February\’s calendar of Strengths (2/12)

Hello and welcome (back) to my blog, dear friends!

I hope 2024 continues smoothly for you and that you got a good sense of enthusiasm! I am back with this month\’s calendar, and oh what a beautiful theme we\’ve got!!! In February we are encouraged to cultivate love and connection in our lives. Research says that strong relationships contribute to good mental health, positivity and therefore longevity.

As you might know already from last month\’s post, these calendars suggest a daily activity we can all implement – using a few of our strengths in an intentional way. And all activities have a link attached to them, that you can access if you click on the image:

The Strengths Calendar for February provides tips to help you nourish better relationships, using your inner strengths of Love, Kindness, and Social Intelligence. Using these 3 strengths, we can:

• Elevate your ability to connect more deeply with others.
• Learn strengths-based approaches to resolving problems.
• Discover the confidence to communicate with authenticity. 
• Develop the ability to notice strengths in others.

And don\’t worry, you DO have these strengths within yourself. As you might have read in January\’s strengths\’ blogpost, each and every one of us has a total of 24 such character strengths, in different degrees.

Each character strength falls under one of 6 virtues. And as I wrote the word \”virtues\”, I could not help but remember the story of Benjamin Franklin that I wrote about at the very beginning of this blog, and that fascinated me greatly. I won\’t repeat it here, I just warmly encourage you to read it, it\’s very short and very inspiring.

Let\’s now explore these character strengths, which help us build deeper connections with those who matter most to us. First of all, all these 3 character strengths fall under the virtue category of Humanity.

LOVE – Based on the millions of poems and songs written since the beginning of time, love needs no introduction. However, as a character strength, love refers to the way we approach our closest and warmest relationships. Love is reciprocal, referring to both loving others and the willingness to accept love from others. There are four types of love, each with a biological and evolutionary base:

• Romantic love: spouse/partner/boyfriend/girlfriend

• Attachment love: parent for child; child for parent

• Compassionate/altruistic love: kindness

• Companionate love: friendship

KINDNESS – is being nice to others. According to VIACharacter.org, as you examine kindness further, a number of important dimensions begin to unfold. And so we get to find out that kindness is:

• being generous with others, giving your time, money, and talent to support those who are in need
• being compassionate, which means to really be there for someone, listening intently to their suffering or just sitting with them and silently supporting them. Such compassion involves a deep concern for the welfare of others
• being nurturing and caring to others — to enjoy doing favors for them, to take care of them, and to perform good deeds

And so altruistic personalities possess three characteristics:

• Social responsibility
• Empathy/sympathy
• Moral reasoning

SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE is knowing what makes other people tick. Being aware of the motives and feelings of ourselves and others, and how to fit into different social situations. People who feature strong social intelligence can feel comfortable and say the right thing whether they’re in the boardroom or the janitorial room, in a school setting or at a construction site. According to VIACharacter.org, social intelligence involves two general components:

• Social facility: what we do with our awareness

• Social awareness: what we sense about others

Another important aspect is that every strength can be used with intent, and for every character strength there is a GOLDEN MEAN: in other words, each character strength can be underused, overused, but also optimally used (the golden mean). For example:

• Love is underused when we isolate ourselves, cut-off from others. It\’s overused when we get touchy-feely or into an emotional overkill. The OPTIMAL use is genuine and reciprocal warmth
• Kindness is underused when we are indifferent, selfish and meanspirited. It\’s overused when one is intrusive and overly focused on others. The OPTIMAL use is when we are caring, compassionate and friendly
• Social Intelligence is underused when we are clueless and disconnected. It\’s overused when one is over-analytical or self-deceiving. The OPTIMAL use is when we are tuned in, savvy and empathic

Now, did I get you curious to at least find out your core strengths, what motivates you to ge up in the morning, who you really are and what you burn for? What are the areas and activities that seem effortless to you, in which you get lost, make you feel in the zone, loose the sense of time end feel energised? I really hope so. Because…

Once you have your result, you might feel that you need a bit of guidance, not knowing exactly what to do with all that information. Well, there is where I will do my best to \”translate\” everything that you don\’t understand about your strengths, and to show you how you can use these super-qualities to live a life filled with more sense and purpose.

Hoping I brought a bit more excitement about your intentions, im looking forward to meeting you, so we can discover together how you can get rid of your limiting beliefs, how you can form positive habits and stick to your goals. All for a life filled with enthusiasm, in the long run.

Remember, 2024 will be (y)our BEST year yet ;)!

Until next time, stay positive and take care of yourselves!