Strength Exercise
Name Date
Instructions:This exercise helps you to identify some of your strengths, virtues, skills, talents, and positive personality traits so that you can apply them to areas of life that you care about in order to be more happy or fulfilled in that area.
Step 1:Identify your strengths, skills, and talents.
Write down any positive traits, strengths, skills, or talents that you possess. You may count any of the Tenets of Contentment that you follow consistently such as “good Inner Abundance.”
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Step 2:Add more strengths and virtues to your list of strengths, skills, and talents.
Add more strengths and virtues to your list in Step 1 by circling any word or phrase from the following list that applies to you on a fairly consistent basis:
• Friendly and Affirming of Other People
• Kind, Loving, Loyal, Generous, or Sympathetic to Others
• Very Generous and giving toward others
• Accepting and Nonjudgmental of Others
• Self-Disciplined and Cautious About What I Say to Avoid Hurting People
• Thoughtful toward others
• Thoughtful toward the Group or Society (Good Team Player)
• Gentle, Quiet and Respectful of Others
• Ethical, Honest, Fair, Straightforward
• Funny, Humorous, Playful, Fun to Be With
• In Love with Learning New Things
• Modest, Humble, Forgiving
• Able to Fix Things, Mechanically Gifted
• Self-Calming and Emotionally Intelligent in controlling feelings of depression, anxiety, or anger (Good Emotional Control)
• Optimistic about Life and the Future
• Full of Energy and Enthusiasm
• A “Person on a Mission” in Life, that is, a person with Clear-Cut Life Goals-and-Values
• Self-Disciplined in moving toward long-term goals(Farsighted), Able to Control Self, Make Good Choices, and Steadily Move Toward Long-Term Goals
• Self-Disciplined in Work Habits
• Self-Disciplined in Personal Habits like Weight Control
• Self-Disciplined and Cautious About What I Say to Avoid Hurting People
• Good Self-Control in general
• Good organizer, Well-organized; Very Organized; Conscientious About Getting Things Done
• Hard Working and Reliable; Persistent in Getting Things Done
• Neat and Clean
• Able to Take Good Care of Myself and Keep Myself Healthy—Good Fitness Habits or Inner Abundance
• Good Problem Solver
• Good Common Sense, Good judgment, problem solving and decision making in practical everyday matters
• Cautious and Careful
• Creative or Original
• Artistic
• Can make and keep close friends
• Spiritually Gifted ; Spiritually at Peace, Kind, or Forgiving
• Spiritually Gifted and In-Tune with What Really Matters in Life; Spiritually-based kindness, patience, optimism
• Good at Enjoying Life
• Mindful or able to focus all of my attention on the present moment rather worry about the past or future
• Not Obsessed with Fame or Fortune; Not Overly Concerned About Making Money or Achieving Fame
• Lover of Animals
• Lover of Nature
• Lover of Children
• Nurturing of Others, Loves to Teach and Help Others Grow in Skill
• Lover of Social Justice; Good Fighter for Justice; Crusader for Social Justice or the Environment; Dedicated Citizen of the Community and the World
• Courageous or Brave
• A Person with Many Outside Interests
• Very Knowledgeable; Wise
• Loyal, Caring, Fair
• Consistently Happy or Content
• Consistently Kind, Grateful, or Forgiving
• Humble or Modest
• Good Self-Esteem
Step 3:Make a daily, habitual plan to apply your strengths, skills, and talents to areas of life you care about.
Applying your skills, talents and positive traits to areas you care about may make you more successful in getting your needs, goals, and wishes satisfied in these areas of life; greater life satisfaction in one area, leads to greater happiness overall. For each of the following areas you care about, write down a plan for applying some of your strengths, skills, and talents. For example, Meredith, decided to deploy her kindness by stopping to say hi and make friendly eye contact with everyone in her work group.
Health
Self-Esteem
Spiritual Life
Goals-and-Values
Money
Work
Play
Learning
Creativity
Helping
Love
Friends
Children
Relatives
Home
Neighborhood
Community
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