My Biggest Weak Point Is Super Embarrassing. Here’s What I’m Doing To Fix It.

Copy-pasting excellence from strong points to weak

Ladies, germophobes, and honored others:

I am very excited about something.

A few days ago I wrote two stories on Medium, entitled How to Correct Your Weak Points (And Win At Life) and The One Skill You Can Use To Master Any Area of Your Life.

How to Correct Your Weak Points… dealt with the idea of taking a good hard look in the mirror after a setback and identifying why it happened. I used myself as an example, and told the world (possibly foolishly) that I hadn’t done very well professionally because I didn’t give 100% most of the time.

(If you need me, I’m still wincing. And trying to convince myself I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by making that public.)

The second article (The One Skill…) talks about how you can get really, really good at any area of your life by identifying a different area where you’re already excellent, and functionally copy-pasting your approach from one to the other. Example used: I will get really good at eating healthily because I am a very excellent Cat Mommy.

Don’t question it, it totally works.

My Area of Excellence: Introducing C.R.

Yesterday, oh my friends! Yesterday I had an epiphany.

So, when I said I cut corners and didn’t do my best for previous clients, it was almost 100% true. Ninety percent of the time, I had given like 75% (maybe) (which turned out to be a major trauma response, but shhh whatever).

HOWEVER.

I realized yesterday that there is one person in my life who I have never, ever done less than 100% for.

I don’t know if she would like me using her real name, so we’ll call her C.R. And my dudes, if you ever get a chance to work with someone like her, jump on it with the speed of a thousand Looney Tunes mice.

(Sidenote — Did you get that reference? I got that reference. God, I’m funny.)

C.R. is only a few years older than I am, but she’s one of the one-in-a-million world-changer people. I met her through my involvement with a nonprofit when I was 16. And that was seriously one of the luckiest things in my life.

Why C.R. Is Amazing (It’s Relevant, I Promise)

Getting to know C.R. wasn’t one of the luckiest things in my life because it got me a fancy job or made me a lot of money. In fact, most of the work I’ve done for her has been completely free.

But being in her orbit, being involved with her, is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me because of her effect on me as a person.

She has the extremely rare magical unicorn ability to bring out the absolute best in people. She doesn’t push, she doesn’t even pull — she draws you forward. She believes in your ability to do the thing, so you do the thing because she believes in you.

As I reviewed my professional life so far in the why-the-setbacks mirror, I had to face some painful truths about myself. But the one single shining star in the firmament of my professional life is C.R. Even during the years when getting stressed could literally kill me, I reached out to C.R. to see if I could (totally for free) help her with anything because she was straight-up the only person I could work for without risking death.

Her ability to bring out the best in people, her belief in me, and my absolute determination to live up to that belief mean that I have never, ever done less than my best for her, and I will keep doing my best for as long as I have the privilege of working on things for her. No lie, if she called me up tomorrow and asked if I could go to the moon, I’d start researching training programs. Would I be able to become an astronaut? Not likely, I’m pretty sure I’m too old to start the process and also my body tends to fall apart (I’m working on it).

But you can bet your bottom dollar that I would do my absolute damndest to get on that piece of sky-rock for her.

Conclusion: I Will Fix My Professional Self By Copy-pasting My Work For Her Into Literally Everything Else

In The One Skill You Can Use To Master Any Area of Your Life, I talk about how excellence itself is a transferrable skill. The catch is that you have to have an area where you’re already excellent. Again, that area doesn’t need to have anything to do with the area you’re trying to improve! But it does make it a little easier if they’re like, within shouting distance of each other.

I’m very excited because I realized that I do already have an area of excellence, professionally. I have an approach I can copy-paste into the rest of my working life. And I have decided that my mantra for every project I work on going forward, for as long as it takes, will be this:

“This project is for C.R.”

Because I will cut off my left arm before I disappoint her.

Fin.