The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
/The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
- Joseph Campbell
I’ve been inspired by this quote for Joseph Campbell for many years, and thought deeply about what it is to be who I am. Not a simple question to respond to. A lot of wise women and men have spent much of their lives struggling to answer this question with authenticity.
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Neal Mayerson in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Mayerson is a psychologist and musician who has been deeply involved in the emerging science of Positive Psychology. It would be fair to say that Positive Psychology would not exist in its current form without the support of Neal Mayerson.
During our conversation we were talking about character strengths. Our character strengths are human qualities that we can all develop to make our lives more resilient, engaged, and meaningful. For example, If we find ourselves in situation of constant stress, where our fight or flight response is constantly firing and making us feel exhausted, we can utilize Positive Psychology to bolster our sense of bravery. This is a really important feature of how our brains work - we can improve many of our character strengths with skillful practice and mentoring.
As our conversation went a bit deeper, we spoke about an important distinction in the Positive Psychology science, the distinction between a character strength and a signature strength. We all have 24 known character strengths that can be identified, studied, and measured. They include Prudence, Optimism, Persistence, and Creativity (and 20 others). Signature Strengths are a different degree of character strength. We each have 5or 6 character strengths that really stand out for us, that we have learned throughout our lives to do well. These are called our Signature Strengths. Signature strengths are our qualities of character that, when we are in contact with them we think or say ‘THIS is who I am!’
So Positive Psychology has given us a partial answer to the question ‘Who am I’? The answer is, ‘ I’m someone who is Creative, Brave, Persistent, Optimistic, and Empathetic’, or whatever your top 5 character strengths are.
I think this is a really big deal, to be able to identify our core positive strengths, and begin to strengthen them.
What do you think? If you’d like to take the free test and find out what your top five character strengths are, follow this link: https://www.viacharacter.org/
When you finish taking the test, be sure to take a few minutes to reflect on how well these character strengths fit you. Could you make your life more resilient by focusing your attention on these qualities and strengthening them?
Guess what? The science of Positive Psychology says you can!
Have fun taking the VIA Character Strengths Test!
Dr. Mike
Special Needs Dad, Chiropractor, Servant Leader