Why You Need to Assess Your Strengths Now! - Part 1

Are you looking for greater job satisfaction? Feeling like you are in a rut? Want more out of life? Well knowing your core strengths can help you to begin to redesign your life and achieve a happier and more satisfying life.

I’ve started out applying these principles to my life and career and achieved a dramatic lift in happiness, satisfaction and energy. I now use these techniques with family, friends, my work team and life-coaching clients. You too can get a boast in happiness yourself.

What are Core Strengths

Dr. Martin Seligman a leading positive psychologist and calls then signature strengths and describes them as character traits. The book StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment form the Gallop organization calls them your top talents (see the bottom of this post for a link to this book on Amazon)

Why Knowing Your Strengths Is Important?

The short answer is you can dramatically improve your happiness. If you align your work and life with your strengths you can achieve what Dr. Seligman calls “The Good Life”. If you can align your strengths with meaningful work or activities then you can achieve what Dr. Seligman calls the apex of happiness as “The Meaningful Life”.

I took the StrengthsFinder assessment back in 2004. At that time I was in a Director role at a large bank and was unhappy and burned out. Given my workload at the time it took me some time to really get intimate with my strengths and figure out what they meant for my career and my happiness. In 2005 I came to a conclusion that I could not align my strengths well enough at the bank. In addition, I longed to have a career that was meaningful and truly help others. Offering credit cards to the underserved market and then charging them fees was just not my idea of meaningful work. So I began to craft a plan to change jobs. In 2006 I took on the role of Director of Web Services at the University of Richmond where my strengths are totally aligned with my work and where the mission of the University leads to meaningful work. Since them I have taken on other activities outside of the university that also align with my strengths and are meaningful activities. The end result is a happiness and satisfaction with life that I never thought possible. You too can have the same!

How To Assess Your Strengths?

Get the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book (see the bottom of this post). Read the intro and them take the assessment. Buy a new book since each book comes with a one time use key for the assessment. Take the assessment when you won’t be interrupted. Results are presented to you at the end so save them and print them out. Please post a comment with your strengths or send me an email at “eric AT ericfpalmer dot com” and I will share your strengths with others anonymously.

Go to AuthenticHappiness.com, sign up for a free account and take the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire.

Print these out and get your family, friends and coworkers to help you understand which strengths resonate most with them. You may find one or two strengths don’t seem to be real for you. Over time your opinion might change or might persist. Just be open to the fact that knowing your strengths will be key to knowing yourself better and achieving greater life satisfaction. For advanced souls, knowing your strengths will help you on the Vital Journey to Self Actualization.

How To Begin To Use Your Strengths?

In a later posts we will discuss how to super charge your life using your strengths. For now start with these steps:

Read and reread the complete information provided by StrengthsFinder with your online assessment and the book. Adsorb what your friends and family say about your strengths. And then use these concepts to examine your thinking and actions in life. This provides a safe vehicle for meta-cognition (thinking about your thinking) which is key to Self Actualization and improved Happiness. Don’t be judgmental about your thoughts and actions. Instead approach them with a sense of detachment and wonderment. Embrace who you are and start to think about how to leverage your strengths in your life. Then use one of your key strengths to change your self-speak about yourself. One of mine self-speak phrases is “I’m great at solving complex problems, bring em on!”

At work, discuss with your boss, co-workers and others your strengths and seek ways to leverage your strengths better. You might even develop a little guide for people that work with you on how your strengths can be leveraged. Then work toward using your strengths more and more at work.

If you are looking to change careers, then seek opportunities to fully deploy your strengths. Even better, if your life situation allows it, seek meaningful work that leverages your strengths.

Example Strengths?

My top 5 StrenghsFinder Strengths

Ideation
Basically I have a love and fascination for ideas. The discovery of simple explanations for complex phenomenon or a new way to look at a new problem really jazzes me up. Being an Ideation person helps me solve big complex problems but at times leads me to see patterns where maybe they don’t exist. See intellection below for added complexity to Ideation.

Learner
Straight up, I love to learn. I can be learning about anything and be happy. My challenge is to be focused and spend time learning topics that are relevant to my career, life-coaching practice and hobbies.

Responsibility
If I commit to something I am emotionally attached to the completion of that item. This strength can lead to over commitment and a loss of work-life balance if I’m not careful. Once I make a decision for getting something done, however, it gets done.

Intellection
I like to think and like mental activity. I like (and am good at) connecting the dots around big complex problems. The combination of Leaner, Ideation, and Responsibility with Untellection means I’m always signing up for problems that I don’t have an immediate solution for solving. But 99% of the time I end up solving the problems and surprising myself in the process.

Activator
I’m impatient to get started on activities. If these activities involve my other strengths, I’m just that much more impatient to get started. Taken with Responsibility I can sign up for too many activities. So I have to be very conscious about what problems I take on and make a commitment for solving. But being a manager of people these is a great strength to have. It helps me line up work for my team and get them moving.

My top 5 VIA Signature Strengths

The following descriptions are taken directly from Dr. Seligman’s Authentic Happiness site. While the nature of Dr. Seligman’s VIA signature strengths are different than the StrengthsFinder strengths, you will notice some alignment. All of these strengths resonate with me and are spot on.

Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Appreciation of beauty and excellence
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Zest, enthusiasm, and energy
Regardless of what you do, you approach it with excitement and energy. You never do anything halfway or halfheartedly. For you, life is an adventure.

Capacity to love and be loved
You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

More Information on Strengths

Watch this ted.com talk from Dr. Seligman as he explains 1) The Pleasant Life 2) The Good Life and 3) The meaningful Life:

And if you are into reading scientific research Dr. Seligman and others document their successes in sustaining improvements in happiness with Strengths Alignment among other techniques. See his Landmark Article Reporting the Efficacy of Positive Psychology Interventions

The Happiness Project

If you are on the quest to improved happiness you should visit Gretchen Rubin’s site The Happiness Project! You have to love the web!