VIA Strengths Inventory

 

 

This photo is from when my brother, Colin, was born and I believe it reflects my strengths of both Love and Kindness. Although we have had our moments, I would do anything to help, protect, and take care of him.

 

 

My top five strengths are:

1: Kindness

Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them.

2: Love

Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing & caring are reciprocated; being close to people.

3: Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence

Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

4: Honesty

Speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions.

5: Prudence

Being careful about one’s choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted.

 

The VIA Strength Test was interesting and allowed me to be made aware of and reflect on different aspects of my personality. I learned about qualities that I never thought about before, such as “Zest” and “Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence”.

I am content with the order of my top three strengths. Kindness and Love are aspects of my personality that I have always valued above any others. I never considered “Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence” as a ‘strength’ anyone had, however I do believe now that it is a considerable strength of mine, and is my favorite strength. I have always appreciated how incredible everything on this earth is, including admiring art at museums, seeing how perfectly numbers work in mathematics, learning about electricity in physics, appreciating how beautifully each note flows together in music at concerts, and just how incredibly animals and plants have adapted to the world around them in nature.

I do not believe that Honesty is one of my top strengths. I do value honesty in relationships and in school and I do take responsibility for my actions, however I feel as though I am not always completely honest about my feelings in order to protect friendships or to please others. Because Kindness and Love are my top two strengths, I would rather keep my true feelings hidden in order to make others happy. Additionally, instead of Honesty as my fourth strength, I would put Leadership or Love of Learning in its place. I am always the person to organize events and outings with my friends or at my job and pride myself as being a good leader, and I also love learning new things, new skills, and why things behave the way they do in the world. However I do believe that Prudence is a good fit for my fifth strength, as I put a lot of thought into making decisions (although sometimes too much). I try not to do anything I will later end up regretting and always think through the many outcomes that could happen by me making one decision.

Looking through the rest of the list, I felt that some strengths of mine should be higher, such as Creativity and Humility. The strength that stood out to me the most that I would like to work on making higher on my list is Hope. Hope was my second to last strength, and this was very disappointing to me. I understand why it is so low on my list currently, but I would like to become more hopeful about my future and eventually have it be one of my top strengths. I have not been very hopeful about my future, especially after realizing that my perspective career path I chose in high school is not one I can see myself perusing. I can get lost in my head and am very down on myself at times, but now that I am fully aware of this weakness I plan on accepting myself and moving forward with much more confidence.

All in all, I believe that this was an interesting exercise that made me aware of strengths and weaknesses I would like to change and improve.  I would like to take the test at the end of this year to see if anything has changed and reflect on the differences of my strength order.

My full results can be accessed here: DownloadResults-2nj6s8s