Shining From Within: The Value Of Personal Strengths

On many occasions, we are so focused on what is happening around us that we forget the protagonists of this story: ourselves. To recognize our true value, it is convenient to do an exercise of recognition and strengthening of our personal strengths.

Learning the strengths of character of each one and knowing how to express them has a very important impact on our lives. The benefits of using personal strengths in different areas such as physical, emotional, social and spiritual are many. On the other hand, these areas are related to different areas.

These areas linked to our physical and emotional well-being are the meaning we give to our life, the amount of positive emotions and relationships, the level of commitment and our achievements. This is the map that makes up our reality, our moods and the perception of satisfaction with our life. Being able to amplify the different areas of our map and grow positively goes through working on personal strengths.

Expand our lives

Studies carried out in this regard confirm that techniques that focus on recognizing personal strengths and correcting their deficits have a very positive effect on the level of self-esteem, self-acceptance, the achievement of goals, resilience and even physical health.

There seems to be little room for doubt: strengths of character are the only paths to achieving those positive goals, which are ultimately what everyone pursues: the perception of well-being.

Human beings have certain thinking biases that make us more affected by negative events than positive ones. And they do it in a totally automatic way. Negative emotions and experiences cling very cruelly to ourselves.

Personal work on our strengths helps balance this equation. Negative experiences are implicit in the mere fact of living; They are necessary, because it is the way we learn, motivate ourselves and train different strategies. All of them help us to grow.

Reframing the negative

In no case are these negative experiences from the past what define us. Our strengths will be those that help us in future negative circumstances: they remind us that we have our own resources available and developed to face these types of situations.

Doing a good job with personal strengths allows us to maintain a greater degree of control in critical situations. They are directly related to stress coping skills, strengthening our immunopsychological system against depression.

Where to start?

The security that the certainty of having these tools gives us makes us tolerate, for example, uncertainty much better or that we are less afraid of taking risks. Now where do you start?

The past is a good scenario to draw conclusions: we will probably be able to overcome those obstacles that we have already overcome; On the other hand, doing a good analysis of alternatives when deciding to implement one or the other solution will be essential; Many times there are several alternatives to get to the same place, but only one is the one that best suits our strengths.

On the other hand, it is important to differentiate the strengths of talent. To understand the terminology in this article, a talent would have to do with an innate predisposition, while strengths would have more to do with training and learning.

Seligman’s 24 personal strengths

Martin Seligman offers us an inventory of personal strengths, the VIA Inventory of Strength, which measures the degree of each of the 24 strengths, organized into 6 virtues or categories:

• Wisdom and knowledge, which include strengths such as creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, the desire to learn, and perspective
• Courage : linked to the achievement of goals, such as courage, persistence, integrity and vitality.
• Humanity: which include concepts such as love, kindness and social intelligence
• Justice : these are civic strengths such as citizenship, justice and leadership

• Moderation : which are what protect us against excesses, forgiveness and compassion, humility and modesty, prudence, discretion and self-regulation.
• Transcendence : they are those that give meaning to life, among them we find the appreciation of beauty, excellence, gratitude, hope, a sense of humor and spirituality.

Each of us has five strengths that characterize us. The purpose of the inventory created by Seligman is to know the personal strengths of each one of us in order to recognize them in the first place and develop and amplify them: our own happiness and the strength with which we are able to shine from within.