I Conquer Weakness

This week's past two posts have talked about my lack of perfection and my mistake-making. The conclusion to this mini-arc focuses on how I combat my insecurities and weaknesses and turn them into strengths.

I imagine myself as a monarch over a castle. My best self is kept safe inside the castle walls.

So the gray part is my castle, the green part is grass, and I'm the yellow dot.

I'm ready to defend myself from any weaknesses that want to come in and wreck the place, thus holding back my best self.

Sure enough, before long, I'm attacked by two vices (the purple dots holding cutlasses). Let's say these are pride and anger. I rush to defend myself.

But then two more vices come onto the scene. These guys could be envy and hatred. Fearing the new threat, I rush to answer their assault, leaving pride and anger to attack my right flank.

But before I can do anything about envy and hatred, laziness and greed swoop in from the east. I leap forward, ready to take these new enemies out.

But then, lust and discontent barrel into the fray, and I race past laziness and greed to contend with these new enemies.

But by then, it's too late.

Because I spent so much time jumping from threat to threat, I never fired a single arrow. My defense was useless, and now all of my weaknesses are successfully battering down my best self.

I should have taken the time to tackle one weakness at a time. If, instead of racing to the new threat the moment it presented itself, I'd taken aim and gotten rid of the issues currently in front of me, then I might not have become overwhelmed.

Yes, by the time I took out pride, anger, envy, and hatred, the others might have put some sizable dents into my castle. However, the damage they would have ended up doing would have been far less than the entire combined body working together unhindered.

Now let's jump into the real world application.

We all have weaknesses and things that keep us from being our best selves. I have so many, in fact, that I am often overwhelmed by all the work I have to do on myself. Because I get caught up trying to balance so many things at once, I end up doing nothing at all.

So here's my advice.

Pick one thing about yourself that you want to work on. Focus on that one thing for a week. If you're satisfied you made progress, move on to focus on something new. As time goes on, you will find yourself circling back to the first thing you picked. You may not recognize improvement in yourself all at once, but taking things one step at a time will help you continue moving forward, as opposed to being overwhelmed and stagnating.

So get on up top of your castle's ramparts with a bow and a smile, and start picking off your personal goals one by one. I'll be right beside you in my own castle, plugging away myself.