A few days back, I heard a very powerful statement from an online motivational speaker that made a lot of meaning to me. He said "you can turn your flaws and your past experiences into a great asset." We live in an era and at a time where a lot of people are obsessed with being polished and perfect. This obsession is so much that even on social media, people pretend to be without flaws. But what they fail to understand is that constantly living in denial, and assuming to be perfect will only make them worse. Every human has a part of them that is considered flawed, but it does not make you disadvantaged. To live an impactful life, you are not to deny the existence of flaws, but you can turn them into your greatest assets.
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I have a friend who is a software engineer and an app developer. He stutters especially when he is nervous. There was a particular project that he was working on in his company, and after the project was done, he was told that he will be the one to present it. He was scared of public speaking because of the way he talks, and he often uses intense and rapid hand gestures while stuttering. They choose him for the presentation because he built it and was the one in position to explain it well. The event was to be held in a hall that sits about 500 people, so he would be talking to that number of people for the first time in his life. This made him even more nervous.
A few days to the day, he was practising public speaking and how to talk in a "slick" way, yet he was not getting a headway in it. He came to me to share his worries and how he was concerned about the speech. I told him that he does not need to force perfection on himself, but he should just use it as an asset to his advantage. I also explained a couple of things to him, and told him that I would accompany him to the event to cheer him up. When he mounted the podium, he looked at the people an said "I get very excited about anything relating to software. So if I start to stutter or wave my hand like a windmill, just know that the codes are working well." This sent the whole room into laughter, the tension reduced, and he felt at ease. He did the presentation well and even earned a recommendation. He welcomed his flaw and turned it into an asset.
You have to understand that the pursuit of perfection is a very strenuous adventure, which may even leave you exhausted without achieving it. This is because, the quest to appear perfect will simply make you to hide your mistakes, mask your vulnerabilities, hide your flaws, and give you a fake feeling that you are what you are not. This is part of what make people not to learn, and they may keep doing the same thing over and again. More so, I have come to notice that perfection may even keep you isolated. People are not particularly keen at connecting with the supposed perfect person, but they connect more with the one who is true to themselves. As a matter of fact, trying to hide your flaws and become perfect will make you look untrustworthy, unrelatable, and fake.
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Welcoming your flaws does not mean that you should give excuses for your shortcomings, neither is it a lazy acceptance of what is not right. Rather it is a conscious search for solution. Trust me, the first attempt towards finding a solution is to acknowledge the problem, not deny its existence. Your flaws, what you have passed through in the past, the hardship you have survived, your rough edges, etc, are part of what make you who you are. You should turn them into an asset, into the motivational tool, not just for yourself, but also for others.
It is worthy to note that being distinctive beats competence in some aspects. In this world that is full of hyper-competition, competence alone may not be all that is required to give you an edge. Trust me, there are millions of other people with the same qualification, competence, degrees, and professional behaviour as you. If you try to blend in perfectly, you will become just like every other person. This is where you have to bring in your own unconventional methods, and your ingenuity, instead of striving to be perfect. Try to be you, and do not force yourself to be who you are not.
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