Focusing on virtues and character strengths: probably the smallest but most decisive step towards wellbeing
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” — Gandhi
Among the different perspectives for responsible wellbeing (personal, social, and planetary) if I must choose one that is in our hands and can have some immediate effects, this is the personal approach. Paradoxically, as we will see in the post, all is interconnected, and the social and environmental approaches will also be affected.
We all know different ways or frameworks to improve our personal wellbeing (in fact, I once wrote about the five ways to wellbeing), and in this post, I’m going to write about another one whose statement is the title of this article to a concise way of answering this question:
What would be the minimum that one can do to achieve maximum wellbeing?
However, the answer is wider, and I’ll try to explain more extensively through this article why focusing on virtues and character strengths could be one of the answers to the above question.
I’ve also adopted that headline because of these reasons:
Firstly, the suggestion of the psychologist Alex Linley, who leads one of the projects on strengths that we will see, argued that:
“Realizing strengths, in my view, is the smallest thing that you can do to make the biggest difference.” — Alex Linley
Secondly, for the last fifteen years or so, I have been discovering how introspection and self-awareness about my strengths with different models and their assiduous practice of them, led me to greater personal satisfaction and wellbeing.
Thirdly, we make personal proposals sometimes (mostly at the beginning of the year) with which we want to correct, improve or establish new habits or behaviours, so this piece could serve as inspiration to someone.
Finally, as the Delphic oracle indicated, one of its maxims was “Know thyself”, i.e., knowing our assets such as the virtues, strengths, values, talents, and skills that we have on our journey through life. The famous saying attributed to Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world”, was just a simplification of the quote above which holds some deeper nuances to investigate our inner self.
As this topic is broad, I will divide this article into three parts where I will try to answer the following questions:
- What are the virtues and character strengths?
- Why would be desirable a focus on virtues and character strengths?
- How could one start to focus on virtues and strengths?
What are the virtues and the character strengths?
(The hummingbird. THE EXPLORER)
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The story of the hummingbird is about this huge forest being consumed by a fire. All the animals in the forest come out and they are transfixed as they watch the forest burning and they feel very overwhelmed, very powerless, except this little hummingbird. It says,
‘I’m going to do something about the fire!’
So, it flies to the nearest stream and takes a drop of water. It puts it on the fire, and goes up and down, up and down, up and down, as fast as it can. In the meantime, all the other animals, much bigger like the elephant with a big trunk that could bring much more water, they are standing there helpless. And they are saying to the hummingbird,
‘What do you think you can do? You are too little. This fire is too big. Your wings are too little, and your beak is so small that you can only bring a small drop of water at a time.’
But as they continue to discourage it, it turns to them without wasting any time and it tells them.
“I am doing the best I can.”
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This section will describe the main concepts behind the focus on virtues and strengths as well as the history behind one of the best-known initiatives that promote it and that can be used as a reference to delve into this topic.
In 1998 the election of Martin Seligman as president of the American Psychological Association (APA) brought a great turn in the dominant psychology of the 20th century with the emergence of positive psychology. It is not that the change was a novelty because many of the philosophies and ideas behind positive psychology were already known previously (Aristotle, William James, Jahoda, Maslow) but by force as a heterogeneous movement with which it has burst over the last two decades. If the concept and name of “positive psychology” were to be honoured, the crown would possibly go to the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, who already proposed this concept in 1954 and many of the ideas of the current positive psychology were already reflected in one of the chapters of his book “Motivation and Personality.”
Psychology has been like a pendulum’s motion. It has been turned from a perspective where the main or perhaps the most powerful psychological currents of the 20th century focused on the solution to human problems to a model focused on the empowerment of what really works as human beings. As not everything is black and white, in the book “Character Strengths and Virtues: a handbook and classification”, which can be considered the foundational “bible” of the character strengths in positive psychology, the authors specify the position of both models in an intermediate context.
