Odds Are You Aren't a "Strong" Person
(and that's okay)
In an age of therapeutic self-help strategies for aiding shriveled self-esteem, one personal “reminder” always seems to bubble up to the top of the inspirational toolbox whenever adversity is afoot in our lives or those of others:
“Remember, you are strong. You are so strong.”
What this means is rarely clarified explicitly, but whatever it means apparently characterizes almost anyone who is still physically alive in the midst of—or after—enduring difficulty. If we are “still standing” after suffering or hardship, our continued existence is a testament to the strength we didn’t know we had, or so we are told.
One might hope such an affirmation would be more discriminating, but common usage suggests otherwise.
This way of thinking about personal strength leads to a conclusion as astonishing as it is obviously false: given that most people have endured (or are enduring) some kind of meaningful adversity, most people are, in fact, strong. Or at least they were strong in the past.
The problem is that no one really believes this because it isn’t true.
To be sure, the appeal of believing oneself to be a particularly strong person is potent. After all, what’s the alternative? That I am a weak person? Not me.
The whole framework gets two things wrong that deserve our attention:
It sets up a false dichotomy of strong vs. weak.
It mistakes strength for effort.
A False Dichotomy
The truth is that, like physical strength, most people are not particularly strong or weak: they are average. Or, more precisely, they sit near the median while believing themselves to be closer to the outliers—or a veritable outlier themselves.
Why?
Because we consider being near the median or average to be failure. “Above average” is where we must see ourselves in order to avoid a small—or massive—existential crisis. The thought that we are merely average in areas we commonly value (e.g., intelligence, character, how good we are as husbands, wives, or parents, how successful we are, et al.) is simply not a conclusion most of us are willing to entertain.
We know we are likely not “the best,” but we are certainly better than a regular person in whatever valuable category we are considering.
This tendency to overestimate our abilities and virtues is extremely well studied, and our self-perceived sense of “strength” is no exception. In fact, our will to believe in our own strength is particularly powerful when we have bought into a fallacious binary and in a context in which weakness language is shame language.
Now, none of this implies that people are incapable of forming accurate views of their own strength—only that the reasons for believing should likely lie in data points that are more objective (“Tremendous difficulty does not generally cause me to lose hope or accept defeat”) and external (e.g., the strength-affirming words of sober-minded people, not personal cheerleaders), rather than psychological self-assessment.
Some strong people will read this brief assessment and accurately conclude, “True, but I am, in fact, on the stronger end of the spectrum.” Others will inaccurately conclude the same thing, thereby demonstrating the problem itself. The same phenomenon would arise if this analysis were about good vs. bad drivers.
Perhaps realizing that “weak” is not the only alternative to “strong”—that a genuine spectrum exists, and that we can find ourselves at different places on it during different seasons of life—can provide breathing room for honest self-evaluation in this area.
But if it does, it will require a second correction alongside it.
Effort vs. Strength
Consider Jill and Rose at the gym.
Both grab dumbbells for exercise. Jill grabs 10-pound dumbbells while Rose grabs 30-pound dumbbells. Both do sets of ten to failure, even when their muscles start burning and they consider quitting halfway through the set.
Who was stronger?
Answer: Rose.
Why?
Because equal personal exertion is not the same as equal strength.
The fact that both Jill and Rose gave it everything they had does not mean they each had as much to give. Just because their muscles burned equally does not mean their muscles were equally strong.
And so it is with strength of mind and soul.
In an attempt to inspire, would-be encouragers often confuse the effort someone is exerting with strength. But strength is the capacity to exert force, not the capacity to exert effort. The capacity to exert effort is something closer to willpower or determination (which may also be lacking, but that is for another time). That one can exert willpower and press 300 pounds off their chest as a result, is strength.
They are not the same.
When someone must summon all their willpower simply to do basic tasks or get out of bed, for example, we should commend them for being fighters but not powerlifters. Indeed, they know it more than you and I: they cannot wait to get to a place where ordinary life—and certainly enduring challenges—requires less effort because they are, in fact, stronger.
At that point, they will not be exhausted all the time.
Who Cares?
Is this reflection anything more than the musing of a heartless edgelord aimed at discouraging insecure, struggling people? Why insist on clarity here? Why does it matter?
It matters because we should not be telling one of Plato’s “noble lies” to people when they would be better served by truth, wisdom and our encouraging presence in times of adversity.
Moreover, people who believe themselves to be strong when they are not will tend to demonstrate a form of self-reliance that isolates them in times of adversity (e.g., the stereotypical man who exudes silent self-sufficiency and appears unphased by life while internally crumbling).
Finally, the Christian comforter who resorts to false platitudes robs sufferers of a far greater comfort: we do not have to be strong in ourselves. In fact, Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 1:8–9; 12:9). Because Christ is strong, we can rely on a strength that cannot be conjured up by self-talk or well-intended friends.
Indeed, in such cases, we would do well to remember the theological substance of one of our finest nursery rhymes:
“Little ones to him belong;
we are weak, but he is strong.”
And for Christians, that should be enough.