All right. So in our last module we talked about managing anxiety and increasing positive emotions and how having more positive emotion is going to help you to manage your stress and increase your creativity and build really important resources. Now in module four, we're going to talk about two of my favorite topics in resilience and positive psychology. So, the first is character strengths. We want you to be able to identify who you are at your best from a character perspective, so that you can use the best parts of yourself to overcome challenges, to create more positive emotion, to have stronger relationships and we're also going to talk in this module about how to strengthen relationships with the people you love, with the people you lead so that you're having greater intimacy, greater trust, a sense of belonging. That's all good in and of itself and we know that strong relationships are at the foundation of resilience. So, let's get started. We're going to start off by talking about character strengths. Now, I asked you to complete the values in action survey. I'm hoping you did that. If you didn't, you might want to stop now, take that survey because we're going to use that survey a lot in this next bit of conversation. If you did take it, have it handy because I want you to refer to it as I'm talking. So, values in action survey. Now this survey was developed by two of my mentors. Dr. Chris Peterson and Dr. Marty Seligman and what they wanted to do was to have a list of the best of humankind. The character traits that describe humans at their very best and as you know from the survey you took, there are 24 character strengths, character traits, listed on that survey. Now it probably occurred to you why 24? I mean certainly there are more than 24 character strengths in human beings but what Chris and Marty wanted to do was not just develop a survey of character strengths of Americans in the year 2002, they wanted to create a list an overview of the character strengths that are valued across time and across place. Character strengths that are valued everywhere on this planet. So, how do you do that? I mean if you think about it that's not an easy question to answer. How do you know what character strengths are valued cross time cross place? Well, what Chris and Marty, and their graduate students did is they read the religious texts of all of the major religions to understand what are the character strengths that are showing up in the religious texts. They read children's books, so think about that for a second. Why would you want to read children's books if you're trying to understand character strengths? Well, because children's books are filled with messages about character strengths that are valued. So, the little engine that could, right? What does that teach? That teaches optimism and perseverance, those are character strengths. The Giving Tree, that's a book that probably many of you have read to your kids. What does that teach? That teaches kindness, kindness as a character strength. Charlotte's Web teaches love. They didn't just read children's books though, they also listened to the song lyrics and figured out what character strengths are being imparted through the lyrics of songs. Didn't stop there, they read the creeds of civic organizations, they read world literature, philosophy, psychiatry, youth development, psychology. I mean they studied character from as many different perspectives as possible and then asked the question, which of these character traits are showing up across time and across place? So, when they did that, the 24 that are on your survey are the 24 that they believe are valued everywhere not just today but historically as well. Now what they did was they clumped these 24 character strengths under six virtue categories. So, by virtues I mean justice, temperance, transcendence, the ability to rise above. Wisdom and knowledge is a virtue, courage is a virtue, humanity, connection to others, is a virtue and Chris and Marty looked at these 24 character strengths and suggested, for example, that if you wanted to live a life of temperance where you modulate and where you temper against excess, that forgiveness and mercy is a character strength that can be used to not have an excess of anger in your life. Modesty and humility can be used that character strength, modesty and humility can be used to make sure there's not an excess of arrogance in your life. Caution and prudence can be used to modulate yourself. Self-control and self regulation can be used to not have an excess of Dunkin Donuts in your life. So, they talked about each of these character strengths as a pathway to living a life of one of these virtues. I think that question, how do you live a life that if you view value whatever that value is through the best of who you are? Through marshaling and leveraging your top character strengths and that's a question that we're going to be wrestling with as we go through this material. How do you create the life you want to live, have greater resilience, greater meaning, stronger relationships by using deliberately the best of who you are? Okay, so the values in action survey assesses each of these 24 character strengths. When you took the survey, you got a score report that told you the rank order of these 24 character strengths. So, the ones at the top. Are what we're going to call signature character strengths. So, I want to explore with you what we mean by a signature character strength. Signature, sign of your nature. So do me a favor. Grab a pen, write your name. Okay. So, first of all, my guess is you picked up the pen with your dominant hand and writing your name was incredibly easy. You didn't have to think about it, it wasn't effortful, it didn't require a lot of attention, it just flew, it just came out of you easily, you wrote your name very easily, and it probably was effective too, probably looks good. The signature character strengths are like writing with your dominant hand. They are the aspects of your character that are most comfortable in