There Always Comes A Time When You Discover Your Strengths

The writer Dorothy Parker used to say that those who get bored in times of calm are because they don’t know the times of storm. Somehow, a part of ourselves is always revealed in those moments of greatest swell, in those days when destiny takes our balance to put us to the test. It is at that stage of the complex existential journey that you discover your strengths.

Until then we could say that one is limited only to improvise. Now, this topic is still as interesting as it is revealing. A few years ago, the American analysis company Gallup  wanted to probe what kind of fortresses were the most abundant among the population. To do this, he developed a survey so that people could evaluate themselves.

Later, psychologists Nick Epley and David Dunning pointed out something relevant on this topic. Much of us are inexperienced judges of our worth. There are those who magnify them and there are those who underestimate them. The best way to find out what our strengths are is to turn the mirror and see what others are saying.

Another way is to test ourselves. Sooner or later there comes a moment when our true worth, our greatest strengths, emerge.

At the end comes the day when you discover your strengths

It was in 2004 that Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson published a book entitled Strengths and Virtues of People: Manual and Classification .

This work was an antithesis of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and basically sought to highlight those talents, abilities and values ​​that each person harbors within.

This book has always elicited certain criticism from a part of the scientific community. Defining as strengths kindness, generosity or joy was for many rather in the field of moral virtues and not in the area of ​​psychological competences.

Perhaps for this reason, in 2014, the doctors of the University of California Laura King and Louis Trent contributed a new approach in which to put aside the “virtues” to talk about the “strengths of the human personality”.

This approach tried to find those values ​​that allow us to better adapt to changes, to the challenges of life. It is that emotional and psychological tissue that mediates well-being, better decision-making and even our ability to reach our full human potential. Let’s see more features.

When you discover your strengths, you handle calm times and times of adversity well

Sometimes something unforeseen happens: the loss of a job, an emotional breakdown … These events put us to the test, we suffer them, they immobilize us and, of course, they hurt. However, when you overcome them, you discover your strengths.

You realize that there are resources in you that you did not know. You have learned to manage your emotions, to deal with pain, to once again nurture hope and even motivation …

All these learnings are integrated into you and offer you more filming, greater vision. That’s when you start to move better, both on calm days and on those of difficulty. You do it because you are clear about your purposes, you know what you want and your personal compass is well calibrated.

We all have “strengths” in our personality that must flourish

Many of us spend years used to our comfort zone. To that stability where everything is under control, that in which everything is predictable and we even take it for granted. Until, all of a sudden, the first crack appears, and soon an area of ​​our safe area crumbles and collapses. So we do it, we react and we realize that we have strengths.

However, even though sometimes a situational or experiential demand causes us to react appropriately, it does not mean that this will happen again. That is to say, today we may have acted well in the face of that mistake made at work, in the face of that problem experienced in our relationship as a couple.

However, it is possible that when faced with another complicated situation we will not act so correctly. What does this mean then? It means that when you discover your strengths you must ensure that they continue to flourish.

The more you use them, the more they will develop so that you can apply them to many more areas of your life. If you were good at solving an incident at work, that reaction capacity should also be applied to other scenarios of your day-to-day life.

The three components of strengths: feel, think, act

When you discover your strengths you change your reality. However, for this to happen, three forces must be aligned, three exceptional processes that guide us towards achievement, towards progress in that conquest by overcoming our fears, by making our way through adversity. We talk about emotion, thought and action.

Every strength starts from an emotion, the one that invites us to overcome ourselves, to cross that bridge in which, fears remain below and hopes are in front of us. Strength is also ensuring that our thoughts are nourished by motivation, by self-confidence. Only then can we act without being immobilized by fear, without being surrounded by insecurity.

Let’s trust a little more in that engine for self-improvement that we all carry inside.