Your success, your obstacle.

It happens and it happens often. I’ve seen it in friends and colleagues and on the mirror as well.

We work day in and day out on perfecting our trait, we pour our soul into our work and become specialists, experts and in some cases, even some sort of authority or point of reference.

Good for us! But then what?

Of course there is nothing wrong with being successful or being the best at what we do, on the contrary, we should always aim to excel at it. However we often forget to excel at something else: controlling how arrogant we may become after a certain amount of success. And that is just plain wrong.

Granted, it is sweet to be successful. It’s great to have our efforts recognized. And to listen to the sugar coated compliments from other people feeds our ego.

But I insist, what then?

Once we reached our mountain top we need to recognize that we have two options: rejoice in our success, loose focus and fall down or savor it for just a few moments and fix a new horizon and start walking towards it.

And to do this, it is essential that we understand that success has different forms and it is not just in the form of power, material belongings, money or titles; and that, what it’s important to us, might not be so much for others.

We must be humble and make time to learn and identify our greatest strengths and weaknesses.

We need to recognize that our greatest strengths exacerbate our biggest weaknesses.

Nobody is perfect. The fact that you are a great creative does not mean you are a great strategist. If you are great at production you might not necessarily be great at creativity. If you are a Math guru you actually might not be good at explaining it; and if you are an excellent manager it does not mean you are great leader.

Don’t let your greatest strengths turn you blind in front of what you need to improve. Recognize what your weakness is and reinforce it by surrounding yourself and partnering with people who are as good at what you lack as you with your ability.

Admit you are not everything, that you need help from others and that you need to collaborate with them. Open yourself to the possibility of participating with others and let them share their experience with you. You don’t always have to try and prove you are better than the rest.

Picture credit: Redjotter