Everyone is born with their own set of strengths and weakness but if we think about it "why is that only few become leaders and prodigies". I feel that's because they not only make full use of their strengths but also choose to take that extra step to try to work on their weaknesses to get it counted as one of their strengths.
I personally admire people who do this. I would like to share few stories which r very close to my heart and from which i took inspiration.
I was doing my third year undergrad i attended a famous institute 'Promac' for GRE coaching. Although i don't remember the chairman's name but he was the one who was teaching us the verbal part and after i attending couple of classes i got to know that he was a moving dictionary. And what a great orator, he was able to take a class for about hour and half and there wasn't a single student from the class of hundred who use to move his/her head in anticipation that they might miss something important. He had the talent to pass on toughest of words into your head cracking a joke and would blend couple of words into the context of the joke. His timing was amazing and i always give his example of how a mentoring a class should be. In one of the classes someone asked him how he managed to get the knowledge and his answer amazed everyone in the class "I am good at verbal english words because i didn't know proper english 10 years back"...silence all over....and he continued "Having done my schooling in a non-english medium school, English was my weakness, i was not able to converse in English and was made fun of by my friends all the time. I just chose to convert my weakness into my strength and then made it my profession. The weakness then is making me a rich man now". Having said so he continued with the class. Although i forgot his name, i was never able to forget his attitude towards his life and his weakness.
I was doing my third year undergrad i attended a famous institute 'Promac' for GRE coaching. Although i don't remember the chairman's name but he was the one who was teaching us the verbal part and after i attending couple of classes i got to know that he was a moving dictionary. And what a great orator, he was able to take a class for about hour and half and there wasn't a single student from the class of hundred who use to move his/her head in anticipation that they might miss something important. He had the talent to pass on toughest of words into your head cracking a joke and would blend couple of words into the context of the joke. His timing was amazing and i always give his example of how a mentoring a class should be. In one of the classes someone asked him how he managed to get the knowledge and his answer amazed everyone in the class "I am good at verbal english words because i didn't know proper english 10 years back"...silence all over....and he continued "Having done my schooling in a non-english medium school, English was my weakness, i was not able to converse in English and was made fun of by my friends all the time. I just chose to convert my weakness into my strength and then made it my profession. The weakness then is making me a rich man now". Having said so he continued with the class. Although i forgot his name, i was never able to forget his attitude towards his life and his weakness.
Few years passed and came to US, completed my masters and got a job in a financial company and i happened to meet a colleague of mine who is very organized, keeps his desk very neat and always organizes his work very well. I observed him for more than couple of years and he was always showing excellent and credible results, always getting accolades for doing excellent work in time which was due to the fact that he was very organized. The fact that he is very well organized always amused me, as this is an art that is not easy to find (how many of us don't search for car keys when we leave the house). One chilly day, We were walking to starbucks as part of the usual routine when we buy a coffee for ourselves in the afternoon and i asked him his secret for being so organized, after all its not an art everyone has. He smiled at me and he said "I am forgetful and organizing my works helps me overcome that". I was spell bound for a minute, His weakness for being forget has made him a guy who plans everything very well.
This always made me appreciate people when they admit that they are working on some weakness of theirs. This also drives me to work on my weakness and makes me dream of a world where weakness is not always considered a defect but an opportunity to improve ourselves to be a better human being.
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