Friday Feature: Celebrating Strength

Which would you rather spend time on: something you're good at or something you struggle with?

For most of us, the answer feels like a no-brainer. While we acknowledge the need to work on the things that don't come naturally to us, we generally find it more fun to do the things we're good at.

So, why not take that approach to life?

A few weeks ago, I had my students take a strengths assessment. As I often do, I took the assessment, too.

I've taken strengths assessments before but the one I had my students take yielded a profile that described me better than any of the others I've taken. I must confess that I need to go back and take another look at my results so I can consider ways to put them to use, but the whole experience left me feeling good about myself and caused me to reconsider a question I'd only scratched the surface of previously.

What if we used our strengths as our foundations, building on them with the same fervor we use to make up for what we (or others) perceive as our deficits? It seems to me that we could accomplish the same end goals with much less work and frustration (which is pretty much the premise of Know Thyself...but that's another post) :-)

I cannot take credit for this idea; though I embrace it fully, I first heard about it in a positive psychology course that I took. Either the concept itself is gaining traction or, now that I'm aware of it, I keep finding it in new places -- a whole focus on a strengths-based approach and strength-based culture in business, for example. Closer to home, a great article on Berkeley's Greater Good website discusses how to be as strength-based parent. It focuses on kids with learning differences but, to me, its approach seems applicable to not just kids with learning differences but kids -- and adults -- of all ages and abilities as well.

Want to know more about your own strengths? Check out either -- or both -- of the assessments linked above. Then, see how they fit with your own perceptions.

Curiosity satisfied? Go ahead and stop there.

Or consider the possibilities of using what you're already good at to be good at other things, too.

What a concept.