Hello friend! đ
Happy New Year and welcome to the first Super Sunday of 2024.
If Iâm being honest, busy as it was, 2023 still felt like it flew by.
Given my deep interest in the concept of time, I went down the rabbit hole researching time and why certain âtimesâ go faster than others. The finding needs a whole post on its own so I will keep this for another time.
But I will leave you with this; our interest distorts our perception of time, the ânewnessâ of the experience, and whether it fires the same neural pathways or creates new ones.
Awesome stuff!
Onto todayâs topic (riding the wave of the New Year resolutions topics too).
2024 should be the year of efficiency and efficacy.
Get the highest output for the effort you put in. Not to put less effort (you can if you like), but to move into a new paradigm and unlock a higher version of yourself. Trust me itâs worth the effort!
With efficiency in mind, the first thing you gotta focus on is doing more of whatâs working.
This is not our natural way of approaching development, when we think of developing weâre thinking of fixing whatâs broken. While in reality, it is strengthening whatâs working.
Thatâs where focusing on character strengths comes in.
Why Focus on Strengths?
Character Strengths are defined in positive psychology as the capabilities or abilities you have that are natural to you, that yield good outcomes, and that youâre able to do effortlessly.
For example: Your strength may be honesty - you can have difficult conversations that give clarity to others.
Or, your strength may be positive thinking - youâre able to navigate challenges and find learnings in failures.
There are 24 of these strengths, the combination of which is unique to everyone on this earth (much like the DNA).
If you focus on strengths then you can produce exceptional work at low effort, and unimaginable work at focused effort.
In contrast, working on your weakness may at best create decent work with exceptionally high effort.
Focus your efforts, and multiply your results!
How to Know Your Strengths?
The easiest way is to do the gold-standard survey designed by Dr. Martin Seligman.
Dr. Seligman is the father of positive psychology, responsible for shifting the focus of psychology from only disease-based to that which includes people who can flourish.
You can access the survey by visiting this link.
Once completed, think of your toughest problem at hand today (relationships, work, a new habit, etcâŠ) and map out creative ways to solve it using your specific top strength.
You wonât only multiply your chances for success, but you will also make the work more meaningful (because youâre using an approach that is natural to you).
Have fun with it, and Iâd love to know how you succeed in solving your challenge.
Now, you can SUPER charge this by listing your resolutions and then finding creative ways (using your strengths) to make them stick.
Make sure to gamify the process, no one likes a dull life!
Have a Super Sunday! âĄïž
With much joy,
Hashim