Discover Your Strengths: Amaze the World with Your Best Three

Discover your strengths!  Why? Knowing and finding ways and means to use your strengths will build your resilience, improve your well-being and may open career doors.

When the Gallop poll asked people, What percentage of a typical day do you spend playing to your strengths? a disappointing 17% of the respondents reported most of the time.

Martin Seligman, Chris Peterson, and Marcus Buckingham have become leaders in the Use Your Strengths movement. Following in the footsteps of personality inventories such as the Myers Briggs Indicator, the Clifton Strengths-Finder and Seligman’s Signature Strengths are quizzes that help you determine your key strengths.

Definition of Strengths

For our purposes, the definition of strengths is a combination of:

1) talent (innate talent) such as thinking logically,
2) skill in how to use the logic to design a bridge and
3) knowledge or understanding of the materials and necessary structure to complete the task.

All strengths can be developed. However, when you have strong inherent talents, the accompanying tasks are more easily accomplished. For example, if you are like me, you expend a great deal of energy and effort thinking logically and with detachment. If given the choice, thinking more randomly and creatively comes with ease.

You can learn the skill of writing a logical pro and con decision list and access the knowledge needed to decide which item goes on the pro or con side. Yet, for the creative intuitive person, this process requires more exertion.

Your actions and the resulting successes demonstrate your strengths to others. When people demonstrate creativity, they feel excited about change and challenge, they think of new solutions, and they imagine a successful end result.

We all know people who are stuck in the same old ways, who say, But we have always done it that way and resist change. Creativity is not their strength but orderliness may be.

A picture of my office would indicate that creativity is one of my major strengths while I would benefit from the services of a professional organizer. All weaknesses can be improved yet we blossom when we build on our natural strengths.

As Seligman wrote,

Building strengths and virtues is not about learning, training or conditioning, but about discovery, creation, and ownership.

How to Discover Your Strengths

Step One:

Look over the 31 strength words in the grid below. If an important strength is missing add it to the Other box. Choose three strengths that seem a fit for you.

Step Two:

On a scale of 1 to 10 where  1 means strongly disagree and 10 means strongly agree, write down your response to the statements below (Ten Strength Considerations) for each of your three chosen strengths:

Strength ONE: __________
1__ 2__ 3__ 4__ 5__ 6__ 7__ 8__ 9__ 10__
Total: _____

Strength TWO: __________
1__ 2__ 3__ 4__ 5__ 6__ 7__ 8__ 9__ 10__
Total: _____

Strength THREE: __________
1__ 2__ 3__ 4__ 5__ 6__ 7__ 8__ 9__ 10__
Total: _____

Ten Strength Considerations 

1. I have had success demonstrating it.
2. I tell myself, “I’m good at this!”
3. Other people acknowledge it in me.
4. I volunteer for activities that require it.
5. It is easy for me to demonstrate.
6. I am in the zone or in flow when I use it.
7. Time flies by as if I am on a high.
8. I seek out opportunities to use it.
9. Using it feels like meaningful fun.
10. I feel stronger when I use it.

Record your highest scoring strength, plus your second and third. Post those words somewhere at your desk, in your day-timer or on the wall.

Step Three:

Take charge. Arrange to use your top three strengths whenever possible. Notice your improved work and life satisfaction.

Option: To truly dive into discovering your key strengths, consider taking a look at Buckingham’s  Strengths-Finder or the free inventory developed by Seligman and his time at VIA Survey of Character Strengths.

What did you discover?  How will you use this information?