When you were little, did you imagine growing up to be Wonder Woman or Super Man? How about the Wonder Twins? Do you remember them? Where did all our thoughts and dreams as a child of wanting to be a superhero go? The moment we became responsible for our own bills, I think we were forced to put our dreams away and deal with what was right in front of us. Adulting took the place of childhood fantasies and trudging through life became our reality. As we continue in The One Year Journey series, let’s take a moment to focus on our superpowers. Not like those of our Superheroes but our own natural superpowers.
I never understood what strengths were until recently and my life has been changed. And now, I am a believer. I purchased the Strengths Finder 2.0** book probably about 10 years ago. It had sat on the shelf with many other growth books which I have a habit of collecting. About a year ago, I met a life coach who focused on doing strengths-based coaching and asked me if I had heard of Strengths Finder 2.0. I told her I had the book but never read it. Then she shared a secret about the book – I didn’t have to read the whole thing! She told me that there was a code in the back of the book and for me to go to the Gallup Strengths Finder website with the code and take the quiz. So, I did, and my life has been forever changed.
After you take this quiz, it analyzes the 34 different strengths and gives you your top 5 strengths. My top 5 happens to be Futuristic, Activator, Command, Focus and Achiever. Once you know your strengths, you can now look up these strengths in the Strength Finders book. Yes, that book which sat on the shelf, I finally had the opportunity to see what it was all about.
I have to be honest with you, I think I knew I had some of these strengths but to have them named and put in the order of strongest to strong caused me to be curious about these strengths and how each of these have looked in my life. Each and every one of these strengths, I knew I had but I had no idea how significantly they were showing up in my day-to-day life and how I have interacted with people.
Part of learning about your strengths is first the recognition of them and to celebrate them. Until I saw that Futurist was my top strength, I had no clue. But once I was able to name it, be curious about what being a Futurist meant, things became so clear. A Futurist is a visionary. Many well-known people are great visionaries – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson to name a few. I’m not on the level of these men and personally, I have no desire to go to space but if someone throws out an idea, I can envision it and give steps of how to get to the realization of the idea and other sub-ideas to lead up to that point or even beyond. My second strength of Activator plays hand in hand with the Futurist. Once I have the vision, I can activate steps toward the vision and put the wheels into motion. Having these strengths were critical when I launched my own practice and continue to guide me as I envision the evolution of the practice.
The other part of learning about your strengths is also understanding the flip side to the strengths, which would be your weaknesses. We have all heard the saying “Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness.” And this can definitely be true if we are not aware of our strengths and understand the flip side of them. Let’s take for example my top strength of being a Futurist. The strength of a Futurist is clear but the flip side to the strength is that someone who is a Futurist and unaware of their strengths may not know how to balance their future focused nature and stay in the present moment. Having a vision for the future is great but if you cannot stay in the present moment and incorporate the future vision with your current reality, you are merely just living in fantasyland.
Learning about your strengths are just the first steps. The next step will be to understand the strengths and the kryptonite to these strength and grow in a balanced manner and turn them into your natural superpower sans the negative.
Take the brave steps with us to name your superpowers and your strengths. Let’s find out how we can build on these strengths as we go through The One Year Journey. Connect with us and share with us what your superpowers are. We want to celebrate and acknowledge them with you!
Next week on Build Your Foundations, we will home in on our top 5 strengths. We hope you will join us and be a part of the conversation as we continue in The One Year Journey series.
The One Year Journey is currently available for those who are at a crossroad in their lives and are ready to launch into a year-long intensive series of one-on-one coaching to help you go from not knowing what may come next to becoming your best self and living your best life.* We are also very excited to share that Group Coaching and Support will be available in the near future.
* There is no guarantee of becoming your best self and living your best life. Foundations Divorce Solutions and Foundations Coaching Group will help guide our clients through the journey, but the change will happen if and when the individual does the hard work themselves. The results will not be an overnight transformation. This process will take at least one full year and as the tools learned are implemented into a daily practice, change will come, and growth will continue to happen.
** Affiliate Link to Strengths Finder 2.0
