In this NSFW clip, David Goggins talks about how tripling down on your weaknesses is more important than tripling down on your strengths. It’s easy to improve at things you’re already good at, but it’s much harder to get good at difficult things. In my own experience, I’ve found that overcoming my weak points has been far more rewarding than improving my strong points. The greatest joys I’ve felt have come from getting good at things at which I struggled, and even small improvements in these areas have been exciting.
Whenever I can, I try to make small improvements and focus on easy steps to get where I want to be. Sometimes, however, I have to take bigger steps or even huge leaps. If I’m trying to jump across a sizable gap, I can’t tiptoe across it or walk slowly up to it before making my attempt. I have to run at a fast enough pace to give myself enough momentum to clear the gap by the time I jump. I can start off walking if I have enough distance between myself and the edge, but at some point I have to start taking bigger, faster steps to have any chance of making it. Self-improvement is the same; small steps were ok initially, but eventually I realized I had to work on directly tackling my major problem areas. Otherwise I’d be forever working on polishing things that were already shining brightly while neglecting the things that were falling apart.
This is the hard side of self-improvement, the side that gets ugly and messy and is often left out of conversations on this subject, and for good reason: if it were included, most people would never undertake it. The people who have spent decades working on themselves make it look easy whenever they respond with kindness to a hostile person or accomplish more in a morning than most people do in a day. We can see them do those things but what we’re not seeing is their early years where they struggled and had no idea what they were doing; when they spent years working on things that may occupy a chapter or two of their book. They may talk about where they came from and how hard it was for them to get where they are now, but seeing their struggle is a whole different ballgame than reading about it or hearing them discuss it. You may know someone who you’ve seen rise from the lowest of lows into a fantastic place in life. If so, how powerful was it to watch them on their journey and see the progress, slow at first and then much faster as they went on their way?
Everyone who’s worked extensively on personal development has a story that is far too complex and detailed for any book, video, or speech to fully capture. However, if they don’t include a synopsis of their journey and the difficulties they encountered (and probably still face to this day), they’re giving others a false impression of what the process is like and are setting them up for failure by making it look far easier than it really is. There are parts of self-improvement that are easy, or at least easier than other parts. If you’re committed to it, though, eventually you’ll get to the difficult, painful parts. It’s here where the real magic happens if you stick with it and heal these big issues instead of just healing the small ones (although healing a lot of small issues will help you prepare for the big issues).
There have been many seasons on my journey in which I’ve felt enraged, cried at the drop of a hat, wanted to distance myself from everyone around me, and felt all my hard work was for naught. Nothing I’ve heard, watched, or read fully prepared me for these times. Whenever I’ve made through one of those seasons, I’ve always felt better and stronger, especially if I had incorporated a lesson into my life that I needed to learn. I can’t see myself going back to how I was before and I can’t imagine how my life would look right now if I hadn’t undertaken this journey. Keep all this in mind if you decide to start or have already started a self-improvement journey. It’s often difficult and painful and it’s always worth it. Godspeed.
