Day 24,451: You Think I ‘d Know My Strength By Now

I’m going straight to the conclusion in this post: The most important things I can do to fight Coronavirus have nothing to do with my strengths. It is to stay home, keep my family home, wear a mask and gloves when food shopping, and give money to NYC and Philly to get PPEs to first responders. None of these are things I normally do.

Now, back to the beginning: 

With Coronavirus upon us, everyone is taking to the airwaves, “ahem the Internet,” to share their talents, wisdom, and strengths. For some, that means streaming physical strength training into your home, and for others, it’s teaching their skill sets to others from InstaPot cooking to meditation.

In a recent discussion group, one participant asked how she could best contribute to fighting Coronavirus from her own home. The question put back to her was “What is your strength,” with the implication being that you should volunteer the use of your unique talents to make a real difference.

To her credit, the friend seemed to immediately know her strength.  To my discredit, I wasn’t immediately sure what my strength was in a situation such as this. To be honest, in blogging I tend to concentrate more on my weaknesses. Three cases in Point:

The Obvious vs. The Hidden

Because this is a blog, you might be tempted to tell me writing is my strength. It is something I can do, but there are so many others who do it more consistently and better.

According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, 10,000 hours of anything makes you “good to great” at it.  it is somewhat based on the research that even the most talented composers did not do their best work after 10 years.

By my calculation, not 100% accurate, I’ve been on the planet 586,824 hours, which would afford me the opportunity to have 58 different serious successful talents, and I was still contemplating the strength question. So, I went back to the gurus.

Screen Shot 2020-04-04 at 12.00.43 PM

Now, to be honest, they didn’t help.

I do know my strengths — resiliency, flexibility, persistence. The question was how to use  strengths for a cause.  And here’s my conclusion: Sometimes your strengths don’t matter.

The most important things I can do to fight Coronavirus are at the top of this post. I can do what everyone else is being asked to do, and I can do a bit more because I can donate to buy supplies for others.

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Afterthought on Gun Sanity:  The Pen is Mightier than the Sword. Now the Mask Is Mightier than the Magazine. Stop buying ammo and start finding ways to make masks. You’ll do more good for everyone in the long run.