February Focus: Master of All Strengths

We focused our efforts this month to expand your positivity perspective on yourself, others, and your environment. To embrace the discovery of this journey, it will require an open mind, a growth mindset, use of words understood by everyone, and a passion to try something new.

Every day this month, we will be highlighting one STRENGTH on Instagram. Join the conversation over there, and read on to learn why Live Your Yes strongly believes in leveraging STRENGTHS to live our strongest YES life.

We believe words like ‘failures’, ‘weaknesses’, or ‘right versus wrong’ leave the receiver feeling a bit doubtful and unworthy. Most adult brains stop maturing at the social or self-authoring stage; this is good to know because the above words become part of the identity of the receiver when heard frequently. The mind doesn’t understand ‘failure’ as objective; it sees it as subjective. Therefore, the receiver believes they are weak, or worse, that they ARE a failure. We believe, and see in clients we’ve coached, that this leads one to feeling shame, and numbing is the behavior that arises.

After researching and using the numerous tools in the marketplace to aid individuals to better understand themselves, we aligned our practice with the VIA Institute of Character. Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, Dr. Christopher Peterson, and 55 noted scholars & positive youth development practitioners, embarked on the most comprehensive and robust effort ever to understand what’s best about human beings and how we build full and flourishing lives for ourselves and others. As a result of their global research over a 3 year period, they released their free character strength assessment. Fast forward to today and over 5 million people from every country in the world have taken a VIA Survey which is currently translated into 37 languages, and there are over 300 scientific publications relating to the survey in professional journals.

The Character Strengths are*:

Wellsprings of the good life- a life well lived.
Psychological ingredients that define the great virtues (wisdom, justice, temperance, transcendance, courage, humanity)
Capacities for thinking, feeling, and behaving
Positive traits that are core to our being/identity and our doing/behavior
Basic building blocks of a flourishing life: character strengths are the pathways to well-being, described as PERMA – Positive emotions, Engagement, Positive Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishments
A common language as a group that describe what is best in human beings.

*Cited from Seligman, Peterson, Park, 2002

We now live our lives and teach our clients to incorporate the Character Strengths into theirs. We invite you to take the VIA Character Strength assessment, too.

Take the quiz

Awareness of your strengths is the first step to Living Your Yes. Noticing when they are overused, underused, and in which situations different strengths arise is critical to living your best lift. We hope you enjoy this journey of exploration and are here to guide and support you as you move forward.

Wishing you your YES,