"Resolve" Insurance -- Article Three

3. Acknowledge Your Weaknesses

There is a huge difference between acknowledging our weaknesses and making excuses for why we are not able to accomplish our goals. Everyone has weaknesses! That is the primary reason why we need to make improvements in the first place.

We cannot expect to overcome our weaknesses if we pretend they don’t exist. Also, trying to cope with our own weaknesses by highlighting the weaknesses of others is common (and may seem helpful for a while) but will never help us accomplish our goals. Also, if our goals are being motivated more by what others think about us than our own self-awareness we may be disappointed even though we are successful.

No doubt many of the changes we would like to make in this New Year are recurring from past years. If this is the case, sit down and try to list all the reasons why you may have failed to reach your goal in the past. If there are certain weaknesses that seem to always set you back, try to change the circumstances that highlight these weaknesses. Here are some questions to ask yourself (and be honest with your responses):

• Why do I give in to these weaknesses?

• Is it my fault or just my reality?

• What definite steps can I begin today to help me “Overcome” these weaknesses?

• How long should it take before I see progress?

Another important step in overcoming our weaknesses is to disarm the ones that have defeated us in the past. These weaknesses may hold our past failures over our head. This creates the fatalistic conclusion that we can’t change the way we have always been. Any negative influence our past mistakes or weaknesses may hold over us are self-inflicted.

The major change that we have longed for is closer than we think. Once we acknowledge our weaknesses, disarm them, and chart a plan to overcome them, we are on our way to making our dreams become reality! While merely thinking we can make it will not get us to our destination, how we think is critically important.