Discovering Your Strengths

I’ve recently been reading “Authentic Happiness” by Martin Seligman. It’s an interesting book, but not necessarily one I would recommend, because I’m not finding it easy to read!! The style is slightly too academic for me, and can sometimes be hard going for that. However, I do have to recommend the website – www.authentichappiness.org – I went along today to do a strengths test, and although I am normally a bit sceptical about the value of personality tests, I found this one really interesting.

After 240 questions, it will tell you your top 5 strengths and show you the 24 strengths in order. not so that you can improve your weaknesses, but so you know what strengths you can focus on. Seligman advises us to pay attention to your top strengths and find ways to use them more often. This is an approach that I wholeheartedly endorse – focus on what you are brilliant at, and do that more…life gets so much better then.

The site also has other personality tests and resources – and it’s all free! So, if you’d like to find your top strengths, go along and check it out (it’s the VIA signature strengths test I did). Let me know what you find out!

Love

Donna.x

PS My top 5 strengths today are: Curiosity and interest in the world, gratitude, humour and playfulness, capacity to love and be loved, and love of learning. Yep, sounds like me!

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Why Should You Be Able to Do Something You’ve Never Done Before?

It’s interesting to me how often I have conversations with people that go along these lines – “oh I could never do that thing you do, I’m rubbish at (whatever it is) and you’re so good” to which I invariably reply “Well, I couldn’t do it either when I first started”. Competence in anything – whether it’s writing, making video, speaking in public, driving, operating a piece of technological wizardry – is often more a measure of how much practice someone has had than how brilliant they are.

Of course there are people who are natural geniuses, and are born able to walk, talk, ride a bike, program a video (hehehe)…oh no, there aren’t. Everyone has to learn how to do everything. I will allow that some people do have an affinity for a particular area which makes it easier for them to pick it up – some of us find writing easy, some find driving easy, some find cooking easy, some find running easy, some find predictive text easy…and the list goes on ad infinitum.
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