Signature Strengths
This post is a reflection for a course I am taking at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. The course is titled Positive Psychology and is taught by Professor Denise Marigold, currently the Chair of Social Development Studies.
The topic of the reflection is from the course, though the response is my own.
In my previous post on Goals and Strengths, I discussed the Values in Action (VIA) Inventory of Strengths. This inventory measures individual character strengths. I took a version of the inventory provided for free by the Authentic Happiness website at the University of Pennsylvania. Their version of the questionnaire is called VIA Survey of Character Strengths.
My results
By default, you are given just your top five strengths. My top strengths were:
- Curiosity and interest in the world
- Love of Learning
- Kindness and generosity
- Fairness, equality, and justice
- Bravery and valor
Each of these are discussed more below.
Curiosity and interest in the world
This top strength didn't surprise me at all. For as long as I can remember I have been a very curious person, always asking questions and trying to understand better how the world works. This has taken a lot of different forms, through exploration of math, science, engineering, humanities, every subject I can get my hands on really. I want to know why things are the way they are (science, math, humanities), why things were designed a certain way (engineering).
I already foster this strength a lot by trying to read a wide range of books on different subjects, not just those in my specialty. One way I want to use it more in the future is to spend more time exploring various parts of the world, and spend more time talking to a diverse range of people to gain new perspectives.
Love of Learning
I think this could easily have been my top strength, but the two are clearly related to each other. As I mentioned above, I manifest my interest in the world by trying to learn as much about it as I can. Learning is something I value deeply, and something I plan to do all my life. I am a major fan of the idea of a growth mindset, that when faced with a challenge that you should try to use it to grow.
It is interesting to note that in a few months I will be graduating university and it will be the first time in a long time that I will not be in school. It won't surprise me if I find myself back at a university in the future, but for now I plan to spend a bit of time learning how to use my love of learning in a new context and apply it to my job designing microprocessors.
Again, like above, there are so many ways I already try to foster my love of learning. This website is a good example. While I have extensive experience in computer programming and professionally design computers, I have only had limited experience with web development. I have been playing around with different ways of developing websites recently and have been taking various online courses on the subject. I plan to do a lot more exploring in this area once I have more free time again (classes have made me refocus my learning). Another example is recently my hammock ripped, so I have been doing a bit of learning on sewing, and it seems like something interesting and useful that I want to explore more.
Kindness and generosity
This one definitely wasn't as obvious as the first two to me, but I think it's really touching to see it make the list. I think it is really important to my values to be nice to people and to do my best to spread my fortunes and privileges to as many people as I can.
This week I will try to use this strength more by finding some small acts of kindness I can do, perhaps for my roommate while we are stuck at home with the stay-at-home order. Some ideas I have are doing more than my part around the apartment with dishes, garbage, and other cleaning type tasks, or maybe making us some nice meals (I love cooking).
Fairness, equity, and justice
I think fairness, equity, and justice is related to the other four of my top five strengths. The more I explore and learn about the world, the more I come to understand the ways we are all unique and also all the ways we have a lot in common. Though I am not a particularly religious person, I do think we all have moral and ethical obligations to do our best to reduce the suffering in the world, in any form it takes. It can be hard at times to stand up for what we believe in, especially if it isn't universally accepted, but I think it is our obligation to try to work out those differences.
I am currently working on a group project, and this week at my group meeting I will try to make sure I remain open minded and give everyone a chance to contribute their ideas have their say in how we do things.
Bravery and valor
I see this manifested in myself in two forms. Together with that sense of justice and equality come my sense that you need to speak up for what is right. I think it also takes the form of knowing when to take calculated risks, and to sometimes take the harder path. For example, I chose to go into a challenging field of electrical engineering, and from there I chose to go into the challenging subspecialty of integrated circuit design. There are not a lot of jobs in this area compared to software engineering for example, but I decided to rise to the challenge and not shy away from what I wanted to do.
I think recently I have been a bit more cautious than usual when it comes to challenges in school and not taking on things that I am not sure about. There are merits to this, but at the end of the day I am not a very big risk of failing out, so I think I could benefit a lot from challenging myself more even if it is a bit riskier.
The bottom of the list
While by default you are just shown the top five strengths, it is also possible to see the full results. It didn't surprise me much to see my second to last strength being "spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith". I am a very skeptical and rational thinker most of the time, and I question things that can't be proven with empirical research. I do think this can be too rigid at times, especially when it comes to more metaphysical questions that are hard to address with direct evidence. For example, questions of higher purpose, meaning, etc. I would like to foster a greater sense of spirituality and universal connectedness and have recently been exploring Buddhist ideas.
At the very bottom of the list was modesty and humility. This is something I value a lot, so I am somewhat surprised to find it so low on the list. I am curious what responses put this at the bottom, and I wonder how they distinguish modesty and humility from self-confidence.