Quotes About Strengths

Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns.

Love's weaknesses are better than hate's strengths.

I try to perfect my strong points and make my weaknesses adequate.

First, he became aware of it. Many of us don't seem able to take even this step. Second, and most significant, he chose not to focus on reinforcing its weaker threads. Instead, he did the exact opposite: He identified its strongest threads, wove in education and experience, and built them into the dominating strengths we see today.

Third, you will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses. This is not the same as saying 'ignore your weaknesses.

Rather, your smartness and your effectiveness depend on how well you capitalize on your strongest connections.

If your senses are numbed with delusion and denial, you will stop looking for these true strengths and wind up living a second-rate version of someone's life rather than a worldclass version of your own

From this point of view, to avoid your strengths and to focus on your weaknesses isn't a sign of diligent humility. It is almost irresponsible. By contrast the most responsible, the most challenging, and, in the sense of being true to yourself, the most honorable thing to do is face up to the strength potential inherent in your talents and then find ways to realize it.

In Martin Seligman's words, 'Psychology is half-baked, literally half-baked. We have baked the part about mental illness. We have baked the part about repair and damage. But the other side is unbaked. The side of strengths, the side of what we are good at, the side…of what makes life worth living.

The point here is not that you should always forgo this kind of weakness fixing. The point is that you should see it for what it is: damage control, not development. And as we mentioned earlier, damage control can prevent failure, but it will never elevate you to excellence.

Knowledge consists of the facts and lessons learned. Skills are the steps of an activity. These three-talents, knowledge, and skills-combine to create your strengths.

Satisfactions provide the last clue to talent. As we described in the previous chapter, your strongest synaptic connections are designed so that when you use them, it feels good. Thus, obviously, if it feels good when you perform an activity, chances are that you are using a talent.

Thus, the lesson we should draw from these people is not that each person's talents are infinitely malleable or that they can be anything they want to be if they just apply themselves. Rather, the lesson is that talents, like intelligence, are value neutral. If you want to change your life so that others may benefit from your strengths, then change your values. Don't waste time trying to change your talents.

The bottom line on skills is this: A skill is designed to make the secrets of the best easily transferable. If you learn a skill, it will help you get a little better, but it will not cover for a lack of talent. Instead, as you build your strengths, skills will actually prove most valuable when they are combined with genuine talent.

Each of these strategies-get a little better at it, design a support system, use one of your strongest themes to overwhelm your weakness, find a partner, and just stop doing it-can help you as you strive to build your life around your strengths.

Our research into human strengths does not support the extreme, and extremely misleading, assertion that 'you can play any role you set your mind to,' but it does lead us to this truth: Whatever you set your mind to, you will be most successful when you craft your role to play to your signature talents most of the time.

Nonlinearities are important not only because they confound our expectations about the relationship between action and response. They are even more important because they change the relative strengths of feedback loops. They can flip a system from one mode of behavior to another.

Remember, as you look at yourself, to look kindly, and also remember that you are not balancing a checkbook: anything you see that you don't like, or that you want to change, is not a debit that you subtract from your virtues. When you learn to reflect on your strengths, it becomes easier to look at your weaknesses with acceptance and compassion. Keep your virtues at their full value and cherish them.

Grow on your strengths; not on others' weakness

Figure out what it is in life you don't do well, and then don't do it.

The things we overcome in life really become our strengths.

People and organizations don't grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses

People's purpose in life is always connected to their giftedness.

Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.