The Importance Of Playing To Your Strengths.

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It's been proven throughout time that we as people are constantly seeking to improve upon the things we already have. It's almost mind boggling when you think of how there was once a time where house phones were the only way for people to talk on the phone. Now house phones are pretty much a rarity, and mobile communication is the norm. I bring the point of seeking improvement up because like the upgrades to technology example that I used, we as people in general are often looking to upgrade ourselves. What do I mean by this? Many of us are seeking to make our lives better in various aspects in order for us to live better lives. I'm pretty certain that most of you would agree with this, and I am right there with you in agreeing on this. Now in order for us to expand upon and improve our lives, we have to first acknowledge what areas that we need to improve. These things could be classified as weaknesses right? Strength and weaknesses are characteristics that we all posses. Regardless of how strong or weak you may in certain areas, or how they level out when it comes to the number of each that we posses, the fact remains that there is nobody that is all one or the other. When it comes to our weaknesses, I believe that they are attributes that we should definitely work on improving. However, there are many of us that don't fully use and capitalize on our strengths to the best of our capacity. This is a huge problem from my perspective, and I think it is of great importance for us to play to our strengths in today's society.

YO! What's up once again everybody? This is Brad H. once again, and I'd like to welcome you all to another installment of 'Brad H.'s Perspective'! For all the first time readers, this is platform where I give my perspective on a topic that will hopefully serve as inspiration in our lives. Glad to have you all here once again. I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving, and that you are enjoying the month of December thus far. Man this year has gone by so fast right? So hard to believe that in less than a month that 2020 will be here. So for my soapbox this week, I'm going to address my Dallas Cowboys. So we saw them lose the Thanksgiving Day game to the Buffalo Bills, and this past Thursday we say them drop another to the Chicago Bears. Despite all of that, they are still in first place in the NFC East. Crazy right? Shows how weak that division is, but the biggest topic the last few weeks has been whether their owner Jerry Jones should fire head coach Jason Garrett. Now I personally think back to the year when Jerry fired then head coach Wade Phillips. That was in 2009 or 2010 I believe. Before Phillips was fired, the Cowboys were playing like absolute trash. They looked like a team that had given up on their coach, and it showed because when Phillips was fired and Garrett was promoted, the team started playing better. I bring this up because I see some semblance of that happening now. It looks to me like this team doesn't believe in Garrett anymore. Now I could be wrong, but when I see a team not executing like the Cowboys haven't been doing, I believe that it's a coaching issue. We will see how this all plays out, but I do believe that this will be Garrett's last year at the helm. Wit the lack of success the Cowboys have had in the last couple decades, I would say it's long overdue at this point. Alright, now that I've rambled about my team for a bit, lets talk more about the importance of playing to your strengths.

When it comes to us as individuals having both strength and weaknesses, I believe that it is important to put thing into the right context. This is one of the main reasons why I wanted to bring this topic to fruition, but the other goal with this is to hopefully inspire others to recognize their gifts. Now I mentioned earlier that our weaknesses should never totally be neglected. This especially applies when we're weak at something that has bearing on our lives. For example, if you're weak a speaking publicly and you have to take a public speaking course in college, working on improving that is crucial to how the end result will be for you in that class. Then there are other weaknesses that may not be as relevant to our lives. An example of this could be a person that is weak when it comes to a particular sport. Unless you're someone that plans on making a career out of whatever sport you're bad at, the idea of not being as strong in this area of your life probably won't matter much. Again, I'm of the belief it is better to put more emphasis towards improving in the areas of your life where it affects your livelihood. Our weaknesses definitely should matter in our lives, but as I pointed out earlier in this topic, there are many of us that do not fully maximize our strengths in this life. I believe that many of us don't even fully recognize most of our strengths, but for those of us that may do, we often allow them to take the backseat to the aspects of our lives where were we're weaker.

Now before I go into why I think it is important for us to play to our strengths, I want to try and setup where I am going with this topic. So what do I mean when I say that many of us do not fully maximize our strengths? This is a question that is subjective to whatever context that it is put into. My personal belief of this is that many of us do not fully apply the things that we're good at for the sake of bettering ourselves. Many of us have gifts and talents that we do not fully capitalize on, and because we don't, we find that it is more difficult for us to progress. Now as I alluded to earlier, much of this isn't our fault due to the fact that a lot of us don't fully know or understand our strengths. In order to know what your strengths are in this life, you have to be a self aware individual. That is beside the point, but the fact remains that suppression of our minds, along with focusing on irrelevant things often keep us stagnated. Since we're in the heart of the NFL season, I'm going to use a football example. When you think of a team like the Baltimore Ravens who have a scrambling quarterback in Lamar Jackson, along with a very good running back in Mark Ingram, wouldn't it make the most sense for them to use their running attack to progress their offense? If you watch football, you know that is what their team does, and they have been successful at it so far. When it comes to us as people, we have to identify our strengths and use them to our benefit.

All of this brings us to the main theme of this topic, which is the importance of playing to your strengths. Why do I personally believe it's important for us to play to our strengths? Besides the obvious idea of playing to your strengths gives you a better chance to succeed at whatever you're strong at, focusing too much on your weaknesses can lead to frustration and depression. From my own personal perspective, I believe that when we don't put precedence in our strengths in life, it leaves us too much energy to focus on the things we're not as good at. I'm sure that most of you at some point in your life tried doing something that you had a hard time figuring out, and to be quite honest, you probably become frustrated if you weren't able to do so. Maybe you later figured it out and become good at it, but there are times when that isn't always the case. There are just some things in our lives that you're never going to be good at, and that's okay. You don't have to drive yourself nuts trying to figure out something that isn't meant for you to learn. You have to focus more on the areas of your life that you do excel at. Those are the areas that will lead you towards having a better and more productive life. If something works for you and you're good at doing it, keep on pushing that instead of worrying about the things you're weaker at. We all have strengths in our lives, and those individual strengths are tailored just for us. Exploit those, and don't necessarily neglect your weaknesses, but put less focus into them if they're not benefiting you.

Well we've reached the conclusion of this week's topic, so I'm going to go ahead and sign off for now. Thank you all once again for stopping in for another installment of 'Brad H.'s Perspective'! I'm am truly grateful for everyone that has read, commented, and tweeted anything that I've ever written. If you feel the desire to do any of those things with this topic, please feel free to do so. You can also follow me on Twitter @BradrickH if you'd like. Christmas is right around the corner, and I hope that everyone is in the Christmas spirit. If you happen not to be in the spirit, put on some good Christmas music and see if that helps. Matter of fact, listen to one of my favorites called "This Christmas" by Donnie Hathaway. That is a beautiful Christmas song, but I'm sure most of you have heard it before. Alright, I'm out of here, so I'll see you all in the next topic. Have a good week ahead, and peace!

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