It is said that your strength is something
- you can do without any special effort
and
- that is difficult for others.
Often your strength is not so obvious to you and your extension such as the family, close friends and coworkers. Those, including yourself, are too used to you to see something special about you.
A girl growing up in a farm drives a tractor and milks a cow as her chores. Such things are nothing more than a daily task like doing the laundry. Pretty much anyone in the agricultural community can do. But for a girl growing up in a city, those things are something beyond her imagination. From her point of view, the farm girl is such a brave and talented super woman.
Your strength is not only something you achieve with a great effort. Likely you already have a lot of strength, yet much of it you are not aware of.
I am from Japan. I have lived in Canada for over 15 years. I see the strength of each.
What I see between these cultures is the different level of patience. Generally speaking, Japanese have more patience. It makes them more thoughtful, well prepared, detail oriented and hard working.
If you are a Canadian, don’t be offended! You may not be so patient, but you have the great ability to take an action. Patience can prison someone under a certain condition forever. Without taking an action, nothing will change. Your ability not to wait too long before making a decision is quite special.
Japanese and Canadian cultures are just different. Learn your own strength from the other’s point of view. At the same time, go beyond your standards and learn from the other’s strength. After all, no matter what you do, the ability to take an action and patience are equally important.
First of all, you need an action to start something. Without the first step, nothing will happen.
Once you start a thing, there are always the consequences. Some are great and some are not. Sometime they seem out of control. To handle the situation successfully, you should give an assessment over it time to time. You need to carefully examine what is going on. You observe, research, study and think through the situation.
People give you different ideas and opinions. There are endless what-if’s. There are so many options seeming equally beneficial and risky.
If you don’t have the strength to make a decision, then you get lost into the chaos. The only way to find out which option works is to try it. After you give some thought of it, the next step is to do it.
Think about your strength – are you good at taking an action or making an assessment?
If you are a good action taker, you may want to spend a bit more time to think through the situation. Give a bit more time before you make a phone call, send an e-mail or click a button on a web site.
If you are a deep thinker, you may need to force yourself to stop thinking and do it at a certain point.
This is an intentional self training. Once you recognize your strength, you also see your weakness. The repetition of thoughtless actions doesn’t bring you anywhere farther. Neither does the heavy thoughts without any action.
As you improve the balance of action and assessment, you get more stability to handle the life.