Why should you care about your character strengths?

The science of well-being and your best qualities has some interesting findings about the connection between being yourself and leading a more meaningful life.

Have you ever explored your personal strengths? With a variety of psychometric tests available, understanding what comes naturally to you can reveal new insights about how you approach work, relationships, and life. If you’re curious about discovering your unique strengths, read on

What Are Character Strengths and Why Do They Matter?

Love, curious, loves to learn and appreciates

beauty& excellence. That's me, according to VIA top character strengths.

For most of my life, I’ve been focusing on what I should improve, for eg, "you need to promote yourself more". Then came quarantine, I enrolled in Yale’s most popular course, Science of Well-being and learned about a different angle - the benefits of well, just being myself.

These strengths didn't even feel like strengths, but more of what comes naturally to me. They are, in fact, defined as feeling effortless, essential and energising. This means that you being you feels easy and natural.

Why should you care about character strengths?

Knowing facts is not the same as experiencing them. When I’ve put my character strengths to practice, I started to feel the surge of energy and a certain this-is-how-life-should-be feeling. At this time, by venture, the Playground was just starting, and in retrospect, I am sure that curiosity helped me research, whereas appreciating beauty and excellence helped me build it. But apart from enjoying work more and being happier, the other areas that I used to want to improve no longer seemed as challenging. Here is a list of other noted benefits of using your strengths.

Benefits of being yourself

• Increases your well-being

• Makes you less stressed & more resilient in the face of hardships, illness, and loss

• Improves your relationships

• Helps with self-acceptance

What are VIA character strengths?

Image: Molly Beauchemin

Character strengths is a concept coming from positive psychology, a branch of psychology focusing on the research of well-being. Unlike traditional psychology, which mostly centres on dysfunction, this sub-field, founded by Professor Martin Selingman aims to help people have better & more meaningful lives. There are 24 culturally universal and morally valued character strengths. This means that my strengths would be appreciated both in Serbia and when I take a trip to Colombia. They are grouped into 6 categories of virtues ( Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, and Transcendence) and everyone possesses all of them in different degrees. It’s also important to mention that if for eg. creativity is your last strength, it only means that it’s not as intuitive to you. And of course, your combination makes you unique 😜. You can learn more about classification and theory here.

Over to you

Now you know that being your best self will make you happier and more successful. If you are not already practising being you or don't know your strengths, discover by taking the official VIA test here (they will ask for your email). I am not personally associated with the VIA institute, but I would like to share what has supported me.

P.S. At Playground, one of the creative elements I use are games designed to remind you to use your strengths while you work on your project. The next anti-procrastination begins soon. Learn more here.