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Live Your Life with Gumption

Strengths Finder 2.0

Strengths Summary ? Final Thoughts

Strengths_Summary-Final_Thoughts

Knowing your own strengths is potentially life-changing.

Strengths are the things you like to do.
Strengths are the things you naturally do well.
Strengths are the things you subconsciously continue to develop – with ease.
By definition, your strengths don’t need fixing or improving.

During our formal education and within society generally, a huge emphasis has been spent on trying to fix or improve.
By definition, the things that need fixing or improving are our weaknesses.
Our weaknesses need to be fixed or improved.

Do you see the disconnect?

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Responsibility

Dear Reader. Hopefully you’ll see the irony of this post appearing a few days late. All the pieces were in place for my Responsibility post to appear as originally scheduled last Thursday. Despite good intentions, it did not happen. I take responsibility. Drop-the-ball is as drop-the-ball does.

Strength#5_Responsibility

Tom Rath’s book Strengths Finder 2.0revealed my top five strengths. My number five strength is responsibility. Wow! It’s a good thing – I’ve based my career on Gumption, or personal responsibility. It’s a relief to learn I’m practicing what I preach – LOL!

People with the responsibility theme, or strength, take psychological ownership for all that they commit to do – large or small. They feel emotionally bound to follow through to completion. When they can’t deliver, they try to make it up to the person to whom they’ve committed.

Responsibility people feel that apologies aren’t good enough. They believe that excuses and rationalizations are unacceptable. They can’t live with themselves until restitution has been made.

Ouch! Knowing this about myself makes me want to be careful for the commitments I make … and explains a lot about myself.

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Connectedness

Strength#4_Connectedness

Tom Rath’s book Strengths Finder 2.0revealed my top five strengths. My number four strength is connectedness. Simply put, people with the connectedness strength believe that things happen for a reason. I am certain of this.

Connectedness people believe that individuals are part of something larger than themselves. We are all individuals with free will, but we are connected to a larger spirit or life force. I, too, believe this with my heart and soul.

Of my top five strengths, connectedness was the most surprising strength. Here’s why.

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Strategic

Strength#3_Strategic

Tom Rath’s book Strengths Finder 2.0revealed my top five strengths. My number three strength is strategic. Strategic people create alternative ways to proceed. They quickly spot relevant patterns and issues when faced with a given scenario.

Just like I am a futurist, I also believe I’m a strategic. I see strategic and futurist in myself as a nice complement. The futurist side is creative – my right brain. The strategic side is logical – my left brain.

From Rath’s book, the strategic person follows this simple three-step process over and over:

  1. Asks, “What if?”
  2. Selects from multiple possible paths.
  3. Strikes down the best logical path.

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Futurist

Strength#2_Futurist

From Tom Rath’s book Strengths Finder 2.0, I learned that a futurist is a person inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

This is me. I’ve always known it. But I never had the opportunity to hear and read about it so succinctly. I now have a simpler way to understand who I am.

I do love to peer over the horizon. I’ve always been fascinated by the future. I can see in detail what the future might hold … and become. A picture of the future does pull me forward, into tomorrow. It’s exactly as the book describes.

I am a dreamer. I see visions of what could be. And I love creating those visions.

So, how is this new knowledge helpful to me?

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Activator

Strength#1_Activator

From Tom Rath’s book Strengths Finder 2.0, I learned that an activator is someone impatient for action. Activators frequently ask, “When can we start?” Activators know that only action is real. Only action makes things happen. Only action leads to performance.

I was surprised when I learned that Activator is my number one strength. Why? Because I’ve felt there hasn’t been enough action in the past few years. As I’ve transitioned from entertainer to speaker, I often felt there were long periods where things weren’t moving … or certainly not moving fast enough.

The book continues … Activators are impatient. Once a decision is made, activators cannot not act.

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