Character Strengths Reflection
My top three character strengths were love of learning, curiosity, and hope. I think that these perfectly encompass who I am. I am the type of person who overloads my classes just because I want to learn for the sake of learning. I don't care about requirements for my major-I just want to get my hands on as much knowledge as possible. I also always have hope that I will be able to balance the workload while still coming out on top with my grades. Having these strengths have led to a lot of interesting opportunities for me-speech and debate (comedy category-which would be very surprising if you knew me, getting to go to Florida (for free) for a business competition, making it to NCAA Division 2 wrestling (got a major concussion from that), and so many other weird side adventures just because I was curious on what it would feel like.
Prompt: Think of what you would consider your signature strengths. Do you primarily use these strengths for your own well-being, or for the well-being of others? How can you ensure a balanced usage?
To be honest, I see myself as an inherently selfish person. I am always trying to get ahead with my own work and passions, which leaves less room for friends and family. However, my curiosity and love of learning led me to the 7 cups internship! This has led me to help people by honing my skills on how to properly listen to people. Although, I suppose that is also inherently selfish because I took the internship because I wanted to learn how to be a better listener and communicator for myself. I also want to help my brother with these new skills, although it is scary because my family is a bit weird. We have our own struggles, which make it hard to communicate with each other. However, I was recently able to help a friend with a breakup-I think-or else, I didn't do anything to make it worse, so there's improvement. Whenever I try to spread my own hope, though, it always goes wrong. I believe in aggressive optimism, where things have to get better. It's inevitable. I also believe in cliche phrases like "What goes up must come down". I now know that, while the phrase is inherently true (cliches become cliches for a reason), it's usually not what people need to hear when they need someone to talk to.
@Kaleigh3067
My strength is empathy. I can put myself into alot of people's shoes and be understanding to why they did something and be forgiving. It helps me in building relationship with people, and also in making others feel heard. However, it can get in the way of saying no and stand up for myself when people hurt me because I 'd always think they are handing alot to hurt me intentionally or unintentionally. As these situations repeated however, I learned to 1, put myself as priorities instead of others. 2, I can be kind while standing up for myself too.
It really helped to balance between having it as my strength and a weaknesses hehe
It makes sense you might feel like you are selfish, but I wanna gently challenge that idea.
Pursuing what you love, taking that internship to learn to listen better, trying to help your brother, even supporting a friend through a breakup—these aren’t acts of selfishness. They’re proof you care, even if you’re still figuring it out. Your drive to grow doesn’t cancel out the ways you show up for others. That’s not selfish at all. Think about it in this way, those curiosity and love of learning are what derives you to help people and those people benefitted from both your knowledge and your compassion
Anyway, thanks for helping people and for your contribution to 7cups