Reflection

Reflecting on your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats can make the path to personal success much clearer…

REFLECTIVE practice, simply stepping back from the day to day tasks and thinking about your performance, has been shown to be an effective method of self-improvement. It can help build stronger relationships with those around us, create a deeper understanding of our personal motivations and identify any gaps that might prevent us from succeeding as we had hoped.

Undertaking a personal SWOT analysis may sound rather intimidating and it’s fair to say that many of us are much better at listing our weaknesses than our strengths, but it can be a remarkably useful tool to help us plan the lives and businesses we want for the future. Using a personal SWOT analysis helps us be more focussed and organised about what we want to achieve or the changes we want to make for a more fulfilled or balanced life. That’s a great return for 30 minutes to an hour of your time.

REFLECTION:

A PERSONAL SWOT

Getting started

Start with a blank sheet of paper and fold it in half vertically and again horizontally, so you have four quarters. Label the top left Strengths and the lower left Weaknesses. The top right is Opportunities and the lower right is for Threats. Strength and Weaknesses are internal factors, because they are qualities within ourselves, whereas Opportunities and Threats are more often external factors that we can work with but not control.

For example, a farmer might have climate change or drought as a threat. While there’s little they can do personally to avert a drought, they could explore crops or seed varieties which require less water to thrive.

List your goals

When undertaking a personal SWOT, it’s helpful to start with a specific issue like ‘I would like more adventure in my life,’ or ‘I would like to work more with sports injury clients’, or ‘I would like to incorporate more energy medicine into my work.’ ‘I need to make more money’ or ‘I want to work part time’ are equally valid starting points. You can put this statement at the top of your page or in the very centre. It should be at the heart of your responses when listing points for your personal SWOT.

List your strengths

Think about the strengths you have that can help you achieve the goal you’ve set down. These might include professional skills or personal qualities that set you apart from your competitors. For example, you might have advanced qualifications, be able to speak several languages, be really persuasive, great at finance, good at multi-tasking, love admin or be intuitive about your clients underlying causes of injury. Some things may not seem like strengths until you consider how they affect your goal, like the ability to relocate overseas or having a sister in law who’s great at marketing or creating websites or a friend who helps run the local rugby club.

Move on to your weaknesses

It’s tempting to list every single fault from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, but stick to those that are obstacles that will slow your progress to achieving your goal. We are all very good at thinking the worst of ourselves, but the object of a personal SWOT is to help us see clear actions that will move us towards our goal, not make ourselves feel bad. Almost all weaknesses can be improved upon, few are absolutely unsurmountable with sufficient thought and determination.

You might want to include your worst work habits, where you could use more training or experience, tasks you struggle with or that bore you senseless, personal qualities that hold you back, or self-limiting beliefs.

Keep in mind that some strengths tend to be packaged with accompanying weaknesses. You may have great ideas, but aren’t great at following these through, you may love learning new things but get bored senseless by the routine of cleaning up between clients or updating their records.

Focus on your Opportunities

Opportunities are external factors that could help you reach your goal. For example, if your goal was to specialise in sports injuries and your weakness that you had little experience and a strength in the form of that rugby club friend, then your opportunity might be to speak to them about working with the rugby club.

Keep in mind that some strengths tend to be packaged with accompanying weaknesses.

Some opportunities will be things you can’t control, like market trends or changing demographics. Understanding how macrotrends might affect your ability to accomplish your goal can give you some perspective on what steps are available to move you forward. Lets’ say your goal is to set up your own business, then opportunities might include free local business training for start-ups via your local business development agency, grant funding via the Prince’s Trust or other agencies, growing demand for your modality, or the trend of high street shops closing which could mean that premises would be available to rent very cheaply.

Look at the Threats

The final quarter of the paper is for listing potential exterior threats to achieving your goal. Obviously you need to focus in on threats that affect you personally, or those that may affect your clientele. So the cost of living crisis is a relevant threat because it makes people scared of spending and also gives them less disposable income, similarly, the return of a pandemic is a valid threat, but global threats like climate change or the possibility of being invaded by aliens shouldn’t be on your list. You might want to look at competitors, changing demographics, the local job market, or whether your skills might be replaced by technology.

Reflecting and making a plan of action

Once you’ve drawn up your SWOT analysis, review your listings and consider their relative weightings. Match your strengths to your opportunities to see your likelihood of successfully taking advantage of an opportunity. You can also match your strengths to your threats to measure your ability to overcome them. If you find that your weaknesses outweigh your strengths and opportunities, devise ways to improve your standing to better prepare yourself to accomplish your goals.

Using your SWOT as a basis, list three things you will do that will help you get nearer to your goal in the next fortnight, two in the next six weeks and one in the next three months. Let’s go back to our example of the holistic therapist who wanted to specialise in sports injury clients. Their two-week goals might include speaking to their friend about working with the rugby club, making a list of sports clubs in their area and visiting the websites of local competitors who specialise in sports injuries. Their six week goals might include asking their creative sister in law to create a new website or update their current one to include information about their sports injury work while their three month goal could be to undertake a specialist qualification in sports injury massage.

Using a personal SWOT in this way can take us from reflection to action and get us closer to the life and business we most desire. n