We have a slightly different type of episode today. I want to talk about weaknesses and strengths. Yes, we often hear things like: “Strengths make you special”, “Work on your strengths; don’t worry about your weaknesses”, “Do what you’re good at”, etc.

First of all, if you want to stick with the easy stuff, you’re basically listening to the wrong person right now. I want to help you excel; not just win some lottery because you think you have a special chance or a special number.

Weaknesses are what pull you down. Strengths are something special, and you want to certainly go with your strengths, but what about your weaknesses? Life is just not simple. While we concentrate on our strengths, that’s okay; weaknesses are going to hold you back.

A lot of life requires you to be much broader than a specific special skill. For example, you may be wanting to be an engineer, you may be wanting to do something else, you need to make presentations. What are the skills for those presentations? You’ve got to speak well, you’ve got to learn to speak in front of people, you’ve got to be able to use logic, and you’ve got to understand what motivates people. When you get into that, you’re also talking in other areas as well. In sales, you also have to understand people and what motivates them, and you also have to stand in front of them.

Many occupations, probably just about all, require you to do networking. You have to meet people, and you have to get over the shyness, etc. that you normally might have. I bring up shyness because that was one of my biggest problems when I was young. I couldn’t talk to anybody. I couldn’t stand in front of a class when I was in junior high school and high school. I had to, but I was nervous and shaking, and everything. I had to learn it.

I noticed that when I was in the security agency, I was asked to brief colonels, and that was a very, very nerve-racking experience. I wasn’t even standing up. I was sitting down across a desk from them, but it was still very nerve-racking.

When I got my PhD at Berkeley, I went around on the interview circuit. One of the universities where it was a foregone conclusion I’d be accepted asked me a question that was so simple, we’re talking about as basic and as simple as you could be – I couldn’t believe it. I tried to start thinking of all the things, got nervous, and I froze.

I realized I couldn’t go on in that situation. How would I do this? I tried all kinds of tricks. You hear them, you imagine different things. You imagine the people in their underwear or some other stupid thing. That wasn’t enough. What I did is when I got my job working in research labs, talking to different people and trying to look up ideas, I ran across a Dale Carnegie course. It doesn’t matter whether it was my situation going to the Dale Carnegie course, or your situation in some other capacity. We have tons of things where we have weaknesses and we have to learn. I’ll give you a few more examples.

To give you an example let me explain what I did to step out of my comfort, because this is a big one for a lot of people. They say the biggest fear that anybody has is being in fire, second is speaking in front of people. So I went to the course and all these people were gathered around in the classroom, they’re all talking to each other. They’re really good outgoing people. I sat in the front row, and I sat there before the class and I was just sort of by myself. Sort of chatted a little bit with the person next to me, but these people were really having a good time.

One thing was: why was I in the first row? That’s a very uncomfortable position, generally, to be there. But why? Because I had read when I wanted to learn how to study—I didn’t know how to do it best—I read a book on studying and learning, found something and it said: “Sit in the first row. Why? Because you won’t be distracted by other people.” So I just copied it—remember that episode (see copying mentors)—I j...