The following wonderful article is from A New Treasury of Words to Live By, 1956. The article is titled Make a Weakness Pay Off and was written by playwright and motion picture executive Dore Schary.
Make a Weakness Pay Off
by Dore Schary
“If you have a weakness, make it work for you.” – Dore Schary’s Mother
My mother was a hard-working and very wise woman. Many years ago she observed to me, ‘If you have a weakness, make it work for you as a strength – and if you have a strength, don’t abuse it into a weakness.”
Through the years, and in the different jobs I have held, I have seen constant demonstrations of the truth of my mother’s observations.
A person who chooses to call himself frank and candid can very easily find himself becoming tactless and cruel. A person who prides himself on being tactful can find eventually that he has become evasive and deceitful.
A person with firm convictions can become pigheaded. A person who is inclined to be temperate and judicious can sometimes turn into a man with weak convictions and banked fires of resolution.
Good habits of health too rigidly followed can make you a hypochondriac.
Hard work, unless balanced by relaxation and mind and body, may eventually destroy you.
Loyalty can lead to fanaticism. Caution can become timidity. Freedom can become license. Confidence can become arrogance. Humility can become servility.
All these are ways in which strength can become weakness. But the reverse is true too.
Destructiveness based on a desire to know what makes something tick can often be channeled into constructiveness directed at making it tick better.
Gullibility can be turned into understanding and compassion.
Relentlessness can be turned into versatility.
Laziness can be turned into contemplation and study.
Extravagance can be turned into generosity.
I think of this often and, while I lead quite a regulated life, I very often deliberately break habits -change patterns – merely to avoid the danger of extremes and open up new avenues of inner growth.
Look at that first line again: “If you have a weakness, make it work for you as a strength – and if you have a strength, don’t abuse it into a weakness.” Study it, apply it, and I think you will find comfort, strength, and truth in it.
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I’m sure you can see why I was so anxious for you to read these words. Aren’t they brilliant? “ I very often deliberately break habits -change patterns – merely to avoid the danger of extremes and open up new avenues of inner growth.”
Great stuff!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great! Thanks for posting it! It’s so funny how some advice is ALWAYS good.
Positively Present’s last blog post..how to give the world a virus
The thing about good advice is that it is timeless!
The most important lessons people learn are the ones people have been learning for centuries. This is kind of reassuring.
Great find! Serves to remind us that the current crop of self-help authors didn’t invent the concept of self-improvement or how to achieve it. Thanks for sharing.
Joi,
I’ve never heard that before – what a great little nugget of wisdom.
Thanks much for the great tip on the book – I’ll be ordering a copy and can’t wait to dive in!
This great timeless writing that rings true today just as it did over 50 years ago. I don’t know where you dug this up, but thank you for posting it.
Be Wealth Minded
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You’ more than welcome, Ken. I get so much from the writings of authors such as F.D. Van Amburgh, Grenville Kleiser, Dore Schary, etc. You’re exactly right – they still ring true!
Miki – You’ll love the book!
Brad Morris – You’re so right. I read A LOT (old and new books) and I can tell you this: There’s a certain quality that you can find in the older books that’s missing from a lot of the one’s today. Authors of yesterday weren’t afraid of being PC or of having to make everybody happy. If they wanted to thank God, for example, for their blessings – they simply said, “Thank God for my blessings!”
Hoffman Centre – Indeed, good advice is timeless! A lot of older books are simply filled with advice such as this. I’m planning on posting many more articles in the coming days. In fact, I have a stack nearly as tall as me beside me right now!