I’ve always known that I’m good at somethings and bad at others. I’m good memorizing parts of movies and recalling them at weird times, i’m bad at cooking rice of any form. But there is something about knowing that you are good at and living according to those rather than trying to improve upon your weaknesses.
I recently took a course through Trinity Lutheran Church in Clinton Township, called Living Your Strengths. Using the strengths assessment in Living Your Strengths, we worked in a group of about 10 to analyze our strengths and determine how we could better use them for serving God.
Using a series of questions, the test ranks your top five of 48 themes. For an additional fee, you can get the entire set of themes. The questions aren’t really what you’d expect. It’s basically, a ranking system. A topic is given on each end of a horizontal line. The user determines which side they identify with, and by how much. So, here is an example.
BaseballSoccer
I don’t like these types of questions. I think it’s relative. My definition of strongly agree and my husband’s definition of strongly agree might very. So, I always went with one extreme or another. No middle road.
It’s not great just to know how those strengths can be used to praise the Lord but also just for my own well-being as well.
According to the strengths assessment, my top five themes are:
Restorative
Strategic
Responsibility
Discipline
Achiever
At first I thought this list was depressing and very heavy. There are other “fun” themes such as harmony, relator or maximizer. However, I started to realize that the assessment was accurate. No matter which way you shake it, those are my themes.
I plan to take a look at these themes this week and demonstrate how they are alive and well in my life. I will also illustrate how this changed my life and allowed me to go from blaming myself to understanding the way I approached life.