I have recently been on a personal journey of really trying to discover my strengths. Maybe this is because I think there is so much more I can contribute to this world, maybe it is because I want to enjoy the work that I do, or maybe it is because I think I see other people doing amazing work and I want to join the party. Whatever the reasons, I know that it ultimately comes down to the fact that I am realizing that I cannot do everything. I am realizing that I cannot be doing a lot of things really well. And I realize that the work that I do love doing suffers because of all of the other things calling for my attention.

This is ultimately my own responsibility and I need to take ownership of that. Nobody has been there telling me exactly what I must be doing from one hour to the next. Nobody has structured my weeks or months and all of the allotted free time within those periods. I am the sole person who has the responsibility of directing my own ship, of finding ways to utilize my strengths and leveraging them so they benefit projects I am working on.

The past few months I have been re-reading books I previously read about strengths including StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Living Your Strengths. I have also read Marcus Buckingham’s books Standout, The One Thing You Need to Know, and Go, Put Your Strengths to Work. In addition I have been re-looking at past personality assessments I have done such as the Myers-Briggs, the CPI, and the Social Styles assessment to make sure I am thinking about all aspects of my life. Another book that has been informative for me in this process is Susan Cain’s bestseller Quiet. Finally, I am about to start reading Don Miller’s book Storyline and am excited to go through his process for figuring out what the main themes I want my life to be about.

All of this is to say that it would be useless if I just read these books or took these assessments. I need to do something with them. I need to work through them and find out how they resonate with me and speak into my life. I need to be diligent in taking Marcus Buckingham’s advice in Go, Put Your Strengths to Work and work through finding out what I love doing and what I loathe doing and then really digging into his followup questions for each of those activities. I need to fully enter into the journey that Don Miller proposes in his Storyline book and online tool. I need to practice talking about my strengths to people and finding ways to mitigate or delegate my weaknesses.

Building on your strengths is all about action. The action does not need to be monumental to create real, lasting change in your life. It simply needs to be intentional, practical, and constantly moving forward each and every day. This process of re-discovering my own strengths and clarifying them has even had an impact on my search for a practicum. I really want to narrow down what I am looking for and focus on a niche I want to serve in the future. The more I am going through this process myself the more I am realizing how it really fits into the mental health field. I get excited just thinking about how I can help other people discover their own strengths and finding ways to leverage those strengths in their professional lives, personal lives, and in relationships.

What have you been doing to evaluate your strength?

How have you gone about focusing more utilizing your strengths?

What has been helpful to you during this process?

Is there anything that hasn’t been very helpful?

Do you know of a resource regarding strengths, using strengths based approaches in mental health, or even a clinic/therapy practice that focuses on strengths based approaches?

Leave me a note in the comments or send me an email to tell me about it.

This youth worker’s story really resonates with me. The focus of this video is on adolescents and teens but I think it is true of so many people. When we make mistakes we want to run and hide but this does not solve our problems. I know I need to be reminded about the grace God has for me in the situations when I screw up. What is our response as the church, as role models, as mentors to young people when they screw up? Do we say “I told you so?” or maybe “What did you think would happen?” I think the much more appropriate and much more useful for students to have people in their life who pursued them and reminded them about God’s love, truth, and grace in their life.

I am making it my resolution to respond to my students in these ways that provide more of an example of Christ’s love. I hope that in the process of responding to my students in this way that I will also be reminded of these truths of God in my life as well.

This story about a man in Belgrade, Serbia has been making the rounds on the internet and in newspapers. I first saw the story in the Star Tribune while having a cup of coffee. I found this article to be a little more in depth and informative however.

What strikes me about the story is the first time the man saved someone it was purely by chance but since then it has taken more focused effort. He is now aware that people may want to jump from this particular bridge and so he is constantly watching for people trying to commit suicide while still going about his daily life. He does what he can by being aware and responding to situations when they arise. He asks for nothing in return and just wishes to give people a second chance at life.

How similar is this to those of us in the helping professions? We often get started in our field by simply being present for some situation and then we become aware of similar situations all around us. We start to become acquainted with what to look for and the next thing you know we are trying to gather as much information about people in these situations as we possibly can. We become finely attuned to the warning signs and then hopefully we act. I say hopefully because I know not all situations smack us in the way that hearing someone scream and thrash about in a cold river might compel us to act. I know that I need to keep my eyes on the landscapes around me so I am more aware and ready to act the next time I am faced with an opportunity to help someone.

My encouragement to be ever more vigilant is also tempered with the reality that we cannot be present or available at every moment someone might need. This man in Belgrade could only save about half the people who had jumped. We cannot beat ourselves up over the ones we could not help but only celebrate with the ones we can help. Only we need to make sure we don’t expect or need to be thanked for our efforts. We can simply take joy in knowing we have done what we can to the best of our abilities and in light of the opportunities presented to us.