Strengths + their influence on your happiness

Everyone has strengths, although we often find ourselves focussing on our weaknesses. So it may be that you might just not have discovered yours yet. This can take time, and might not be obvious at first.

What are they?

The sorts of strengths we're talking about here are personality traits - for example integrity, originality and kindness, not talents like being able to run really fast or sing with perfect pitch.

Strengths are more voluntary than talents, which you are usually born with. Strengths involve choices about when to use them, and whether to build them up or not, and can be acquired by almost any person. For example, you might choose to be kind, and to make an effort to try and be kind in many different ways in your everyday life.

Strengths vary greatly from person to person - you might be really good at dealing with people, or you might be amazing at just getting stuff done, no matter how frustrating or difficult it is.

Once you have an idea of what your strengths are, this might be useful for knowing where you might want to focus your energy.

Why focus on strengths?

The idea of focusing on your strengths is a relatively new concept that you may not have heard about before.

Research has shown that identifying and maximizing the use of your personal strengths, qualities and attributes can lead to higher levels of health, happiness and success. Having and building on strengths is a good thing - you don't have to feel bad, shy or guilty about it.

Quite often people take the opposite approach - that is, to try and identify and fix their weaknesses and problems. While it is admirable to try and improve in areas where you're less strong, if you spend too much time working on improving some of your weaknesses, this may actually be unproductive.

In contrast, research from the area of positive psychology suggests that focusing on your strengths is more productive. It suggests that it is of greater benefit for you to accept your relative weaknesses, and concentrate your energy on using your strengths that are worth building up (that is, the positive attributes) as much as you can.

This is not to say you shouldn't try to improve on your weaknesses too, just that most of your energy should go into using and improving on your strengths.

How do you know what your strengths are?

You might feel like you've always known what you're good at, and what you're not so good at.

Or, you might find it difficult to pin-point exactly what your strengths are, or you might feel like you're good at quite a few things, and don't know what you should focus on. This is OK, and it may only be with time that you discover what you're good at in particular.

Either way, here are a few suggestions for finding out what your strengths are:

Talk to people - Talking to people you trust about what your strengths might be may be helpful. They may have noticed things about you which you yourself aren't aware of. The person you speak to might be a family member, friend, teacher, or counsellor.

What do people frequently compliment you on? - There may be specific areas of your life that people often praise you for. Try and think of what these things are - it probably means that it's something you're quite good at!

What aspects of your life are you most proud of? - If there's something in your life you're proud of, it might mean it's something you're strong at.

What skills have you learned very easily? - If you've learnt something easily, there's a good chance you're probably pretty good at it, and it might be a strength of yours.

When do you feel most like yourself? - This might also give you an idea of what you're good at, and what makes you happy.

Take the strengths quiz  - Check out the quiz on psychologist Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness website for more clues on where your strengths may lie - www.authentichappiness.org. The survey rates you on 24 Signature strengths - there is a short quiz of 24 questions and a longer one of 240 questions, and it's free!

The top 5 strengths

Although there are many strengths you might have, there are five in particular which are more strongly associated with higher levels of happiness.

These are:

1. Gratitude
2. Optimism
3. Zest and Energy
4. Curiosity
5. The ability to love and be loved

You may discover that you are strong in one or more of these strengths - if so, that's a bonus - it means that by focusing energy on that strength, you're even more likely to experience higher levels of happiness.

But, even if none of these 'top 5' is amongst your top few strengths, it's still worth thinking about which ones might be most relevant to your life, and how you might be able to use and build upon these strengths, especially since they're so closely associated with higher levels of happiness.

Using + keeping track of your strengths

Once you know your strengths, you might want to think about how you can use them more frequently and more effectively in your life.

Choose some strengths that you'd like to focus on (start out with three), and brainstorm ways in which you might be able to concentrate on developing that strength. For example, one strength you choose to focus on may be gratitude. A way in which you might focus on this strength is to list 3 things that you are grateful for each day.

To keep track of how you're going, you might want to keep a 'strengths' diary, where you record your weekly activities to improve the strengths you've chosen to focus on. Try and do at least one activity per strength each week.

Once you feel you've made some progress in your use of one strength, you might decide to focus on another one. It's still important not to forget the strengths you've already worked on though, and to come back to them now and then to make sure you're not neglecting them.

See how you go - it may not work for everyone, but you won't know until you try. Who knows - you may find that by focusing on your strengths you're able to increase your level of happiness, health, and success, and that's something worth working towards.

Let us know how you go!

 

Acknowledgement to:

Authentic Happiness
Martin Seligman
Random House Australia (2002)
www.authentichappiness.org
(you'll have to join, free of charge, to access the various questionnaires)

The Happiness Handbook
Dr. Timothy Sharp
The Happiness Institute
http://www.thehappinessinstitute.com