Begin to identify your strengths:
A strength is a personality trait. You anticipate activities that utilize your strengths. Take note when doing an activity - did you look forward to doing it? Using our strengths leads to a drive to repeat the behavior or feeling. You feel a strong sense of satisfaction when using your strengths. It feels good!
Here are some examples of strengths you may have:
Strengths of Wisdom and Knowledge: Cognitive strengths that involve the acquisition and use of knowledge.
1. Creativity: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things.
2. Curiosity: Taking an interest in an experience for its own sake; exploring and discovering.
3. Open-mindedness: Thinking things through and examining them from all sides; weighing all evidence fairly.
4. Love of learning: Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally.
5. Perspective: Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people.
Strengths of Courage: Emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external and internal.
6. Bravery: Not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; acting on convictions even if unpopular.
7. Persistence: Finishing what one starts; persisting in a course of action in spite of obstacles.
8. Integrity: Presenting oneself in a genuine way; taking responsibility for one's feeling and actions.
9. Vitality: Approaching life with excitement and energy; feeling alive.
Strengths of Humanity: interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others.
10. Love: Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated.
11. Kindness: Doing favors and good deeds for others.
12. Social intelligence: Being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself.
Strengths of Justice: civic strengths that underlie healthy community life.
13. Citizenship: Working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group.
14. Fairness: Treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others.
15. Leadership: Encouraging a group, of which one is a member, to get things done and also maintain good relations within the group.
Strengths of Temperance: strengths that protect against excess.
16. Forgiveness and mercy: Forgiving those who have done wrong; accepting the shortcomings of others; giving people a second chance; not being vengeful.
17. Humility / Modesty: Letting one's accomplishments speak for themselves; not regarding oneself as more special than one is.
18. Prudence: Being careful about one's choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted.
19. Self-regulation: Regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one's appetites and emotions.
Strengths of Transcendence: strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning.
20. Appreciation of beauty and excellence: Appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life.
21. Gratitude: Being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks.
22. Hope: Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it.
23. Humor: Liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side.
24. Spirituality: Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose, the meaning of life, and the meaning of the universe.
(list developed by Christopher Peterson, A Primer in Positive Psychology, 2007)
