Signature Strengths Exercise - Use What Your Nature and Nurture Gave You!
What are you good at?
This question was always hard for me growing up. I wasn’t particularly good at anything cool. I was a terrible rollerblader (It was the 90s), couldn’t really dance and could not whistle (really - still can’t).
To make me feel less uncool growing up my mom would say I have “quiet gifts”. I am choosing to believe that this was not just to make me feel better :)
I really do have quiet gifts. I can listen and synthesize information really well, I can help people solve problems, I can think in systems and I can be a non-anxious presence.
None of these skills was really rewarded in elementary or middle school. But now - I get to use them every day in my work and personal life.
One practice in positive psychology is called signature strengths or character strengths. It is an assessment that you take to learn what it is about you that is a gift.
According to posproject.org
Dr. Chris Peterson led a 40-person team, over a three-year period, to better understand character and its manifestations. Alongside Dr. Martin Seligman, Dr. Peterson then wrote an 800-page book on the research called Character Strengths and Virtues. This book explains that:
24 character strengths that are evident in the most widely influential traditions of thought in human history.
Robust evidence of all 24 strengths existing throughout time and in all cultures of the world.
All 24 character strengths exist in every individual.
You can take an assessment to see what you top strengths are.
You then use this information to enact these gifts in your daily life and notice when you are using them and how to better incorporate them.
The goal is to increase feelings of capability, uniqueness and engagement in your work and hobbies.
We can often think that things that come easily to us are easy for others. This exercise shows you how special your strengths are and asks you to take them seriously and be intentional with them.
Want to try it?
It’s easier than whistling (at least for me).
Take the assessment (this is a free one online) and find your character or signature strengths.
Then notice how they show up in your daily life - in relationships, in work or actions and in your thoughts and self talk.
Name your character strengths to yourself when you see them in action.
Think about ways you can use these strengths in the world.
Try to use your signature strengths in a new way each day.
Try it and let me know how it goes!
