Psychology Answers Thirty-Year-Olds. _Reading 4 (attitude toward weaknesses)

While I'm at it, let me write another one back-to-back..
[Psychology Answers Thirty-Year-Olds] is a wonderful book that strikes the heart no matter how many times I read it.

It's one of the few books that changed my life... I'm so grateful.
And it's a book that makes the dream of becoming a person like Kim Hye-nam grow and grow inside me..
The fact that my own thoughts and actions can influence someone is such a grateful and happy thing.
 
And not searching for it far away but, starting from daily life, motivating myself and the people around me one by one,
and through that, slowly living life — isn't that what 'hongik ingan' (benefit all humankind) is...

Oops-  -_-'''
Suddenly mentioning hongik ingan.. brings back memories from middle/high school... but it really seems like the most fitting word.. lol lol lol







Even diamonds, said to be the most beautiful, 
are full of scratches when you look at them under a microscope.
What matters in life
is not what happens
but how we receive what happens.

Whether you take it as a flaw,
or turn it into a strength rather than a flaw,
is up to your choice.

- Park Sung-cheol, from [Acorns of Hope] 



People who think they're full of weaknesses usually fret about their weaknesses being exposed.
They are ashamed of their weaknesses and try never to expose them.

There are two reasons for this.
First, the fear that if their weaknesses are exposed, people might dislike them or abandon them;
second, the fear that others may seize on those weaknesses and try to dominate and control them.

If you spend all your effort fixing or supplementing your weaknesses, even your strengths may end up buried.
If you focus on your strengths, you'll gain confidence in the world, and your weaknesses will become less sensitive.
The weak parts don't disappear, but they no longer torment or worry you.

Another method is to take your weaknesses lightly.
"Yeah, I have this weakness. So what?" — that confident attitude.
This is the method the world-renowned scholar Bertrand Russell used to overcome his own weaknesses.
It's also the method that this 'byeon-gun' transcribing the text uses.
There is no one in the world without weaknesses.
And it's because there are weak and lacking parts that we strive to make up for them, and therefore grow.

People often think that strong people are never anxious or afraid of anything, that they will push through any difficulty without wavering. 
They also think that, having overcome all their weaknesses, such people no longer mind others' eyes and just push through with their own thoughts.

But a strong person is by no means someone without weaknesses.
They simply are not afraid of their weaknesses and not anxious about exposing them to others.
A strong person is convinced that their weaknesses cannot make them inferior or bring them down.
So rather than trying to eliminate their weaknesses, they try to understand and complement them.