Embrace your disadvantages

OCT. 15, 2025

Embrace your disadvantages.

"They were weak, and yet were made strong." Heb 11:34 NCV

A pastor writes: "Around the turn of the twentieth century, a pioneering psychologist named Alfred Adler proposed the counterintuitive theory of compensation. Adler believed that perceived disadvantages often prove to be disguised advantages because they force us to develop attitudes and abilities that would have otherwise gone undiscovered. 

And it's only as we compensate for those disadvantages that our greatest gifts are revealed. Seventy percent of the art students that Adler studied had optical anomalies. He observed that some of history's greatest composers, Mozart and Beethoven among them, had degenerative traces in their ears. He cited a...wide variety of vocations, of those who leveraged their weakness by discovering new strengths.

Adler concluded that perceived disadvantages, such as birth defects, physical ailments, and poverty, can be springboards to success. And that success is not achieved in spite of those perceived disadvantages. It's achieved because of different skill sets. Some of them became more proficient at oral communication because reading was so difficult. Others learned to rely on well-developed social skills to compensate for the challenges they faced in the classroom. 

And all of them cultivated a work ethic that might have remained dormant if reading had come easy for them...Our greatest advantages may actually be hidden in our greatest disadvantages, if we learn to leverage them." That's sufficient reason to praise God for your perceived disadvantages and challenges.

Embrace your disadvantages

Disadvantages and challenges

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