Personal Growth Through Focus On Strengths

People have great potential for nurturing and growing their strengths, but they run out of steam if asked instead to focus on correcting their deficiencies. Easier said than done? Actually not, developing strengths isn't difficult to do.

Greater Potential In Strengths Than In Deficiencies

Confirming common sense, recent research shows that humans possess greater potential for nurturing their strengths, than for correcting their deficiencies. Greater potential also means greater motivation. For an excellent 2-minute video on the topic, click here. When I was a child, my parents marked our growth with penciled marks on the kitchen door frame. We - the kids - asked to be measured twice daily! We couldn't grow fast enough - growth can be incredibly motivating.

However, at school the focus changed. Now we are asked to focus mostly on areas that are lagging behind in growth. (Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating a different educational system). Little wonder that 10, 20 and 30 years later only one in every three workers believes that his or her work is aligned with their growth and their strengths. Continuously asked to focus on what's lacking within, students in the classroom and people at work end emotionally and spiritually disengaged from school and work, sometimes to the point of hating it. Heart attacks indicate a spike on Monday mornings - when the stress of having to resume dissatisfying work is greatest. Suicide rates among young people are of concern to anyone interested in the nation's health. The consumption of drugs, mostly legal, to ease peoples' minds has reached epic proportions and keeps growing (to the satisfaction of the drug makers). How to reverse the trend?

Treat The Itch, Not The Scratch

Instead of band-aiding the outcome - stress, depression - 'attack' the root cause. Instead of focusing on what's missing, focus on developing what's there. This simple shift in focus is all it takes.

Love Your Work, Love Your Life

The notion it's a good thing to love your work is sometimes received with skepticism. To say you love your work in some places only gets you seen as full of you know what. And the claim that work can actually set you free has been given a very bad rap by dictators throughout history. But forced labor isn't work.

Work that appeals to your strengths and is aligned with your purpose in life will elevate you and benefit you in every way. Look around you. People who love their work are in the average three times more likely to have and outstanding quality of life, than people who don't. Successful men and women work more, not less. Almost without exception, people who "don't need to work for money" anymore work as if their life depended on it. Which it does. It quite simple, really: work - and keep growing - or die. Ask anyone forced to retire.

Find And Develop Your Strengths

Figure out what makes you stand out. If you and the people who love you do not come up with an answer right away, decide what will make you stand out. The point is, get started, you can always make adjustments over time. Consider getting yourself a copy of Tom Rath's "Strengths Finder" book.

Do not compare yourself to others - comparing is not strengths finding. A tulip is not the best tulip she can be by comparing herself to a rose. Just be yourself. Besides, everybody else is already taken. Being you, and knowing your strengths, is essential also in knowing when an opportunity (such as a promotion) is in fact an opportunity, and when accepting it would be a disservice to yourself.

Relevant Quotes

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity." - Louis Pasteur
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt
We all have strength enough to endure the troubles of others." - La Rochefoucauld