Weakness is awesome

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is going to school to become a mechanic. He was telling me about a part of the class that he was kind of struggling with. He was looking at this thing that was giving him trouble and seeing it as something that could make his next couple of weeks in the class rather difficult.

My reaction at first confused him. I saw what he was saying as an awesome opportunity rather than an obstacle. Most of the things he had been learning up until this point were things he already knew or had at least a passing familiarity with. But this "new" thing will increase his knowledge base and expand his mind. Once he conquers it he will have additional confidence in his abilities.

That is not what makes this thing so great though. What makes it great, is that he is now aware that he is not familiar with or good at this particular thing. In short it is a weakness. And the awesome thing about that is, once you are aware of a weakness you can annihilate it. While you are unaware of it, you can do nothing about it.

People tend to look at life kind of backwards. We are often only happy when things are running smoothly and flip out when things stop going according to the plan. If everything in life always went smoothly and according to plan we would never develop the tools to handle problems. It is the obstacles and challenges we meet on the road that offer us the ability to improve and grow. Instead of getting frustrated or angry,we should celebrate when difficulties occur.

A person who goes through life without any obstacles has no real idea of what they are good or bad at. If no tests of your abilities ever occur, there are no results to look at and compare how you did with how you think you should have done. If there is no metric for comparison, how do you know whether to be satisfied with what you can or can not do?

On the contrary when something happens to show a weakness, limitation, or lack of knowledge on your part, it is a blessing. It gives you the opportunity to check in with how you feel about that thing. If not knowing or being good at that thing does not bother you then nothing need be done. If it does however, then you have a jumping off point for change. Knowing that you are not good at a thing in the present provides everything you need to get started being good at that thing in the future.

If the lack is simply in knowledge, a quick trip to the library or internet can fix that for you. If it is a thing that you are not good at doing, you can watch others do that thing and get advice from those who are successful at it. And then on your own you can practice,practice practice. If your weakness is a habit that you have do not attempt to quit the habit. Simply replace it with another one.

Instead of getting upset at other people when they point out a weakness that you may have, sincerely and enthusiastically thank them. One they are doing you a great service and two it will provide you the opportunity to show them how great it is to have weaknesses.

Tolerance and limits

One of our roommates was planning to be out tonight. It was her night to cook and she asked if I would be willing to cook for her. At first, I was thinking about saying no but did not really have a good reason. So, I agreed to play chef for the evening.

I decided that we would be having home made tacos. While at the store I got all the ingredients that we would need including something that I had been considering trying for awhile. First the meat was seasoned and cooked. Then the cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and onions were all taken care of. Finally, I got out the scotch bonnet peppers we had purchased and began to slice them as finely as I could, seeds and all.

Now it is at this point that the question of tolerance came to my mind. I knew that regardless of how hot the peppers were, that I would be comfortable just mixing them in with the meat. The one person who is not at all fond of spicy food was the one that had asked me to cook due to her intent to not be present. But I had some concerns how the other people eating would fare if I made such a choice for them. So I asked their opinions. All but one person said to make it as spicy as possible. To him I brought a tiny sliver of one of the scotch bonnets. Based on the facial expressions and coughing that ensued, I decided to put the peppers in a bowl on the side rather than mixing them in with the seasoned beef.

His reaction kind of amused me because I had just consumed about five times as much pepper as the amount I had given him and I had no ill effects whatsoever. I rather enjoyed the heated sensation going on within my mouth. It did cause me to think of how pain thresholds differ for different people though. What one person thinks is no big deal another person considers nearly unbearable.

After the food I made tonight, I have reached the conclusion that scotch bonnet peppers are the low end of what I consider to be spicy. And the heat lasts a good ten minutes or so if you do not eat or drink anything else. It was really kind of nice. For me. I can't remember anything else that I have eaten that was spicier. I think i've had jerk sauce that was close to the same. Most foods that other people think are spicy, to me they just are not. So these peppers were like a one or a two on a scale that I hope goes up to at least ten.

Whether it's physical, emotional, or mental pain, we often tell people to man up and just get over it.  We tend to have very little tolerance for what another person's tolerance levels are. But we truly have no idea what that person's level of discomfort is compared to their ability to withstand said pain. What I consider to be a two many other people might consider to be closer to a nine. And while training and discipline may be able to push those limits further back, it is not one's fault where their limits are. It is also not fair to pick on or belittle them for having those limitations. It can be okay to point out the limitations when you see them and offer advice on how to stretch those limits if the other person is interested.

Where a person is, is always the perfect place to be in order to start working towards where they want to be, assuming of course that they are not already where they want to be. And in that case it is still the perfect place for them to be.

If you can believe it...

You can do it.  In 1954 an Englishman, named Roger Bannister did something that had never been recorded before. He ran a mile in just under four minutes. The interesting thing about this is before that, in the 1940's, scientists and doctors had reams of statistics showing that due to the physics of motion and the general make-up of the human body running the mile in under four minutes was a physical impossibility. Many people believed this with absolute certainty. And those people were right. Until they weren't.

For a great many years the four minute mile was an unobtainable goal. What changed? For the longest time the athletes themselves believed it could not be done. After all nobody they had ever heard of had been able to do it. Their trainers could not do it and did not know anybody that had. Medical science said it could not be done. But all successful athletes are constantly working to improve themselves, striving to be stronger, smarter and faster. They train with other athletes and learn new techniques for pacing and breathing. Their minds are always looking for what is next. They never get to the finish line and say okay that's it, that's the best I will ever be able to do, now i'm gonna take up fishing. Each time they meet a goal they are looking forward to the next one. And each time they prove to themselves that it is possible to be just a little better than the last time.

Regardless of what other people told them, it was only a matter of time before the athletes running the mile had enough focus and strength of purpose to start believing that a four minute mile was possible.  All that had to happen for that belief to become a reality is that the person accomplishing the goal had to have a stronger belief than the people telling him it could not be done.

Ultimately, the belief of someone that is actually in the process of accomplishing something is much stronger than the belief of someone sitting on the sidelines. A runner has more knowledge of what their body can do in a race than a doctor or scientist. What the runner has is practical knowledge, gained by doing. Everyone else just has statistical data based on what has been observed. In most cases what science tells us is possible or not is based on a generalization surrounding the "facts" about what has and has not been done.

We used to live in a world where the four minute mile was an impossibility. So was wireless communication. We used to know for a fact that such a thing as an airplane could not ever possibly exist. We used to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world was flat and were prone to murdering or locking away people that had PROOF to the contrary.

Take a minute and imagine if you will telling someone a thousand years ago about how one day they would be able to get into their car and drive to the movie theater. And you could go on to tell them that one of their friends would be able to pull out their wireless phone and buy tickets for the movie, while another friend bought a ticket for a flight to Memphis that they were taking the next day.  It would probably take you twenty minutes to describe all the concepts contained in those two sentences. By the time you finished explaining all the simply ridiculous things that you were talking about, the person you were talking to would certainly be looking at you like you were a madman, an idiot or both.  You would be hitting them with thing after thing after thing that they know to be impossible. And in their world with their limitations, they would be right.

Until they weren't.