The article entitled, “FREAK FACTOR: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness” by David Rendall was written to explain that all people have flaws, but is it really such a bad thing? He then goes to list a lot of his own personal weaknesses and basically knowing your own weaknesses you find out clues to your true strengths. I think that all of his suggestions are valid because it’s a new look at improving yourself. Like figuring out your flaws is not meant to bring you down and you should know that nothing is wrong with you as a person. This is an article designed to give you a step to bettering yourself or at least realizing that your individual self isn’t bad even with flaws. I think that David Rendall’s nine suggestions are valid. His first two steps are designed for you to figure out whats wrong and what needs to be fixed. I could easily implement this strategy by making a list of all my flaws. This would help me visually see what my weaknesses and even my strengths are and could be. Then you must realize that these flaws don’t make you a bad person but can improve your qualities. Next it states that you shouldn’t try to fix your weaknesses but you should build on your strengths. Basically if you don’t use your strengths, you lose them. I could implement this strategy in my Creative Life easily by using them in making movies, coming up with ideas, and laying out shots.
I don’t know if I believe that some of his suggestions would be valid for trying to help us better ourselves. Step 4: Forget it: Don’t try to fix your weaknesses is a step that I think doesn’t help. I think that fixing your weaknesses can sometimes be worth trying to fix for bettering yourself. Then two steps later it says that you can’t do both which I also think is incorrect. Yes there isn’t a lot of time and energy you can use on both but still you can manage time well enough for it to work. Also step 3 states that you should think of yourself as “Flawless: There’s nothing wrong with you” which I think is not a very good strategy to improve. I think that identifying that you have flaws is the first step to fix whatever your weaknesses are. Also you learn from your mistakes so if you don’t take a risk in fixing your flaws how can you ever gain if you don’t work at it. I do think that your weaknesses make you unique from everyone else but also that if you use your strengths to your advantage you can become even greater. David Rendall has some very good points suggested in his article of Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness but a few of them can be given time to look at and revise. Showing off your weaknesses is never a good tactic for someone but with work this strategy could help someone improve themselves overall.
Regarding the creative process, I think some of my strengths could be found in my preparation. If I spent as much time preparing for a test, writing out a movie, or a speech as I did for actually doing the job I would have so much more potential. I think that this makes me notice that a weakness of mine is my ability to take action. I always talk about doing something but always get stuck at the step that really matters, getting the job done. One of my strongest features is that I am very good at taking my laid out ideas and shooting them exactly how I thought it out. This is a very difficult part of the creation of movies and I think it is one of my strengths that I need to focus on and use to the best of my ability. One of my weaknesses is my writing ability for a script. This is something that definitely has to improve. I am going to try to surround myself with people that have good writing capabilities because in the article it states that you should find people who are strong where you are weak. Another strength of mine is coming up with great ideas. But with that my weakness can be attributed to not writing them down and never being able to work on it because of forgetting or just not enough time on my hands. This helps me realize what I need to work on by seeing it on paper.
