We talk a lot about strengths in positive psychology coaching. This is because they offer a fantastic doorway into greater self-awareness, allowing a deeper understanding of who we are and what we want to be known for. They also help us recognise what motivates us, which is really useful when you have goals you want to achieve.
When I talk to a client about their strengths and how behaving in ways that puts those strengths to use makes them feel, we often get a few lightbulb moments. They notice a ‘thread’ weaving through their lives. Things they’d put down to random impulses. Things that drive their interests. They may be able to trace that thread back to happy early experiences or activities with a family member or an inspiring teacher.
What are Strengths?
In essence, they are our positive characteristics, the behaviours we find natural and satisfying.
There are 24 of them in the VIA positive psychology scheme.
Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) 24 Character Strengths
Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Bravery, Creativity, Curiosity, Fairness, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Honesty, Hope, Humility, Humour, Judgement, Kindness, Leadership, Love, Love of Learning, Persistence, Perspective, Prudence, Self-Regulation, Social Intelligence, Spirituality, Teamwork and Zest.
The link to take the free test and uncover your strengths is in the references below.
We can practice any strength and improve those skills, but the ones that come to us more naturally are key to our wellbeing. This is because positive psychology isn’t about fixing what clients see as ‘broken’, instead the aim is to shift the focus to things they do well. It is a strength based approach; discovering your strengths and doing more activities that use them.
Strengths and Wellbeing
A key way of supporting your wellbeing is to make sure that you are using your strengths regularly, ideally every day. We often do this naturally when we are feeling good;
- Taking a gift to a poorly neighbour (Kindness)
- Being the instigator of adventures in your friendship group (Zest)
- Bouncing ideas off colleagues and supporting others in the team (Teamwork).
Signs you are using your strengths; they energise you, you forget time, you look forward to doing them, they make you feel happy even if they are challenging (in fact its great if they are a bit challenging). So they are great motivators and help with changing habits and developing new behaviours.
Which is all good for positive self-image, resilience, building your identity and sense of competence and confidence. They help you connect with yourself and the world around you because they are ways of being that are meaningful to you, that you value. In fact they will closely align with your values. They make you feel like you!
Sometimes, if we are going through a difficult time, we stop doing some of these things and that can deepen the spiral of negativity. When this happens we need to consciously start building back in the activities that give us the sense of self.
What does that look like in practice?
Some strengths might seem more relevant to your work and others more to your social life, but actually you can approach most activities using your key strengths. It’s who you are.
You can bring Kindness to insurance sales calls and Gratitude to your gym session. It’s the attitude rather than the activity that is important.
Humour is one of my key strengths and understanding what that meant to me, how I value being playful and connecting with people through laughter, was a game changer. It has encouraged me to find more ways to tickle that funny bone.
Humour is in the Virtue of Transcendence so it is important in helping me feel connected to other people. It takes me out of myself when I am lost in my head! I use Humour in so many of my interactions with people. It may not be ‘laugh out loud’ humour but my quirky way of seeing the world or the way I look to make difficult conversations easier and bring people together.
It gives me so much in return, the same value other people get from offering acts of Kindness or Gratitude. Everyone’s a winner. I make someone happier by making them smile, I make myself happier by using my top strength.
Using Strengths To Achieve Your Goals
An area of personal development I’ve been working on for about a year now is public speaking it’s something that I find very anxiety provoking but it is necessary for my work.
How can I use my strengths to support me? Well if you do a Venn Diagram of public speaking and Humour stand-up comedy will be in the intersection! Stand-up is essentially acting, everything is pretty much pre scripted, just like with a lecture or a talk. So I’ve used the motivation I get from practicing my strength of Humour to support my public speaking by doing stand-up. It has got me standing on stage and talking in front of 250 people. It has helped me to associate the adrenaline with excitement rather than fear!
How Are You Going To Use Your Strengths To Boost Motivation?
You might need to think outside the box a little.
Love the outdoors (Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence) and want to improve your Leadership skills? Try volunteering with an outward bound organisation. Want to make more friends but find it hard to start conversations? Tap into your Curiosity to come up with interesting questions.
Once you become more aware of how you play to your strengths you can build in more ways to practice.
Can you think of ways to put your strengths to work to achieve your goals? Not sure how? Get in touch to brainstorm some suggestions together.
References
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press.
Discover your strengths – take the free test https://www.viacharacter.org
Feature image curtesy of Pixabay
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