Holidays

Happy Holidays

I know I've been missing in action for the month of December - but I've been truly enjoying the holidays and spending lots of time with family and friends. I've really tried to make an effort this year about truly getting into the true spirit of the season.  So, because I've been slack on writing a blog - - here is a wonderful way to view your character strengths this holiday season. It comes from the Center of Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) organization in the UK. I hope you enjoy it.

CAPP is a wonderful organization that truly helps to promote, research and educate the world in Positive Psychology, strengths application and more. Check them out at: http://www.cappeu.com
for more information and resources related to their services.

The Strengths Story of Christmas

We can tell the strengths story of Christmas with one strength from each of the five Strengths Families. It goes something like this... From the Relating family, we start with Personalisation, as we strive to find the perfect gift for the perfect people in our lives. If we're strong in Personalisation, this will be our favourite time of the festive season - although we're likely to have been spotting the perfect gifts right throughout the year! With Personalisation, you probably can't help yourself - you see something, and you just know that it will be perfect for Jane, or Simon, or Grandma. When the holiday season finally arrives, it might be the Motivating strength of Work Ethic that we can at last dial back and even turn off, for a while at least. For the British, it seems that Christmas is the one holiday where you have a reasonable chance that other people will be off work as well. So enjoy it, relax, and recharge. The Work Ethic requirement will come around again soon enough when January dawns, as we know from our UK population strengths data (Work Ethic is the most prevalent learned behaviour)... For Christmas Day itself, Gratitude, from the Strengths Family of Being, could be our signature strength. Gratitude for the gifts we have received, enjoyment of the time we have with our family and friends, and appreciation for what we have in our lives and what we have achieved over the last year. Step back and savour, making the most of your Gratitude strength on this special day. As the festivities proceed, we might find ourselves drawing from the Communicating Strengths Family, where Humour could be the order of the day. Defuse any tension around Christmas dinner with a laugh and a joke, then sit back and enjoy the Christmas comedies that grace our screens. Later on, as the anticipation of the good times recedes, to be replaced by the reality of the year that is to come, we may well turn our attention to the Thinking Strengths Family, and especially the strength of Prevention. "Don't over-indulge!" we may warn ourselves, as our focus shifts to what we can do now that will serve us well for the future (top tip - for help with your New Year's resolutions for 2012, look back to Strengths Dynamic #1 for advice on the strengths that serve goal attainment). As we do all of these things, there is perhaps one thing that we should do above all. That is to remember that we are part of the human race, and to exercise our strength of Compassion as we think about others less fortunate than ourselves. What can we do to alleviate their suffering and salve their distress? Christmas is a time for celebration, for reflection, and for anticipation, yet it is equally a time to ensure that we remember others less fortunate than ourselves and play our part in helping them. So, with this final Strengths Dynamic for 2011, I wish you all a wonderful Christmas season. I hope you have enjoyed reading the Dynamics over the course of this year, and above all, I hope that your knowledge of your strengths has inspired you to make a positive difference in your world. Maximising our strengths is right for us, right for our performance, and right for our well-being. Make the most of your strengths in 2012! With our warmest compliments of the season, Alex Linley and the Capp Team