“The past concern of psychology with human problems is of course understandable and will not be abandoned anytime in the foreseeable future. Problems always will exist that demand psychological solutions, but psychologists interested in promoting human potential need to pose different questions from their predecessors who assumed a disease model of human nature. We disavow the disease model as we approach character, and we are adamant that human strengths are not secondary, derivative, illusory, positive way, we believe that character strengths are the bedrock of the human condition and that strength-congruent activity represents an important route to the psychological good life.”
This gives us a great perspective on the vision of the project of positive psychology and its synergies with the concept of “wellbeing”. Among the many ideas and projects behind the positive psychology umbrella, I will focus on the theme of virtues and character strengths. In 2004, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in their book “Character Strengths and Virtues: a handbook and classification” proposed a kind of manual for the scientific study of virtues and character strengths. In the same way that there is the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) of the World Health Organization (WHO), the objective of the handbook of virtues and strengths was to establish the principles, concepts, and definitions for the study of what function as human beings. Ancient Greek philosophers stated that virtues were the positive traits that make a person morally good. To find these virtues, a team of several people focused on three of the main regions of the world whose traditions had influenced the history of human thought: China (Confucianism and Taoism), Southeast Asia (Buddhism and Hinduism), and the West (Ancient Greece, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam). Through these and other investigations, they established the 24-character strengths, revisable in the future, which were grouped into 6 categories that included the basic virtues that occurred in all previous cultures. Somehow this attempt to break out of Western patterns could make those virtues and strengths of character an almost universal reference.
There could be some confusion about the differences between what character strengths are and other terms that we call “strengths” such as talents, skills, interests…, so I will introduce for your understanding the definitions that Ryan M. Niemiec, education director at the VIA Institute on Character, brought to light in a post on Psychology Today:
- Character strengths are capacities for thinking, feeling, willing, and behaving. They reflect what is best in you and can be viewed as part of your positive identity. The 24 strengths (e.g., fairness, hope, kindness, leadership) in the widespread VIA Classification are the best examples of this type of strength.
- Talents are strengths that are innate abilities, which typically have a strong biological loading, and may or may not be well-developed (e.g., intelligence, musical ability, athletic ability).
- Skills are strengths that are specific proficiencies developed through training (e.g., learning a particular trade; computing skills; researching skills).
- Interests are strengths that are areas or topics you are passionate about and driven to pursue, such as playing sports, engaging in particular hobbies, and working with arts or crafts.
- Values are enduring beliefs, principles, or ideals that are of prime importance to you. Values reside in your thoughts and feelings, not behavior. E.g., your value for family, your value for hard work.
- Learning styles are ideas or hypotheses about how people approach new materials, e.g., you might be reflective in how you learn a particular subject, or you might be more interpersonal in your style because you want to receive new learnings through discussion rather than reading.
Resources are the one type of strength that is external. These are your external supports, such as social and spiritual connections, living in a safe neighborhood, and being part of a good family.
As a summary of the different definitions, it could be said that the virtues, specifically those 6 basic virtues, represent more abstractly positive qualities that make human beings morally and ethically good. If one wants to achieve these virtues, the 24-character strengths can be used as vehicles. These character strengths are a more concrete step of those virtues. They are the processes that define them, which is why they are also called values in action (VIA). Character strengths are not totally “watertight compartments” aimed at achieving those basic virtues where they are classified. It is true that to achieve the virtue of wisdom and knowledge; curiosity, creativity, love of knowledge, open-mindedness, and perspective help a lot but other strengths such as prudence, fairness, integrity… can also be useful. Finally, in the third part of this article, I will also show other models that are articulated around a different taxonomy. They are also called “strengths”, but they are more specific than character strengths are therefore could be called “situational themes” to differentiate them from character strengths. As we will see through the post some of these “situational themes” have been driven to a specific theme, “work” so in those ways they can be called “work themes”. The main difference between “character strengths” and “situational themes”, according to the book pointed out above, is that the last ones are “neither good nor bad; they can be used to achieve strengths and hence to contribute to virtues, but they can also be harnessed to silly or wrong purposes.”
