seeing so many celebrities, who had more money than they'd ever be able to spend, still traveling the country trying to make people laugh. These are people that I thought had retired long ago to a beach in the Bahamas. Here are just a few:
● Bill Cosby, age 72
● Robert Klein, age 67
● Colin Quinn, MTV game-show host from 1987
● Ray Romano, star of Everybody Loves Raymond
They don't need the money, but they do need the laughs. They are addicts. To emphasize this point, the movie opens with this line from a comedy club owner. "There is a certain compulsion among stand-up comedians to go on-stage and perform." But don't mistake that compulsion for weakness. Their compulsion is an absolute necessity if they want to continue to be the funniest comedians in the world. Their compulsion, their addiction, is what drives them to obsessively and endlessly practice their craft. And it is that constant practice that makes them the best.
T
om Morris is a philosopher, public speaker and the author of
numerous books on philosophy and business, including The Art of
Achievement and If Aristotle Ran General Motors. We’ve
corresponded about the freak factor concept for years and he’s sent
me quite a few of the quotes and examples in the book. One day he
sent this personal example.
“On our exercise walk this morning, I told my son that I can see how a real weakness of mine, a tendency toward obsessive behavior (learning everything about and collecting fountain pens for a few years, then watches for a few years, then guitars for a few years and so on - and when the obsession is going full tilt, I'm thinking about it all the time, and then BOOM it's over and I'm on to the next phase - I also have a history especially in my grad school years, of finding a restaurant I love and going many times a week, and then never again or rarely ... when the phase ends) is responsible for my learning so much about something that I write a book on it or create a talk.”
Nance Rosen is a voracious and compulsive reader and seems quite proud of it. "I read a lot of things (publications, the backs of cereal boxes, anything except instructions to technology that I also am driven to purchase) that have no reason to be interesting to me other than the fact that my brain noisily demands to be fed, like the way your stomach spasms and makes noises when you’re hungry.
I can’t escape this drive to be relentlessly educated. It’s why I can’t wake up without lots of newspapers, real and online. It makes my Sunday ritual of having lunch out just an excuse to wend my way to a bookstore and come home with six books that I could probably get from a fellow publisher if I could wait (I run Pegasus Media World). My brain won’t let me wait.”
Her drive to read the backs of cereal boxes really resonates with me. Shortly after getting married, my wife cleared off the entire table during a meal and then asked, "do you have to read everything? What is so interesting about the back of the ketchup bottle?" It wasn't until later that I learned that one of my top five strength themes from the Strengthsfinder profile is Input. I just love to read. It is who I am.
Similarly, Rosen explains "If I’m not growing I feel like I’m dying. That’s why being a lifelong learner isn’t something that’s nice for me, it’s essential – like air, water and food." She needs to read. Like all of our strengths, this is both a blessing and a curse, a strength and a weakness. "My partners, clients, associates, fellow instructors, suppliers, employees, family and the panoply of people who surround me in my working life (which is 90% of my life) both benefit and suffer from my having this trait."
Nance ends the article with this question. "What is your driving trait? I’ve revealed mine in its most manic light, because I want you to see that the basis of your brand isn’t a choice, it’s your calling." In other words, your uniqueness and your greatest opportunity for success can be found in the activities that you are compelled to do, those that you simply can't avoid.
Nance's obsession with reading and learning serves her well in her career as an author, speaker and publisher. She has found and created an environment that rewards her for being herself. She can amplify and flaunt her apparent weakness because she has found the right spot. We’ll talk about this more in the chapter on alignment.
Here is a short equation that summarizes all of these stories.
Addiction = Obsessive Practice = Greatness
Greatness starts with addiction. Without the addiction, without the obsession, without the compulsion, without the inescapable need, there is no practice and thus there is no greatness.
What are you addicted to? What do you need? What can't you live without? What do you do too much, too often and for too long?
How can you build on your addiction and become the best? How can you use the power of your addiction to fuel the obsessive practice that it takes to become one of the best in the world?
Sometimes we seem to confuse being “not bad” with being “good,” but they’re not the same thing. There are huge rewards for being good, especially for being the best. There is virtually no payoff for being mediocre or average.
