How Character Strengths Guide Us Through Life’s Storms
In the midst of life's inevitable challenges and transitions, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or disconnected from our sense of purpose. Whether you're navigating a career change, healing from burnout, or simply seeking to create more meaningful patterns in your daily life, the answer to moving forward with confidence and authenticity may be using your inner compass.
Your character strengths are the unique combination of positive qualities that make you who you are at your core. They are reliable navigational tools that have been guiding you through life's journey, often without you even realizing it.
Core Character Strengths
Positive psychology researchers Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson identified 24 character strengths organized under six core virtues: wisdom and knowledge, humanity, justice, courage, temperance, and transcendence. This comprehensive framework, often visualized as a wheel of character strengths, represents the positive aspects of human nature that contribute to flourishing and well-being.
These strengths include qualities like creativity, curiosity, bravery, kindness, perseverance, hope, gratitude, and social intelligence. Scientists have identified these as positive parts of your personality that impact how you think, feel and behave. What makes this framework so powerful is its universality. These strengths appear across cultures and throughout history.
Unlike talents or skills that we develop, character strengths feel inherently part of who we are. According to Seligman, your top strengths are those that feel authentic and powerful to you. They are things you delight in using and feel energized afterward.
Your Personal Strengths
Take a moment to pause and reflect. What are the five character strengths that feel most alive and authentic in you? Consider these questions as you explore:
Which positive qualities do others consistently recognize in you? Think about the compliments you receive, the ways people describe you, or what they seek you out for.
What activities or situations energize you most? Notice when you feel most engaged, alive, and in your element.
During your proudest moments, which inner qualities were you drawing upon? Reflect on times when you felt most yourself and most capable.
What values and traits feel essential to who you are? These might be qualities you couldn't imagine living without.
Some examples to consider might include:
Creativity - bringing new ideas and original approaches to life
Perseverance - finishing what you begin despite obstacles
Kindness - being generous and compassionate with others
Curiosity - seeking out new experiences and knowledge
Gratitude - noticing and appreciating the good in life
Leadership - organizing group activities and guiding others
Hope - expecting the best and working to achieve it
How Your Strengths Have Served You
Once you've identified your top five character strengths, take time to honor how they've already been working for you. Your strengths aren't just abstract concepts—they're living, breathing aspects of yourself that have been helping you navigate life all along.
Consider how each of your strengths has shown up during significant moments in your life:
In times of adversity: How did your perseverance help you push through a difficult period? How did your humor or hope help you maintain perspective during dark times? Perhaps your curiosity helped you discover new solutions, or your social intelligence guided you to seek the right support.
In your relationships: How has your kindness deepened your connections with others? How has your honesty built trust? Maybe your forgiveness has helped heal wounds, or your love of learning has made you an engaging companion.
In your personal growth: How has your creativity helped you find unique solutions to problems? How has your prudence guided you to make wise decisions? Perhaps your bravery has pushed you to take important risks, or your appreciation of beauty has enriched your daily experience.
In your work and contribution: How have your strengths shaped the unique value you bring to your career or community? How do they influence the way you approach challenges and opportunities?
Applying Your Strengths to Current Challenges
Now comes the transformative part: consciously leveraging your character strengths to navigate your current situation, challenges, or goals.
For current challenges you're facing:
If you're struggling with a difficult decision, how might your strength of prudence or perspective guide you to gather the right information and consider long-term consequences?
If you're dealing with conflict, how could your fairness or forgiveness help you find resolution?
If you're feeling stuck or overwhelmed, how might your creativity or perseverance open new pathways forward?
For goals you want to achieve:
If you're seeking better relationships, how could your strengths of kindness, social intelligence, or teamwork help you connect more authentically?
If you're pursuing personal growth, how might your love of learning, curiosity, or self-regulation support your journey?
If you're working toward a professional goal, how could your leadership, bravery, or zest help you take meaningful action?
For creating sustainable change: Rather than relying on willpower alone, consider how your natural strengths can become the foundation for lasting transformation. When change efforts align with our character strengths, they feel less like forced discipline and more like authentic expression of who we are.
The Ripple Effect of Strength-Based Living
When you begin to consciously recognize and use your character strengths, something beautiful happens. You start to feel more aligned, more energized, and more confident in your ability to handle whatever life brings. You approach challenges from a place of inner resourcefulness rather than perceived deficit.
Your strengths become a renewable source of resilience. They help you bounce back faster from setbacks, make decisions that align with your values, and create positive changes that stick because they're rooted in who you authentically are.
Moreover, when you operate from your strengths, you naturally inspire others to do the same. You become a living example of what's possible when someone embraces their authentic self and uses their gifts in service of growth and positive change.
Moving Forward with Strength and Intention
Take time regularly to check in with your strengths. Notice when you're using them and when you might be neglecting them. Pay attention to how you feel and what results you create when you're operating from your zone of strength versus when you're not.
Your path forward invites you to become more fully yourself, to lean into the beautiful, unique combination of strengths that make you who you are, and to trust that these qualities are exactly what you need to navigate whatever comes next.
The wheel of character strengths reminds us that we all possess a rich inner landscape of positive qualities. Your particular constellation of strengths is your gift to the world and your key to thriving through any season of life.