Personal strengths: what are they and how to enhance them in therapy?

Several qualities that can be trained through psychological intervention.

Each and every one of us knows that there are things we are good at and things we are bad at.

Likewise, we all have aspects of our way of being that are notable for both good and bad, and that are considered both positive and negative not only by us but also by our peers and even by our culture. In the first case we are talking about aspects that we consider or are considered to be our personal strengths.

But what exactly is a personal strength? Is it possible to train or improve it? In this article we are going to make a brief commentary on the matter.

Personal strength: definition and basic characteristics

Personal strengths are understood as that set of skills, characteristics or psychological or attitudinal aspects in which we Excel and which represent some kind of virtue or adaptive advantage. They are those capabilities that represent positive and desirable elements in terms of personality.

For a characteristic to be considered a personal strength, it must be cross-culturally recognizable as something positive and desirable, valued for its own sake and not only for its results, and be capable of generating satisfaction for the person who possesses it. Likewise must also be measurable and have an undesirable opposite.. Another necessary element is the fact that it is a stable characteristic, generalizable to the subject's way of acting, and that it is outstanding in some people and not so much (or even non-existent) in others. They must be exemplary and visible, and there must be people who manifest them early on.

Personal strengths have a strong cultural background, and are often linked to practically universal values and can even be related to virtues. The study from psychology of this type of elements from the psychological field is relatively recent, being framed within positive psychology.

This is a current or movement within psychology that advocates the analysis and study of the factors that contribute to generate and maintain well-being. contribute to generate and maintain well-beingIt is different from the more traditional approach in which studies focused on the presence of deficits and mental disorders.

Within the analysis of mental strengths, the figures of Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (two fundamental authors within this paradigm) stand out, who even generated the Values in Action Project and even a personal strengths questionnaire based on these studies.

Examples of personal strengths

There are a large number of aspects that qualify as personal strengths. The aforementioned authors even went so far as to draw up a list in this regard, although this can be perfectly expandable depending on the values that are considered positive in a majority way. The following are eight examples of personal strengths that can be very useful in our day-to-day work.

1. Ability to work as part of a team

Probably one of the most in-demand skills in the workplace is also considered a powerful personal strength linked to interpersonal relationships and productivity. Being able to work in a team involves a large number of elements such as the ability to negotiate, but it is mainly the fact of being able to coordinate one's own efforts with those of others that stands out. but it mainly highlights the fact of being able to coordinate one's own efforts with those of others to achieve a specific goal. to achieve a specific objective.

2. Hope

One of the personal strengths that help us most in our day-to-day work and when it comes to training and helping us to achieve our goals is hope, more specifically the ability to have hope. This strength implies being able to look to the future and to establish positive predictions about it that serve as a guide and motivation to fight for the future. guide and motivate us to fight for the future.. This aspect is important: it is not only waiting for good things to happen, but also working to achieve them.

3. Mental flexibility and openness to experience

Mental flexibility and openness to experience, although they are not exactly the same thing and can be considered separate strengths, have a common background: in both cases they imply that the person is able to accept the existence of new possibilities beyond those previously taken into account. In the case of openness to experience there is also a component of curiosity, this being another possible personal strength.

4. Curiosity

Linked to the above mentioned facts, curiosity is the force or impulse that allows us to approach the force or impulse that allows us to approach to learn, see or test new possibilities.. This interest in the new allows us to be more flexible, to learn and to live much more diverse experiences.

5. Fairness

Linked to the concept of justice, impartiality is a strength that allows us to make relatively objective judgments. It involves being able to put aside personal opinions and to make our judgment of the situation our own emotional involvement in the case..

6. Persistence

Persistence or perseverance can be a personal strength of great interest. It involves the ability to initiate, continue and complete a given course of action despite the fact that difficulties may arise. To stick with it even when it is hard and to strive for the goals set without giving up.

7. Kindness

A complex concept but undoubtedly one of the most recognized and difficult strengths to maintain. Kindness implies the ability to focus on helping others, having a good disposition towards what surrounds us and trying not to cause harm or damage to others. It implies a certain level of compassion and love. Sometimes also kindness, although many people have the strength of kindness without necessarily being cordial or kind in their dealings.

8. Love

One of the forces that move the world. Mainly love as a strength refers to the ability to give and receive esteem and positive emotionality in interactions with our loved ones and the environment. While strength usually focuses on the ability to give and receive affection from others, it should also include being able to love oneself.

How do we strengthen these personal qualities?

Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses, and it may be more than advisable to diminish the latter and enhance the former. However, for many people it can be complicated to to enhance and strengthen (redundancy aside) our personal strengths.. In order to achieve this, both on a personal level and in the case that we are in therapy and we want our patient to train them, we must take into account the following issues.

1. Identify strengths

Understanding which aspects of ourselves are strengths may seem intuitive and logical, but the truth is that if we put our minds to it, in many cases we will find it difficult to find them. And the fact is that thinking about what we are good at is not as common as it seems, not valuing and recognizing ourselves often some highly recognizable aspects of our way of being and doing.

Thus, the first step to strengthen our strengths is none other than to becoming aware of them. To do this we can turn to different sources of information, including our own perception of things we do and in which we consider we excel and contrasting these beliefs with the opinions of others, or asking others and assessing whether their opinion is correct.

2. Analyze the different factors that are part of it.

In addition to being aware of what we are good at or what aspects of our being are most outstanding, it is advisable to try to fragment these capabilities in such a way that we can see, already within that capacity, in which aspects we excel more and in which it would be more advisable to work to enhance them even more.

3. Work on specific aspects

It is not feasible to indicate a unitary way to work on all the strengths, since they are different from each other and require specific ways and elements to work on them. For example, in the case of love, kindness or even teamwork, the link with others and emotional expression should be worked on. should work on bonding with others and emotional expression, as well as some work on empathy.as well as some work on empathy.

Similarly, justice or fairness may require practice based on exposure to situations involving ethical dilemmas, noting the existence of different equally valid positions and taking into account the possibility of taking different courses of action.

Perseverance would require setting realistic goals and visualizing, planning and preparing for them. and visualization, planning and preparation for possible difficulties, as well as ways to act upon them.

Creativity could be trained through exercises that stimulate lateral thinking or with expressive or art therapies. The ability to imagine, read and visualize are also trainable and facilitate both this and, for example, curiosity (which we can also enhance through the deepening of the aspects that cause us interest).

4. Put your strengths to the test

To be able to empower ourselves we not only have to know our strengths but also their limits. This means exposing ourselves to the practice of behavioral activities and experiments where we see how far we can go. in which we observe how far we can go and what it means for us, so that we can work on trying to improve ourselves.

5. Train and practice

As with most things in life (e.g. physical fitness or level of proficiency in a non-native language), what is not trained tends to get lost or downgraded. That is why we should try to to put our strengths into practice with some frequency.

Bibliographical references:

• Clariano, S.M. y de los Ríos, P. (2012), Psicología de la Salud. Manual CEDE de Preparación PIR, 04. CEDE: Madrid.
• Peterson, C. & Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. OUP USA.
• Seligman, M.E.P. (2003). La auténtica felicidad. Barcelona: Bergara.