What is it worth to be the best? Why bother trying to become the best? What’s so bad about being average?
To answer those questions, let’s consider book sales. If you write an average book, it will sell 500 copies. That is probably not even enough to cover the publishing and marketing costs. The vast majority of books, 90%, don’t even do that well, selling less than 100 copies. As this example illustrates, it doesn’t pay to be mediocre.
But what about bestsellers? What if you wrote a great book? The best books can sell more than a million copies. Authors of these books make enough from these sales to retire early and live on their own private island in the Caribbean. It is like winning the lottery. Do you want to be average or do you want to be the best?
The value of being the best can be seen more clearly by looking specifically at book sales on Amazon.com. Below are the average daily book sales based on sales rank:
The #1 book on Amazon.com sells more books in one day than the #100,000 book will sell in six years and more books in two days than the #10,000 book sells in an entire year! Even estimating a small royalty of $2 per book, the #1 book earns $4,200 per day for the author, while the #100,000 book earns just $730 per year for its author. There are exceptional rewards for being exceptional. These rewards increase drastically as you move closer to the top.
The same is true in the speaking business. Statistics from the National Speakers Association show that the top 5% of speakers earn more than $10,000 per presentation and the top 40% earn more than $5,000 per speech. These speakers earn more for one day’s work than the average American earns in two months. Meanwhile, average speakers are paid in pens, plaques, gift certificates, mugs, and honorariums that barely cover their travel costs.
Entertainers and professional athletes provide even more astonishing examples. An all-conference high school baseball player will probably get a scholarship to college, avoiding school loans and other costs that most students face. If that same player can become an all-conference or all-American in college, they will probably be drafted by a professional team.
Once drafted, they will start in the minor leagues, where salaries are low and crowds are sparse. Notice that the rewards for being very good are sometimes very small. But if a player does well in the minor leagues, they might get a chance to play in the big show, Major League Baseball. The minimum salary for a major league player was $380,000 in 2007. That is more than ten times what the average American earns in a year. The average salary for players was almost $3,000,000, more than 100 times the salary of the average American.
But the rewards are even more outrageous if you are the best of the best.
Alex Rodriguez was the highest paid baseball player in 2007, earning just under $28,000,000. It would take the average American more than 1000 years to earn this amount. Even when compared to other professional baseball players, his salary is still enormous. A player, who earned the league minimum, would need to play for 72 years in order to catch up with Rodriguez’s yearly paycheck. The average player would need nine years to match the same total, which is problematic since the average career lasts less than three years.
It is far more lucrative to
leverage your strengths,instead of attempting to fix all the chinks
in your armor.
– Tim Ferriss, The Four-Hour Work Week
The following chart illustrates three important points. First, rewards increase exponentially as you go from being very good to being the best. Second, there are virtually no rewards for moving from below average to average. Third, your best chance at being the best is to build on your existing strengths, where you are already above average, instead of trying to remediate weaknesses, where you are below average.
The rewards for being first are
enormous. It’s not a linear scale. It’s not a matter of getting a
little more after giving a little more. It’s a curve, and a steep
one.
- Seth Godin, The Dip
There are three myths that keep us from building on our existing strengths. First, we believe strengths will always be there so we don’t need to worry about them. But the truth is that if you don’t use it, you lose it. Second, we think that since we’re already strong in these areas, there’s not much room to improve. But the truth is that our strengths are where we have the most potential.
More than thirty years ago, the Board of Education in Omaha, Nebraska tested the reading comprehension of high school freshmen. They discovered that some students could only read 90 words per minute with good comprehension, while others could read 350 words per minute with the same level of comprehension. They put all the students in an Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course to improve their skills. At the end of six weeks, the students who were weak readers and could only read 90 words per minute had improved to 150 words per minute.
However, the students who were already strong readers improved their scores dramatically from 350 words per minute to almost 3000 words per minute. We often think that we should work on our weaknesses because we have more room to improve in those areas. But this study shows that our greatest opportunity for improvement lies in our existing strengths.
