Day 5 Identify your greatest strengths.
Keywords: Self exploration, key character strengths.
Time: 30 minutes
Goal: To scientifically test, understand and celebrate your key character strengths.
The Covid pandemic has called upon many of us to test our inner resources in a way that we had not anticipated. Many of us will have surprised ourselves with our ability to cope. All of us have strengths in our characters, these vary from person to person but resource us and resource our communities. This is a time to really understand what our individual strengths are, to build upon them and to celebrate them and to use them more in our families and our communities. The VIA-IS (values in action inventory of strengths) is one of the most commonly used tools in positive psychology. It is a questionnaire/psychological assessment that takes 20 minutes to complete. It was designed in the US by Peterson & Seligman, two famous American Psychologists. It is scientifically validated so we can learn so much about ourselves by doing it. It helps us to identify our dominant strengths. By knowing what these are we can focus our energy and attention on using these in our daily lives.
The VIA-IS is reliable, validated, and backed by tons of scientific research, and best of all – it’s free to use (Park, Nansook, & Seligman, 2004).
There are 24 main character strengths. These are organised into six broad categories as follows:
Wisdom and Knowledge: Creativity; Curiosity; Judgement; Love of learning and Perspective.
Courage: Bravery; Perseverance; Honesty and Zest.
Humanity: Love, Kindness and Social intelligence.
Transcendence: Appreciation of beauty and excellence; Gratitude; Hope, Spirituality and Humor;
Justice: Teamwork; Fairness and Leadership.
Moderation: Forgiveness; Humility; Prudence; and Self-regulation.
Discover your strengths!
In order to discover your strengths, go to the https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths and take the VIA-IS test. Just scroll down through the description of the 24 strengths until you see ‘Take the Free Survey’. With the results you don’t need the more detailed report (this isn’t free) just scroll below and you will see your top strengths. It takes about 15 minutes to do but it is so worthwhile knowing what your greatest strengths are and what you can best bring to your community moving forward. It is also interesting to look at your 5 lowest scores, these are not weaknesses they are just areas that don’t come as naturally to you and that require more effort.
Identify your top five strengths. Are these a surprise or were you aware of these already? Have you been using these to help friends and family? How can you build further upon these? How can you bring them to your work, relationships, recreation, and daily life? Couples who know and appreciate each other’s strengths have more committed relationships, it is very helpful to focus on the things that people naturally do well.