Strength Spotting is a positive intervention that must be practiced, repeatedly. Below are a few activities to increase your ability to spot the strengths in yourself and those around you. When engaging in a positive intervention, it helps to track your wellbeing as a measure of success. Before you dive in, take your PERMA+ Snapshot and see what your score is today. Next, try each of the activities below over the coming weeks and then re-take your PERMA+ Snapshot to see how the positive intervention of Strength Spotting impacted your wellbeing.
Know + Share Your Strengths
Take the VIA Character Strengths Survey and use this worksheet to document your unique combination of strengths. Next, you’ll reflect on what your Character Strengths look like in action across the various aspects of your life. Finally, this reflection activity will help you share your strengths to those you love and spend time around. When your friends, family and colleagues know your strengths, they can help you spot them in action.
- Strength Spotting in Hindsight
It is commonly said that “hindsight is 20/20,” and this can be leveraged to help you spot your Character Strengths in action. In this activity, you will reflect on what you did yesterday or the day before. Which strengths did you use throughout the day? Were there any moments where you leveraged your strengths but didn’t notice them at the time? Were there moments where mindfully calling on a strength might have helped?
- A Community of Strengths
Most people have built a family tree or seen an org chart. But what happens if you layer in Strengths to these diagrams? In this activity, you’ll identify a ”community of strengths” by going out into your network of family, friends, colleagues and others to collect and reflect upon their Signature Strengths. Identifying how these strengths impact you and your relationships can help improve not only your wellbeing, but the wellbeing of your community.
- People I Admire Most Reflection
What we most admire about others is usually closely tied to their Signature Strengths. When thinking about people you look up to, who are they at their core? How do they use those strengths to live their lives to the fullest? Taking time to reflect on the strengths of those you admire will aid in training your brain to spot the strengths in yourself and those around you.
- Strength Spotting in the Digital World
It is one thing to spot, name and appreciate Strengths when you are working side-by-side with a teammate or family member. But, can you train your brain to Strength Spot when using technology? Can you see a strength in a text message, hear it in a voicemail, find it in a social media post, or read it in a comment? Do your texts, posts, and comments reflect your Signature Strengths? Imagine the positivity that could ripple through our exchanges if we started leading with our own strengths and spotting the strengths of others.