Third, some people are worried that focusing on strengths will make them one-dimensional. Mark Twain once said that “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” His point was that we sometimes use the skills that we have in situations in which they aren’t relevant or appropriate. Twain has a lot of great quotes but I'd like to modify this one slightly.
"If you are a person with a hammer, start looking for nails." This is the essence of amplification. Use what you have. Don’t worry about the strengths that you don’t have. Seek out more situations that require what you possess. Find more things that need hammering. Find people with a broken hammer or no hammer. They need someone just like you. As Seth Godin suggests, if “a hammer is exactly the tool that will solve your problem . . . Hire a guy who only uses a hammer. Odds are, he's pretty good at it. . . Go to someone who has only one tool, but uses it beautifully.”
There is another reason that we don’t need to be worried about becoming one-dimensional. We have more than one strength. The ultimate success strategy is combine your strengths together into a superpower to become a superfreak. For example, my top five strengths, as identified by Gallup’s StrengthsFinder profile, are:
● Input – I love to learn and read
● Ideation – I love ideas
● Command – I love to be in charge
● Activator – I love to get things moving
● Achiever – I love to get things done
I combine all these strengths into a superpower in my work as a professional speaker. Speaking gives me the opportunity to share the ideas (Ideation) that I’ve learned by reading and listening to audiobooks (Input). Being the one at the front of the room with a microphone in my hand makes me the center of attention. Everyone is listening to me (Command). The fact that I’m self-employed also fulfills my need to be in charge. Additionally, I don’t need external motivation to keep my speaking business going because I’m so motivated to work on projects (Activator) and complete those projects (Achiever). I’m a superfreak.
Furthermore, we need to remember that our strengths are patterns of passion and proficiency. They are what we love to do. They are what we do well. They are also broad abilities, not narrow skills. I can apply my Command strength in all sorts of ways and in many different situations. There are a lot of ways to take control.
I can focus my Input strength on a variety of topics. My Ideation strength allows me to see the connections between seemingly different concepts. Building our strengths doesn’t make us one-dimensional because our strengths have many dimensions.
I
f you’re still worried that sticking with your strengths will make
you one-dimensional, just read about Clemens. His experience shows
that we can be strong, while still moving in many directions. In
fact, your strength might be that you love to move in so many
different directions.
“It started in grade 2. My teacher Mrs. Hannah once turned to me in exasperation, saying ‘You don’t have to be such a know-it-all.’ I had probably answered a question of hers with something half-baked that I had gleaned from a book somewhere.
It was 1967, my family had moved down from northern British Columbia the year prior, and that not long after my we had emigrated from Germany for a second time. At the age of 8, I read voraciously. Books, comics, cereal boxes. Anything. Text was a drug.
Somewhere in there, I began my journey of almost getting everywhere. Therein lays the weakness I have struggled with for years: I find everything interesting; every avenue has intersections and branches to follow. I got bored and struggled to see anything through to the end. I knew just enough about almost anything to be dangerous.
I picked up so many things and then put them down. Family and friends wondered if I would ever focus. Degrees, businesses, places I lived, events and activities, always completely committed (for a day, or a month, or a year). I learned like a sponge but always got bored and moved on before ever getting to Malcoln Gladwell’s 10,000 hour mark of real expertise.
Languages came easily if I tried: music, French, Latin, poetry, computer languages and management, but I never mastered any of them. By the time I hit my 40’s I was starting to wonder. So were a lot of people around me. I wasn’t alone in feeling that my inability to focus and to commit for the long haul was serious weaknesses.
I trained in improvisational theatre for 2 years with the Vancouver Theatre Sports League. I did two years of performing arts at Simon Fraser University, working collaboratively with artists, dancers and musicians. More languages.
I worked for five years in a letterpress shop as a typesetter and printer. That’s a language where you learn to read and design upside down and backwards. Then I moved away from the big city.
On the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) for 15 years I taught and did community development work, directed a music festival, and produced a CD, raising two kids and managing a staff. I traveled every year for more training and to lead workshops in improvisation, team building, and leadership around British Columbia. I focused on the language of Positive Behaviour Support. As a high school principal I worked with the Haida First Nation to develop a multi-agency intervention team for aboriginal youth.
