Does what doesn't kill you really make you stronger? Partly, and it also annoys me. Strength is the ability to deal with change, not the ability to jump out of aeroplanes.
Does what doesn't kill you really make you stronger? Partly, and it also annoys me. Strength is the ability to deal with change, not the ability to jump out of aeroplanes.
The older I get the more I think strength is just leaning in a bit. It is not parachutes and mountains. And there is a weakness worth naming, which is the inability to say no. Wanting to please everybody sounds generous and it does not end well for you.
One thing to try: Say no to one small thing today that you would normally agree to.
In this episode
(0:04) What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and why it annoys me
(2:45) Strength as the ability to deal with change
(5:03) Strength is just leaning in a bit
(7:29) Showing a weakness by fearing the other person's strength
(10:13) The inability to say no, and wanting to please everybody
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What is strength, if it is not the thing you were told it was?
What does not kill you makes you stronger. I grew up with that and I still half believe it, and it also annoys me, because of what people picture when they hear the word.
The heart of it
Strength is the ability to deal with change, not the ability to jump out of aeroplanes.
Most of it is just leaning in a bit rather than turning away.
The bully is usually the most frightened person on the field.
As a teenager I thought strength was the gym. Could you take a punch, could you get back up. Some of that counts. The older I get the more I think the real thing is being able to absorb change, forgive people, and listen without putting yourself first.
Look at me for the physical version. My arms give out after ten minutes and I would struggle with a bag of sugar. So that column is empty and it has not made much difference to my life.
The tree is the better picture. A tree is not strong in the way we mean it. It bends, it has deep roots, and it drops its leaves when the season turns. It survives by adapting rather than resisting.
Listening is a strength, and a rare one. I am not good at it. In council meetings my mind goes to what I am having for tea, and I hope nobody asks me anything. That is honest rather than flattering, and being able to say it is its own small strength.
So is admitting a mistake, and giving credit to somebody else. People who take credit usually cannot generate it themselves.
And there is a weakness worth naming, which is mine. I cannot say no. I want everybody to be all right. It sounds generous and it does not end well for the person doing it, which is going to be an interesting problem across a year as mayor.
One small thing to try
Say no to one small thing today that you would normally agree to.
Then write your actual strengths down. Not the ones you wish you had. What have the hard years given you that you would not have had otherwise?
Most of us can list our flaws instantly and go blank on this one, which tells you which list you have been rehearsing.
Questions people ask
Is being unable to say no really a weakness?
Yes, and it hides well, because it looks like kindness. What it produces is a person quietly running out of themselves while everybody else thinks they are fine.
Why do you say the bully is weakest?
Because that behaviour is fear management. They are keeping somebody down because they are frightened of what happens if that person stands up, and that is not strength by any definition worth having.
How do I find my strengths?
Look at what you got through and ask what it built. Hard times are usually gifts you have not unwrapped yet, and the ability to look for the gift at all is one of them.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
resilience · confidence · change · update
Read the transcript
So what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
I grew up with that phrase and I still stand by it quite a bit.
But it also annoys me and I want to talk about what that strength
means and what it means to be a strong person.
But before that, I'm Stephen Webb, the this is Stillness in the
Storms, the podcast that helps you to find a little inner peace
in difficult times.
Two weeks ago I become mayor of Truro and it's been a really busy
couple of weeks for me.
A lot of meetings.
Yeah, a lot of meetings and luckily a lot of them are still virtual,
but it is summer and I've been.
Some of them have been in person and the merry making was in
person in the cathedral.
What an amazing backdrop that was.
And I've had a lot of good media attention and a lot of good
write ups and all that at the moment.
But now that I've got the profile out there, now I've got to
stand by what I say.
And I really want to make my mayorship count and I'm sure every
mayor does, and I'm sure I'm not bringing anything new to the
table in that way.
But I'm starting to work out what my membership means.
And one of the things is not to leave anybody behind, leave no
groups out.
And that's gonna really form the question behind nearly every
decision I make.
Does this leave any groups out?
And if it does, how can we include those groups?
And I think that goes down to the social and economic recovery
today is how can we make sure it involves everybody?
So yeah, a lot of meetings, a lot of thinking about and I'm now
getting to grips with what I can do to help people and things
like that and really have hit the floor running, so to speak.
And we're getting there.
And I do want to shout out and say thank you to a couple of ex mayors
and a couple of councillors that have really helped me out and
really step forward.
And they've been there at the end of Texas, at day and night, really,
when I've literally, I don't know what to do with this, you know,
who do I contact, things like that.
So it's really valuable support.
So thank you.
I want to talk about strength, what it means to be strong and very
much.
While I was growing up, as a teenager, I thought strength was
going to the gym, building your muscles.
Can you punch hard?
Can you beat people up?
Can you absorb the punches?
Can you get up when you stand up, get up when you get knocked down?
And I think, yeah, all of those count to some degree.
But also the older I get, the more I realize strength is in the
ability to deal with change, the ability to forgive people and
listen without putting yourself first.
And I think we very often, when we have hard times, we look
at coming out of them stronger, but we don't look at what
those strengths really mean to us and how they affect our lives.
And I just want you to think about your strengths during this
podcast, really, not so much in the way of muscle strengths, but
in the way that you've become more resilient, that you become more
wiser and you're able to see things from more perspectives.
And I think that's where strength really comes.
When you can see things as complicated structures, you no longer
see things as black and white.
You can learn to forgive people because you realize that nobody's
really deliberately doing bad things.
Mitzi, can you please not lie on my keyboard?
You're gonna.
As much as I think my keyboard is nice and warm for you, it's not
the best time.
And welcome Mitzi to the podcast.
