avatarAlberto García 🚀🚀🚀

Summarize

The Unsettling Paradoxe That Will Blow Your Mind

And will change your view of your faults.

Photo by Thomas Vitali on Unsplash

Your faults are your virtues.

Because when you’re a cactus, your thorns are your flowers.

You may not be a damn tulip or even a sunflower, but you don’t need to be.

Your weakness is your strength.

Your ignorance is your wisdom.

The scarcity of means, skills, and resources forces you to learn.

But above all, it forces you to use your Imagination.

And as Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, and Imagination encircles the world.”

Virtues limit, and defects make you grow.

It’s not the pluses that make you grow; it’s your minuses.

As my grandfather used to say, “If you want a tree to grow, put a wall in front of it so it has to fight to reach the sun’s rays.”

People who have a normative “virtue” are limited by it. — They get the sun; what are they going to grow for?

People who lack that normative virtue must fight, which forces them to develop new skills (growing up to get the sun’s rays).

I have never been handsome, or tall, or attractive.

That forces me to seduce with words, to be more creative, and to practice active listening (there is nothing sexier than a person who knows how to listen).

My thorn — being short and not looking like Brad Pitt — became my flower, my virtue.

Thanks to my physical appearance (thorn), I learned to socialize, have people skills, have a fun chat, and know when to talk and shut up.

And that has benefited me throughout my life because the one who is born handsome gets older with the years (like everyone), but the one who always had to make an effort to socialize has more charm every year :-)

Beauty is lost with the years. Attractiveness is a muscle that, if you train it, grows.

My thorns are my flowers.

I have dyslexia; I change words, confuse letters, and read much slower than others.

And what is supposed to be a “flaw” became my advantage.

I became constant and disciplined by working harder than others to learn things.

I can spend eight hours studying because, since I was a child, I have had to spend those hours learning what other people learned in two or three Pomodoros.

Your flaws are your assets.

I had a more challenging childhood than the rest of the kids I grew up with because of the bullying due to my physique (I was a chubby kid, wore glasses, had a patch over one eye, and on top of that, I had dyslexia and OCD).

But all that made me unstoppable.

When the norm in your life is that nothing goes right, you don’t get bitter when nothing goes right for you. And that’s a superpower.

Today, the barrier to entry is low for many things, thanks to the advancement of technology.

But people still have psychological barriers, impostor syndrome, embarrassment, etc.

This is a luxury I have never been able to afford, and that’s why I expose myself so much in my texts.

Talking about my misfortunes openly is my advantage.

People want to read something honest. But only a few are willing to speak honestly about their weaknesses and flaws.

(Saying that your most significant flaw is being a perfectionist doesn’t count).

Takeaway

Please list your flaws; among them, you will discover your most valuable tools to achieve your dreams.

I’m serious.

Your strength is your weakness because you overtrust yourself.

But your weakness is your strength when you are aware of it and try to compensate for it with Imagination and will.

A virtual hug

AG

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Life Lessons
Life
Self Improvement
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