being weak

I have this routine of hitting the gym every morning to knock a few reps out. Although it’s nothing too ambitious and only a way to stay in shape but still I do continuously try to identify my weak areas in order to improve on them and get better results.

You get the point, right? Accepting your weakness is an essential prerequisite to growth. There is no other way around it. The way we accept and make peace with our weaknesses, though, could be different for each of us.

Hmmm…

I know, the idea of making peace with one’s shortcomings is often taken to be synonymous with losing hope, accepting one’s failure, and slacking. This mindset, albeit sounding very encouraging, does nothing more than putting you on a repetitive course of:

1. Pushing harder (mostly in vain),

2. Feeling disappointed with yourself,

3. Trying even more harder out of rage,

4. Failing again with injured self-respect, and

5. Ultimately burning out while losing all will for good

Let’s just confess, we’ve all been there at some point in our lives. I have. It’s quite natural to feel bad at your shortcomings. This shows that we, as humans, aspire to be better, which is a good thing. Not so good, however, is choosing to do it the stubborn way.

So, you mean, accepting our weaknesses is the right way of making ourselves better?

Indeed. No athlete ever clocked a record in the very first attempt, right? There are hours and hours, and even years of constant training at their backs. What is this training about, you ask? All about identifying and eliminating flaws, one at a time, until that move is perfected.

You could be a writer, a dancer, an architect, an engineer, a doctor, a scientist, or even Elon Musk, for that matter, but you still really can’t claim much without acknowledging your shortcomings. The key is to:

1. Make an attempt. Try wholeheartedly.

2. Hold on to yourself if the attempt fails. Stay put. Absorb.

3. Analyze the failure for flaws. What went wrong? What could’ve been done better?

4. Make amends first and only then try again.

5. Repeat while knowing that you’ve just improved your chances by eliminating one flaw.

And what exactly makes this approach less stubborn?

Well, my friend, no one wants to lose – no second thoughts there. It feels tremendously awful, everything just seems so lame. But the entire magic lies in how you emerge from this feeling at the other end of defeat. Would you rather hit back the same way in ever so blinding rage or prefer a revisited, more calculated, and precise shot next time? Where do you think great chances of lasting success lie?

I would prefer to revisit my approach and be flexible about it. I would follow failure with patience and preparation. I would choose to move closer to my soul, get in sync with nature, have the positive energy root for me. Does any of this occur to you as meaning that I would give up and not strike back, that I would succumb to darkness?

My friend, you and I, we both have to keep coming back. Not with anxious rage but confident strides, certain that we’ve returned as a better version of ourselves.

Happy living!