How to Use Your Character Strengths

The PsyBlog has a couple of posts up about character strengths.
The first one, “Discover You Character Strengths in 15 Minutes”, has a link to a 240 question quiz.
The second one focuses on “How to Use You Character Strengths”.

From Psyblog:

“You may like to have your character strengths survey results to hand while thinking about these questions. Head over to the VIA Survey website to recap your strengths, or take the test if you haven’t done so already. This previous post explains the background.

What can I do with my list of strengths?
One common exercise is a discussion of your signature strengths with another person. Talk with someone you trust about which strengths strike you as more authentically associated with yourself. One thing you might discuss or have a think about is:

How do I know when to use which strength?
Sometimes it’s possible to be too courageous, too curious or even too kind. The trick is determining when to use which strength. Try to think of situations in which you’ve used your strengths successfully and times when you’ve used them unsuccessfully. Is there any pattern? If there is, what is this telling you? Schwartz and Sharpe (2005) argue that practical wisdom can only be reached through practice. There’s no substitute for exercising your strengths in the right way, and understanding why.”

Take the Character Strength Quiz here.