Biography: Evaluating our Weaknesses

(Imposter Syndrome is judging our selves on a scale that can deteriorate our self-confidence; image provided by Flickr) 

The topic for my portfolio is encouragement and motivation, so I felt it be nice to continue that theme in my biography post and share some personal strengths and weaknesses. The two things I am going to share have transformed me into the individual I am and in that, I would greatly credit my OU journey as being a very important part of my life. People always say that we grow a lot through our college experience, but I truly think that I can pinpoint differences in my behavior and attitudes from high school to now. I have been able to hone into my weaknesses and really work toward turning them into strengths. I think one of my biggest strengths is my perspective and I definitely credit part of this to my Psychology major. Looking at any situation from different perspectives or from the perspective of the other individual can allow us to handle any situation with grace and care.

I think my biggest weakness is that I all too often suffer from imposter syndrome. This is when we think we are not worthy of opportunities and start to doubt ourselves and our accomplishments. I would argue that every person at some point or another has had self-doubt. But I find myself doubting my own abilities too often and sometimes it can cause me to even doubt my self-worth. After anything good happens, I always tell my tell it is the situation and not my skills that allowed the good thing to happen. This is a mindset I am really working to get over because I think it makes me push myself harder than needed. Something that has helped me is taking moments to step back and reflect. Reflection allows us to consider how we contributed to the situation, as well as everyone/thing else involved.  I think by reflecting on the situation, I’ve been able to start crediting myself for my accomplishments. As stressed-out college students, we should learn to celebrate the small moments. That could be doing well on a test or getting an internship. Celebrating these accomplishments allows us to reflect upon ourselves and take pride in what we did!

Authors Note: I wanted to do the biography extra credit assignment this week and chose the strength/weakness topic. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to do a lot of reflection on my personal skillsets, looking greatly at where I need to improve and the skills I like about myself. I think to talk about them (or in this case, writing about it), allows me to put character into my thoughts. For my writing style, I chose to write this as an informal first-person story or narrative. It was more about putting my thoughts on paper. I hope you enjoyed my little story on my personal strengths and weakness.