The most perfect of men has them, and is either wedded to them or has illicit relations with them... It is not so much that their possessor does not know them: he loves them... For all men hit upon such a failing, and on going over your qualifications they make a long stay at this blot.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
There is a difference between a flaw you do not see and a flaw you protect, and the second is the dangerous one. Most capable people have a pet fault, a temper they call honesty, a bluntness they call integrity, a disorganisation they call creativity, and the affection for it is exactly what keeps it alive. Others are not fooled by the flattering name. When they assess you, they linger on this one blot and use it to shade everything else you do. Getting free of a beloved fault is difficult precisely because you must first stop enjoying it, but doing so releases every other quality it was holding down.
Practice
- Find the fault you defend rather than the one you hide; the tell is a flattering name you have given a real weakness.
- Strip the excuse first: "brutally honest" is often just "unkind," and the honest relabelling is where change starts.
- Ask a safe, blunt person which of your traits they would fix; the answer is usually the one you have been protecting (maxim 89 builds the mirror).
Use this when
- Use this before promotion and any elevation in visibility; the pet fault becomes the headline of a bigger file (maxim 23 removes the standing blot).
- Use it when the same complaint about you recurs across years and people; recurrence is the flaw signalling through the excuse.
Ignore this when
- Don't confuse a pet fault with a harmless trait; the test is whether it costs you or others something real, not whether it is unusual.
- Don't over-correct a genuine strength into blandness; the temper that is truly a flaw differs from the intensity that drives your best work.
A picture of it
A gifted designer describes herself, almost proudly, as someone who "cannot suffer fools," and treats the phrase as a credential. It is the first thing every collaborator mentions and the reason the best of them decline a second project. The turn comes when a mentor refuses the flattering label and calls it plainly: not a standard, a habit of contempt, and an expensive one. Stripped of its good name, the fault becomes fixable, and within a year the work that was always strong is finally paired with a person people will work with twice.
Rename your favourite fault honestly. The love you have for it is the only thing keeping it alive.