Tag Archive for 'friends'

Leveraging Your Strengths

Today’s intern training session touched on my company’s philosophy that it is “impossible to turn a weaknesses into a strength.” It seemed counter-intuitive. Why wouldn’t every company want to turn each employee’s weaknesses into strengths?

But, then, in that rare flash of insight I am rarely prone to, realized it was about ROI — Return on Investment.

Rather than having employees spend excessive amounts of time trying to turn a fear of public speaking into a Broadway actor’s stage presence, companies would rather have them reach an acceptable level of public speaking competency. The return on investment for reaching perfection for a weakness just isn’t worth it.

I would argue that the most successful (and happiest) Harvard students are those who leverage those strengths.

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Treat Yourself Like You Would a Good Friend

The folks at lifehack.org have an interesting article titled “How to Be a Friend of Yourself” –

We often focus on building relationships with others that we forget the essential first step: being friends of ourselves. That is the crucial first step if we are to have good relationships with others. How can we have good relationships with others if we don’t even have good relationship with ourselves? (read the rest)

It’s a fantastic article — but I think in order to be a good friend of yourself, it doesn’t just mean being able to accept and embrace yourself. Rather, to be your own best friend, you need to start treating yourself like you would a best friend.

Would you demand as much from your good friend as you do of yourself?

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