Then I got a business degree, an MBA in executive management from Royal Roads. I spent three years marketing educational programs in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. I continued to facilitate management and leadership workshops.
But early on, even in the constant shifting, I was already conscious of something: I was comfortable everywhere and could make almost anyone else comfortable too: physics majors who played cello, loggers who played hard, teenagers who trusted no one, chefs, mathematicians, politicians, athletes, gay punkers, and bankers. It didn’t matter whom I sat down with, I knew just enough about their world that I could find a place to connect and start a conversation. And I knew how to listen.
Now I have a career as a coach that has, at its heart, the ability to connect dots and think outside the box. I am old enough to have learned to bring complete focus to someone for two hours without blinking. Listening has become a contact sport for me and I play hard.
The key to making a difference is learning how to listen. Most of my clients’ major breakthroughs were not the result of anything I said, in any language; they were the result of what they said in a place where they actually got to hear themselves think… and I just listened.
My strength also lies in my layers of experience and education. I make connections others don’t make. I see patterns and trends and possibilities. I don’t believe in rigid plans but believe passionately in having a focused, crystal clear vision of the future. After years as a business owner, a manager, and a team leader, I know that leadership and management are a craft and an art more than a science. And I understand what that actually means. Where other people talk about creativity, and thinking outside the box, I have lived outside the box my whole life.
Now everything I went through makes sense: the endless indiscriminate reading, the meandering journey through music, the sciences, performance, business, education, sports, management, art, writing, and the fascination with what everyone else does. Just like then, I ask questions to allow others to connect the dots that I see hanging in the air. I create safe spaces to have conversations outside the box, because I have always been comfortable there.
Sometimes I Iook back and regret how long it took me to get here. Wouldn’t it be cool to have an extra decade to really enjoy this? But, as a number of friends and supporters have said, I wouldn’t have been ready. I couldn’t be who I am without my past. I couldn’t do what I do now as well as I do, if my so-called weaknesses had not shaped me and my journey.”
There are three primary reasons to build a career around your existing strengths. First, it feels good. It is enjoyable and energizing to work on our strengths. Second, as we just learned, the rewards for improving our strengths are outrageous.
Your strengths have the capacity
to become so dominant that they render your limitations
irrelevant.
– Dr. Lance Watson
Third, our strengths make up for our weaknesses. A well-developed strength often makes our weaknesses irrelevant. As Keith Ferrazzi explains in Never Eat Alone, “In developing an expertise that highlighted my strengths, I was able to overcome my weaknesses. The trick is not to work obsessively on the skills and talents you lack but to focus and cultivate your strengths so that your weaknesses matter less.”
Success is achieved by developing
our strengths, not eliminating our weaknesses.
- Marilyn vos Savant
Nick Morgan is the author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. He also writes an excellent blog with tips for effective speaking at PublicWords.com. One of his recent posts is about dealing with a negative audience. Our natural inclination might be to start with the dissenters in the audience and try to win them over but that is the opposite of what he suggests.
His first suggestion is to "talk to the positive people in the room. . . This is counter-intuitive, but important, because if you can establish a positive relationship with a few people in the room, that positive feeling will ripple across the crowd. We have these things called mirror neurons in our brains that give us essentially the same experience as we see the people around us having. So if we see someone reacting positively, we will too."
This same advice also applies to our own lives. Too often we focus on the negative aspects of our life and/or work and try to tackle the problems and weaknesses first. Instead, we should focus first on the positive elements of our lives and then the success and confidence we gain in those areas will ripple across the other parts of our lives as well. If you use this strategy, you'll be surprised to find that, after starting with the positives, the negatives seem to disappear or at least become less problematic by the time you eventually get to them.
When everyone is against you, it
means that you are absolutely wrong -- or absolutely right.
- Albert Guinon
Alex Bogusky and his ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, are the creators of some of the most well-known and successful advertising campaigns of the last few years. His successes include the resurrection of Burger King and the introduction of the Mini car to America. A recent profile in Fast Company explained that “his control-freak tendencies are widely known - and desired - by clients."
