Brad on Man in the Mirror

Oh, I'm goin' there...

I'm definitely of the bred v. born mentality. I believe knowing yourself is one of the most critical factors for positive professional or personal relationships. This creates professional or personal success, however you measure each. Everyone knows their strengths right? You ask a person, "Why should I hire you?" and they can go on for as long as necessry to tell you all the reasons why they are awesome. Yet I find a surpisingly small number can answer the question "What's my biggest risk in hiring you?" or "What do you suck at?" By the way, "I'm a perfectionist" is the absolutely worst answer you can give. Other terrible answers include "I'm too hard on myself" or "I expect too much of myself". Know your strengths, fine. Know your weaknesses, critical.

Now if you truly know yourself and your weaknesses, the most straightforward way to be abetter friend, father, husband, or being more valuable to your employer is to improve upon those weaknesses. "That's the way I am" has never worked for me as an excuse for poor behavior (believe me I've tried it). I had more hard conversations with mentors early in my career than I'd care to admit about my tendency towards a short fuse. Besides the professional setbacks, my temper continually damaged the most important personal relationships I had. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Anger is seldom without a reason, but seldom with a good one." I've learned and now believe, slowly and painfully I might add, that there is virtually nothing I can't change about myself including my temper. Its still there, but you have to push the button a lot harder or a lot longer to see it. Beyond that specific example, I may choose not to change because I value some particular personality trait, but that is a conscious decision and one that I control.

As a collector and lover of quotes, this one is particularly relevant about facing yourself in the mirror and making changes:

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' you must do the thing you think you cannot do."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Looking at yourself and being honest about your shortcomings is one of the hardest things I've done, but also one of my proudest accomplishments and one that has paid dividends personally and professionally.