Perceived Disadvantages

Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Soulprint (Mark Batterson post: Theory of Compensation)

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. And he cited a multiplicity of other examples, from a wide variety of vocations, of those who leveraged their weaknesses 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 them.

Our greatest advantages may not be what we perceive as our greatest advantages. Our greatest advantages may actually be hidden in our greatest disadvantages, if we learn to leverage them. And one key to discovering your soulprint is identifying those disadvantages via careful, and sometimes painful, self-inventory. Your destiny is hidden in your history, but it’s often hidden where you would least expect to find it. Your destiny isn’t just revealed in your natural gifts and abilities. It is also revealed in the compensatory skills you had to develop because of the disadvantages you had to overcome.

When I was starting out in ministry, I was frustrated by the fact that I had to preach from a manuscript. I had friends who could preach from an outline or just jot down a few notes on a note card. I couldn’t speak extemporaneously. I had to study longer hours and read more books. Then I had to script and rescript every single word. I would often stay up till three o’clock on Sunday mornings putting the finishing touches on my manuscripts, and that was after working on the message for more than twenty hours during the week. I thought that the inability to speak extemporaneously was a handicap, but what I perceived as a preaching disadvantage proved to be a writing advantage. Those sermon manuscripts, after some adaptations and alterations, became book manuscripts. And without that perceived disadvantage, I don’t think I would have cultivated my writing gifts. Writing, for me, is a compensatory skill.

When was the last time you praised God for your perceived disadvantages or thanked God for the challenges in your life? Without them, we’d never discover or develop the compensatory skills that God wants to use to catapult us spiritually, relationally, and occupationally. Our strengths are hidden within our weaknesses. Our advantages are hidden within our disadvantages. And no one is a better example of that than the king who came disguised as a shepherd. His greatest advantage was the direct result of a perceived disadvantage. And without that disadvantage, he would have never fulfilled his destiny.