What If Nothing Is Wrong With You?

At some point, most of us have asked some version of the question.

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I stick with this? Why do I keep losing interest? Why does this seem so much easier for other people? Why can’t I make myself do the thing I know I’m supposed to do?

Usually the question comes up when there’s a gap between how we think we should operate and how we actually do.

So we try to close the gap.

We try to become more disciplined, more organized, more decisive, more outgoing or more focused. Whatever it is we think we’re missing.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow. We all have things we need to work on. But before deciding something needs to be fixed, I think it’s worth understanding it.

What if the thing you’ve been judging about yourself is actually telling you something?

I became interested in personality assessments years ago for this reason. I love anything that helps me understand why people behave the way they do. I’ve explored DISC, Human Design, Myers Briggs.. and more assessments than I can remember.

What interests me isn’t really the label at the end.

It’s when you read something about yourself and recognize a pattern you’ve experienced for years.

Oh. I do that.

Or sometimes:

I thought that was a problem.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I think that’s worth figuring out.

I’ve seen this play out over and over again with people building businesses.

Someone tells me they need to become more disciplined about prospecting because they keep avoiding it. They’ve bought the program. They know what they're supposed to do. They’ve blocked the time in their calendar. They’ve watched other people build successful businesses doing exactly what they’ve been taught to do.

And they still hate it.

Maybe they do need to get better at prospecting. But before deciding that, I want to know how they are generating business.

Where are their clients actually coming from? What are they naturally good at? What are they doing that seems to produce results without feeling quite so difficult?

Maybe they’re exceptional at building relationships. Maybe people trust them quickly. Maybe they’re great at creating community or explaining complicated things in a way people understand.

There may be a very successful business in there.

But you can miss it when you’re too busy trying to fix the person.

I think we do this outside of business too.

We develop ideas about the kind of person we’re supposed to be and then measure ourselves against them. Some of that comes from our families, school, work, relationships and the people around us. And now we have an endless view into other people’s lives, careers, routines and habits to compare ourselves with.

After a while, it can be hard to separate who you are from who you think you should be.

That’s one of the reasons self-awareness matters so much to me.

Not because understanding yourself means you never have to change. Of course it doesn’t.

There are things about ourselves that get in our way. There are skills we need to develop, patterns we need to recognize and behaviours that may have worked for us at one point but don’t anymore.

But I also don’t think personal growth should become a lifelong attempt to correct everything about ourselves that is different.

Sometimes we need to understand something before we decide it needs changing.

Think about how many people have spent years believing they’re too much of something.

Too sensitive. Too intense. Too curious. Too quiet. Too impatient. Interested in too many things.

Or that they're not enough of something else.

Not outgoing enough. Not organized enough. Not consistent enough. Not confident enough.

Those descriptions don’t tell us very much on their own.

Someone can be incredibly inconsistent with things they have no interest in and spend hours completely absorbed in something they care about. Someone who appears quiet in one environment can be completely different in another. The person who is impatient with process might be the person who sees a faster way of doing it.

Context matters.

One of the things I find particularly interesting is how often our strengths are difficult for us to see.

We notice the things we struggle with because they require our attention. The things that come naturally don’t create the same friction, so we tend to assume they aren’t particularly remarkable.

You assume everyone can see what you see. That everyone can talk to people the way you do. That everyone can make sense of a complicated situation, come up with ideas, organize information, build relationships, notice what someone needs or stay calm when things go sideways.

They can’t.

Sometimes the thing that feels completely ordinary to you is exactly the thing worth paying more attention to.

And all of this becomes especially important when you’re deciding what to build.

If you believe success requires you to become a different kind of person, it’s very easy to start building around that person.

You choose strategies that suit them. You create routines for them. You follow advice that makes sense for them. You may even build yourself a role they would probably be very good at.

Then you wonder why maintaining it is so hard.

Not everything should be easy and we shouldn't only do things that come naturally to us. Building something worthwhile is going to stretch us.

And the better you understand what matters to you, what you're good at, what gives you energy and what kind of success you actually want, the better chance you have of building something that actually fits.

So the next time you find yourself thinking, What’s wrong with me?, maybe don’t be so quick to answer it.

There may be something you need to work on.

Or there may be something about yourself you haven’t understood yet.