What is your superpower?

After writing this post, I was thinking that my superpower as a researcher is my willingness to admit I’m wrong, which gives me many opportunities to learn and do better (see for example here or here). My other superpower is my capacity to be upset, which has often led me to think deeper about statistical questions (for example here).

That’s all fine, but then it struck me that, whenever people talk about their “superpower,” they always seem to talk about qualities that just about anyone could have.

For example, “My superpower is my ability to listen to people,” or “My superpower is that I always show up on time.” Or the classic “Sleep is your superpower.”

A quick google yields, yields, “The superpower question invites you to single out a quality that has made it possible for you to achieve, and to give an example of a goal that you were able to reach as a result. Our first tip is to choose a simple but strong and effective superpower, for example: Endurance, strength or resilience.”

And “My superpower is the fact I am STRONG, DETERMINED, AND RESILIENT.”

And this: “Your superpower is your contribution—the role that you’re put on this Earth to fill. It’s what you do better than anyone else and tapping into it will not only help your team, but you’ll find your work more satisfying, too.” Which sounds different, but then it continues with these examples: Empathy, Systems Thinking, Creative Thinking, Grit, and Decisiveness.

I’m reminded of that Ben Stiller movie where he played a superhero whose superpower was that he could get really annoyed. Kinda like a Ben Stiller character, actually!

How it could be?

OK, superheroes aren’t real. So it’s not like people can say their superpower is flying, or invisibility, or breathing underwater, or being super-elastic, etc.

But . . . lots of people do have special talents. So you could imagine people saying that their superpower is that they have a really good memory, or they’re really good at learning languages, or that they’re really flexible, or some other property which, if not superhuman or even unique, is at least unusual and special. Instead you get things like “grit” or “sleep.”

And, as noted above, even in own thinking, I was saying that my superpower is the commonplace ability to admit I’m wrong, or the characteristic of being easily upset. I could’ve said that my superpower is my mathematical talent or my ability to rapidly spin out ideas onto the page—but I didn’t!

I don’t know what this all means, but it seems like a funny thing that “superpower” is so often used to refer to commonplace habits that just about anyone could develop. I mean, sure, it fits with the whole growth-mindset thing: If I say that my superpower is that I can admit I’m wrong or that I work really hard, then anyone can emulate that. If I say that my superpower is that math comes easy to me, well, that’s not something you can do much with, if you don’t happen to have that superpower yourself.

So, yeah, I kind of get it. Still it seems off that, without even thinking about it, we use the term “superpower” for these habits and traits that are valuable but are pretty much the opposite of superpowers.