Strengths are sadly often a result of weakness.

“Find your weakness and work on it!” – Random Guru

If people followed that bad advice, a lot of success would have never happened.

I’m not saying “turn those weaknesses into strengths,” I’m pointing out that that:

Persisting weakness in one area actually creates strength in another – Truth Cake

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a weakness of his accent, but that ended up being a great thing for his movies. He also had a terrible self image and thought he was ugly and flabby even as a bodybuilder, and it pushed him to be better and better.

Externally, we were impressed, but internally Arnold was a painful mess.

Michael Jackson had a weakness of trying to be a perfectionist, and was never happy with his performances, often slinging him into dark depressions. But it’s what made him practice relentlessly.

Omar Ellatar, the popular YouTube success podcaster, was motivated by jealousy and anger towards other people that he envied. He never gave up because his hatred towards so many other people was so intense. Jordan Belfort was motivated to succeed because he was a sex addict. Edison’s competitive spirit that resulted in so many inventions also resulted in torture by electrocution of animals to prove that A/C was more dangerous than his D/C electricity.

It’s the dark side of many successful people that no one talks about.

What weaknesses do you have that will actually propel you forward?