Collaboration Was Born From Our Shortcomings

An old note:

I spent a long time thinking it through. The reason I had the chance to work with certain people wasn’t because of their strengths.

Everyone likes strengths—people all over the world do. Those strengths could have taken them anywhere they wanted to go.

But they ended up here, working with me, because of their flaws. Their flaws are what kept them stuck by my side.

The tragedy in how people relate is usually this: we’re drawn in by someone’s strengths and ignore their flaws. Then, as flaws surface during time together, we can’t resolve them, and we suffer deeply from them. So we grit our teeth, armed with hope and belief that we can change those flaws.

Then both sides are exhausted.

Then comes, “I was tricked.”

No one tricked you. You just didn’t observe or evaluate their flaws thoroughly enough beforehand.

You don’t yet understand: flaws are exactly what create your opportunity to be with them.

Why did she marry him and stay together for so long?

Why did he follow him and become one of the people who benefited when the company went public?

Because he learned to live with his flaws for years on end.

So treat kindly everyone who has left you, too.

Don’t keep telling yourself they took advantage of you. They, too, lived within your flaws for a long time.