When your strengths go to town on you

Last week I posted on playing to your strengths. Knowing what they are and being able to use them to bring out the best in you, to support you in your success and wellbeing.

But.

There can be a different side to your strengths as well. When they go to town on you and party too hard.

If you recall, perseverance was one of my top strengths. Together with my Enneagram Type 1 ‘The Perfectionist’ personality type, it made me an excellent analyst and a high achieving performer. Everyone around me was happy as was my bank account.

Except for me.

Because unfortunately, that combination also paved the way for anxiousness, sleeplessness, extreme highs and lows regarding my achievements. Good was never good enough, I was always chasing the next perfect solution, never satisfied with what I had done. Acknowledgements went in one ear and out the other.

The biggest challenge was that I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing. In my eyes, I was using my strengths - both the perseverance and the Perfectionist - to deliver the outcomes that my environment and I had come to expect. And more I tried, the more unhappy and frustrated I became.

Because my strengths had decided to go to town and party - hard. And I was left with the headache and hang-over. That wasn’t sustainable.

It was my activities outside of work that finally managed to get through to me. Whenever I spoke about them, friends and colleagues would say “Sonja, you light up when you talk about hiking, climbing, the outdoors.” My strengths and personality type certainly came to the forefront there, but in a far more balanced way. I would feel on top of the world, and not like I was on an all-nighter around town. I was starting to see patterns emerge - some made me feel good, grounded and content and led to holistic success, others didn’t.

Someone who has been pivotal in my journey asked me “What do you have now? What do you really want for yourself? When you get what you want, what will that give you? And how does that affect your sense of self? I can see you’re not happy, is that how you want to continue your life?”

Powerful questions that created more and more awareness about what I needed to be and do for myself, my wellbeing and success.

My strengths still go to town occasionally together with my Perfectionist. But these days they come home before the sun comes up, they don’t party nearly as hard anymore and they’ve learned that the curfew benefits us all.

Let me know if this resonates with you.