Strength Is Overrated

Photo by Tim Hüfner via Unsplash

Yes, you read that right. Culturally, we spend way too much time on strength. We evaluate strength, rate strength, and reframe so many of the things we do as strengths.

This focus annoys me because so often, it feels like the only thing being honored when there are so many things that make people exceptional. What gets us through the grey and darker times isn't just strength. It's tenacity, flexibility, courage, resignation, ingenuity, cussedness, and possibly knowing someone will come back from the dead to kick you in the ass if you do something too stupid.

In my first career, I designed the parts of buildings that keep the building standing. I never used the strongest material possible. In a world where we’re told that to be strong, you must be the strongest, the buildings I designed were made from weak materials.

In fact, as an engineer of wood-framed buildings, I most often used the weakest of modern building materials. If I designed buildings that keep you safe from weather and the people living or working upstairs from weak material, you can build a life out of what the world calls ‘weakness’ and still be protected and safe.

That sounds radical, even to me.

How does that even work?

We start to identify where we need the strongest elements. Sounds simple, eh? This first step is also the hardest.

As an engineer, there are guidelines based on historical data and geeks' best guesses about what kind of loads a given structure expects. Even better, we get to work out most of the kinks on paper (or in computers) before we try to build something.

No such advantage exists for building a life. Our building process starts before we even have a voice [1], and we begin building our lives without much of an idea of what kinds of loads to expect. So, with our young, undeveloped brains and twitchy bodies, we make assumptions and write stories to live by.

Because the short versions of us wrote stories with incomplete information, as adults, we often wake up, wondering how we got here, feeling scared and stuck. This state? It’s not our fault. It’s part of being human.

If you’re here right now, I invite you to take a look around see what your loads are. What's hanging over your head? What's coming at you sideways? What's trying to eat your feet? Turn around. What are you ignoring? Make a list. It may scare the crud out of you; mine does on a regular basis.

Here, I must tell you a truth. Unlike those loads engineers design buildings for, your load list will change frequently. They change for all kinds of reasons. Adding or losing a person from your living situation changes the daily dynamics. Starting a new job or even retiring shifts your responsibilities. Doing the work of creating your desired version of yourself? Yeah, that changes the loads too.

So, instead of living in lives like buildings with a static structure that resists most of the loads it sees, we live in systems where the loads change all of the time, and we're forced to adapt to keep up.

That means our lives are jury-rigged [2]. We do the best we can with what we have at the time.

I can hear my inner Chester [3] right now. “Great. Kelli, you just told everyone they would never finish step one. That’s brilliant.”

OK. I hear you. Take a deep breath. You now know a simple, challenging truth. We will never know all the loads. So, now you get to decide how to move forward.

The options abound.

I often feel lazy and use the work I've already done. You've figured out your loads for today. When you look at your life, where are those loads causing the most hardship? Let's start where we can see the floor bucking or the walls leaking.

What tool in your toolbox do you need? What tool do you need to develop?

Did you pick up a tool that will help you power through? Or pop a foolish person over the head? Did you pick up the largest, strongest tool you had because you’re done with dealing with this and want it fixed once and for all?

Before you deploy that powerful, strong tool, I'll ask you to consider some things.

First, can you afford to deploy it? It feels crass, but I have to ask. Do you know why most single-family homes in the United States are wood-framed? Because concrete or steel doesn't make economic sense, they cost way too much.

When we apply tools to our lives, we must consider if we can afford them. The creation cost quickly becomes the most readily apparent. Will I lose my flexibility? Will the strain of possible economic uncertainty overwhelm us? Will I end up alone? The maintenance costs tend to hide. How do you keep the tool in place? What do you have to sacrifice downstream?

We face that dilemma of not knowing again right here.

So, given all this unknowing – in terms of future loading and present costs – why not just plop the strongest tool in place and see what happens?

Because I understand the lives we create as systems. In this context, systems are a composition of (maybe) associated elements that work together for a common purpose. Buildings have structural elements, heating and cooling elements, plumbing elements, and others that work together to provide us safe shelter. Our lives have bodies, emotions, sensations, and thoughts that all work together toward our purpose.

Photo by Josh Olalde via Unsplash

I don’t pick the strongest tool first because of what I call The Field of Dreams Problem in Systems. Simply stated, the strongest, sturdiest elements of a system pull the most load. So, while that super strong tool may be sufficient for today’s loading, over time, as the loading changes, the tool draws more and more of the load.

Think about your experiences of teamwork. What happens when one or two team members take on a disproportional portion of the load? Their piles tend to get higher and higher because "they can take it." Having a system where one or two of the tools left in place all the time overpower other system elements constantly asks those tools to hold more.

That continued asking of more leads to tool failure. And the quietest reason for not using the strongest material is that it tends to break in a bad way.

Yeah, I know it's hard to think of a good structural break. Weaker materials are often more flexible. They can change shape, continue to work, and you can see some breaks coming – the beam or column bows or cracks start to form. With those cues, you know you have to get in there and shore up the structure. Weaker materials also tend to get used in multiples – like three studs on the side of your window openings. This means if one stud fails, you have a neighbor ready to pitch in.

The higher strength tools don't tend to give you any warning. And, since there is often only one when it breaks, it's catastrophic. The failure comes with little warning. One moment the tool appears fine. The next thing you know, the tool and everything it carries has crashed down over you.

At the end of the day, simply using a lower strength material - with more redundancy and more warnings – actually means more safety.

So, consider all of the tools in your toolbox in looking at the most troubling thing on your load list. What two or three tools could you use to support that piece of your life?

Maybe, rather than powering through, you try combining compassion with flexibility with cognitive reframing with a bit of cussedness. Acknowledging that a load is best carried by combining things we consider strength and weakness.

Why carry and cultivate a toolbox full of stuff if you’re not going to use them?

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[1] Western science is finally beginning to catch up with indigenous wisdom as epigenetics tells us how our mother’s experiences when we’re invitro impact us and suggests the experiences of older members of our family line also impact the DNA we start with.

[2] Jury-rigged: A temporary solution created with materials that are at hand. Sometimes clever, innovated, and impressive.

[3] Chester is what I call my inner critic, who looks an awful lot like Slimer.

[4] There’s a fancy engineering term for this. I don’t know that I ever remembered it.