The Hidden Power Of Your 'flaws' | Connecting To Your Magic

We’ve been taught to fix our weaknesses, but what if they were actually working for us instead of against us?

In this episode, I explain how to reframe your weaknesses and see them as strengths in disguise, the surprising ways self-doubt and so-called flaws can fuel success and personal growth and how to align with your purpose by fully owning your strengths and weaknesses.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Free Well podcast. I'm Alacia and I am really happy to be here with you today. Today we are going to focus on strengths and weaknesses. So we're going to dive a little bit into this topic because I think that a lot of the times we are kind of focused on our strengths in a positive way and we focus on our weaknesses as if they were like a sort of problem almost like something that we need to fix, Change or improve or whatever and I mean there's always room for improvement obviously there's always like another next level and stuff like that which is you know something we're going to be talking about in next week's episode of the podcast but the reality is in my opinion that your strengths cannot exist without your weaknesses. So like what I mean by that is like the things that make you the most you are really not fully possible without your so called weaknesses. So I've talked about this a couple of times already on the podcast but recently because I'm refining one of my coaching programs I've been taking myself through my own process and it's been really interesting actually because yeah it's just it's been bringing up a lot of things and it's really forced me to reflect and the questions that I was asking myself in particular this weekend were you know what like reflecting on sorry who I am, Who I want to be and like what shifts I need to make to get myself there and when you think about who you are there's so many things that can come up I mean so many labels and so many identities and stuff like that and strengths as well can come up like for example like oh I'm you know I'm a fur mom and I'm a coach and I'm a teacher I'm a partner or a girlfriend or I'm a daughter or sister or friend or aunt or whatever it is that you are right like it can be those titles your job what you do which like I mean I do kind of hesitate to encourage people to over identify with because a lot of what we over identify with or a lot of what we identify with is actually not who we are but it's what we do or it's a role that we embody on earth not necessarily who we are as people if that makes sense but what actually came up and I think this is a testament to the work that I've done in the past but what came up were a lot of strengths I was actually really happy with that because like my first instinct wasn't like I'm bossy I'm annoying I'm you know frustrating I'm blah blah blah one of the things that came up was what I talked about in the episode last week about being too much so there were some there were some like you know less stellar things that came up as well but like yeah I came up with like a long long list of strengths and kind of just you know a short average list of weaknesses like nothing nothing too crazy and it's really it was just really satisfying because I think that like I've had and I know a lot of people and like even clients have a tendency to over identify with the negatives and to be very self critical right and like when we can get to a point where we see as much or more good in ourselves than we do like the so called bad then I mean that's really a beautiful sign that we've healed a lot of I think I would call it like conditioning whether that be familial conditioning societal conditioning cultural conditioning whatever when we've when we can say nice things about ourselves and we can speak about ourselves in a really positive way and we can view ourselves in a really positive light then I think that that's a testament to the amount of healing that we've done to kind of release the stories that aren't ours that don't belong to us that never came from us in the first place right but what was even more interesting is that my so called weaknesses are actually so much of what fuels my business and the work that I do in the world so as I was going through this process and kind of like you know going through the stories that I tell myself and so on and so forth some of what came up were like you know include but are not limited to impatience maybe being a little bit arrogant I don't love that word but sure being frustrating to others being challenging being stubborn and thinking that I'm always right and friends listen I'm not even ashamed of it and I don't know if I would even begin to changing this to change this at least not at this stage of my life but I really do think I'm often right and I will explain more about this in a second but all of these individually sound not great let's be totally honest they are not individually particularly positive adjectives or ways to describe one's self I would say right and we don't tend to like really like applaud people who are impatient arrogant you know they tend to like get on our nerves they tend to bother us like we tend to get really pissed off with people who are like this so there's like a lot of kind of negative stories around these around these adjectives around these like self identifying weaknesses that came up for me okay but when I put them in the context of the life that I live they begin to make so much more sense okay so much more sense so I am impatient I refuse to wait for things what I mean by that is not like Amazon orders I don't care about stuff like that but like if there's a line for something there is nothing at the end of that line that could convince me to wait for it like not nothing I guess if there was a Chanel bag at the end of the line I might be convinced to wait but I mean there are very few things that you would convince me to wait in line for not interested in waiting in line to get into a club couldn't care less not interested in waiting in line for food for like to try a new trend to get into a store like that's having a sale like I don't that's not for me because the waiting for me is not worth the reward of whatever is on the other side of that line so which it sounds however it sounds I'm not I'm honestly not too concerned about it that's just the way it is for me and I've very much come to terms with these weaknesses of mine but I tend to be impatient with this kind of thing I'm not I would not say however that I am impatient with people because you need a massive amount of patience in the in the job in