He doesn’t just amplify his own weaknesses; He does the same for his clients. "Instead of hiding qualities that may seem negative - such as Mini's tiny proportions or Burger King's fat content - Crispin exploits them. 'It's part of your job as a marketer to find the truths in a company, and you let them shine through in whatever weird way it might be.' Naturally, that risks pissing someone off."
Amplifying your weaknesses leads to resistance. As Bogusky warns, "life conspires to beat the rebel out of you."
If you spend your days avoiding
failure by doing not much worth criticizing, you'll never have a
shot at success.
- Seth Godin
If we believe that we can please everyone by becoming perfect, by fixing all of our weaknesses, we will fail. If we imagine that it is possible that everyone will like us, respect us and appreciate us, we will fail. The best are rejects. Not everyone likes Starbucks or McDonald's or Apple or Wal-Mart. It's true that a lot of people do, but not everyone does. We can't make everyone happy and it is futile to try.
I cannot give you the formula for
success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is to
try to please everybody.
– Herbert B. Swope
As Seth Godin explains, “If you are willing to satisfy people with good enough, you can make just about everybody happy. If you delight people and create change that lasts, you’re going to offend those that hate change in all its forms. Your choice.”
Notice that he said “you can make just about everybody happy.” Good enough doesn’t make everyone happy and often it doesn’t make the right people happy.
Ignore everybody.
- Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void
Success is about making the right people happy. It is about delighting the right people and being willing to make other people unhappy. You have to decide who the right people are, but the right people and most people are not always synonymous.
Someone will always be unhappy with what you do. The great thing is that you can often decide who will be happy and who will be unhappy.
What will you choose? Are you willing to offend some people? Or will you settle for good enough?
Judy Rey Wasserman, an artist at UngravenImage.com, wrote the following comment in response to my blog post about rejection. “Artists deal with rejection often, whatever their field. Real artists have something unique to offer, and that means different and untested, so gatekeepers are wary. As a fine artist (with a manifesto to a whole new way of creating art focusing on the stroke), I researched other artists, now revered, to help me withstand rejection. I discovered that van Gogh (never recognized in his own lifetime), Rembrandt, the original Impressionists, and the initial Cubists, Warhol and many, many others all experienced great rejection by the establishment. Rejection can be a good sign that one is doing something innovative! So now I sail forth less concerned about rejection.”
The notion, that everyone can be
everything to everybody at all times, is completely off the
mark.
– Keith Ferrazzi
Celebrity chef, Rachel Ray, doesn’t mind being criticized. "If you spend so much time thinking about the people who dislike what it is you're doing, you're doing a disservice to the people that employ you. I'm not employed by those people. I work for the people that want the type of food I write [about], the type of food we share with people."
It’s easy to give this advice but a little harder to take when it happens to you. Last year I got my first piece of hate mail, or at least nasty mail. Most people like my seminars and classes, and most of my work is based on referrals from happy participants and meeting planners. I’ve always known that everyone doesn’t appreciate my style and I’ve seen some scattered negative evaluations over the years. But it was a challenge to respond positively, both internally and externally, when someone attacked me directly in an email.
I have to admit that it bothered me a lot in the beginning. I wanted to challenge their arguments. I wanted to address each issue and show them that they were wrong. But that would have been a waste of time. Just as we don’t need to fix our weaknesses, we don’t need to try to please all of our critics. Just as we should build on our strengths, we are probably better off building deeper relationships with our existing fans than trying to convert our enemies.
So I didn’t reply. I didn’t respond. I took my own advice and reframed the attack as evidence that I’m on the right track. I still don’t like it and I’m not looking forward to the next piece of hate mail. But maybe I should. Maybe I should measure my success by how many people I please and how many people I offend. Maybe if everyone seems happy, then I’m doing something wrong.
How about you? Are you getting enough hate mail?
In case you wonder what a personal attack looks like, I’ve included the email below.
“Dave: I attended one of your seminars and I felt uncomfortable with how much of your talk was regurgitation of other people’s ideas. You arrogantly stated, “and now I get paid to talk.” Well, never forget that it is a privilege to talk to people. No one stays awake at night in anticipation of hearing you and no one stays awake at night after hearing you either I promise. Just to give you a reality check because I think you need one.
