Lifestyle

Best Practices for Strengthening Your Professional Weaknesses

Published

5 years ago

July 11, 2021

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in your career – or how far you’ve advanced – you’re always going to have weaknesses. And if you want to continue improving, you have to deal with these weaknesses sooner rather than later.

The Backwards Approach to Professional Development

Have you ever noticed that most of the workforce (and most people in general) have a backward approach to professional development?

As humans, we have this desire to feel important. And one of the ways we feel important and fulfilled is by leveraging our strengths and skills. When we’re good at something, we typically enjoy doing it (and want to do more of it). When we’re bad at something, it makes us feel inadequate – so we avoid it.

But if we only do the things we’re naturally good at and avoid the things we’re not skilled at, we don’t actually improve. We end up staying the same. Worse yet, we often get burned out and see a decline in the areas where we were once proficient.

The real purpose of professional development is to lean into weaknesses and refine the areas where we’re inadequate. And though it’s not comfortable to do this, it provides far more growth.

5 Tips for Strengthening Your Weaknesses

If you want to develop as a professional, it starts with identifying your weaknesses and being willing to address them. Here are some tips to help you strengthen your shortcomings:

Set Specific Goals

If you’re going to go through the discomfort of strengthening your weaknesses, you need a plan. Setting very specific goals will give you a target to reach for. As you get closer to this goal, you’ll feel yourself making progress. This will provide further energy and motivation.

If your weakness is public speaking, for example, having a goal of giving a 10-minute presentation at a company event by the end of the year will give you something tangible to strive for.

Spend Time With the Right People

You become the combination of the people you spend the most time with. Make sure you’re spending time with people who help you grow, rather than people who make you comfortable.

Find two or three people who are already skilled in the area where you’re weak. Take them out to lunches and dinners. Ask questions, gather feedback, and solicit advice. It’ll be awkward and painful at times. But it’ll spur on growth.

Invest in Continuing Education

If you’re in an industry where continuing education is required in order to remain actively licensed, you know the shortcuts. Most of your peers have figured out how to take the easiest classes and courses so they can skate by. (You’ve probably done it yourself in the past.) But if you want to grow, use continuing education as an opportunity to strengthen your weaknesses.

If you’re a respiratory therapist, for example, don’t take respiratory therapy CEU’s on ethics and professional boundaries if that’s something you’re already familiar with. If you know you’re lacking in knowledge on chronic progressive lung disease, that’s the course you need to take.

Leverage Strengths to Tackle Weaknesses

One of the best things you can do is leverage a strength to tackle a weakness. Take a weakness in public speaking as an example. While you might be totally lacking in this area, you know you have a strength in woodworking. Rather than giving a speech on something that you know nothing about, you could give a presentation on woodworking. If nothing else, your knowledge of this topic will give you more confidence.

Take it Step by Step

You don’t have to eat the whole enchilada at once. The best way to tackle a weakness is by addressing it one bite at a time. A step-by-step approach allows you to slowly improve your skills and build confidence.

Start by giving a one-minute speech in the mirror with nobody watching. Then challenge yourself to record yourself giving a presentation and upload it on YouTube. Next, do a Facebook Live where you present on a topic for five minutes. Then do it in person with a small audience. Then a larger audience, etc.

When you take this step-by-step approach, your weakness of public speaking (or whatever it is) becomes much more manageable. Try this strategy and see what you think.

Get Ready to Grow

Growth is rarely easy or painless. It requires effort, energy, time, and confrontation. But when it’s all said and done, professional development has a refining impact. It could take months or years, but your willingness to tackle your weaknesses head-on will produce positive results. Stay with it!

Lifestyle

When Seasons Shift: Dr. Leeshe Grimes on Grief, Loneliness, and Finding Light Again

Published

3 days ago

February 22, 2026

Michelle Langton

Some emotional storms arrive without warning. A sudden change in weather, a holiday approaching, or even a bright sunny day can stir feelings that don’t match the world outside. For many people, the hardest seasons are not defined by temperature; they are defined by what’s happening inside, where grief and loneliness often move quietly.

This is the emotional terrain where Dr. Leeshe Grimes has spent her career doing some of her most meaningful work. As a psychotherapist, registered play therapist, retired U.S. Army combat veteran, and founder of Elevated Minds in the DMV area, she understands how deeply seasonal shifts and unresolved grief can affect people. Her upcoming books explore this very space, guiding readers through the emotional weight that can appear during different times of the year.

What sets Dr. Grimes apart is her ability to see clearly what many people overlook. Seasonal depression, for example, is usually tied to winter months. But she often sees it appear during warm, bright seasons, the times when the world seems happiest. For someone already grieving or feeling disconnected, watching others travel, celebrate, or gather can create its own kind of heaviness. Sunshine doesn’t always lift the mood; sometimes it highlights what feels missing.

The same misunderstanding surrounds grief. Society often treats it as a short-term experience with predictable phases and a clean ending. But in her practice, Dr. Grimes sees how grief keeps evolving. It doesn’t disappear on a timeline. It weaves itself into routines, memories, and milestones. People learn to carry it differently, but they rarely leave it behind completely. And that’s not failure, it’s human.

Her approach to mental health centers on truth rather than pressure. She encourages clients to acknowledge the emotions they try to hide: sadness that lingers longer than expected, moments of joy that feel out of place, and the waves of loneliness that return even when life seems stable. Instead of pushing for quick recovery, she focuses on helping people understand how emotions shift and how to care for themselves through those changes.

Much of her insight comes from her military years, where she witnessed the emotional toll of loss, transition, and constant survival. She saw how people continued functioning while carrying pain that had nowhere to go. That experience shaped her belief that healing requires space, space to feel, to speak, and to move through emotions without judgment.

In her clinical work today at Elevated Minds, she encourages people to build small, steady habits that anchor them during difficult seasons. Journaling helps them recognize patterns and name what feels heavy. Community support breaks the cycle of isolation. Therapy creates a place where emotions don’t have to be minimized or explained away. And intentional routines, daily sunlight, mindful breaks, and calm evenings help rebuild emotional balance.

Her upcoming books expand on these ideas, offering practical guidance for navigating both grief and seasonal depression. She focuses on helping readers understand that healing is not about escaping pain. It’s about learning how to live with it in a healthier way, honoring memories, acknowledging loneliness, and still allowing room for moments of light.

What makes Dr. Leeshe Grimes a compelling voice in mental health is her ability to bring language to experiences that many struggle to explain. She reminds people that emotional seasons don’t always match the weather and that there is no single path through grief. But within those shifts, she believes there is always a way forward.

The seasons will continue to change. And with the right tools, compassion, and support, people can change with them, finding steadiness, softness, and light again, one step at a time.