you, most dominant in you, it doesn't require a lot of thought or energy to tap into those aspects of your character, they are your dominant character strengths. So do me a favor. Look at the, I don't know no magic number, look at the top three, four, five, six on your character strength profile and just ask yourself the question, are those character strengths dominant in me? Are they comfortable in me? Do they just flow from me? My guess is if you're like the followers of other people that we've worked with and used this survey that they most of you are saying, "Yeah, that's me, that's a great analysis of my dominant character strengths." Okay, good. But here's a thing, I don't want you to identify your top character strengths, the sign of your nature simply through a survey, just because of the ones at the top. I want you to think a little bit more deeply about how do you know whether a character strength is truly dominant in you? So, Chris Peterson, and Marty, and others thought about like what makes a signature character strength a signature character strength? So, think about this, look at the ones at the top and ask yourself the question, when you're operating from that piece of your character, do you feel true to yourself? Do you feel authentic? So, for those of you for whom bravery is a signature character strength. When you're standing up and speaking the hard truth even in a setting where people are not agreeing with you, when you're marshaling that bravery, you feel authentic, you feel like you're in your own skin, you feel like you're being true to yourself. That is an indicator that it's a signature character strength. Here's another way, look at the ones at the top again and ask yourself when you're operating from those strengths, do you feel energized? Does it create energy in you? Do you feel like you're skiing down the mountain? Like you've got gravity going in your direction rather than feeling exhausted or depleted when you're tapping into that part of your character? So, let's say judgment and critical thinking is one of your dominant signature character strengths and you're at work and you've got to look at a problem from multiple perspectives or you've got to make a really tough choice and you're analyzing it and thinking about it over and over again. For those of you for whom judgment of critical thinking is a signature strength that brings energy, it's a good day when you get to tap into that aspect of your character. For those for whom that's not a dominant strength that might be a little bit more tiring, a little bit more depleting. So, energizing rather than exhausting, it's a sign and it's a dominant strength. Then the last way to know is it truly a signature character strength, is it the dominant part of your character, is that if it is the motivation to use that part of yourself comes from within. So, many of you I'm guessing have gratitude as one of your dominant signature character strengths. So, if that's the case, you don't need me to tell you to hunt the good stuff or to design a gratitude exercise. You don't need me to cajole you or remind you to look at the world through the lens of what am I receiving? If gratitude is a dominant strength, it just comes out of you, you're motivated to tap into that part of your character. So, again, look at the ones at the top and ask yourself, do I feel true to myself when I'm using that part of my character? Am I energized when I use that part of my character? Do I feel motivated from within when I use that part of my character? My guess is many of you right now are saying, "Yes, yes, yes" to the ones at the top of your profile. Now, you know that that truly is a signature character strength of yours. Now, let's also unpack this a little bit more, 24 character strengths in your profile like everyone's ranked order from number one to down to number 24. Do you think all 24 character strengths will be signature character strengths in one person? So let me say that a different way. Is it likely that one human being is equally comfortable, is equally authentic, is equally energized, is equally motivated with each of these 24? Probably not. So, zest and prudence as an example, if you're motivated to be zesty, not sure that's the word. If you're motivated by zest and you feel authentic when you're feeling a sense of zest, it's probably not the case that you feel equally motivated, equally yourself when you're being cautious and prudent, they pull in opposite directions. So, the goal of what we're talking about today is not that each one of us should be trying to have all 24 be equally strong, it's probably impossible anyway. The goal of what we're talking about is to ask the question, which of these are most dominant and how can I leverage them fully to create the life I want to live, to have more resilience and so forth? So, once at the top signature, hard to have all 24 equally dominant, what are the ones at the bottom? So look at the bottom of your list. Some of you are seeing self-control and self-regulation down there, some of you are probably seeing forgiveness lower down on that list. What are the ones at the bottom of the list? Well, do me a favor. Grab the pen again and now hold the pen in your non-dominant hand and write your name. How was that? So, were you able to write your name? Absolutely. I'm sure each of you was able to write your name but what happened? Well, it took a lot more concentration, it took a lot more effort, it didn't feel as comfortable and it probably didn't even look as good. So, think about the character strengths lower down on your list as your non-dominant hand, they're just not as dominant in you and that's okay. That doesn't mean that you can't develop them, it doesn't mean that you can't use them or access those aspects of your character. It does mean, however, that those aspects of your character are not as dominant, not as comfortable as the ones that are your signature character strengths. So, we all have signature character strengths and we all have character strengths that are less dominant.
