Wellness Wednesday – “Engaging With Our Strengths”
For this week’s Wellness Wednesday, we continue our exploration of the second of the five aspects of the PERMA-V model for well-being in life by again considering how to improve our Engagement. As I mentioned in my last Wellness Wednesday, one of the best ways to improve your engagement in your various callings in life and begin to experience a greater sense of flow, joy, and fulfillment is to discover, develop, and leverage your God-given talents to build a Strengths-based life and ministry. One of the best assessments I’ve found that has helped so many that I’ve coached over the years to do just that is the CliftonStrengths assessment. Of all the assessment tools I’ve utilized in coaching over the years, this is the one that my coaching clients have found the most energizing and beneficial to empower them to make a greater Kingdom impact in their everyday callings of life.
The CliftonStrengths assessment (a.k.a. Strengthsfinder) aids people in identifying their innate God-given talents – their natural patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can be productively applied in life. While this assessment doesn’t measure for every talent in life (i.e., musical talent, athletic talents, etc.), it does measure for 34 distinct talent themes, or unique combinations of talents, that are universal to all people. The way to take a God-given talent and develop it as a strength in your life is known as The Strengths Equation:
These talents are gifted to us as part of God’s workmanship and design. To serve one another with the strengths God provides is to play a role in God’s economy in our daily vocations. He uses each person to bless others uniquely according to their God-given ability. As such, each of us should utilize those strengths that have been gifted to us to love and glorify our Creator by loving and serving others. As the Apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:10-11, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”
Below are the 34 talent themes that the CliftonStrengths assessment measures for categorized into the four domains, or different groupings of these 34 talent themes, as laid out by Tom Rath in his book “Strengths Based Leadership”: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking.
We are often tempted to think that success and increased engagement in life comes from identifying and fixing our weaknesses. While we need to be aware of our weaknesses because they can trip us up, the most significant opportunity for success comes from not focusing on improving our weaknesses but instead focusing on and leveraging our strengths in life. Then, in the areas we are not as gifted at, we should partner with those with talents complementary to our own. Sound familiar? This concept is what Paul has in mind when he equates each of us as a part of the Body of Christ in 1 Cor 12:18-20, “But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. ” You can’t be all things to all people – you can only be who God has created and redeemed you to be in Christ!
If you want to deepen your awareness of God’s unique gifting in your life and improve your level of Engagement in your ministry, with your family, and in your other various callings, feel free to contact me. I would be happy to assist you in taking the CliftonStrengths Top-5 assessment, which will assist you in identifying your top five strengths, highlighting some of the best of who God has gifted and created you to be. Also available are the CliftonStrengths Full-34, CliftonStrengths for Leaders, and CliftonStrengths for Managers reports. I would also be happy to do a complimentary coaching session to help you name, claim, and aim these unique talents as strengths in your life.
