I was having a great conversation with a friend and accountability coach yesterday about showing up in the world. We stumbled across the topic of our strengths and weaknesses, how to utilize them, and how to find them. It brought back a memory of something I had completely forgotten I had done, but was monumental in my personal growth journey. This exact personal growth exercise that I’ll be sharing will work wonders for you as it did for me.. do you want to find out what it is?
Of course you do 🙂 ! But before I share the exercise I want to talk about where I found it; it wasn’t something I came up with on my own. It was within the pages of my favorite book. The book that I think changed my life forever and gave me a 100x boost in my health, mindset, and lifestyle journey. It was The Miracle Morning, by Hal Elrod.
If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend it. I actually wrote a post about it so you can get a sense of what it entails but the book is just truly a pot of gold. The personal growth exercise was at the very end in a chapter titled, “The email that will change your life”.
And that’s exactly the simple exercise… writing an email.
What is the email that will change your life?
As Hal describes it, the email that will change your life is a personal growth exercise to help you identify your biggest strengths and your biggest weaknesses. However, not based on your thoughts about yourself. It’s based on how you show up in the world according to other people. It doesn’t matter what you think or intend if other people don’t see you that way.
That’s why this email is so powerful. It forces you to see sides of yourself and what you really are like to other people. It’s quite scary and you might face some inner resistance and critic.
Writing the email is simple. You ask for 3 things that you need improvement on, and if it makes the recipient feel better, a handful of strengths that you have as well. It’s sending the email and reading the responses that’s the hard part. People you know, love, and have relationships with are going to be sent this vulnerable email. To some, it may seem weird, but to others it may seem admirable. If you’re scared of sending the email, remember the worst that’s going to happen is you don’t get a reply back. You can do it!
The email
Here’s the exact email I sent:
You’re obviously welcome to change the email and make it sound more like yourself in any way you choose, but you get the gist of it.
Using the email for personal growth
The responses I got back from my friends and family were nothing short of eye-opening. It helped me become aware of areas that I know are my weaknesses and more importantly the areas that I didn’t think I struggled with.
As I read the latter responses, my mind was telling me “noo, that’s so not true.” and tried coming up with a whole bunch of excuses or reasons as to why they were wrong. Then I caught myself. That’s not the point of this exercise. This personal growth exercise is designed to make me feel this way and become aware of how I’m showing up in the world. It’s not my thoughts that matter here, it’s what other people see in me.
Once you have your responses, the awareness itself will help you move forward with more clarity, purpose, and ideas of ways you can improve. It can also be good to take immediate action too. Take a moment to brainstorm ways to improve upon the biggest weaknesses that popped up for you. What’s something you can do right now that might remedy that? Is there someone you need to message, reach out to, etc? How can you take little tiny baby steps to making that weaknesses not so prevalent in your life.
That’s how you use this personal growth exercise. Gather the information you need, then make a plan moving forward as to how you can use it.
Conclusion: don’t be afraid
When I first learned about this email, I thought I didn’t need to do something that vulnerable – I already thought I knew myself pretty well. That was me not showing courage. I just didn’t want to have to email all of those people that were closest to me and ask what I was bad at. It hurt my ego. But I did it, and you can too. Draft up an email like this and send it to 10 people you are closest too and that know you well. Then send it. You’ll be blown away by the emails you get back.
