"Inner strengths are the supplies you've got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard road of life. They include a positive mood, common sense, integrity, inner peace, determination, and a warm heart.
Researchers have identified other strengths as well, such as self-compassion, secure attachment, emotional intelligence, learned optimism, relaxation response, self-esteem, distress tolerance, self-regulation, resilience, and executive functions.
We can develop happiness and other inner strengths that foster fulfillment, love, effectiveness, wisdom, and inner peace.
Challenges, Vulnerabilities, and Strengths
How you feel and act is determined by three factors: the challenges you face, the vulnerabilities these challenges grind on, and the strengths you have for meeting your challenges and protecting your vulnerabilities.
You need strengths to deal with challenges and vulnerabilities, and as either or both of these grow, so must your strengths to match them. If you want to feel less stressed, anxious, frustrated, irritable, depressed, disappointed, lonely, guilty, hurt, or inadequate, having more inner strengths will help you.
Inner strengths are fundamental to a happy, productive, and loving life. Research on just one strength, positive emotions, shows that these reduce reactivity and stress, help heal psychological wounds, and improve resilience, well-being, and life satisfaction. Positive emotions encourage the pursuit of opportunities, create positive cycles, and promote success. They also strengthen your immune system, protect your heart, and foster a healthier and longer life.
The Practice
Your experiences matter. Not just for how they feel in the moment but also for the lasting traces they leave in your brain. Based on what we've learned about experience-dependent neuroplasticity, a modern version would be to say that the brain takes its shape from what the mind rests upon.
If you keep resting your mind on self-criticism, worries, grumbling about others, hurts, and stress, then your brain will be shaped into greater reactivity, vulnerability to anxiety, and depressed mood, a narrow focus on threats and losses, and inclinations toward anger, sadness, and guilt.
On the other hand, if you keep resting your mind on good events and conditions, pleasant feelings, the things you do get done, physical pleasures, and your good intentions and qualities, then over time your brain will take a different shape, one with strength and resilience hardwired into it, as well as a realistically optimistic outlook, a positive mood, and a sense of worth.
This practice of growing inner strengths is both simple and authentic. First, look for opportunities to have an experience of the strength.
Second, help this experience actually sink into your brain, helping it fill your body, and getting a sense of it sinking into you as you sink into it."
Reflection:
What are some of your inner strengths? And what strengths would you like to develop?
*I think compassion has always been a strength of mine and I'm so grateful for it. I would love to develop more resilience and self-esteem.*
#Strengths #Self-esteem #Compassion #Resilience #Development
