Too Much of a Good Thing: When Strengths Become Weaknesses

Aristotle’s golden mean and viewing our qualities for what they are

If you were to ask someone to write down their top 5 strengths and their top 5 weaknesses, what are the chances that the lists will relate to each other?

Some human qualities are generally accepted as positive ones. Generosity. Honesty. Courage. Kindness. These are characteristics that we inherently assume are part of ‘goodness’; qualities we strive to instil in our children as they grow up. But is it a simplification to think that our strengths will always operate in our favour?

In ancient philosophy, Aristotle famously conceptualised the ‘golden mean’. The idea is that too much or too little of a virtue is problematic, and we should instead strive towards the middle. The old version of seeking out the porridge that’s ‘just right’. Many Greco-Roman philosophers warn of the dangers of excess and advocate for temperance, so perhaps this is not surprising.

Different ends of the pendulum

What might this look like in practice?

Let’s take courage as an example. Aristotle would argue that too little courage would result in someone being cowardly. Fair call. In the modern day, we could assert that this person is passive, acquiescing in circumstances where they should speak up; someone who fails to live up to their values in practice.

If we move to the middle of the pendulum, perhaps this is someone able to speak openly and courageously, defend others when it’s right to do so and act even when it scares them. The golden mean zone.

But what about when the pendulum swings too far? Too much courage and Aristotle would suggest we’re now in danger of acting rashly. Our courage has become a quality that no longer serves us or others. We’re moving with arrogance, overconfidence, even irrationality spurring us on.

You could argue that there is an associated weakness on either side of the pendulum for most strengths. On the pendulum of honesty, too little, and you’re inauthentic, manipulative, or weak. But honesty to excess may bring a tendency to be abrasive, disconnected to others, abrupt.

I have recently started consuming less of one of my favourite author’s social media. I used to love his confidence and the power with which he wrote. I still do. But at some point, his online presence passed a boundary for me and moved into something I now perceive more as overconfidence, potentially even egotism. That’s just my perception, but it’s changed how I view the author’s work. When does confidence become self-importance? I don’t know. We’re always operating somewhere in the pendulum, and perhaps it swings often, over time and depending on the circumstances.

Follow the pendulum of analytical strength to the extreme, and you may find difficulty in decision-making or getting too caught up in the details. The pendulum of the pursuit of achievement may follow through to perfectionism, a tendency towards burnout, a debilitating fear of failure. Too much kindness could lead to extreme passivity or hesitation to call out breaches of boundaries. Too much generosity and friendliness may result in a loss of sense of self. Perhaps this is where the phrase ‘to a fault’ comes in. Compassionate, to a fault. Loyal, to a fault. There is ‘nice’, and then there is ‘too nice’.

I’d consider myself a creative person, and idea generation would be a strength on my list. But the extreme version of a creative mindset leads to a kind of possibility syndrome: Difficulty following through with ideas because novel ones keep interrupting initial plans. This is definitely a weakness of mine, too.

A new frame for self-awareness

Aristotle’s framework is an important one for self-awareness. It is an opportunity to view our qualities through a different lens, appreciating them not as necessarily inherently good or bad but rather as things that are there. Things that can be employed to serve us and others, or taken to levels that don’t. This could also be an opportunity for cognitive reframing: Asking ourselves, what might this weakness look like when it’s positive? What is a version of this ‘development area’ that actually serves people?

Each one of us is a whole, messy, nuanced human being, and it is arguably an oversimplification to suggest that our strengths and weaknesses are mutually exclusive. To be truly self-aware, we have to take the positive with the negative, appreciating how different qualities play out in our lives and where we can build on them (or pull them back). The golden mean concept is perhaps also a kind of reassurance. If every strength carries with it associated weaknesses, and our qualities are far messier than a categorical ‘good’ or ‘bad’, then perhaps we can use this to challenge a desire or need to be perfect. Because there’s really no such thing.

I’d love your thoughts — if you consider your own strengths and weaknesses, do you notice connections between them?