Focus to improve on your strengths and let other people complement your weaknesses.
What is this rule?
As human beings, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is perfect in this world. The only perfect being is God. Despite our imperfection as humans, we have managed many feats which are pale in comparison to other species. We managed to build tall buildings reaching high towards the sky. We managed to build a vehicle (aircraft) travelling at 900 km/h. We managed to build devices (mobile phone) that can communicate in real time between people on different parts of the world. These are just a few example of our achievement to-date. As an individual, we do whatever we can in this world based on our capabilities and strengths. What we are not able to do, we can leave that to other people with the capabilities and strengths to do it.
Do you remember the time when you took your exams either in high school or in college/university? The least you have to do to get a certificate is to pass your exams, but that is not good enough for your future undertakings. For example, if you want to get a job, you need to get at least a second class upper to increase your chances. It is even better if you can get a first class degree but it is very hard to get a perfect score. You might have to score around 70% to get a second class degree and around 80% to get a first class degree but it would be some sort of a miracle to be able to score 100% or even close to that. Even scoring 70% and getting a second class upper degree is enough to get you a job. This shows that you don’t have to be perfect in order to be able to do your job. You just have to know enough of the basic and the rest will be filled in by learning and experience when doing your job.
How to implement this rule?
In order to implement this rule, you need to know yourself. You need to discover for yourself what are the things that you do well and the things that you don’t do so well. You need a session of self discovery and in order to do this, you just need to try as many activities as possible and discover it for yourself. It is also good to get an honest feedback from other people about your strengths and weaknesses.
Your strengths mean all the things that you are very good at doing. For example, you might be a good ping pong player, or a good speaker, or a good writer etc. Your weaknesses are those things that you cannot do very well. For example, you might be bad at Malay, or bad at IT, or bad at computer, etc. Let us do an exercise. List down 10 skills which you think are your strengths and list down 10 skills which you think are your weaknesses. Then, give a rating from 1 to 10 with 1 being the worst point and 10 being the perfect point. For example, your skill might look something like this:
1. Writing – 6
2. Reading
3. Mathematics – 8
4. Ping Pong – 7
5. Islam – 10
6. Memorizing the Quran – 9.8
7. English – 8
8. Japanese – 6
9. Investing – 6
10. Arabic - 8
My 10 weaknesses
1. Badminton – 3
2. Malay-3
3. Chinese-3
4. Information Technology –3
5. Multi Level Marketing -3
6. Programming -3
7. Networking – 3
8. Communicating– 3
9. Shopping – 3
10. Bowling -3
The idea or this rule is to keep working on improving your strengths so that you become better at it. For example in the list above, if you work on your writing skill you can bring that skill to a 7 or 8. If you work harder on writing, you can even bring it to a 9 or 10. If you manage to do that, people will appreciate your writing skill because there are not many people in this world who has an excellent writing skill of 10 point.
On the other hand, if you work on your weaknesses, for example Chinese language. You might be able to bring it from level 3 to level 5. Even at level 5, people will not really appreciate your skill because there are many others in this world who is better in Chinese language than level 5.
This rule stress on your strength but it is by no means to neglect your weaknesses. If your job requires you to be good in your weaknesses, by all means work on it up to an acceptable level. A level 5 is an average level and if level 5 is good enough for you to do your job, then work on your weaknesses up to that level. It is however your strengths that you have to work harder and give it a boost possibly to level 9 and 10.
The second part of this rule is to let other people complement your weaknesses. You don’t have to be perfect in this world, but if you can find friends who can complement you, then you are indeed closest to being perfect in this world. How about you find a friend who is good at Chinese to accompany you with your visit to China? How about asking that guy who know this Dato’ to introduce you for a business venture? In my case, I will look for a wife who is good at Malay, Chinese, shopping and bowling in order to complement me in my life.
More about this rule
The sun is located around 149 million km from the earth. Despite this distance, we can still feel the heat of the sun throughout the day especially during the peak at noon time. Do you know that earth has an axial tilt of about 23.5º? This slight tilt caused the sun to have concentration of more sunlight in the southern hemisphere during December thus resulting in summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the northern hemisphere during December. The reverse occurs in June with more concentration of sunlight in Northern hemisphere resulting in summer and less concentration of sunlight in Southern hemisphere resulting in winter. The sun intensity during winter is around 0.9 kW/m2 for about 10 daylight hours and during summer the intensity is about 1.2 kW/m2 for about 14 daylight hours. Consider the fact that the difference in sun intensity between summer and winter is about 25%. This 25% difference in intensity make a difference between a hot temperature of summer and cold temperature of winter. My point is you can improve any skill that you want by focusing more on it, just like the sun able to create summer by focusing more sunlight on it and able to create winter by focusing less sunlight on it.
Consider also the magnifying glass. A small magnifying glass has such tremendous power that it is able to create a spark and fire when used directly under the sunlight. This happens because the magnifying glass is able to focus all the sunlight through the glass into a small point. The temperature at this point will be so high that it is able to create fire. If you are able to focus your mind like the magnifying glass, you will be able to create that spark and hence improve on any skill that you want.
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