Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

― Maya Angelou

Welcome to the second part of the positive psychology challenge! The first part was basic training for making the most of your life and living your life to the fullest. You had an introduction to positive psychology, learned about happiness, and the theory of PERMA about the five elements of well-being. You also learned about three things that you will help you increase them:

(1) positive reappraisal which is the ability change your mind for the better,

(2) behavioural activation which involves finding and doing what you love to do, and

(3) exposure to what you fear as a way of increasing your courage for overcoming obstacles.

The three good things activity that you focused in most of the chapters in the first part was a way of opening your eyes to more of the goodness and beauty around you every day.

During this second part of the challenge, we will focus on enabling you to better see and use what is best about yourself. During the next third part, we will concentrate on improving your relationships with others and the world around you before focusing on helping you create a plan for a better future in the fourth and final part.

As I said in early in the first part of this chapter, before the dawn of the positive psychology movement, the focus in psychology was primarily on what can go wrong with us. Psychology and psychiatry developed what is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or DSM. This was developed to classify all of the mental and behavioural problems that may affect us, including things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, schizophrenia, and PTSD.

To balance what can go wrong with what can go right, Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson led the development of what has been jokingly called the “UN-DSM,” a manual that classifies the attitudes, behaviours, and strengths that enable us to be happy, successful, and create a life worth living. They recruited a large, diverse, and well-respected group of psychologists and social scientists from around the world. This group met frequently during the early years of positive psychology and came up with a new classification of human virtues and strengths. Their goal was to identify the things that across time and culture represent us at our best and contribute to both individual and community happiness and well-being.

The result is what is called the Values in Actions or VIA classification of virtues and strengths. It is presented in that “UN-DSM” or what is more formally titled the Character.

Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. They also developed a survey that we ask you to take that will enable you to identify your top strengths. Most important, during the past 20 years, they and other positive psychologists have identified and developed a growing number of ways to build and use each of the strengths. Unlike the fictional powers in Star Wars or Harry Potter, these strengths represent the real powers that are within our grasp and that can help us create the kind of lives we seek.

Thus, we are focusing on many of these strengths in different chapters in this challenge and in this part will help you identify and learn how to better use your top strengths on your journey. To begin, I want to introduce the 24 strengths as they are classified under six overarching virtues. As I go through these, see if you can identify some that may be top strengths for you:

• The first virtue is Wisdom, which enables us to find our way in life, and it includes the strengths of Wisdom itself; Curiosity; Love of Learning; Open-mindedness; and Creativity.
• The second virtue is Courage, which enables us to overcome obstacles to moving forward in our lives, and it includes the strengths of Bravery; Authenticity, Honesty, and Integrity; Perseverance; and Vitality or Zest.
• The third virtue is Humanity, which enables us to establish and maintain good relationships with other people and it includes the strengths of Love; Kindness; and Social or Emotional Intelligence.
• The fourth virtue is Justice, which enables us to create a healthy and just society and includes Fairness; Citizenship or Teamwork; and Leadership.
• The fifth virtue is Temperance, which helps us keep balance in our lives, and it includes Self Control; Humility; Forgiveness; and Prudence – which has to do with careful planning.
• The sixth and final virtue is Transcendence, which enable us to connect with things larger than ourselves, and it includes Optimism and Hope; Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence; Gratitude; Humour and Playfulness; and Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality.

Now that you know what these virtues and strengths are, I need to make a critical point about them. Because of our negativity bias and tendency to focus so much on our disorders; many people primarily focus on correcting their weaknesses – rather than how to better use their top strengths.

The difference between working on your weaknesses and finding new ways to use your strengths has been compared to a sailboat that represents each of us. Working on our weaknesses is like fixing the holes in the boat. Sometimes it is necessary but usually not a lot of fun and if it is all we do we may never really get anywhere. In contrast, focusing on better using our top strengths – like you will do in this part for the challenge – is like lifting the sails! When we do that, we really begin to get somewhere and it will feel like having the wind at our backs.

This is like finding things you love to do, “following your bliss” in Joseph Campbell’s terms, or experiencing flow – which often involves the expression of our top strengths. The other thing is that once you experience that wind at your back in using your strengths, it is often not as hard to work on the holes in your boat – and using your top strengths can help with that. In this challenge, you will get good ideas for building the strengths that you struggle with, but the most important thing is that you begin to realize that you already have sails and that you begin to lift them and see what happens!

You can see the power of this in the life of the singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who was blind as a young child, although he had an exquisite sense of hearing. The turning point in his young life came when a mouse got loose in his elementary school classroom one day. The teacher had noticed little Stevie’s gift for hearing and asked him to use it to find the mouse.

The whole class got quiet and Stevie began to hear what others couldn’t. He followed the sound to the wastebasket where the mouse was hiding. The class cheered and thereafter Stevie began to see himself more in terms of his strengths rather than his weaknesses. This led him to embrace his gift for hearing and become one of the most creative and successful musicians of the past 40-50 years. During that day in class, he felt the wind at his back, and I hope you will begin to feel that same wind during this part of this challenge – which brings us to the tasks for this chapter.

Workbook Tasks for the Chapter

These tasks are designed to help you better identify your top strengths, reflect on when you have used them, and spot strengths in others.

First, there is a task that involves going to the website where you can take the Values in Action (VIA) Survey that will enable you to identify your top strengths. After you complete the survey, you will be given a ranking of the 24 VIA strengths from your highest to lowest. This will be an important first step in seeing, embracing, and using what is best in yourself and for the activities that will involve using your top strengths during the rest of this part of the challenge. Although you may see options for paying for a larger report on the survey website, all you need for completing the tasks in this workbook is the ranking of your 24 strengths which doesn’t cost anything.

Second, there is an activity where you will be asked to list your top five strengths from the VIA survey and write about a time you were at your best using at least one of your top strengths. Just as it can be very helpful to think and write about times you have been resilient or benefited from stress, so to it can be very useful to remember and reflect on the times you have used your top strengths. This can improve your confidence and motivation to use them and make it more likely you will benefit from using them in the future.

Third, there is a task for beginning to practice what has been called “strength spotting,” which will improve your ability to see and empower the best in others. Below, there is a list of the 24 VIA strengths with a brief description of each and a link to a special video of a scene from the movie Good Will Hunting. The task for you will be to circle the strengths that you see in either the Robin Williams or the Matt Damon character.

Fourth, there also is a copy of the list of 24 VIA strengths in Appendix G. The final task is for you to use it to identify the strengths in one of your friends or family members. If you can, share your list with them and try to let them know when, where, and how you have seen the strengths that you identified in them. Then you can ask them to identify your strengths and you can talk about how to better support each other in using your strengths. This is one of the best ways to increase your ability to see the best in other people.