28 Feb Happiness is…understanding the truth about weaknesses
There are so many good people doing so much good work in the area of positive psychology and happiness but one of the best is Robert Biswas-Deiner. Once again he's written a great happiness relevant article focusing, this time, on kindess and weakness. It goes like this…
Within the circles of positive psychology there is, understandably, a preference for focusing on strengths. This approach makes sense since research suggests that people who focus on strengths enjoy higher self-esteem, more happiness and make more progress toward their goals. What this also means, unfortunately, is that some folks take license to ignore weaknesses.
Make no mistakes, weaknesses are also an important area of focus, and they should be managed carefully. The truth about weaknesses is that addressing them can actually be fun. Just take the example of Kurt Shuster, the founder of the coach-client matching service Noomii (www.noomii.com).
Kurt took the VIA strengths assessment and found that kindness was– let's just say– not among his top strengths. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that Kurt is not naturally kind. As alarmed by this finding as you and I are Kurt decided to address his kindness deficits and has recently launched a fantastic video blog called "52 acts of kindness" ( http://www.noomii.com/blogs/52actsofkindness/ ).
The idea is simple, fun and powerful. Each week for a year Kurt is going to engage in an act of kindness and see if all this psychological exercise can help him bulk up his kindness muscles. fortunately for the rest of us Kurt is also filming his projects! His video blog begins with his first act: offering free limosine rides to arriving passengers from Los Angeles International Airport anywhere in the metro area. Let's just say that not everyone is as eager as you might think to jump into a free limo.
I hope you will watch Kurt's misadventures along with me this year!
I encourage you to go to the source and find out more about his great work HERE at the Positive Acorn.