Last week, I was introduced to this book - "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham. It talks about how most of us live our lives focusing on fixing our weaknesses. Alot of times, we take our strengths for granted. Well, no point for me going into too much detail about this, you can check this out in his website or the book.
Anyway, the great part about the book was a unique ID key that allows you access to create an account to take the StrengthsFinder profile quiz. And, below is my "simple" certificate. Read simple description of each here.
From the top 5 themes, I realised something very profound. As I continue to read the book (quite fast to finish - about 3 days), I could relate to each of the 5 themes and understood why I did what I did...... It all made sense.
Restorative - I take alot of pleasure in fixing problems (technical, personal, relationships). The more complicated it is, if I can fix it - I feel satisfaction. Otherwise, definitely will feel defeated, spend hours thinking through the problem, patterns and how to solve it. Some obvious examples for myself are my eagerness to help friends fix their computer related problems, spending hours playing Sudoku (those super hard ones), Weiqi, etc. I remember my time at my previous IT job, spending time overnight at the Data Centre trying to fix a system down issue, couldn't fix it, felt frustrated (due to pressure from upstairs? maybe not... looking back I think it was more of myself)
Learner - I didn't really notice this until recently which explains my increased frequency to library. However, learning not necessarily means reading. I learn various skills. When I was young, I enjoy learning notes in the school band, learnt abit of drumming. I picked up cooking. I picked up Weiqi, Salsa, Mahjong, Chinese Chess, IT technologies. My learner theme comes into play as I write this blog as I feel so passionately that I need to share what I learn to confirm my learning. Also, I can see how my Restorative theme and my Learner theme pair up when I play Chinese Chess (although I got thrashed heavily in Viwawa, I kept pressing on... because I want to learn ... and restore). I think my housemates can verify this. They are very much surprised at why I spend so much time playing over and over, losing over and over.. until I finally manage to win abit more consistently.
Harmony - Ah... ok. This one - I am generally nice person :) ... I think the term - Agree to Disagree Agreeably comes into play here? Maybe abit to specific but more of ... as long as general environment friendly and happy, good. A good example is when I play online games (where kids these days generally are so rude, you'd fear for the next generation), I tend to keep quiet and ignore nasty comments than talk back. At the back of my head, I was thinking - it doesn't affect me, why bother.. they can be as rude as they want to be if it makes them happy.
Context - This is an interesting one. This is very true - I feel alot more connected to a person if I get to understand their past. Mixing this with my Restorative nature, I have made use of this strength before in rationalizing why people do what they do. I do love finding more about history' e.g. why Adolf Hitler came to power and yet this mad-man was a son who loves his mother so much. It intrigues me.
Responsibility - Honesty & Loyalty eh. Hmmm... This particular theme, I do feel I have it but sometimes I question it. I thought that probably Positivity would be higher on this list. However, since I wrote my initial comments as such, it could probably mean I have not fully utilised this particular strength. However, I do have a recent example of something I did for my client. I went out of my way, got into some trouble for the sake of my client to ensure that I have acted responsibly in his best interest.
There's alot of things going through my mind after finding out this. As one of my strongest theme is Context, I'm looking back at all the events happening to me and using my learner and restorative strength, I'm rationalizing and determining how I came to be what I am today. Anyway, shouldn't dwell too much on where I'm weak. I'm actually very excited now I know my strengths...... Today is only like Day 1 where I try to notice how my strengths come into play during my daily activity (possibly my learner strength energize me here, ie. applying what I learnt).