You claim that you have associates ????? Mmmmmhmmmm. You claim that you have refreshing solutions ?????? Revive dead ideas of others is more accurate. Authentic and humble??? Apparently this is only for others to practice.
I just think it is important to get a sense of perspective that your message and style does not really sit well with everyone and I think it is great that you have selected the ‘best comments’ to put on your website to impress others with; but I hope you do some deep introspection about your true level of rigor and originality. Good luck mr leadership. LP”
Do not fear to be eccentric in
opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
– Bertrand Russell
In response to an audition on American Idol, Simon Cowell offered this feedback to Amy. “There are a lot of people who will like you and a lot of people who will find you very annoying.” I think that is true for most of us and it’s something to get comfortable with.
You can please all of the people
some of the time and some of the people all of the time,but you
can’t please all of the people all of the time
- John Lydgate
When I ask audiences to list the greatest leaders of all time, a few names always make the list: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus Christ, Gandhi, John F. Kennedy. These leaders were indeed great and they’ve had a lasting influence. However, they are all similar in one other way. They were all killed. They were loved and admired by millions but also hated and despised by millions more. Their lives and violent deaths are a testament to the fact that we can’t please everyone. In fact, it seems that the more some people love us, the more others will hate us. I’ve illustrated this in the diagram below.
Seth Godin refers to leaders who challenge the status quo as “heretics.” I saw Seth give a live presentation on his book, Tribes, in 2009. He was definitely a freak, showing off his mismatched socks and sporting lime-green Buddy Holly glasses. If you didn't know him and you saw him on the street, you might laugh and dismiss him as a dork. But that would be a mistake.
He is one of the best speakers that I've seen. In particular, his slides were unique, funny, emotional and imaginative. He argued that "heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements. The marketplace now rewards (and embraces) the heretics. It's clearly more fun to create the rules than to follow them, and for the first time, it's also profitable, powerful and productive to do just that. . . Suddenly, heretics, troublemakers, and change agents aren't merely thorns in our side - they are the keys to our success."He also offered some great advice for aspiring freaks.
● Don't just copy what works for Seth. You are different. His tactics might not work for you.
● Be a positive deviant. Find where you are both different and successful, then build on that.
● Everyone won't join your tribe. Get over it. Find your audience and turn them into fans.
● Do something that people can criticize. Be a heretic. Challenge the orthodoxy.
● You can have a small, tightly knit tribe or a large tribe. But you can't have both.
I want to follow up on his last point. Even if we can’t please everyone, we can still choose a small group of people and find ways to please them. Kevin Kelly, at The Technium blog, argues that all you need to be successful is 1,000 True Fans. That isn't even close to everyone. In fact, it's almost no one. It is less than .01% of the population of the United States. Some people have that many friends on Facebook. We’ll talk more about this in the chapter on affiliation.
Controversy is good. Don’t be
afraid to polarize people.
- Guy Kawasaki
I'll take it one step further. If we just need to please a few people, then this means we can succeed even if the vast majority of people don't like us. We can be successful even if almost everyone dislikes us. The Heath Brothers make this point very clearly in a Fast Company article called Polarize Me. They suggest that "if you want people to like you, first decide who needs to hate you." Don't just choose who to please, choose who you will displease. Intentionally select a group or groups that you do not intend to help or satisfy. How many of us are ready to implement that suggestion?
Jason Seiden, at JasonSeiden.com, encourages his readers to "fail spectacularly."I love his post entitled, Embrace Excellence, Not Arrogance. What Stupid Advice, in which he described an executive who is facing resistance within a new organization. "When you’ve got someone who is good at his job, who knows it, who is willing to use power to move things along, who is not tolerant of convention born from thoughtless routine, and who pushes others to break the mold, that person will be interpreted as both arrogant and excellent." In other words, polarization is almost unavoidable.
