How Understanding and Accepting My Flaws Helped Me

I have spent a large part of my life working in the self development field. It’s not just a job, it’s a passion and a hobby.

I have researched, tried, and discussed almost everything I thought was worth pursuing. It started at an early age, and it will continue throughout my life.

I have been through some highs and lows as most of us have throughout our lives. I know that my pursuit of continual development have made it possible for me to end up where I am today. Which is a good place I’m more than satisfied with.

I’m writing this article today to help anyone reading this understand some of my journey, and also help you understand yours.

With learning, growing, and improving the way we act, live, and think, there are going to be some tough challenges. Some will seem impossible at first, but there is a way to look at these challenges that will help.

Because self-development obviously focuses on improving areas of our lives, as well as accepting areas of our lives for what they are.

Don’t get too hung up on what your perceived ‘flaws’ are if you are struggling to strengthen them. I have found great success is understanding and accepting some of my flaws, and I want to explain how you can too.

How Understanding and Accepting My Flaws Helped Me

There Is a Strength to Help Every Flaw

This may not immediately make sense, but I will explain. I always used to try and avoid planning things for groups of people. I would really worry about letting someone down. Yet, when I discussed this openly with friends we all agreed I was good at planning and arranging things for myself.

So my flaw here is the worry about letting others down. Yet I have a strength that can help me. So I decided to go large, and the next time there was a huge planning task I took it on.

I got straight into planning mode as I would if I was just taking care of my own business, and it went perfectly. So try and apply this to something you’re stressing over and let a strength carry the weakness.

Understand and Work on Flaws Spawned from Success

If you are going to work on your flaws and not let them have a negative impact on your life you need to prepare for them. The most obvious example of what I mean by this is looking at successful people who become victims of their own success.

If you’re really working hard on your career you will no doubt be making sacrifices, whether you aware of it or not. This may be reflect in a reduced social life, burnout, or growing stress.
Try spotting the sings of these flaws early, you can pull back on the work and balance your life better.

Use Flaws to Learn about Yourself

If something isn’t going well in your life you’re only really going to conquer it by understanding it, and learning from it.

People suffering from depression or anxiety are good examples of this. Depression always has an underlying cause, such as fears, concerns, negative thoughts etc.

People overcome depression by looking into these root causes and working on them. So apply this to whatever situation is affecting you can see what you can learn from your flaws.

Flaws are light red lights, they are making themselves present and we should take notice. Simply ignoring flaws and hoping they will go away or solve themselves is just not going to work.

Flaws Remind Us We Are Human

Even the most intelligent and productive people have flaws. Honestly. Nobody is perfect, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, that’s the beauty of individuality.

The next time you feel like you have the worst luck in the world, think how many other people are feeling exactly the same. If you get upset easily, you can guarantee countless others do too.

Rather that seeing flaws as you being less perfect than others, see it as a sign you’re just as good as anyone else. Likewise, be a little more patient and accepting of others being aware of this.

Flaws Help Us Improve and Change

Recognizing a flaw, and understanding why you behave the way you do make for a great foundation to change.

An example of this is a good friend on mine, he was always putting off doing things. We talked about it and got to the bottom of why he was putting stuff off – he was scared of failure.

We worked together and discussed what would help him get past this ‘flaw’. We came up with the plan of breaking down daunting tasks into smaller wins. Each win making him feel better about himself.

This is a good example of improving and changing based on a flaw.