Personal Strengths

"O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us," wrote the Scottish poet Robert Burns. He meant it in a cautionary sense: We should govern ourselves so that if we were standing outside of ourselves watching our actions we would not shame ourselves. But a corollary to this is also true: We are not always aware of our own strengths. This paper examines the differences between my own assessment of personal strengths and those that a survey of these strengths showed up. There is a temptation to designate those strengths that are assigned by an outside source (in this case, a well-tested social-psychological instrument) as being more legitimate than those one has thought up on one's own in an extemporaneous way. However, central to the value of this process for me has been my exploration of the ways in which these two...
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