Growing Stronger

There’s no doubt that most of us spend a lot of time dwelling on our weaknesses.  We regularly beat ourselves up about all the things we believe we are no good at.  If we could only apply the same amount of time and enthusiasm to praising our strengths!

A colleague received a mailing from the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology which is a new organisation promoting the science and practice of positive psychology.  The pack contained several cards with a word or phrase on each, and a comic representational drawing on the reverse. We decided to do a quick exercise with the cards to identify what we thought our strengths and weaknesses were. Thankfully, of the two piles of cards we chose, the one representing our strengths was bigger!  Our choices were similar.  We had both picked ‘social intelligence’, ‘perspective’ and ‘humour’ as strengths.  I had also picked ‘creativity’, ‘kindness’ and ‘spirituality’ as my strengths. Interestingly, we had both picked ‘love’ as one of our weaknesses.  Not that this means we are completely incapable of feeling or giving love.  We just felt we didn’t express it as well as we could and this was something we wanted to work on.

This was an exercise that definitely got us thinking about how little we recognise and acknowledge our strengths.  I am particularly inspired by the suggestion on each of the cards about starting a daily ‘Strength Journal’ where you record three occasions during the day where you displayed that particular strength.

Comments

[Marc]

Oh yes, absolutely. Love IS a trap!!!