our weakness can define our greatest strength, our very super power!
The tender part of me is the people pleasing part of me. I rarely have known myself, in my past, not to appease others and soothe potential conflict by leaning towards agreeability, even when I do disagree!
I grew to truly “hate” this aspect of myself in my younger years and have worked on it my entire life. The work I speak of has resulted in me accepting this about myself incrementally over time, rather than judging myself for being overtly accommodating and self forgetting.
What I have subsequently become very good at, although seemingly unlikely, is conflict resolution because of how sensitively I can see and navigate around conflict triggers.
I shat myself every time I found myself in the middle of rising tension between people, but because of my hyper awareness to tension, conflict and fear based reactivity, I am now the best person to mediate conflict.
The gift I have evolved from this, is an ability to see and communicate a different perspective. I can stand in another's shoes, more than the average person, which is very handy in my line of work.
I took a contract last year which had me mediate between two lawyers within the same firm who were NOT seeing eye to eye. The greatest nightmare my 30 year old version could have realized ;-).
It was quite a defining moment, when during the course of this mediation, the dots aligned and for the first time I saw the gold inside the people pleaser, which has always been a bold mark against my personality or personal reality - at least in my own judgment.
So my greatest difficulty and weakness has become my greatest strength, with some intention to step through a previously disabling fear.
Being such a fan of the enneagram, I have become acutely aware of how each of the gifts of each respective archetype has a counterpoint weakness or shadow aspect. A hurt - even those strong personalities, who hide their vulnerability so well - or so they think ;-)
The simple wisdom I have reached is that the more I lean towards accepting my inner people pleaser without the judgment and the loathing hate it used to come with, the more I can leverage its counterpoint/gift (when I work with this aspect of myself rather than against it).
Brings weight to the saying - “what you resist persists”
Gabor Mate’ who is a truly amazing human rightfully coming into popularity for his amazing work with addiction & trauma has on the front page of his website… Human development through the lens of science and compassion
He reckons our entire personalities are a result of our trauma or deep seated wound.
So my “trauma” has been fear of conflict which is likely underpinned by a fear of rejection.
The other side of that coin is an ability to navigate conflict highly effectively because of hypersensitivity in navigating through tension with the lowest risk of people and dialogue shutting down.
So if I take the wisdom from the enneagram and mash it up with Gabor Mate’s wisdom; could the following then be true…
The thing we most fear, accepted with compassion, has the potential and likelihood to create a natural ability to soothe, heal and change that very thing we fear. Acceptance and tenderness done intentionally can upend our deepest hurt into our greatest strength.
In layman - our hurt or wound can become our greatest gift and skill, if we are wise enough to be kinder to ourselves.
How counterintuitive!
Our trauma creates our gift
Our fear defines our growth
Our weakness becomes our strength
It begs one question if knowledge is to alchemise into wisdom!
Where can we be more compassionate and caring with our deepest fears? what is possible from there?
