How To Find Your Strengths And Feel Happier, More Confident And Less Stressed

Wondering how to harness your strengths to feel happier, more confident and less stressed?  Learn all about it in our post by Neil Francis, author of Positive Thinking (LID Publishing, 2019)

I would like to introduce you to one of the most prolific inventors of our time, a name you’ve probably never heard: Yoshiro Nakamatsu or, as he likes to be called, Dr NakaMats. He is the holder of over 3,500 patents for his inventions.

The 3,500 patents he has include the CD, the DVD, the fax machine, the taxi meter, the digital watch, the karaoke machine, CinemaScope, spring-loaded shoes, fuel-cell-powered boots, an invisible ‘B-bust bra’, a water-powered engine, the world’s tiniest air conditioner, a self-defence wig that can be swung at a attacker, a pillow that prevents drivers from nodding off behind the wheel, an automated version of the popular Japanese game pachinko, a musical golf putter that pings when the ball is struck properly, and a perpetual motion machine that runs on heat and cosmic energy, to name just a few!

What Has Dr NakaMats Got To Do With Positive Thinking?

In an interview, Dr NakaMats described his ‘creativity process’, which includes listening to music and diving.  Diving is where he comes up with his best ideas and even records them while underwater.

Nakamatsu claims that he benefits from a lack of oxygen to the brain during his dives, making inventions “0.5 seconds before death’.

He also claims that his Calm Room, a bathroom constructed without nails and tiled in 24-carat gold, encourages creative thinking by blocking television and radio waves.

But what has Dr NakaMats got to do with positive thinking? Well, he is exceptionally creative and has dedicated his life to putting that creativity into action as an inventor.

Creativity is his key strength, to the extent that he has developed his own creativity process to help him come up with more inventions.

So, using your strengths more frequently, like Dr NakaMats, you will think and act more positively.

Performing At Your Best

A strength is a personal attribute that energizes you and enables you to perform at your best. A strength is also a strong attribute or an inherent asset. Using strengths enables people to consistently provide a seamless performance in a specific activity.

Your strengths are innate and unique to you and leveraging them can improve performance. When you use your strengths, it just feels right.

Strength-Based Tools

Over the last 20 years there has been a boom in strength-based tools to help identify dominant strengths. Probably the two most popular tools are the Gallup StrengthsFinder (now CliftonStengths) and VIA (Values in Action) Character Strengths.

Through interviewing 1.7 million individuals form various fields and roles – executives, salespeople, teachers, doctors, lawyers, students, administrators, manual laborers and nurses, to name but a few – Gallup was able to identify 34 key strengths or ‘talent themes’.

From this they developed an assessment tool, the StrengthsFinder, which allows anyone to identify their dominant thinking patterns, which Gallup calls Strength Themes.

To date, over 20 million people around the world have tried these tools.

Your Signature Strengths

Let me give you some examples of a talent:

• A talent for empathy. You walk into a room where a meeting is in progress and, very quickly, you pick up on the atmosphere. If the meeting is going badly, you feel the tension in the air. The key is that you sense the tension without anyone actually saying anything.
• A talent for action. There’s one person who’s desperate for everyone to reach a decision. They have a talent for getting things done quickly.
• A talent for focus. Meanwhile, there’s also a person who is getting stressed that the agenda is changing, and that the meeting is now covering lots of new subjects. That person has a talent for concentrating on one thing at a time.

Talents are also referred to as character strengths, for example in the VIA classification of 24-character strengths.

These 24-character strengths fall under the six broad categories of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Typically, each of us has a unique set of signature strengths that we frequently use.

Playing To Your Strengths

Whether you see your strengths as innate talents or character strengths, when exercised, your strengths tend to energize and excite you.  They bring you more fully alive and help you to meet the demands of your daily life.

Using your strengths in the right way can bring you into a state of ‘flow’ when doing any activity. When you experience flow, you lose track of time. You don’t feel self-conscious and you feel that what you’re doing is intrinsically rewarding and enjoyable because you are using your strengths to maximise impact.

Increased Happiness, Resilience & Confidence

Not only does playing to your strengths improve your well-being, it can help you improve your performance at work, making you more likely to achieve your goals. These are very compelling reasons to identify your strengths and start using them more, both at home and in the workplace.

Using your strengths often is beneficial for you in a number of ways.

• Increased resilience: using your strengths frequently will help you to bounce back better from adversity
• Increased confidence: using your strengths more is associated with increased self-esteem and self-efficacy
• Less stress: by using your strengths, over time you will suffer less stress
• Increased vitality: using your strengths is associated with high levels of positive energy
• Goal achievement: people who use their strengths are more likely to attain their goals
• Increased happiness: using your strengths can make you happier and contribute to your wellbeing

So, the obvious question is, how do you identify your strengths?

How To Identify Your Strengths

There’s a huge range of tools, books and online assessments and methods to help you identify your strengths. With regard to online tools, the two I found really helpful were VIA Character Strengths and he Gallup StrengthsFinder.

The books I would recommend are The Strengths Book by Sally Bibb and StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath and Gallup. The latter gives you information about the StrengthsFinder tool and its history and describes in detail the 34 individual strengths. Both are brilliant books.

In addition, to help you get the most out of these tools and books, I would recommend that you have at least one discussion with a mentor or coach who understands these tools. These coaches can help you better understand what your strengths are and how to maximize the impact they can have in your life.

If this feels a bit formal, or if you don’t like doing this kind of assessment, a simple way of uncovering your strengths is to ask your friends and family – those who are closed to you – what they think your strengths are.

What You’re Naturally Good At

By this, I mean the things they’ve observed that you are naturally good at. Don’t ask them about your knowledge and skills, but about your innate strengths. Some examples are listed below.  You…..

• are really adaptable and can spin many plates at once
• have a wonderful ability to get the most out of people
• are fantastic at communicating, whether one-on-one or in front of a big crowd
• are driven to get things done
• dislike conflict and try to bring people together
• love creativity and invention
•  have a passion for learning and exploring new things

And if you really think about it, you’ll probably find that you already know exactly what you’re naturally good at. So, along with considering what your family and friends tell you, sit down and ask yourself which aspects of your current job, role or hobby fill you with excitement.

In which areas do you get the most positive feedback from others and which tasks do you feel really comfortable doing? These are probably the areas in which you are using your strengths.

My Stroke And Strengths

After I had my stroke, I had significant cognitive impairment in a number of areas. However, it became apparent fairly quickly that my natural strengths had remained largely intact.

I was still bursting with ideas and keen to put them into practice.  I could still pick up the mood of a room very quickly.  And I could still see how to achieve potential outcomes by connecting up ideas and people.

My limitations, however, were far more pronounced than they had been before the stroke.

Organizing and planning my week was very challenging.  Focusing on one thing, even for a short time, was very difficult.  Scenario planning was virtually impossible.

The first time I did the StrengthsFinder assessment was three years before I had my stroke. So, to see if I’d retained my strengths or if they had changed, I repeated the assessment a few years after my stroke.

And do you know what, the results were the same! My strengths were the same as they’d been before the stroke.

This emphasized that I should focus more than ever on developing and using my strengths. By doing so, I was able to achieve far more than if I worked on my limitations. I still do this today. And the results are still the same: whenever I am using my strengths, I feel more resilient and confident and achieve my goals more easily.

Everything feels more natural and enjoyable. Crucially, this leads to me thinking positively about the goals I have set myself and the challenges I am facing.

Identifying your own strengths and then using them so that you also can set realistic and achievable goals and overcome challenges in your own life helps you become dramatically more positive in your thinking.