How to find your purpose, by knowing your strengths
At a career crossroads, navigating the challenges of midlife, or approaching retirement and wondering what gives your life meaning? Oftentimes we find ourselves searching externally for answers in such moments, but to really understand what gives us purpose and meaning, we must first start from within. One of the most helpful ways of doing that, is identifying our personal strengths.
The History of Strengths-Based Research
Historically the field of psychology has been highly focused on identifying and treating diagnoses from more of a medical model. However more recent psychologists, including Don Clifton and Martin Seligman (the “father of positive psychology”), have developed tools and encouraged researchers to put greater emphasis on human strengths and characteristics that build people up.
Research from Gallup, for example, has found that employees who use their strengths every day are six times more engaged in their jobs.
“Strengths science answers questions about what's right with people rather than what's wrong with them.”
- Don Clifton
During this time, Clifton developed a strengths assessment called CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder), and Seligman and colleague Christopher Peterson created a classification of strengths to directly counterbalance the DSM they they called the VIA (for Values in Action).
To come up with the VIA classification, researchers surveyed everything from Confucius and Aristotle, to the Old Testament, bumper stickers, and even tarot cards and Hogwarts houses. The list was then analyzed for commonalities across traditions and passed through a set of criteria, such as ubiquity -is the strength recognized and celebrated across cultures? (It is worth noting that among “culture-bound strengths” that did not pass this test are traits such as ambition, achievement and autonomy, which are valued in some places like the US, but not all.)
Finding Your Personal Strengths
To help you identify some of your own strengths, start by taking one (or both!) of the strengths assessments below:
Strengths Assessments:
While the the above surveys outline many of the more universal strengths and virtues we find across cultures, they are by no means exhaustive. Consider additional strengths you’ve felt connected to throughout your life, or talk to friends and family.
Once you have a running list, you can begin to apply to some of the following areas:
Defining your sense of purpose & plotting your career - What are your “superpowers” or unique gifts? How can you use them to drive your “why” both in and outside of your ultimate career pursuits?
Find more fulfillment in your everyday work - Optimize toward your strengths in your day-to-day responsibilities and professional growth. Even reframe the work you like less to incorporate your strengths (just because you’re waiting tables doesn’t mean you can’t bring humor into your interactions!)
Claim your free time and pursue soul-filling hobbies - The variation in strengths from person to person serves as a significant reminder that what lights us up can differ greatly from one person to the next. Don’t get lost in what you think you “should” be doing. Follow what feels good to you.
Empower your relationships - Appreciate and build up one another’s strengths. Find and plan dates and activities that incorporate strengths from both sides.
Find your happy - In our last blog post, we discussed how the success of any psychological activity or intervention can depend heavily on its unique “fit” to each individual. Understanding your strengths can significantly help you identify the ideas and practices that will resonate with you most.
It can be helpful to think of strengths as similar to physical strengths, or muscles. They help serve as protective factors against some of life’s major challenges, but intentionally cultivating them can also help us to achieve more.
Thinking about purpose as multi-faceted
Finally, it’s not necessarily true that most of us have one singular and neatly packaged “passion” or “purpose” waiting to to be found. In fact, this narrative can actually limit us. Rather, by looking our passions and our purpose through the lens of our strengths, we see that both pursuits are directly influenced by our fevolving life experiences, and thus can be fluid, too. Give yourself permission to use your strengths to pursue and serve through a wide range of things you love over the course of your life, and to evolve them as as new contexts and life experiences mold your strengths and interests into new shapes, as well.f