Why would be desirable a focus on virtues and character strengths?
(Fixing the World. THE MAP)
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“I am reminded of the busy professor who wants to concentrate on his work while looking after his young son. To keep the youngster busy he takes a map of the world out of a newspaper and cuts it up and says,
“Let’s see how long it takes for you to put the world back together”.
After a short while the child comes into the professors’ study and says,
“I’ve finished dad”.
Surprised at the speed at which the task was done he asks.
“How did you do this so quickly?”
“There was a picture of a man on the other side… When I fixed the man, I fixed the world”.
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This section describes the positive side of this approach from a personal point of view as well as from a social and environmental point of view. By broadening the focus to the entire system, synergistic effects could be expected in several of the nodes that I established for a holistic approach to wellbeing.
From an individual point of view, there is quite a lot of positive evidence about individuals who follow a strength approach. Alex Linley, who was one of the founders of Cappfinity whose mission is strengthening the world, has collected quite a bit of this evidence.
Individuals are not islands, but we are social beings and we also occupy a space in the Earth’s ecosystem at a specific time in its history. From a systems perspective, I would like to do a prospective challenge on how it could influence a certain critical mass of people to begin to focus on virtues and character strengths. This is a fictional exercise in which it may not consider many variables or feedback, both positive and negative since the map is not the territory. If we look to the MAMA model (below) that I designed in my FTM, we can see from a systemic perspective (Holistic) that a focus on virtues — ethics of virtues — could fully connect and satisfy our needs as potentiality (autonomy, freedom, participation, self-fulfillment, meaningful activity, affection, love, moral growth…). These in turn are interrelated with other types of needs (primary model- atomistic) such as physiological, psychosocial, and cultural needs, forming a complex ecosystem of needs.
The normative model (with the nodes), which is a holistic approach where the parts are integrated with the whole, makes it possible to better appreciate those systemic changes in society and the environment. This internal introspection between the needs as the potential of the individual with an ethic of virtues affects the parts of the external system such as a greater awareness of civil and political rights towards the dignity of people as well as a greater awareness of the services of consumption that nature offers us.
If we take this in mind as a metaphor, the human body where the circulatory system is the one that carries blood to all its elements so that the person remains alive, the proposed system of nodes and relationships feeds the other parts of the normative system such as society (coexistence) and the environment (existence). From this perspective of the nodes, the introspective focus on strengths would start from “Personal Development”, located in the individual quadrant (achievement). The other node in this quadrant is “Health”. It does not seem out of the question that increasing our knowledge about ourselves increases our health, taking this not only as physical wellbeing but also as mental and social wellbeing as it is defined by the WHO.
Regarding the 6 nodes framed in the social part (family, community, economy, work, education, and ethics), these, in principle, would also positively affect the system from a wellbeing point of view. Relationships in our family, community, and at work would be, at first, reinforced by that energy, vitality, self-esteem, and lower level of stress in our personality. Concerning the ethical system, values and virtues, it would add a new member with intrinsic and universalist values as opposed to the more extrinsic and egocentric values of the current paradigm. In this way and putting it into practice in the economic system, the behaviour would entail acting as a responsible consumer with a broad vision of a world citizen. From the point of view of the cold numbers of the economy, the loss of customers, by the increasing the critical mass of responsible citizens, would reorient the practices of companies and governments. In all these organizations, transparency and changes in their internal structures and processes could be increased as a reaction to the new values. In the same way, as in the creation and death of the cells of our body, there could be possible disappearances of companies that do not adjust to the parameters of the new responsible consumers, both for products or services that do not represent a vital need such as by the way they are obtained, i. e., with environmental and social externalities. The education that would be demanded in the new situation would be more oriented towards teaching how to live instead of the current framework that focuses primarily on how to earn a living. Finally, this expansion of consciousness through the networks reaches the nodes of the environmental system (environment and food) influencing the current models of food production and the extraction of resources from the environment.
How could one start to focus on virtues and strengths?
(Two ways. THE COMPASS)
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“An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves.”