the job that I do and in the field that I work in you need to be patient with people as they move through their own process and I think that if you're understanding and empathetic then that comes with the territory like it's not difficult to get to that point my impatience is more for external things not for people but my impatience also makes me a problem solver because I'm not really keen to wait on someone else to give me an answer or a solution so I go out there and I find it myself and when I can't find what I want I make it. I think that the podcast is a lot about that the coaching program is a lot about that because I haven't found what I've needed for me now that doesn't mean that it's what someone else necessarily needs and it doesn't mean that there aren't amazing things out there there are so many amazing things out there but what I've really wanted and the things that I think are most important I haven't seen them put together the way that in a way that aligns with me so I went out and did it right I went out and did it. If I wasn't a little bit arrogant and this is one of the ones I hesitate to say because there's a little bit of like wounding around this because I think that other people have reflected this back to me it's not necessarily something that I think about myself but maybe it's a story that I'm buying into however if I wasn't a little bit arrogant it would be a heck of a lot harder to be here on this podcast sharing my point of view with you no because it's not like at the end of the day it's not actually arrogance that fuels me but like let's call it like chutzpah and oh my god chutzpah I love a good Yiddish word love it love a good Yiddish word it's chutzpah and it's audacity and a desire to make the world a better place right and the belief that I actually can make it a better place in my own small way right like that's a lot of why I'm here I'm here because I want to have some kind of positive impact in the world I want to be able to use my voice my platform the my perspective the way that I see things the way that I move in the world and I want to use it in a positive way to create a positive ripple effect for myself and for other people right and just to give you like a brief kind of side note I actually looked up arrogance in the thesaurus because I am 100% a linguophile I love languages I think the fact that I am bilingual and the fact that I've studied a million languages I have studied a million no let's go back I have not studied a million languages but I've been studying French since I was six I started studying Spanish when I was in high school and I did it well into university I live in another country I'm currently studying Russian like I really just I love languages and one of the words that came up when I searched arrogance hilariously was self-love okay that was a possible match and that actually makes all the sense in the world to me because if we take the root of arrogance which is someone else's perspective right it's some it's usually someone else's view of the way that someone is behaving that person is probably triggering whoever is calling them arrogant right when you say that someone is arrogant there might be a little bit of triggering maybe somebody actually is arrogant I mean there's there's two sides to every story but I thought that was so so hilarious because like it's like one of the possible matches for your word is self-love and I was like that's it friends being really comfortable with yourself and and owning owning who you are and owning the way that you move in the world right if I wasn't frustrating and challenging I would have no clients and I would have no business because that's exactly what I do in my work I challenge people to question their lives the beliefs that they are running that are running their lives and holding them back the stories that they've been telling themselves or the stories that other have told to other people have told them that they're buying into do you know I don't allow anyone around me to play small and I really try to have a positive impact in the lives of everyone that I touch and that goes from family friends partners you know acquaintances colleagues whatever and then clients obviously like I really try to to have like a positive impact and to use my challenging personality as a way to invite people in to questioning things questioning the things that they believe about themselves questioning what it has always been this way you know it's always been done this way so we must continue doing it this way no how do you want to do it how do you want to move in the world right I believe that I am always right this is where we're coming back to that comment from earlier because I have built up a muscle of actually listening to my intuition right listening to it and trusting it so when something feels off I believe that it is off when something feels wrong it's because there is something wrong or when something is going on 99. 9% of the time there is something going on I can read people because I trust and believe that I can and again if I didn't believe that I was right then I wouldn't be able to be here sharing my own unique perspective with you right by the way is subjective what I mean by right in this case is that this is my truth like what I'm sharing here is what I believe to be true about the world that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be true for you or for someone else but it's always an invitation right because when I say what I believe to be true I am always asking you filter it through your own set of values get clear on what matters to you what you value what you want where you're going the direction that you want to be moving in right who you want to be in the world get clear on all of those things take everything that I'm saying filter it through that and then see what comes up that's your truth then you don't have to believe what I'm saying you don't have to agree with what I'm saying but there is always something to be gained by listening to something like this even if it's triggering even if it's something that pisses you off. So going back to the discussion my weaknesses fuel every single aspect of what I do in the world without them I would not be here having this conversation with you right and and like even moving forward to that like I have a tendency to forget things when I teach mindset when I talk about these ideas tools techniques strategies whatever it helps me remember them right it puts me in a more aligned position as well because it knows it reminds me of what I am know I am here on the planet to do right what I am obsessed with