Mitzi's my cat and she's just decided to lie right in front of
me, right across the monitor.
And I cannot see my show notes now.
Anyway, talking about strength, and I very often look at
me, I'm paralyzed.
My body is quite weak and it's quite skinny apart from the belly
and things like that.
So physical strength, I have very little.
I could barely pick up, pick up a two pound bag of sugar.
If I do exercise, after about 10 minutes, literally my arms are
falling off.
I'm like, nah, this is kidding me.
I can't do this anymore.
But then I look at my strengths.
My strengths are, I suppose, my ability to be okay with change.
I don't fear change.
Yes, I want to run away from things, but I don't run away from
things so much as I used to.
I still feel like it.
Several times the past two, three weeks, I've wanted to run away
from my responsibilities.
Close the door, turn the computer off, but we lean in and
we go.
It's probably not going to be that bad.
And that's strength.
Just remember that strength is just leaning in a little bit.
Strength doesn't mean jumping out of an airplane with parachutes
or climbing up the biggest rock face or running 100 kilometer
endurance.
They're all strengths in one way.
But strength comes in so many different forms.
And just being flexible, just being able to absorb the changes
as they occur.
Look at trees.
Trees aren't very strong, but they become strong with the Fact
that they're flexible and they have deep roots and the fact that
the wind and the different weather conditions and the seasons,
the tree can adapt to change.
It drops its leaves so it can hibernate for the winter.
Not sure if that's the right word.
Have a look at your streams.
Have a look at.
And instead of comparing your streams to other people, really analyze
what makes you stronger, what makes you more resilient nowadays,
what makes you.
What gives you the ability to deal with things when others can.
Maybe you're good at forgiving people or you're good at listening.
Listening is a great strength to have.
It's a great ability.
Very few people could do it.
I'm not a very good listener.
I really am quite a terrible listener.
While I'm listening to people, my mind is thinking about my tea
and how hungry I am, what I'm doing later on, and especially in
council meetings.
I have to be perfectly honest.
Sorry to all my fellow counsellors, but sometimes when they're
all talking, my mind is, yeah, let's go somewhere else.
And I've really got a focus.
I hope they don't sometimes go and ask me a question because I'm
like, yeah, I zoned out for that moment and I'm just being honest
again.
Honesty is a strength, I guess.
But, yeah, listening is a good strength to have.
And the ability to, like I say, forgive people, that's a really
massive strength to realize that nothing is personal.
You know, what people say and what they do is more about them than
it ever is about you or ever is about the other person.
So the strength has been able to see that and not react to it.
We often see strength as a physical strength in the way that
you might have bullies and you have people that really put other
people down, they see that as a strength in themselves, but it
really isn't.
It's them showing a weakness that they're frightened of the other
person because if the other person gets too strong or the ability
to come back or perhaps leave them or something like that, whatever
it is they're fearing, if that person ever grows the courage and
shame to do that, the other person that is putting them down,
all that wouldn't know what to do.
They're frightened.
I think I heard somewhere about the bully is the weakest one
on the playing field or something.
And it's all about different qualities as well.
In.
In the respect of you might be strong in one thing and weak in another.
Like I say, my body is really not that strong.
My body can you remember the alien autopsy years and years ago?
Well, my legs and arms are so skinny and my big belly.
I look like that alien autopsy lying on the autopsy bed on the metal
kind of.
But, yeah.
So, yeah, physical strength.
I don't really have it, but I built up a resilience.
I built up an ability to be okay with when things are going wrong.
I'm not sure I always have the wise answers when things are going
wrong, but nevertheless, it is a strength.
And so think about your strengths.
List them, grab a piece of paper, get your phone out and get
the note app and think about your strengths.
What are you really good at?
What abilities have you grown through your hard times?
Because hard times are very often gifts.
And I do believe there's a gift in everything.
That's one of my mottos.
And I try to look for it whenever things are seem like they're
going against me.
Where's the gift?
What can I learn from this?
And again, learning.
That's another great strength to have.
Can I learn from this mistake?
Can I admit to my mistakes?
Oh, my God, that's a strength.
Can I admit that I was wrong?
Can I give someone else credit or weak people will take credit because
they don't have the ability to come up with things themselves, perhaps.
So they may take credit off other people.
I just want to record this podcast because it really resonated
with me this morning when I was meditating about the different
strengths we have.
The mental, wise strength, the physical strength.
And they're all qualities.
And we very much don't concentrate on the qualities we have.
We concentrate on the qualities other people have and we
wish we had more of them.
And we concentrate on our flaws and our weaknesses, which it's
okay to be aware of our weaknesses on the enneagram.
I'm a type 2.
I'm a helper.
The weakness of a type 2 is the fact that we have an inability
to say no.
We want to please everybody.
We want to make everybody happy.
Well, that's going to be really challenging for me over the
next 12 months.
Really challenging.
And.
But recognizing that that is one of my weaknesses, I can turn
it into a strength.
Eventually.
I need to work on it.
So, yeah, don't ever look at either way as a good or a bad thing.
It is just what it is.
Maybe somewhere we need to work somewhere we need to pat ourselves
on the back and go, do you know what?
You're a damn good listener, a damn good forgiving person, or a
really good person in times of change, you know, whatever your strengths
are really focus on what they are and put them out into the world.
The world needs more wise strength.
That's all I've got this week.
Thank you for listening.
I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.
You can head over to my website, StephenWeb.com with a V
and download the Five Simple Practices for inner Peace.
And you can check out my the most popular podcast that I've done
so far is the one that can you love everybody.
It's the one I talk about, whether or not we have the ability
to love everybody.
And on that note, I love you and have an amazing day.
