Self-Reflection Sandwich

If you were told to make a list of ten amazing things about yourself that you are proud of, things you would call a strength of yours, what would they be? Are they skills you have acquired? Character traits? Things you have made or accomplished? Whatever they are if you are any bit like me and my classmates it probably was not very easy to come up with any let alone ten. Now try to list ten weaknesses of your things that you are not good at, maybe they are things you are working on improving, they could be things that you do not think could ever change. When coming up with my weaknesses in less than two minutes I had over twenty weaknesses, when given the same amount of time for strengths I came up with five. Why is that? My theory, that it is the way we are raised, to say something your good at comes across as bragging and that you think you're superior to everyone else. Personally, when I start talking about my strengths I am immediately bombarded with feelings of shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, and worry. However, this post is not about the failings of society or the psychological insecurity of relationships, this is about my strengths and weaknesses so let’s dive into that.

Have you ever heard of an insult sandwich? The strategy is that when you need to tell someone something bad or criticize them that it will not hurt as much if you start off with a compliment and end in one, that way you start and end on a high note. To present my two strengths and weaknesses I have decided to use the same approach since we need to acknowledge and explore our weaknesses to grow and yet it still stings and makes you feel insecure. Enough dawdling time to rip the Band-Aid off starting with strength number one, being able to see the bright side or the silver lining in everything.

When it comes to ways to coping with negative situations to keep going and not let myself be dragged down with negativity and to stay positive, I look at whatever situation I am in and try to find at least one benefit. After doing something for a long amount of time you may find yourself doing it without conscious thought, this is what finding positives have become for me. Here are some examples, someone robs you on your way home from work, well you now know what you should look out for. Fail an exam, you know what doesn’t work when it comes to approaches to an exam and studying techniques. At the end of the day, there is always going to be some silver lining in any situation, it could be learning what not to do, being able to relate to others who have gone through similar things, learning forgiveness, maybe even learning more about yourself as a person. This is a strength since it helps me accept things going on around me, helps allow me to be flexible with people and situations, most importantly it helps me to understand the reasons behind why people do what they do.

Now comes one of my biggest weaknesses, effort. Effort can be understood as many different things as possible, motivation, drive, hard work, giving it your all, giving it your all, and more. I am good at motivation, one of the reasons is my first strength allowing me to see positives in a world of negative. When it comes to effort, I think of it as a drive to finish a project, my issue is I run out of energy a day or a half a day into something and can never seem to finish a project. This has many negatives, it makes doing homework, going to work, getting up in the morning, and anything else that requires energy. This is something that I work on however it is not simple. My problem is not motivation. I can tell you why I do something, why it is important, why I want to do something, or why you should, but I can’t get myself to do it.

Finally, we have the last strength I am going to talk about, the ability to quickly learn something process it orally talking it out and then effectively teach people what I learned in a flexible way to help explain it in ways anyone can understand. This is a very valuable skill as it allows communication, by processing things out the load you can ensure that you are not misunderstanding something someone is trying to teach you. This also allows a person to foster communication with the people they are trying to teach, by adapting my analogies and how I teach someone something it can be better understood and allows more people to understand what you are teaching.

At the end of the day, every strength can be turned into weakness and every weakness can be turned into a strength. Being mindful as well as aware of what is going on along with your strengths and weaknesses can help you communicate things with other people, find people to compliment your strengths and weaknesses. Being mindful can also help you to manage your strengths and know what you should or shouldn’t do or sign up to do as the truth is that wouldn’t be a good fit for you.