Lesson #2: Focus On Your Strengths

I hope by now you’ve finished Lesson 1. If not, please go back and do those exercises – it shouldn’t take longer than 10-15 minutes.

There are many different exercises I’ll be sharing with you over the next few months, but we’re going to try to ease into them one at a time.

For this lesson, we’re going to Focus on Your Strengths.

When you struggle with low confidence and low self-esteem, it’s incredibly easy to forget all the positive things we have going for ourselves. You’re so focused on all the bad, you forget about the good.

It’s time to re-focus that attention.

No one’s good at everything, but everyone is good at something. You have to start thinking less about what you see as your weaknesses, and thinking more about what you see as your strengths.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you completely ignore your weaknesses or things you need to work on. The point isn’t to lie to yourself, only to remind yourself that you have some strengths too.

According to positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, a good guideline for balancing your positive and negative thinking is 3 to 1. She calls it the “positivity ratio.”

This means that for every negative thought you dwell on, you should balance it out by focusing on 3 positive thoughts as well. The goal isn’t to ignore the negative, but be slightly biased toward the positive.

Unfortunately, our minds are often more biased more toward the negative than the positive. Psychologists call this the “negativity bias,” and it’s very common in most people.

To overcome this “negativity bias,” let’s take a moment to focus on some of the positives in your life. I’m sure you have strengths you don’t normally think about, let’s discover what they are!

Video: Recollecting the Positive

Week #2: Homework and Exercises

1. Create a document titled “My Strengths” – list 5 positive things about yourself.

Just take a couple minutes to reflect on your strengths. What is it that you consider yourself good at? What skills, talents, or knowledge do you have that many others don’t? What are some things people like about you? Write them down.

For example:

1. Honesty

2. Good listener

3. Funny

4. Intelligent

5. Passionate

2. Choose 3 of the strengths you just listed. Write 1 sentence each describing a real world example of you acting out this strength.

Thinking of real world examples of when we have done something positive can be a great way to remind ourselves that we aren’t so bad after all. Try to think of any example, however big or small.

For example:

• Good Listener: “I spent time with a friend after they had a break-up.”
• Passionate: “I work on my psychology website every day.”
• Intelligent: “I scored a perfect 5/5 on my Calculus AP test.”

3. Save the document in your “Social Transformation” folder.

Creating a “My Strengths” document will become a very valuable resource to work on (and add to) throughout the course. If you think of any more strengths of yours (or “real life examples”), feel free to go back to this document and write them down.

When I find myself in a particularly low mood, I sometimes go back to this document and reflect on my strengths to provide an extra boost in confidence and motivation. You can use it for this too!

As mentioned at the beginning of the course, we’re going to continue adding new things to your “Social Transformation” folder and making it a positive resource to look back on.

Remember: You should already have your “Quiz Scores” and “Confident Self” documents already saved there.

4. You’re great! You’ve just finished Lesson 2!