If you have found a treasure which has a mix of old rusted copper coins and some old gold coins. What will you do if you have very limited time to encash them ?



Will you spend time in thinking of the strategy to sell the gold coins by shining them and packaging them or you will spend time in polishing the copper coins also.



Obviously, common sense says first encash the gold coins if the time is limited. Think about the copper coins later if there is enough time and energy left.



But in real life how many people follow this paradigm. If a person's appraisal or a student's report card mentions the strengths(Gold coins) and his/her weaknesses(copper coins) .



Most people ignore the strengths and concentrate on the weaknesses as most of us have been taught and guided to convert our weaknesses into strengths.



It takes enormous effort and time to neutralize a weakness, in most cases the improvement is miniscule. Instead, if we spend the same time and energy on honing our strengths, the rewards will be much greater. Consider Virendra Sehwag if he instead of honing his brilliant hand-eye coordination, had worked on his poor footwork and posture , would he been so successful?



Or Had Anil Kumble instead of concentrating on accuracy-line or length had focused on spinning the ball would he be as successful?



Nature does it almost effortlessly , everybody plays to their strengths , deer run for life, monkey climb trees, tiger attack stealthily.



Any successful person is always known for his/her strengths and not for his/her weaknesses. Same thing applies in the corporate world, a company who sticks to it"s core competency has a better chance for success and is also better known.



So here is a thought for today, identify at least three of your strengths and work on them day in day out and you will be successful . Do not bother about your weaknesses, people might laugh at it today but in the long term your strengths will over shadow them. Sachin Tendulkar and Manmohan Singh have a squeaky voice and a undistinguished personality but their enormous strengths in cricketing and financial skills respectively have overshaddowed their weaknesses.