by Bridgett Hart | SELF
Sometimes, our anxiety and negative thoughts are a result of not understanding our strengths.
The Second Part of Self-Love
In The Hart Habits, I break self-love into four parts. Last post was about the first, boundaries. Today's is about the second: knowing and embracing your natural strengths.
I Thought I Knew My Strengths
When I say strengths, what does that make you think?
I always thought I knew what mine were. I was gregarious, outgoing, and competent in a lot of situations, so I assumed my strengths were related to leadership, spreadsheets, scheduling, things like that.
Then I found the Clifton StrengthsFinder.
What the Clifton StrengthsFinder Actually Shows You
The CliftonStrengths assessment has now been taken by over 34 million people. Don Clifton developed it while serving as chairman of Gallup, the organization behind the worldwide Gallup Poll that's been collected since 1934. His research on human potential reached a massive audience through this tool, and the results are a goldmine.
I encourage you to take the hour-long assessment. You can purchase the book and get the evaluation for free, or purchase the assessment alone through Gallup's site.
Over a decade ago, this process taught me that my strengths are: activator, futuristic, relator, connectedness, and learner. I've used them ever since to build my coaching and consulting work, and The Hart Habits itself.
Why This Matters for Anxiety
When we know and work in our strengths, we get a lot more opportunity to feel fulfilled, and to feel like the contribution we're making is high value for the effort. You deserve to be valued for what you bring to the table. You're awesome.
So if you haven't done this before, today's the day. Take a moment to figure out what your strengths actually are. What helps you bring your best to the table?
If you aren't using your strengths regularly in your day-to-day life, that could be contributing to your anxiety and negative thinking. If you're not great at what you're spending your time doing, it's hard to focus on what's great about you.
But trust me: everyone has specific, unique strengths. There are no right or wrong ones. The CliftonStrengths assessment identifies 34 core strengths, and knowing your top five can significantly shift how you value yourself. Getting the chance to work in them, or build a business around them, is one of the real ways to create the life you want.
Recommended resources:
The Gallup CliftonStrengths Finder
Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
Body of Work by Pamela Slim
The Widest Net by Pamela Slim
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
16Personalities (free MBTI alternative)
High5 Test
BetterHelp Online Therapy
Calm
Question of the day: What are your strengths? Do you get to use them every day?
by Bridgett Hart | SELF
Last time, I talked about how your imperfections make you perfect, and shared two of my own deepest, darkest secrets. I know that raised a real question: how does knowing your weaknesses actually make you perfect? And what good does it do to know your imperfections, especially after I just told you how important it is to know your strengths?
This is about turning your faults, your imperfections, your deepest secrets, into your superpowers. I'll walk you through the exercise. Follow along.
Two Things I Was Hiding
For me, the two biggest ones were cannabis use, and later, discovering racism I hadn't examined in myself.
At the time I first went through this, I was a CEO and executive director at a large agency, overseeing people running 24-hour care facilities. The question was: how would speaking openly about either of those things, cannabis use or unexamined racism, have actually helped me, or anyone, in that role?
It's a fair question. What would've happened if, as CEO, I'd announced I was pro-cannabis, that I used it every day, that I was a health equity advocate for cannabis access and research? At the time, over a decade ago, it wouldn't have helped. I would've lost my job. I would've lost my fingerprint clearance card. I wouldn't have been able to do most of what I was doing in that role.
Authenticity Needs Wisdom Too
Authenticity always helps, but it needs wisdom alongside it. Would discovering my own racism have helped me in that CEO role? Yes, absolutely. I could have used that position to work toward eradicating white supremacy inside the organization, to uplift and empower the people I worked with, to run an anti-racist corporation from the top down, if I'd done that work and been willing to sit with it.
Unfortunately, I didn't have that awakening until long after I'd already left the CEO role, because of the cannabis, not the racism. But that circles back to the real point: how did any of this actually help me?
What the Discovery Actually Gave Me
Discovering how important cannabis was to my life helped me make an authentic decision about the direction of my life. I realized that climbing the corporate ladder, being CEO, being executive director, wasn't actually the journey I wanted for myself. I was there. I hadn't ended up there by accident. But I didn't actually want to be there, and I wasn't motivated to stay on that path. So I pivoted, because I'd authentically embraced what I believed, at the time, were my imperfections.
Once I could embrace those things honestly, I was able to evaluate what I actually wanted. Not just what I didn't want, but what I wanted to build, and what I wanted to contribute to the community around me. I used that imperfection to navigate my way to where I am today.
If I weren't open about my cannabis use now, it would genuinely be harder to do the work I do. A lot of the people I work with, in business consulting and in coaching, also use cannabis, and it matters to them to be able to say so openly with the people they work with, instead of being dismissed, or assumed to lack the wisdom or mental capacity to do extraordinary things, simply because of the stigma attached to it. Because I'm open about it, we can work together in that same authenticity, and build something new, together.
Cultivate Your Strengths at the Same Time
The flip side of embracing your imperfections is cultivating your strengths. I've written before about how to figure out yours using the Clifton StrengthsFinder, based on four decades of Gallup research. You take a short assessment, or it comes with the book, and it tells you your top five strengths.
At the same time I was making this transition in my life, I dug into my own strengths, and started figuring out how to actually work within them. It made all the difference. Using cannabis daily became one of my superpowers. And discovering the racism inside me became another one, because now I can talk to white people about how to recognize and unlearn it in themselves. I've already been through that work. I'm still on it. But I'm glad to share what I've learned.
Connect With People Who Share Your Values
The last piece: connect with people who share your values, your strengths, or complementary ones, and your imperfections too. That's where the real magic happens. You are love, manifest in human form. Exactly as you are is exactly as you were meant to be, and you are perfect. Once you can remember that about yourself, it gets a lot easier to remember it about everyone else too.
Question of the day: What's one thing you've been hiding that might actually be a strength, once you stop hiding it?
