A new friend was telling me how important he believed it is to be positive. I heartily agreed of course and told him I had spent a few years writing about positive psychology on a blog I had for a while. I explained that positive psychology was the study of what makes us whole, happy, thriving human beings.
“And what are the things that do that for us?” he asked. I told him that it seemed to boil down to discovering your best traits and building on them. Positive psychology, I told him, calls these traits your character strengths.
I hadn’t thought about the list of character strengths for a while, but they floated into my awareness again today when I was thinking about my dad. Today is “Father’s Day” here in the States, and as I was recalling the things I loved about my dad, I realized how many strengths he embodied.
The first one that came to mind was his wonderful sense of humor. He loved to laugh and to tell stories that brought laughter to other people, too. That was definitely one of his top strengths. I think it’s what saved him. His life wasn’t an easy one. He had plenty of reasons to fall into despair, to think of himself as a victim of unfair circumstances, a loser in the lottery of life.
But he would have none of that. He looked, instead, for life’s goodness, for the things that were juicy with beauty and friendship and love.
He was industrious, too, a hard worker. He would take on any task that would make things work better or contribute something constructive to the world around him. And he would stick to it until he was satisfied with the result.
Dad had a zest for life. He was open to whatever came along, ready to meet new experiences with enthusiasm.
He loved learning, too. He was always reading something and he would dig for weeks to find answers to questions that popped into his mind. Only one time did he have a question that went unanswered. “You know that guy you see flying around on a magic carpet?” he would ask people. Everybody knew the image. “What was his name?” Dad would ask. Nobody knew. The ladies at the library couldn’t even find the answer. Dad finally gave up on that one. He said he’d just call him Sam.
He was generous, and kind, and hopeful and optimistic.
He had a great big heart.
All of those traits of his are strengths. Character strengths, to be precise. They’re the things that let us be good people. The positive psychologists had identified two dozen of them last time I checked. I’ll share the list with you next week. It’s fun to think about which ones are most important to you. Usually the ones you value the most are the ones that are strongest in your own personality. Once you identify them, you can use them as tools for tackling whatever challenges come your way. And the best part is, when you learn to build on your best ones, the rest of them increase in strength, too.
I can see how that worked in my dad’s life. His willingness to laugh gave him a perspective that developed into a genuine wisdom the permeated every aspect of his life. I feel so lucky to have had him as my dad.
Dad’s matter. If you are a father, I salute you today. If you are the child of a loving father, or have had a strong father-figure in your life, I share with you the incredible feeling of knowing you have truly been blessed.