The last few weeks have been a blur of sleeping, burping, pooping and farting.

No, I’m not talking about Lauren. 

I talk instead of Baby Grundy.

At this stage in the game (almost 3 months in), Baby Grundy is learning to hold up her head. But she’s still so floppy that she’s the human equivalent of a teddy-bear sized marshmallow and her only real move if she gets too hot, too cold, too gassy, too hungry or too anything is to start bellowing at the top of her lungs.

So for all intents and burposes, self-sufficient she ain’t.

And yet…

Over the weekend, Lauren and I paid an Easter visit to Lauren’s old stomping ground:

The City of Steel, Sheffield.

We had a schedule packed with pies, chocolate, beer and Sunday roasts catching up with family and friends.

And the funny thing was, wherever we went and whoever we saw, Baby Grundy attracted so much love, care and attention that the mere whiff of the idea of bambino being a helpless, defenceless baby was sent packing with its tail between its legs.

If anything, Baby Grundy’s vulnerability itself was the source of that love, care and attention.

i.e. was a strength, not a weakness.

Perhaps you can see where I’m going with the subject line. 

In case it's not clear:

It's easy to think of weaknesses as something which need fixing.

But if the Baby Grundy example is anything to go by, our weaknesses are where our strengths hang out.

Perhaps that sounds too Zen for your liking. A bit like the daily email equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping.

But there’s nothing Zen or mystical about this idea.

There's no light without the dark.

There's no noise without the quiet.

There's no end without a beginning.

And there are no weaknesses without strengths.

In fact, the bigger the weakness, the greater the strength.

Case in point:

A piece of feedback I used to get once a quarter from bosses past was “Tom, you should speak up in meetings”.

If there’s a more clichéd comment to give an introvert like me, I’m still waiting to hear it.

And what this feedback misses is that only speaking when you have something to say means you’re actually listening to your colleagues, absorbing what’s going on, catching what other people miss and connecting the dots in your head until you DO speak with a weight & perspective that slices through the waffle like a hot knife through butter.

So that “weakness” is one hell of a strength.

And that’s the message I want to leave you with.

What if “working on your weak spots” blunts the very thing that gives you your edge?

And more to the point, what if your weakness WAS your strength?

If you like, have a think about your own examples.

And once you have, feel free to hit reply and let me know how the weak spot you’ve been trying to fix might be the very thing that makes you awesome.