COLOR YOUR STRENGTHS

Illustrate how you use your strengths compared to how you would like to.

Sometimes you may feel prone to dwelling on personal shortcomings — or what you think are your shortcomings… an unproductive tendency, to say the least. Focusing more on strengths, on the other hand, can make you feel better about yourself, happier, and more hopeful.

Think of traits you’re proud of and those that others compliment: integrity, creativity, compassion, humor, or specific skills.

Draw 2 pie charts. Make each slice represent a strength you’ve identified, and color it in:

• In chart 1, make the size of each “strength slice” proportionate to how much you apply it daily
• In chart 2, alter the size of the slices to reflect how you ideally would use your strengths in a way that gives you the highest level of satisfaction.

Suppose your strengths are organizational abilities, creativity, cooking, interpersonal skills, and generosity. You spend most of your workday on spreadsheets and in the evening you do beadwork. In chart 1, the largest slice is probably organizational abilities — perhaps half your circle — and your second largest is creativity (based on your beadwork); the other 3 are relatively smaller. But you’d like to spend most of your time using your creativity, followed by interacting with people. In chart 2, representing your ideal, creativity would be the largest slice and interpersonal skills would be next.

Once you have your illustrations, take action each day to make your current chart more like your ideal chart by consciously using the strengths you prefer. In our example, you might increase your creativity time by taking a watercolor or photography class and considering an online outlet for your creations.

In a study of people who identified and used their strengths over the course of 1 week, most felt happier immediately after the experiment and 6 months later.