Personal Strengths for Life Satisfaction
Positive Psychology—Discover Your Strengths and Personal Skills
Sep 20, 2006
Positive psychology research studies indicate that people are happier, more creative, and more productive when utilizing what psychologists call their signature strengths. Identifying your personal strengths and then consciously incorporating them into daily activities will bring greater happiness and life satisfaction.
How to Discover Your Strengths
Because you're so used to your special abilities, you may not recognize them as unique strengths. One reason is that the things you do using your personal strengths seem easy, therefore causing you to falsely believe that anyone can do what you do. Consciously identifying your unique strengths and embracing them as something that makes you unique and special will help you appreciate these special abilities.
Personal Strengths
List your personal strengths using these suggestions:
- There are likely things you do in which you totally lose track of time-they are that enjoyable. When doing these activities you probably lose track of time, possibly skipping meals and sleep while caught up in the activity. If you've experienced this, you've experienced using your unique personal strengths-you're signature strengths.
- What activities, hobbies, or past times do you love to do? These are things you gravitate towards when you have a few minutes, maybe even taking the time to do these things when you really don't have spare time. When an activity is so enjoyable that you can't wait to get back to it, you're using your signature strengths.
- Take a positive psychology survey questionnaire to help you identify your personal strengths. A free, popular survey you can easily take results from the work of Dr. Martin Seligman, Ph.D., often called the founder of positive psychology. Take the survey there, called the VIA Questionnaire to identify your unique signature strengths.
Once you've identified your unique personal strengths from these three sources, discuss them with someone who knows you very well. Do they agree these are special skills you possess?
Personal Strengths for Life Satisfaction
Now that you're aware of your unique strengths, the question is how to take advantage of them to bring you a happier, more fulfilling life. Your goal here is to use your unique talents and strengths to your advantage by using them each and every day. This may take some creativity, but it's to your advantage to focus on your strengths.
One tool that may be helpful is the Balanced Life Worksheet a free self assessment survey identifying the predominate roles and responsibilities of your life. Take the survey and then search for ways to increasingly incorporate your personal strengths into each major role and responsibility of your life.
Use Positive Psychology for Greater Happiness
Using these suggestions for identifying your personal strengths an integrating them into your life may provide you with greater life satisfaction, productivity, and happiness.
We're not only happier when we utilize our signature strengths, we're also more productive. Think about the best contributions you've made in your lifetime; those accomplishments that filled you with pride when you completed them and are still very pleasant memories. It's highly likely that you achieved these accomplishments primarily using signature strengths.
If you like this article you'll probably enjoy Five Steps to a Balanced Life.
