You’re only as strong as your weakest trait

Thomas Reid said “The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, for if that fails the chain fails and the object that it has been holding up falls to the ground”. I believe that same concept can also be applied to your personal traits.

The president might be a great leader, charismatic, courageous, a visionary, good crisis manager, etc. But if they don’t have integrity or are adulterous, that will be their downfall and perhaps all they will be remembered for.

You can be the best athlete ever and have generational talent, but if you aren’t coachable, or even make bad choices outside of your sport, you will never reach your full potential as a player.

Someone can have intentions to be a nice, loving parent who cares about their kid, but if they have a bad tempter and anger problems, they can negatively impact their kid and how their kid views them as a parent.

I was always a fast sprinter. In track, I had a good acceleration phase and could maintain my speed for a long time. My start phase was my weakest trait. I could beat most kids with a bad start out of the blocks, but as competition got better, my weakest trait of coming out of blocks slow became a bigger problem. I wasn’t able to start off slow and catch everyone mid race like usual. Some sprinters I couldn’t catch because they ran to the best of their ability and were good in every sprinting phase. The same goes for life. My weak traits might not be a problem at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they won’t cause a problem once things get harder or when I am faced with character defining moments.

We must work on our weakest traits because they will eventually hurt us in some type of way. Whether it’s sports or personal life. The good thing is we can get better and improve those weak traits before they become a real problem.

We must be conscious of all of our traits and continue to find areas where we can grow and improve. This can happen through self-reflection as well as through the help of others. This does have to be a deliberate effort though. There should be a sense of urgency to improve our weak traits because you don’t know when they will cause a problem, if they haven’t already.