USING STRENGTHS TO CREATE A BETTER FUTURE

“To learn, to remember, and to experience is our gift as human beings.

We are changed.  To stop learning is to stop changing.

When we demonstrate what we have learned, the universe will never leave us behind.  Our change is our own evolution. “            

–Joe Dispenza

 

I am a product of change.  I have lived through changes.  I learn.  I remember as I experience.  That is my joy.  My Learner strength is my heartiest, most insistent, hungriest.  I want to apply what I have learned, edging ever into better and better life and living– and that is my maximizer strength.  These strengths were obtained by taking the Clifton StrengthsFinder, which is available online at https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com

I recognize my connectedness strength when I get with people like you and we look for common experiences, common learning, and we form community around those experiences and that learning.

Input is the evidence that I am a learner, because I collect books and knowledge.  I cannot get enough.  I enthusiastically explore ideas put forth by pioneer folks who deliver us to the next phase of our growth.  One such is Jason McLennon, who masterminded the architecture of the Bullitt center in Seattle.  His book, Zugenruhe, is all about the restlessness before migration.  Birds show us the model and I say we humans in our restlessness are looking ahead to a future that is emerging.  A very different future.

So, I place my faith in you.  You are the generation that will stand on our shoulders, building a better world.  There is a physics principle—a law—the theory of dissipative structures.  Ilya Prigogene, Nobel prize winner for this theory,  said old structures die away and new ones form—transcendent to the old.  We are getting better—-unless we fail to change!

How do you put your strengths into action?  How do you practice these strengths every day.  If you think back to yesterday and last week.  Identify the good events, moments, happenings.  Now connect that good event to your 5 strengths.

Share what you discovered with a person you trust.

Strengths are never done.  You can always grow them.  They exist in you and in your brain mind system as talents—recurring patterns of thoughts-feelings-behaviors.  You will know you are in your strengths when you lose track of time because you got so involved and immersed in what you were doing.  You have a sense of satisfaction when you are in your strengths path.  These top five themes are your best descriptors of your true self.

They grow as you use them; they grow as you add more skills and knowledge.  I select one of my strengths periodically to focus on and expand.  Right now, I am into Connectedness.  So, I am reading and studying spirituality and the connection of science to spirituality.  I see that we are all in this together, a part of the nothing that became something at the big bang.  That “nothing” didn’t disappear, it is still available to each one of us as the field of infinite possibility, from which we can generate ideas, create new products, processes, and push the edges of possibilities to more and better formations.

There is an intelligence within me that gives life and motivation to my behavior.  If my thoughts matter, I can surrender old ways of thinking and feeling, tied to old experiences.  I can take turning points in my life and transform them into the next formation of who I am.  Most of our turning points are somewhat negative.  We can see how we were interrupted by illness, death, destruction, tragedy and we remember the impact of these negative events.  From that abrupt interruption, we proved our resilience and likely went on to something  better.

Think back to the major turning points in your life and look at how those events  changed you.

Take a look at one of your past successes and connect it to your five strengths, one or more.

Imagine something you are planning for the future and connect that to your top 5.

What turns you on and motivates you to want to do something?  Inspires you?

Think of something new you learned yesterday.  Last week?

All of these questions will take you to a new realization of your worth, the true self, the person you can become.  Strengths are a great common language (nearly 8 million other people on Earth know what their top five Strengths are)….based on positive possibilities and realistic fired and wired brain pathways.  These pathways have been with you since you reached teenage.  They are the possibilities of productivity for you.  That means, the more you reinforce them by using them and stretching them into possibilities, the more you grow into your authenticity.

Your authentic self will not reduce you to fear, shame, guilt, or feelings of inadequacy.  Your authentic self is hopeful, optimistic, and positive.  So, the point of these words is to give you a new lease on your future.  Let the past be gone and create the story you want to live.  You are the Author, you are the Actor, and you are the Audience in your life drama.  Tell a new story, based on those good talents called Strengths,  and you will experience a new life!