Don’t Make The Same Mistakes George Constanza Did
George Constanza was a loser. Hilarious and lovable, true. But a bum.
In one episode he’s sitting with Jerry after recently losing his job. They’re talking about what George might want to do and what he’s good at. It goes something like this:
Jerry: “So what do you like? What are your hobbies?”
George: “I like baseball.”
Jerry: “OK, and what could you do in baseball?”
George: “I could manage a team.”
At least George got the “think big” part of being successful. Entrepreneurs and small business owners need to dream in order to succeed. Of course there’s dreaming and there’s delusion…
We all know George was hopeless, but luckily that’s a rare affliction. What George should have done was play to his strengths. (Granted, he would have needed to find a job that involved lying, cheating, sweating and obsessing…)
For the rest of us normal folk (yup, you’re included!) we need to properly identify, quantify and use our strengths.
- What are your strengths? List them out. It’ll help.
- How do you know those are your strengths? Did others tell you? Have you always believed those were your strengths? Have you accomplished certain tasks/goals that indicate your strengths?
- What’s your #1 strength? Try ranking your strengths. It sounds a bit silly but it works. Keep this mental list. It’ll come in handy often; job interviews, hiring people, networking, etc.
- What areas of expertise, jobs or business opportunities do your strengths lend themselves to? We can’t all be NHL hockey players (as much as we want to!) but for every strength there are numerous areas of use.
I know you’ve already got your goals lined up for 2007 right? Now you can align those goals and your strengths. Doing so will help you achieve your goals…even if you’ve got a bit of George Constanza in you.
LOVE the Seinfeld reference. Every episode contains valuable life lessons like this one. It’s interesting that George achieves success when he finally aligns his goals with his strengths; that is, when he comes up with the idea for “a show about nothing”.
Great blog!
Brad - you’re right, he does achieve some success with that doesn’t he!
I’m glad you didn’t create a correlation between a “show about nothing” and this blog though! *laugh*
Thanks for the comment. Keep ‘em coming…
Hmmm, George could start a baseball blog, and with some effort build a readership and monetize with ads etc. Sort of like Boston Media Sports Watch, http://www.bostonsportsmedia.com/, run by Bruce who is absolutely PASSIONATE about sports! (and making money too)
Great post. I’m not entirely sure that building on your strengths is the key factor though. As far as I know, there’s no evidence that working on strengths lead to any more success than working on weaknesses, but only that you will enjoy the process more.
Jon Haidt (professor at U of Virginia) did an unpublished study on this. He’s a big name in positive psych, which has been a big factor in the recent popularization of ‘building your strengths’.
Not really contradicting you here, but I guess I just want to point out the following: If you have a burning desire to do something, but no talent for it, doesn’t mean you can’t be just as successful.
But I could be wrong
(Great blog, by the way!)
Kevin - you beat me to my next post, in a way (which I wanted to publish right after the strengths one, just didn’t get to it.) Check in tomorrow, let me know what you think!
I’m not familiar with Jon Haidt but it sounds interesting…
Thanks for the comment!
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