Last week everyone in my class took the Strength Finders test online. Our assignment then was to write a paper on our top 5 strengths. Here is my paper...
My top 5 strengths are Includer, Belief, Empathy, Developer, and Responsibility. For me these all make perfect sense to me and I can definitely identify with them all. Upon reflecting on them, I am thinking about how many of them have been developed so strongly out of past hurts and they really are strong ways that God is using those painful experiences and turning them into strengths and developing me even more in the ways that he had hardwired in me already anyways.
I can see the way being an includer affects my life in many ways. When I was younger I used to make sure all my stuffed animals were on my bed to sleep because I didn’t want them feeling left out. Even now in stores I would be more likely to buy something that is damaged in the packaging because I know most people won’t buy it, and I don’t want that object “to feel left out” by not being bought. I can remember in situations walking through a forest and picking up leaves. I always ended up picking up a lot of them because I didn’t want any of the to “feel” like they weren’t beautiful enough to be picked up. I can see it in the way I relate to people as well. I love making people feel welcome and accepted and even loved. I don’t like hurting people and so I go out of my way to like everyone and get to know everyone, and I especially pursue the people who are off to the side. I definitely identify with the fact includers feel being left out more painfully. I think that feeling left out and not wanted around when I was younger has made the desire in me to include everyone even stronger as I have gotten older.
Belief affects my life in many ways especially in the decisions I make. I choose to hold myself to high standards of my values and it affects the things I do, ways I treat people and my thought process. I identify especially with needing to do a work that matters. If my job title doesn’t really matter then I make sure my time there and my relationships with the people at work matter. My beliefs makes me do things I normally wouldn’t do, putting myself at risk for the sake of others, and taking major steps of faith. Since my core foundations of where I stand in my beliefs are pretty solid it makes me easy to trust and people tend to open up to me and share with me their struggles even when they know my beliefs will go against what they are saying.
Empathy is definitely something that affects my everyday life. My mom likes to say that I should work at a funeral home because I would be good with the grieving families and I am ok being around dead people. I am able to very quickly pick up on people’s feelings and can usually identify with their emotions very easily. Other people are drawn to me during times of hardship, because I am usually able to listen, care, feel their pain and offer appropriate words of wisdom. Knowing what to say, when (discernment) is something I continually seek God’s direction for. The funny thing about empathy is I am very selective of who I let into my life in this way. This is something I have been on a journey about for the last two years especially.
I am a developer in many ways. I absolutely love recognizing the potential in a person, and “fighting” for them to work towards becoming that person. I can identify strongly where it reads “Over time many will seek you out for help and encouragement because on some level they know that your helpfulness is both genuine and fulfilling to you.” My sister always comments on this part of my personality, that I love being friends with people who are “needy” and that I can “help”. It is cool to see that this might just be a way that I was meant to be and that God has specific purposes for me being a developer.
My fifth strength according to Strengths Finders is responsibility. There are specific areas that I can identify where responsibility affects my life. I don’t like disappointing people by not doing something, and have often not said no when I needed to. I often feel like I should take things on and do them myself. I feel honoured that people look at me as dependable and able to accomplish things. I notice that I am less responsible when it comes to following thru on things that my mom asks me to do, and I really want to work on that at home. When Celia said, “If someone doesn’t follow thru on the commitment to a responsibility person then they will have trouble trusting them or asking them to do it again.” I definitely identified with it. I find that once a person breaks my trust in a significant way or doesn’t do something they said they would do that I thought of as important then I struggle with giving my trust out to them again.
I believe that my strengths of Includer, Belief, Empathy, Developer, and Responsibility are ways that God has created me and He will use them for His glory and honour and for the purposes He has on my life. I am excited to see how I am able to walk these strengths out in my life, both now and in the future.
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