What are your strengths? Are you using them each day?
The new website, viame.org, offers the Values In Action (VIA) to both adults and youth, and their versions are only half as long as the versions you might have seen on www.authentichappiness.org. Still at no cost, although if you want a more extensive report (rather than the 24 strengths ranked by your testing results), they offer that at a reasonable cost.
Many of us who are interested in positive psychology find the VIA to be a critical part of our approach. We know that when individuals put more energy into their strengths, they feel happier and more fulfilled. Usually, this takes the form of focusing on one of your top five strengths, and using it in new ways or in new settings for a couple of weeks.
Now Todd Kashdan reports that when people use two particular strengths together, the risk of suicide drops dramatically. If individuals practice both Gratitude and Grit (perseverence) together, any adversity is met with resilience rather than thoughts of suicide.
Here is Todd’s report: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/curious/201305/two-strengths-together-reduce-the-risk-suicidality
Here is a short url: http://tinyurl.com/c4y83r8
Here is a comment by Michael Hogan on this business of combining strengths:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-one-lifespan/201305/systems-strengths
Short version: http://tinyurl.com/dywlshf
How are you combining your strengths?
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