Breaking the Rules

I stumbled across a great blog - I Help You Blog and there is a fantastic challenge that of course I can't pass up. 101 Great Posting Ideas for Your Blog challenges it's readers to pick one of the 101 posting ideas and write a great post about the topic.

I have decided to focus on great food for thought that I found in a book I am currently reading called Breaking the Rules: Removing the Obstacles to Effortless High Performance by Kurt Wright.

He proposes that weaknesses do not exist, only strengths. One example he highlights is that you cannot measure darkness except in relation to light. Darkness is light measured in degrees up from zero, therefore you only posess degrees of strength.

So, it might look something like this: You posess two different characteristics, one is self-confidence and one is self-discipline. Previous to this you might consider self-confidence to be your strength and self-discipline your weakness. But, since weakness does not exist then you need to re-evaluate.

We recognize that we only have degrees of strength, so if we were to use a scale starting from zero, (0-10) where would you place your different strengths? It might look like this: self-confidence might be a 10 and self-discipline might be a 2. They both are strengths and self-confidence is stronger.

If you were to accept this belief as true, how would that change the way you operate going forward? What benefits could you see from adopting this new belief system? What would be different as a result of your new beliefs about yourself?


Here's another interesting thought Kurt brings out in his book - you probably are aware and familiar with the Law of Attraction by now and he points out that energetically we cannot recognize a strength in another if we ourselves do not already posess it. He challenges us to verbally acknowledge and engage others in conversation around a strength we notice in them. By doing this we ultimately provide ourselves with a mirror in which we are able to generate awareness by acknowledging and exploring our own strengths, which in turn makes them stronger.

Who do you know that you embody strengths you admire? How might you verbally acknowledge them this week? In acknowledging them, what do you notice about yourself?

I had fun writing this post and I hope you have enjoyed it. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this - share them!

Thanks to I Help You Blog for the wonderful inspiration behind this tidbit.


Until next time...