Find Your Passion and You Find Your Strengths

What Matters Most?

Using your strengths to impact well-being

by Ryan M. Niemiec, Psy.D.

Ryan M. Niemiec, Psy.D.

Ryan M. Niemiec, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist, certified coach, author, and international workshop leader. His specialty areas include: character strengths, mindfulness meditation, and psychology portrayed in movies. Ryan’s highest character strengths are hope, curiosity, fairness, appreciation of beauty, love, and social intelligence.

• Education Director of VIA Institute on Character, a nonprofit organization in Cincinnati, Ohio that educates individuals about the science and practice of character strengths. VIA is considered a leading organization in positive psychology and the worldwide leader on the science of character strengths.

• Ryan currently leads online workshops on the practice of character strengths for practitioners in business, psychology, coaching, and education. In 2011, these workshops reached individuals in 35 countries. He is a regular speaker at international and national conferences.

• Ryan has had the privilege of helping people in a variety of settings, including a weight management program, pain center, psychology & religion program, correctional facility, homeless shelter, neuropsychology clinic, general outpatient clinic, psychiatric hospital, rural clinic, and a primary care clinic.

• Ryan has a passion for using mindfulness meditation as a pathway for helping individuals to flourish and live their best life, as well as in the treatment of physical and mental problems. He has led several-hundred mindfulness meditation groups over the last decade, and is the creator of Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP), an 8-week program that integrates the best practices of mindfulness and character strengths. It is currently being piloted in several countries.

• Ryan is co-author of 3 books, including Positive Psychology at the Movies: Using Films to Build Virtues and Character Strengths (2008, with Danny Wedding) and Movies and Mental Illness: Using Films to Understand Psychopathology (2005; 2010, with Danny Wedding and Mary Ann Boyd). His books have been translated into multiple languages.
  
• His new book, Mindfulness and Character Strengths, is scheduled to be released in the Spring 2013.
  
• Ryan is Associate Editor of the journal PsycCRITIQUES, the official review journal of the American Psychological Association that publishes scholarly reviews of contemporary psychology books and films. Ryan is a consulting editor for Psychology of Popular Media Culture – an APA, peer-reviewed journal.
  
• In 2011, Ryan received the award for Distinguished Early Career Applied/Research Contribution from the American Psychological Association (Division 46, Media).

Find Your Passion and You Find Your Strengths

New research shows a connection between strengths, passion, and well-being.

Published on May 24, 2013 by Ryan M. Niemiec, Psy.D. in What Matters Most?

Many of us are blind to our best qualities. When asked to name our strengths, we often come up empty-handed or we say something that isn't very meaningful. What we tend to miss is to label our most core qualities - our strengths of character.
Sometimes it is easier to "see" our core qualities by looking at ourselves from a different angle.
What are your passions? What activities do you like that are effortless and give you a sense of freedom to do? Biking, cooking, playing basketball, talking with your best friend, eating at a new restaurant? And on and on. It's probably very easy for you to construct such a list. Consider what character strengths you are using with each activity (e.g., curiosity when trying a new food, social intelligence when talking with a friend, self-regulation when playing basketball, etc.

New research is backing up this approach. Research from Jacques Forest and his colleagues in Canada found that signature strength use led to increases in harmonious passion. This means that when people express their strengths they are expressing a sense of who they are in a balanced way that is freely chosen and personally important in their life. This then leads to greater happiness for that person.
Previous research has been clear: Find ways to use your signature strengths and you will reap the benefits. One such benefit is greater happiness. And when you bring forth your best strengths at work, you have more positive work experiences, work satisfaction increases, and your engagement gets a boost too.
But why? Why is the use of signature strengths linked with greater happiness? In addition to the link with passion, other research has explained this connection by finding that when we tap into our most natural and energizing internal qualities we meet our basic psychological needs and we reach our goals.
The main message: Whether you are a teacher, a garbage collector, a homemaker, an accountant, or an office manager, finding ways to align your character strengths with your work each day has a positive impact.
Here are the steps of the strengths exercises that Forest had his subjects take:
1.) First, the subjects described in detail what it looked like when they were working at their best. They noted how their signature strengths were involved and how they felt before and after using their signature strengths as well as how they felt in the moment.
2.) The subjects were then invited to use two of their signature strengths in new ways at their current job for two weeks.
3.) Finally, the subjects reflected on the positive consequences of using their signature strengths in their current job.
Easy enough, right? Sometimes it’s the easiest things, when applied the right way, that make the biggest impact.
How about you? Apply these three steps above to your current work. This will help you tap into your natural passion and enthusiasm and unleash it into the world.

References:
Forest, J., Mageau, G. V. A., Crevier-Braud, L., Bergeron, L., Dubreuil, P., & Lavigne, G. V. L. (2012). Harmonious passion as an explanation of the relation between signature strengths’ use and well-being at work: Test of an intervention program. Human Relations, 65(9), 1233-1252.
Linley, P. A., Nielsen, K. M., Gillett, R., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2010). Using signature strengths in pursuit of goals: Effects on goal progress, need satisfaction, and well-being, and implications for coaching psychologists.International Coaching Psychology Review, 5(1), 6-15.

source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-matters-most/201305/find-your-passion-and-you-find-your-strengths