“People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”- Thich Nhat Hanh
The air entering my home is unexpectedly cool, as if to remind that a fresh new year has started. The urban horizon is surprisingly clear too, its pollution blown away by a steady breeze from the north.
The tail of China’s winter has come to touch Manila, with temperatures indoors dropping to a low 25 degrees. Although I wear as little as possible, I appreciate that my clothes are keeping me warm today, rather than just dressed.
Two themes have been on my mind as I reflected on the coming year 2009: simplicity and strength.
Several friends in Japan reminded me last month how they are used to treasuring simplicity in their life, as a central part of their culture.
One has recently returned to his home in snowy Niigata prefecture after living more than 2 decades in tropical splendor abroad. He described to me how he built a retirement home that “looks like a small hut.” He anticipates spending time for hiking, playing saxophone, and gardening.
Another hinted at the power of simplicity as she explained how foreign royalty visiting Japan are often mystified with the simple unadorned lifestyles of the members of its imperial family, who devote much time to scientific study and to dialogue with experts on the development issues that are facing today’s world.
A third has retired from a long and influential public life, and now spends time researching the life of a famous monk from Kyoto in the 16th century to write a book, and also continues his long-standing practice of writing haiku in both Japanese and French.
As I reflected more, I realized that on the flip side of simplicity lies strength. It actually takes strength, and building on strengths, to keep things simple and effective.
It is a Japanese proverb that says that “no branch is better than its trunk.” When a tree nurtures the vital strength of its trunk and roots, it can use that strength to grow healthy branches that bear fruits.
Rather than in Japan, though, it is in neighboring China that a remarkable shift has taken place in recent years that is very much about building on strength.
Back in the year 2000, according to bestselling author Marcus Buckingham in an interview with Business Week, only 24% of the people he surveyed in China thought that leveraging their strengths would be a better way to improve performance than improving their weaknesses.
By last September 2008, however, that percentage had almost tripled to an astonishing 70% of the people he surveyed. This is a much higher proportion than anywhere in Europe and northern America.
Marcus has characterized this movement of focusing on strengths as a revolution. And it certainly seems that this revolution is now blooming in China, perhaps inspired in equal measure by the country’s amazing performance of staging the 2008 Olympics as by its persistent challenges to deliver quality products to the world’s market place.
It comes as no surprise then, that people around the globe have been discovering that they have a choice to build on their strengths. “It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths in stead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor,” wrote Timothy Ferris in his book The 4-Hour Workweek.
So when I considered how to invest my time and effort in the new year, I asked myself what would be a more effective way of writing my new year resolutions for a happy and successful 2009.
Should I push myself harder to do “good things” even if I don’t really enjoy doing them, like writing technical reports, coordinating other people’s work, and managing budgets?
Or focus on getting better at things I am not very good at, such as writing detailed action plans and then implementing them step by step?
Or would it be more effective, and fun, to focus in stead on the things I am really good at and enjoy doing, such as spotting and formulating new ideas and approaches, seeing the big picture of a situation, and reaching out empathetically to others to map out new approaches that will inspire their mission and maximize their performance?
While this choice was not so obvious to me earlier, it became much clearer now, and I decided to join the revolution and build on my strengths in stead of trying hard to improve my weaknesses.
I spent a few nice days reflecting how I could carve out roles and chances to use my talents more often in 2009, and to work on perfecting them with knowledge, skills and practice.
But what about working on improving weaknesses then, what seemed to have been a favorite focus in some of my earlier new year resolutions? Since these weaknesses are still with me, won’t they continue to need my attention as well?
On reflection, I was reminded that every person has a combination of strengths and weaknesses that is truly unique. People’s talents, and individual sense and perception are not common at all.
My talents and how I view the world around me are different from other peoples’ talents and views, in their make up and nuances. And my weaknesses are bound to be another person’s strengths, and vice versa.
So rather than working harder this year on fixing my weaknesses, I decided that it will be more effective and fun to find better ways to manage them. To put my strengths to work to cover some of my weaknesses, and to minimize other weaknesses by seeking contributions from other people whose strengths are complementary to mine.
I realized that by building on strengths, including my own and those of others, I have a better hope of decluttering my activities at the start of the new year, to bring more simplicity into my life, and to experience more great times and results in 2009.
Master Thich Nhat Hanh has, in fact, been spreading that revolutionary message for a long time as he encouraged people to touch their talents and make them bloom.
Photograph: Blooming flowers in Shu coffee shop, central Tokyo.
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