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My Character Strengths


Image I designed on Canva depicting a superwoman standing strong in front of two strong arms that represent humor and prudence.

Recently, I took the VIA Institute on Character Survey to learn about my character strengths – good qualities that people possess (Seligman, 2015; The via character strengths survey, 2021). Character strengths are important because identifying and using your character strengths could significantly boost one's resilience (Rust et al., 2009; Seligman, 2015; Gohar, 2021). The results said that my signature strengths are prudence, love, perspective, self-regulation, and humor.

My psychology course tasked me with selecting two of my character strengths and using them more often and effectively in my daily life. I decided to choose the strength that I am most familiar with - humor - and the strength that I want to explore more - prudence. I developed ideas on implementing humor and prudence more often and efficiently by reading Rashid and Anjum's (2005) article on using VIA character strengths.

Humor is the quality of being happy and amusing and involves the enjoyment of laughing, friendly teasing, and bringing joy to others (Rashid & Anjum, 2005). To implement humor more info my life, every day, I brought a smile to my family and friends' faces by calling them and telling them a cringy dad joke, such as:

"As a kid, I wasn't a fan of facial hair.

But then, it started to grow on me.

It started to grow on me!"

After saying my jokes, I got mixed reactions that I delighted in. Sometimes my mom died of laughter, or my boyfriend jokingly said, "I am going to end and call you back" because it was "too cringy." Planning these jokes and having these mixed interactions strengthened my own sense of self and my relationships. I started to feel more like the "real me" because I love to laugh and make others laugh. Humor also strengthened my relationships because by making my friends and family laugh, they enjoy my presence more and thus want to spend more time with me. Yes, the jokes I made were cringy, but they were funny and brought a lot of laughter!

On the other hand, Prudence is the quality of being cautious and involves having a practical orientation towards future goals (Rashid & Anjum, 2005). I applied prudence to my daily life by visualizing the consequences of my decisions in the future. For instance, whenever I felt like not going to the gym, I told myself that if I went, my health would improve, which would make me healthier in the future.

Adding prudence to my life bettered my resilience as I accomplished my goals and significantly reduced my stress during the week. I struggle to focus on my health, especially during the academic year. By being prudent and recognizing the long-term benefits of exercise, I went to the gym six out of seven days a week during a particularly full and stressful week. I'd never been to the gym that much, even during more leisurely times. I was thrilled by my accomplishment and by how much working out reduced my stress overall because I was taking care of my physical self.

Overall, this resilience exercise taught me to use my strengths to improve my overall life and resilience. The results I achieved in one week shocked me because in the mental situation I have been the past several months, I never believed that I had the power to help myself. I definitely need to keep seeing a psychologist; however, there is comfort in knowing that I have the power to use my own strengths to improve my daily life.

Going forward, I plan to apply humor and prudence more often to my life. For example, I will keep throwing cringy jokes into conversations, watch sitcoms more often, and I will keep motivating myself to go to the gym. The more I intentionally try to add it to my life, the greater the chances of forming a habit and them becoming more regular (Wood & Kauffman, 2020).



Citations:


Gohar, D. D. (2021, October). Character Strengths for Resilience PSYCH 477 – Psychology of

Resilience. Ann Arbor; University of Michigan.


Rashid, T., & Anjum, A. (2005). 340 ways to use VIA character strengths. Unpublished

manuscript, University of Pennsylvania.


Rust, T., Diessner, R., & Reade, L. (2009). Strengths only or strengths and relative weaknesses?

A preliminary study. The Journal of Psychology, 143(5), 465-476.


(2021) The via character strengths survey. Personality Test, Personality Assessment: VIA

Survey | VIA Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved November 4, 2021, from

https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register.


Seligman, M. E. (2015). Chris Peterson's unfinished masterwork: The real mental illnesses.

The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(1), 3-6.


Wood, W., & Kaufman, S. B. (2020, May 20). Wendy wood on how to make positive changes that stick. Scott Barry Kaufman. Retrieved September 25, 2021, from

https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/wendy-wood-on-how-to-make-positive-

changes-that-stick/


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