Playing To Your Strengths (Simple Tools 5/5)

Simple Tools for Challenging Times

These 5 lessons were developed by Dr. Jan Russell & Keziah Gibbons as the world went into lockdown in the Spring of 2020. The intention was to apply the tools of psychologically informed environments to help to empower people as we went through this state of uncertainty.

Although designed specifically for lockdown, & recorded in a cupboard due to limited resources, the tools are good & can be applied to any situation to ease pressure and increase a sense of agency.

Transcript

Hello,

This is Jan and welcome back to session five,

The last in this short program.

We trust that you are finding it useful and noticing how these psychologically informed practices stack up to support your well-being and therefore influence your experience in the restricted environment in which we all find ourselves right now.

In these times we want to be as resilient as we possibly can and to support others to be as resilient as they can be.

Often this simply means paying attention and remembering to use our strengths rather than spending a lot of time trying to do things that we're not really very good at or to develop what we don't yet have.

In this session you'll spend time reconnecting to your core strengths and explore how they can benefit you more in the now.

Resilience is all about bouncing back in times of adversity and being able to transcend fear and pain or integrate fear and pain and move forwards.

We do see extraordinary examples of resilience all the time and you might have stories of your own where you've surprised yourself at how strong you could be when you needed to be.

All around the world people encounter major challenges and somehow some way it seems that they survive.

Today as this pandemic has spread around and taken us by surprise we need to kindle all the resilience that we can and to keep a sense of confidence in ourselves.

To do this it is helpful to focus on the qualities of humanity that are really strong in us.

Our personal strengths.

We know that when we use our key strengths we are more effective and we're happier and this is as true if we're in quarantine as at any other time.

So I've made a list below of my take on 10 common key strengths.

Listen them through as many times as you want to and mark down the three or note them in some way that you believe to be your top qualities,

Your core strengths.

Courage,

The conviction to function well in the face of adversity,

Pain or grief and to deal with the unknown.

Wisdom,

Drawing on knowledge and experience to make well-judged choices in relation to your resources and to consequences.

Patience,

The ability to stay engaged in time while waiting for things beyond your control.

Hope,

The ability to stay on firm ground knowing that even though you cannot see the stars they are still in the sky and their brightness will shine out again.

Flexibility,

The ability to find more than one way to reach your outcomes,

To be creative and wide thinking.

Emotional intelligence,

The ability to know yourself and to empathize with others.

Social awareness,

The ability to understand the needs the ability to understand the needs of groups and hold steady on your moral compass to your values.

Kindness,

That lovely mix of generosity and thoughtfulness to others to offer what they might need right now.

Curiosity,

An openness to whatever comes next and to be prepared to discover how we can best respond.

Humor,

An ability to share smiles and laughter wherever appropriate.

From this summary list which three strengths do you believe that you have most readily available to you?

Which ring the bell for you give you that sense that yes I'm in touch with that one most of the time.

The ones that you can see yourself using that you're really aware that you have nice and solid.

Once you've chosen your top three complete the following exercise.

Relax in whichever way you would like to in whichever position you're in taking a minute just to get 10% more comfortable.

In your mind's eye imagine the rest of your day or your tomorrow or your night whichever is most useful and timely for you now.

The time in which you know you can't move around as freely as you'd like perhaps.

The time in which you know you can't move around as freely as you'd like perhaps.

In your outside environment perhaps not in your inside environment.

And in this context run your expectations through your head.

What emotions might you feel?

What needs to be done?

What limitations might there be?

What kind of choices will you be considering in the hours and days ahead?

Now look again at that time ahead.

Get a sense of all the expectations that you've been experiencing for the past few days.

Now look again at that time ahead.

Get a sense of all the expectations that you've already noted and how your days or nights and time might be if you consciously choose to use your top three strengths.

How might using those strengths impact the choices that you could make in order to get to your best possible outcomes?

We're always rehearsing through telling ourselves stories about what might happen.

We imagine what's going to happen.

We talk to ourselves with all of our uncertainties and not knowing and we experience the sensations of emotions in our bodies.