“One wolf is evil — he is anger, envy, greed, arrogance, false pride, and ego.”
“The other is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, kindness, humility, and compassion.”
“This same fight is going on inside of you,” the Chief tells his grandson, “and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”
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Finally, in this section, I want to show several models that have been useful in my approach to strengths. For those who want to dig deeper into the virtues, I will name several organizations that focus on their study. Also, I propose the comments for the readers who want to suggest other models, organizations, or their own experiences on this interesting topic.
One of the first suggestions that I would propose for those who want to focus on strengths is to recognize them, to know what they are. There are several methods, such as introspection, asking acquaintances and relatives about what they find good in us, or even the use of assessments. Here, there is a list of ten strength spotting tips for doing so.
Regarding assessments, I recognize that the tests do not always reflect our reality due to their abstractions in models, due to our projections, or due to emotional circumstances when we take them, but on the other hand, they can be a great first and good approximation to what we want to find, in this case, our strengths.
One of these proposals would be to take the VIA survey of character strengths. At the end of the test, we will obtain a list with our 24-character strengths, ordered from highest to lowest. It is from here when the tool has already been used that a deeper personal introspection on those results could be made. This is already a personal journey to get to know oneself and check or feel that we have these capacities and that it is also very possible that their use in the past or the present is giving us experiences of wellbeing. The next step in that approach would be to know more deeply about each of those first strengths at an academic, philosophical, or experimental level, which can help cognitively to use them more often. As a first key statement, positive psychology recommends that we should focus on our top 5 strengths most of the time but some nuances need to be visible. I will finish this article with a personal approach that focuses on strengths from an integral perspective for wellbeing. Meanwhile, one of those details we should consider is that although we suppose a strength seems to be good, we also must think if this strength is the right strength for the right situation and with the right amount of it. This is the golden mean that Aristotle states for being morally good, a virtuous person. We can overuse a strength that can give us some flaws, or we can underuse a strength where we cannot obtain an optimal result. This link takes us to a list collected by psychologists and researchers Tayyad Rashid and Afroze Anjum with movies and suggestions to put each of the 24 strengths into practice. You also can find the flaws of each of the 24-character strengths when you underuse or overuse them.
If you want to extend the strength to your family or your children’s school, the book “The Strength Switch” (Different Languages) by Lea Waters is a good start and her project “Visible Wellbeing” for students and schools is also interesting. Another project that focuses on schools is “The Positive Project”.
For those who are more interested in the focus on strengths and want to go further in their introspection with other assessments, I will describe two proposals labelled “strengths” but, as indicated above, they could be classified as “situational themes” or more specifically “work themes.”
The first one is proposed by Gallup, which was the predecessor of the 24-character strengths from Positive Psychology. The model designed by Gallup (CliftonStrengths) is made up of 34 strengths (four fields: strategic thinking, relationship building, influencing, and executing). The main difference between the character strengths model and the following two models is that the latter two, “strengths” are more specific to situations. Those strengths are neither good nor bad in themselves and could be used, as indicated above, to develop character strengths. To take the test, you must pay for obtaining a code that gives access to the assessment on the internet. Another way of obtaining the code is by buying some of the books that have an access code.
The second one, Strengths Profile (former Realise2) is the newest of the three models described in this post. Its approach includes five strengths families (being, communicating, motivating, relating, and thinking) with 60 strengths that point to these three dimensions: energy, performance, and use. After taking the assessment (depending on the type of profile, different fees) you get a profile report. This is an example of the introductory profile.