As I’ve explained before, I got in trouble a lot in school for talking too much, being hyperactive, making jokes and failing to do what I was told to do. In 8th grade, I was in a very small art class. There were only four or five students. Most of our class time was spent drawing or painting, while the teacher sat at her desk. There wasn’t a lot of lecture in art class.
I took it upon myself to fill the silence. I offered a running commentary about my artwork, told funny stories and made jokes. Unfortunately, the teacher did not think I was funny. She did not like me at all. I may, in fact, have been the most irritating person she had ever met. At one point, she petitioned the principal to have me spanked. My parents had to approve the request and they were glad to do so. But the beating didn’t work and our problems continued. One day she sent me out of class and told me to stand in the hallway for the rest of the period. As I walked out she said, “I think we are all tired of listening to you.”
The rest of the students in the class quickly talked amongst themselves and decided that they weren’t tired of listening to me. I was very entertaining. They loved it. The prospect of an entire class period without me was not appealing. They told the teacher that they liked my ramblings and asked her to reconsider her decision to expel me from the classroom. As you can probably guess, this caused the teacher to like me even less that she already did.
There’s an important lesson here. The same thing that causes some people to like you, will cause other people to dislike you. The same thing that makes some people happy, will make other people unhappy.
Getting a lot of people to hate
you is easy. All you have to do is become really successful doing
what you love.
- Hugh MacCleod, Gaping Void
Unfortunately, as Pam Slim explains, it is our personal success and happiness might actually cause others to dislike us. "As much as we talk about wanting to be happy and fulfilled, when you actually are, it can annoy the crap out of those around you." This is because our happiness will often remind other people how unhappy they are.
The best are not universally popular. They are rejects. The formula for failure is to try to please everyone. Here is the formula for success. First, don't try to please everyone. Second, choose a few people and focus on pleasing them. Third, choose a lot of people and focus on offending them.
Whatever the public criticizes in
you, cultivate. It is you.
– Jean Cocteau
R
oxy Allen is a great example of someone who has learned to amplify
her apparent weaknesses. Her story shows the power in cultivating
what others criticize.
“It is simple: I like to talk. I was voted ‘Most Talkative’ in high school. I would get in trouble a lot in high school for talking during class or staging a protest against something I didn’t believe in or planning a way to get out of class by pretending I had a chess tournament to go to.
My mom teased me through college for holding too many ‘forums.’ She and my brother are introverts. On the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory she and my brother are both ISTJ and I am ENFP, the exact opposite.
I also like to stand out. I wear my hair in a natural curly tapered ‘fro and sometimes it gets really frizzy. People like to touch it and tell me it feels like a sheep or a dog. That used to make me uncomfortable but now I embrace it because it makes me stand out.
I try to embrace my talkative side by finding outlets for it. I like to talk to interesting people. When I visit the Newseum in DC, I attend their lecture series that features famous authors and politicians. This summer I met Juan Williams of NPR and Cokie Roberts. I like to ask them questions and get real answers. After asking Juan a question about the future of journalism, many people came up to me, even at the Starbucks across the street, and told me what a good and important question I asked.
But it is not all serious for me. I met Ace Young from American Idol’s Season 5 on tour because I liked him so much. It’s fun to meet people with good stories. A good question also got me into O Magazine. They published my letter to the editor in their April 2008 edition where I wrote in about an article by Suzy Welch and she responded to it. I am now blogging about the people I have met and hope to meet and I have a goal to interview and/or personally meet the author of every book and blog I read.”
Roxy was criticized for being outgoing, talkative and inquisitive. However, instead of trying to minimize those characteristics, she is actively seeking ways to amplify them. Her goal is to become more outgoing, more talkative and more inquisitive. She’s going farther in the direction that everyone told her not to go, and finding success in the process. Her most recent project is a newsletter for people seeking jobs in international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). You can find her at RoxyAllen.com.
Reflect
● What is one of your supposed weaknesses?
● Choose one that you routinely apologize for.
● Instead of apologizing for it, how could you flaunt it?
● How could you demonstrate that you are comfortable with this aspect of your life and that you don’t plan to change?
● Reflect on a time when you were able to put your strengths to work.
● How did it feel?
● What were the results?