Rehearsing stories which involve you using your key strengths can be empowering.

Helping you to avoid inner or outer conflict or resolving inner or outer conflict and creating a state of balance which is best for your well-being.

Knowing how to do this through using your top strengths is a really nice knack to have.

In truth we all have all of the strengths identified above it's just that we don't always remember to apply them and we might be well out of practice on a few.

So another exercise you can play with is to pick one strength per day from that list and deliberately integrate it into all that you do for that day.

For example today a client called me let's call him Sean.

He's in an isolation group with his partner and it's day 10.

Sean's partner is particularly irritable today and a little bit snappy and Sean feels pushed out and he knows that he could also get quite irritated.

Sean and I have done strengths work before.

During our conversation Sean decided that he would draw on his strength of emotional intelligence one with which he's very familiar.

He knows himself well enough to know that he can be pushy at times so using emotional intelligence he'll actively resist that temptation and instead he'll put his energy into his mind.

Instead he'll put his energy into being empathic and patient with his partner.

He also knows his partner's strengths quite well and he knows that his partner can't currently access the strength of courage.

He also knows that when his partner feels understood and supported he will be able to play to his strengths which are about accessing flexibility,

Moving through,

Getting things quickly,

Finding a different way to look at things and finding creative solutions.

Sean had a choice here and he knew that if he plays to his strengths and those of his partner he would make his best choice.

I trust that these are useful to you.

There may be some new information here or this might be a way of looking at things that you already knew.

Either way taking time to play to your strengths will impact that which you can control and will also impact the outcome that you want,

The goals that are important to you and the values that you want to live by.

Being at your best will influence your behaviour and the environment in which you find yourself today and you'll support others to be at their best too.

Give this a go,

Enjoy,

Take care and go well.

We're at the end of the course now and Jan and I would like to thank you for your presence and engagement.

Before we go I wonder if you can think of a time in which you might use each of the five tools in our little kit in the near future.

And remember even when you hadn't planned to use them the toolbox is always there within your reach.

With gratitude and much goodwill we wish the best possible outcomes for you and your loved ones.

Stay safe and well.

Reviews

The set of core strengths was really helpful. I did get torn between a few and spent some additional time in meditation on the strengths. The example exercises effectively conveyed how to practice the strengths out in the wild journey of life.

A great series of tools overall!

I wash sent your last session in this class about playing to our strengths when we don't know the outcome. I believe this course was made during the begging and middle of the pandemic. It's fabulous. I wrote it down as I was thinking of my son who is moving into his third year of incarceration. He asked me the other day when he had a choice to move to the cell with a former bunk mate who made origami animals for him, or to stay in the current cell in which he promised his current cell mate that he wouldn't leave. Mitch wanted to keep his promise but also wanted to be with a more intellectually stimulating cellmate. I told him that he would have to listen to his heart and gut because for me I find the least regrets when I ask myself questions that might impact another. I told him he has no obligation to either, mostly to himself so he won't carry regret. I told him that the inmates are constantly moving every day based on jail population and safety so there is no guarantee that the man who he promised to stay with may be gone the next day. I believe he chose to stick to his promise. My son us 27 and a good, safe young man. He makes a safe person to be around because he gets along with others well but stays away from gangs and gambling. So, I listened to this last track in your series and will send to him. I have created a way in my mind to make this entertaining to him so he doesn't just toss it in the mom pile. I am going to create a play. The strengths are going to be characters, etc. With little sketch drawings on paper. Thank you Jan and Keziah for sharing your wisdom. Look how far it is taking you. To a young man in Salt Lake City Utah, who made a terrible mistake involving the accidental death of a man. I hope I can create something on paper that he can share with other inmates. Namaste. A mom.

Hope, humour, and kindness are what get me through. Thanks for the toolkit, Jan and Keziah 🤍🤍🤍

Thank you :) this was helpful today.

Thank you for the great suggestions for coping with daily life. Where can I find a list of the 10 characteristics? It would be helpful for those of us who are visual learners. 🙏