Want to succeed? Focus on your strengths and not weaknesses

Do you remember the theory of law of attraction? It says whatever you focus upon grows in life. This can also be said the other way- put your attention to whatever you want to grow in your life. For instance, if you focus on abundance, abundance grows in life and vice-versa.

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This phenomenon is applicable to every single aspect of your life including success and failure.

Focusing On Strengths Leads to Success

The most successful people in any field in the world have kept their focus on their strengths and not their weaknesses. And that’s why they achieved success. I am sure Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs have had glaring weaknesses but they definitely didn't achieve success by focusing on them.

To make it clearer, let’s take the example of Don Bradman one of the greatest batsman of all times and also known as ‘the Don’. He was known for his brilliant batting abilities and for record breaking innings.

The reason he achieved success and popularity was because he focused on something which was his strength - batting. Imagine if would have ignored his batting and would have worked on to improve his bowling abilities? I guess he would have been nowhere.

Now, look at your own life. Most of us have the tendency to complain and grumble at something which we aren’t good at. But have you ever thought how life would have been if we would focused on our strengths and positive things we posses? 

Let’s take another example: If you are terrible at a coding job, but excellent at writing blogs then what would exactly make you successful? You already have answered this question in your mind. You can’t afford to waste years of your life sitting and coding. Instead, you can turn out among the top writers in the world.

Shift in Focus

We often perform a root-cause analysis (RCA) about our failures. Oh, I failed because of that person, reason, situation, mistake and so on.. People aren’t satisfied till here. They go on introspecting until they find a big,valid excuse under which they can hide their guilt of failure. The result is nothing, but wastage of a lot of quality time, energy, poor relations at work or at personal level and a disappointed person.

Now, think the other way round. We can’t deny the fact that we have tasted success in more or less forms in our life. What if we spent a little time in doing a RCA of what led us to success? This shift in your focus from weaknesses to strengths can instill confidence and positivity in you. In fact, it would keep you inspired throughout.

Knowing about the reasons, facts, possibilities and things that made you successful is what would differentiate your from others. Successful entrepreneurs perform an RCA after every little success, which helps them stay consistent and achieve whatever they want.

So, if you are budding entrepreneur or working on to save your next project from failure then here are a few questions for you. These questions will help you introspect and give you more clarity about your idea for success. 

#1 What Resulted Into Success?

Recall that project when you were successfully able to deliver it. Jot down the approach you followed; planning, ideating or everything you did to make it successful. Once you write everything down, you can convert them into more meaningful results, which can later be shared with your team as well.

#2 Who Was Behind that Achievement?

This isn’t just a good practice to appreciate your team members, but also a great way to instill team spirit among them. Find out who helped you in accomplishing that project or launching that product.

This analysis is helpful in identifying those powerful resources, which can save you from challenging situations as well. Also, this can help you easily figure out people who can emerge out to be the future leaders of your company.

#3 How Much Time Did it Take?

All our project goals are bound within a particular time and if fail to meet the deadline, we fail to make it a success. Thus analyzing the time involved in a particular project is crucial for success. This helps you find out projected time, actual time taken and areas which consumed more time. This analysis helps you to create an ideal timeline for future projects.

#4 What Profits you Garnered?

Cost is an important factor involved in every project. Analyze the initial cost involved, profits made and overall cost efficiency involved in the last successful project. This will add more clarity to your budget-goals and help you identify efficiencies or inefficiencies in your operations.

It is also important to take a note of your team members’ contribution for the success, steps you took when plan A failed, and how you kept going through all the odds. In fact, these are your real assets, which have resulted into projects success and monetary profits.

Now, you look at your answers and you will realize that you have enough preparation, planning, resources, B-plans and timelines in accomplishing your next goal. Also, this will help you identify that your team is a mixture of creative professionals, leaders, advisors, and huge pool of talent which if used wisely can lead to sure short success.

Originally published at YourStory

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About Author:

Sandeep Kashyap is the Founder of ProofHub - a leading project management and collaboration software. A passionate leader, Sandeep is always on the lookout for innovative ideas about filling the communication gap between groups, teams and companies. He is also a featured writer on LinkedIn and contributing author at YourStory. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.

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