How Many Strengths Have You Built? All 24?

In 2003, Martin Seligman published Authentic Happiness, the book that launched the Positive Psychology movement and sparked a worldwide debate on the nature of real happiness. Rather than looking at happiness as merely an absence of illness or sadness - which was what psychology had effectively done by building lists of neuroses and psychoses since its inception - Seligman and others sought a new way forward by attempting to catalogue the ways humans could be strong. They spent years sifting through 200-plus catalogs of virtue - basically every book of wisdom written by any culture around the world. The research team read through the philosophical works of Aristotle, Plato, and Confucius. They read through religious tomes like the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, and the Upanishads. They considered spiritual speculations from the likes of Aquinas, Augustine, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed, and Lao Tze. And they even considered modern guides like Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack. What they came up with after much analysis and consideration was a list of 24 strengths in 6 general categories. Seligman and his team were quick to point out that this list was not final, but just a good starting point for a new conversation about what elements give someone strength to be happy in this world. These are generally universal across cultures and time, although certainly emphasized or defined slightly differently in different places. To me, they make another excellent way to look at your personality - as an inventory of the character strengths you have developed. Let's take a quick look at the list.

1. Wisdom / Knowledge: 1) Curiosity; 2) Love of Learning; 3) Judgment; 4) Ingenuity; 5) Emotional Intelligence; 6) Perspective
2. Courage: 7) Valor; 8) Perseverance; 9) Integrity
3. Humanity: 10) Kindness; 11) Loving
4. Justice: 12) Citizenship; 13) Fairness; 14) Leadership
5. Temperance: 15) Self-Control; 16) Prudence; 17) Humility
6. Transcendence: 18) Appreciation of Beauty / Excellence; 19) Gratitude; 20) Hope; 21) Spirituality / Philosophy; 22) Forgiveness; 23) Humor; 24) Zest

As I said, in my book,

We are not born with these strengths, but we are born able to learn them and we feel happy when we do. Know your strengths. Build them.

This is a long list that undoubtedly sounds great, but in reality washes over us all too easily. You could really spend an entire life contemplating these and working on them. So why don't we try that? If you really want to concentrate on this, take a page from religion and add these to your very own ritual calendar. With 30 total elements, this would make a great list to add to each day of the month. Day 1 - Wisdom / Knowledge. Day 2 - Curiosity. Day 3 - Love of Learning. And so on. If you thought about one of these strengths every day and how you could be better at building that one, in just one year you would repeat this exercise 12 times for each of the elements. Do you think your life would be better if you took a few minutes every day to consider one of these? What further insights might you make as you repeated this exercise through the years. I think I will give this a try.

I won't say more about each of these strengths for now as I am actually planning to try writing a series of short stories with each one of these as its central theme. I expect this writing project to take a few years with a new short story coming out every month or two. I'll probably sell electronic copies of these for 99 cents, so if you want to be notified whenever these come out, be sure to put yourself on my email list. Until then, stay strong! Next week I'll be leaving personality behind and branching off into an entirely new topic.

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