This model radiographs your strengths attending to four quadrants with certain characteristics that combine the three previous dimensions:
1) Realised Strengths: strengths you use and enjoy. (Use wisely)
· Energising
· Perform well
· Higher use
2) Unrealised Strengths: strengths you don’t use so often. (Use more)
· Energising
· Perform well
· Lower use
3) Learned behaviours: things you learned to do but may not enjoy. (Use when needed)
· De-energising
· Perform well
· Variable use
4) Weaknesses: things you find hard and don’t enjoy. (Use less)
· De-energising
· Perform poorly
· Variable use
This is an interesting perspective because apart from mapping your strengths (things we can do + love to do) and distinguishing them from weaknesses, it also brings out two new types of strengths. The first is a type of strength that they call learned behaviours, which are those in which you perform well but take away energy or vitality. The second one is unrealised strength (that give you energy) but that you do not use often since, perhaps, the circumstance where to use them do not exist.
Once we are aware of our character strengths or/and situational themes, the next step is to internalize the virtues. The Center for Character & Social Responsibility of the University of Boston explains in three simple steps how to do it. This is a feedback loop:
- Our understanding informs our actions.
- Our actions give us reason to reflect.
- These reflections strengthen our understanding of virtue and our commitment to act accordingly.
Finally, among the organization that is dedicated to the investigation of the virtues and character strengths, several of them can be found on the Internet (in several countries) with new research, resources, and even MOOCs. On the side of Positive Psychology, the University of Pennsylvania in the USA is one of the pioneering centres with a lot of information.
Another leading centre for virtues research is the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue at the University of Birmingham. In their vision as an organization, they are aware that character strengths are critical for the prosperity of human beings, that they can be exercised in all human contexts and they are also educable. Although it is a very young organization, the quality of its projects, resources, and research are excellent. As an example, this research seminar showed a presentation that connected virtues with sustainability, probably our main challenge as a species in this 21st century.
Lastly, if you want to take a kind of free self-assessment about virtues, the Institute for Cultural Evolution has developed a character exercise where you create a Personal Portrait of the Good based on its 7 fundamental virtues.
Some final personal considerations
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou
From my own experience in strengths, it could be said that in this journey towards enhancing the best of each one, introspection and reflection are two of their best tools. Our character strengths are like a dynamic ecosystem that is fed and get feedback. From a point of view of integral wellbeing (personal, social, and planetary), the six basic virtues could be matched(metaphorically) to the following triad, the three main areas of the brain. The triune brain model could be the link between the triad of wellbeing (personal, social, planetary) and the six basic virtues (reducing these six to three categories)
Our brain, which has evolved, has increased and changed its functions, as well as its complexity. This model could be divided into three parts that interact with each other. On the one hand, there is the brain stem and the cerebellum, which are included in what is known as the reptilian brain, the instinctual one. On the other hand, the limbic system, more emotional, brings us closer to other mammals. Finally, the neocortex, the most rational part, is the most developed phase in humans and certain mammals. Although we consider ourselves rational, our behaviour is much more determined by instinct and emotions that by the rational part. From my point of view, the six basic virtues could be divided into three:
- “COURAGE” and “TEMPERANCE” with their character strengths, could be oriented towards the personal side, one of the wills, to dominate the instinctive part of our personality that makes us flee, fright, or freeze.
- “HUMANITY” and “JUSTICE” with their character strengths, could be aligned towards the emotional part which leads us to a healthy co-existence in society.
- “WISDOM” and “TRANSCENDENCE” with their character strengths, would take the direction to make us mentally aware of the bigger environment, our planet. This is the part of the brain that realises where life comes from, on which we depend, and that we should take into consideration for our survival and that of future generations.
From this perspective, a very smart and synergistic choice about a focus on our main character strengths, would not be directed primarily towards our top five strengths from the VIA assessment. Our orientation or active management would be to find, probably among the top ten-character strengths, the first six that align with each of the six basic virtues (courage, temperance, humanity, justice, wisdom, and transcendence). It would be a balance between our top five strengths (some of them will align with some of the six virtues) plus other strengths that are not in the top five but fulfill the virtues that the top five strengths don’t reach.
Twitter: @ResWellbeing @BienestarRespon
*This is an adaptation and translation into English of my post written in Autonomía y bienvivir, “Enfoque en virtudes y fortalezas de carácter: el paso más pequeño, pero más decisivo hacia el bienvivir.” (18/01/2015)
