Strengthen Resiliency by Utilizing Your Signature Strengths

The most important signature strength is the individual’s personality. Each person has a unique way of being, and no two are alike. By understanding your strengths, you can find opportunities to leverage them in order to cultivate resilience skills or create new ones.

The “art of manliness resilience” is a term that was coined by the author of “The Art of Manliness”. Resilience can be strengthened through utilizing your signature strengths.

This series of articles is now available as a professionally designed, distraction-free ebook that you can read at your leisure while offline. To purchase, go to this link.

When we first addressed resilience, we spoke about how it’s a reactive as well as an active trait, an ability that allows you to bounce back and reach out.

The focus of today’s talk will be on the active side of resilience and how to obtain the courage to take chances and accept change.

Embracing Your Authentic Self as a Source of Resilience

When your self-esteem and feeling of self-worth are based on other people, your work, or any other external sources, your confidence is unstable and vulnerable to change. When these external circumstances shift, your happiness and confidence shift as well. Like a roller coaster, your emotional fortitude rises and falls.

You won’t be able to embrace adventure and approach the world as a brave explorer if you base your self-concept on external things. If you build your self-concept on external factors, any changes in those factors will throw you off, cause anxiety, and force you to cling to the status quo as firmly as possible. You become desperate to maintain your current lifestyle and are unable to cope with change. Traveling, relocating, changing professions, and entering relationships are all things you fear because they change the context in which you’ve built your self-concept, leaving you feeling disoriented and out of control.

The key to active resilience is to base your self-concept on a real self, not a created self, and not on external objects, but on the inner, personal attributes that distinguish you as a man. Your specific abilities are the skills you’ll need to create a happy and rewarding existence. Knowing what tools you have at your disposal may give you the assurance that you’ll be able to confront any obstacle that comes your way. While we can’t foretell what will happen in the future, we can be confident in our capacity to cope with whatever comes our way.

Your resilience will stay strong wherever you go and whatever occurs to you if you base your self-concept on your own strengths.

Consider this: you can either live in a fort and keep your single gun in the turret, or you can attach your armament to yourself and carry it about with you. The tenacious guy is the life’s guerilla fighter.

Finding Your Personality Traits

The “DSM,” or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is presumably recognizable to anyone with a basic understanding of psychology. All of the psychiatric illnesses recognized by the American Psychiatric Association are classified and listed in the DSM.

In the subject of positive psychology, Drs. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson are pioneers. They set out to establish a list of human strengths rather than human diseases, believing that the discipline of psychology had spent too much time focused on mental illness rather than mental wellness. These physicians sought out to discover attributes that have been valued virtually universally throughout history, religion, and society.

Six fundamental qualities emerged from their investigation. They named 24 character qualities connected with each of these virtues. Character strengths provided pathways to living and achieving that virtue. Take a look at the following list:

1. Wisdom and knowledge-cognitive abilities including the learning and application of knowledge

Creativity
Curiosity
Open-mindedness
a desire to learn
Perspective

2. Courage—emotional qualities including the use of willpower to achieve objectives in the face of external or internal resistance.

Bravery
Persistence
Integrity
Vitality

3. Humanity—interpersonal skills such as caring for and befriending others

Love
Kindness
Social Intelligence is a term that refers to the ability to

4. Justice and civic virtues that support a healthy community

Citizenship
Fairness
Leadership

5. Strengths of temperance that guard against excess

Mercy and forgiveness
Humility/modesty
Prudence
Self-control is the ability to regulate oneself (self-control)

6. Transcendence—strengths that allow us to connect with others and the greater cosmos while also providing meaning

Beauty and excellence are valued (awe, wonder, elevation)
Gratitude
Hope
Humor
Spirituality

Take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths, which is accessible for free at authentichappiness.org under the name “Engagement Questionnaires,” before continuing.

Have you completed the test? Good. Examine the list of strengths provided in your findings.

No test is perfect, and the test taker can skew the results by selecting answers that describe the person they wish they were more than the person they are. As a result, you should double-check that the strengths indicated are those of the actual you. According to Seligman and Peterson, you should assess the genuineness of each strength using the following criteria:

Authenticity and a feeling of ownership (“This is the genuine me”).
A rush of adrenaline while exhibiting power, particularly at initially.
As the strength is initially exercised, there is a steep learning curve.
A constant search for new methods to put the strength into action.
A strong desire to put it to good use.
A sense of inevitability about using strength, as though one can’t be prevented or dissuaded from doing so.
While utilizing it, you will experience joy, zest, excitement, and even euphoria.
When employing the strength, you should feel energized rather than exhausted.
Personal undertakings that focus around strength are created and pursued.
Motivation to utilize the power that comes from inside.

If a skill satisfies many of these characteristics, it is considered one of your hallmark abilities. Signature strengths are “character characteristics that a person owns, cherishes, and uses regularly.” If a strength doesn’t match any of those requirements, it’s unlikely that it’s one of your hallmark strengths.

Increasing Your Life and Resiliency by Using Your Signature Strengths

“A found self, not a manufactured self, is the source of resiliency. It is the result of individuation, which is the gradual manifestation of your distinct, inborn skills. The better you become, the more distinct you become as a person—and it never stops.” -Al Siebert, Ph.D.

You can utilize your distinctive strengths to improve your life in three ways now that you know what they are:

1. Begin to define yourself based on your own skills rather than external factors. This isn’t some cliched self-esteem affirmation that says everyone is exceptional because they are. Your hallmark qualities are what genuinely distinguish you and give you something special to contribute to the world. Allow yourself to have faith in what you can give others. We may never be superheroes in the conventional sense, but you should see your personal qualities as unique “superpowers” that you can utilize to make the world a better place, as we discussed on Monday.

2. Accept your trademark strengths as a toolkit for dealing with life’s problems. Your distinctive strengths, unlike external factors, may accompany you wherever and assist you in any scenario. Your distinctive strengths are hanging over your shoulders like a bandoleer, ready to be utilized to construct something new if you get divorced, lose your job, or move to a new area. You’re the Rambo of toughness.

3. Practicing your distinctive strengths whenever and whenever you get the opportunity. The road to ultimate pleasure, contentment, satisfaction, and happiness is to exercise your distinctive strength. Find methods to use your distinctive qualities in your profession, relationships, families, and religion more often. The more happy you are, the stronger you will feel as a man, and it will be simpler for you to take chances and overcome disappointments.

Read the Complete Series Here:

Introduction (Part I) Part II: Changing Your Explanatory Style and Avoiding Learned Helplessness Taking Charge of Your Life (Part III) Part IV – Beware of the Iceberg! Part V: Recognizing and Using Your Unique Qualities Part VI – Stop predicting doom and gloom Building Your Children’s Resilience (Part VII)

Sources

Dr. Al Siebert’s book The Resiliency Advantage

Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Christopher Peterson’s Character Strengths and Virtues

Dr. Martin Seligman’s book Authentic Happiness

Watch This Video-

“Why every man should be strong” is the topic of this blog. The author believes that everyone has their own unique strengths and they should utilize them to make themselves stronger. This can only happen when you are aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and what motivates you in life. Reference: why every man should be strong.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the strengths of resilience?

A: Resilience is the process of dealing with adversities, hardships, or problems. Its an ability that helps people maintain a state of calm in order to keep doing what they need to do and not lose their sense of self.

What are considered signature strengths?

A: The following are things that would go into someones signature strengths but there is no specific list of what these might be. For example, a person may have the ability to multitask while working on various projects and do them all well at once.