what I love reading about talking about studying everything like the material that I love engaging with is this this fuels my fire and the fact that like it's difficult for me to remember things like talking about this and teaching it helps me really sink in really center into that to that energy to really embody that energy as well. So my question now to you is if you were to list out your strengths and list out your weaknesses in what ways are your weaknesses actually the key to exactly what you were meant to do here in the world in what ways are your weaknesses perfectly aligned to your strengths and how can they both help you show up as even more of who you want to be in the world of who you already are right and it takes a hot minute it takes a hot minute you have to sit you have to get quiet you have to get still you have to take the time you have to believe that you are worthy of taking the time to have these kinds of conversations with yourself you have to believe that there is something valuable worth finding when you sit down and have these conversations with yourself there is mindset on mindset it's a very meta process because the questions themselves are mindset but you also have to work on your mindset to get to the point where you're even asking yourself those questions right but what would it take to get you to sit there and actually have this conversation okay here are my strengths and here are my so-called weaknesses and how are those things aligned with each other because they're often connected and how are my weaknesses actually so much a part of the things that I do so well in the world how are they a part of who I'm meant to be of what I am meant to embody in this world right and if you're wondering more about embodiment next week's episode of the podcast is going to talk more about this so feel free to dive into that as well but it's just about asking yourself and asking yourself the question and being willing to take action on the answers and then listen if there's something that you really feel that is a weakness that you don't really like you can of course begin to make the take steps to shift that if you want to but before you start unraveling pieces of who you are I want you to be really clear and I want you to sit with yourself and ask yourself this question did that so-called weakness come from you was that something that you believed about yourself or was that something that someone else told you was one of your weaknesses it's really important that we're always having this conversation and again filtering everything through our own experience our own understanding of the world so this thing that I believe is kind of quote-unquote wrong with me is there actually something wrong with me or is there is this something that somebody else reflected back to me if we go back to the episode from last week this idea of me being too much as a child there is no child that sits there and says to themselves oh you know what I think I'm too much today I'm just going to have to tone it down that was something that was reflected to me that was something that somebody said to me then more people said to me then I took it even more on board ever more on board until I got to an adult and then it's still this story that from like being a small child is kind of still running my life or is you know was running my life because I am in the process of letting it go and I am in a constant process of letting that go so it's really about getting clear too on who is who that voice is and where that story came from and if it's not yours amen thank you that that's not mine so I can do so much it takes less effort to I can just let that go because I don't have to hold on to it anymore because I didn't tell that to myself if it's not yours but you've been buying into it then it's about doing the you know the work to kind of let that go but it's it's it's doesn't have to be challenging it's all about really deciding at the end of the day so much of what we talk about on this on this podcast is about deciding to do things differently deciding to move differently deciding to believe things differently saying like you know actually these aren't weaknesses this is all a part of the of the framework of what makes me incredibly interesting what makes me incredibly valuable and if I didn't have this unique blend of all of these different pieces I would not be me and when I am not honoring all of those pieces of who I am good bad light dark the things I like the things that I dislike about myself when I'm not honoring all of those pieces I am now some watered-down version of who God the universe whatever put me here to be right I am less of who I am meant to be when I am not completely in love with every part of who I am because that's what you were put here for and maybe that's a lesson of a lifetime at the end of the day is learning to love ourselves no matter what no matter our strengths or our weaknesses no matter the mistakes that we've made no matter the challenges that we face or how hard things get or when we fall or when we trip or when we screw up or we say the wrong thing or we embarrass ourselves or whatever loving all of it because all of it is relevant to where we're going all of it is relevant to the journey that we're on and to where we ultimately want to move ourselves right when we're in that self-aware position when we're in a self-aware space and we're saying okay actually I want to be this person I want to have these habits I want to live in this way and so I'm going to begin to embody those things which is exactly what we talk about in the next episode of the podcast so yeah I'm going to leave you here but last time just to repeat the question in what ways are your weaknesses actually exactly what you are meant to be doing here right in what ways are your weaknesses exactly the gift that you are here to give to the world or how do they influence the way that you move in the world in a positive way in a positive way how can you see pieces of those reflected in the things that you already do so well in the magic that is you in the world how can you tap into those things and begin to love all of who you are okay if you have any questions comments critiques or concerns please feel free to message me or yeah if you love this episode please share if you want to and you feel called to leave a comment I love to interact with you I love hearing what you guys have to say and yeah I just really deeply hope that this serves you thank you again for being here and for listening and I hope you have an amazing weekend and I will see you on the next episode of the podcast ciao