Awareness is at the foundation of nearly everything human. In particular, when it comes to your personal psychology and emotional wellness, accurate self-awareness is a big deal. Self-awareness involves knowing our strengths, weakness, what we love, what we dislike, and many other things. Knowing our personal strengths is especially central to positive psychology and happiness.

One main method for expanding self-awareness is to ask others for feedback. Asking others, “What do you think of me?” is a powerful and straightforward self-awareness tool, but it requires social risk-taking and courage. Asking for feedback is a good, but not perfect method for expanding self-awareness because asking others for feedback may NOT expand your self-awareness if that other person doesn’t know you well or sees you inaccurately. Feedback from others is often, but not always, helpful for expanding self-awareness.

Another method for expanding self-awareness involves, ironically, being more open and transparent to others. If we want accurate feedback from others, it’s best to let others get to know us, otherwise the feedback and information they provide will be limited. To get good feedback from others, we need to provide others with good data about ourselves. Without good data, others can’t give us good feedback.

Talking about self-awareness is great way to introduce this week’s happiness activity and challenge. This is an activity I made up about 15 years ago while teaching a career development class. I call it the Natural Talent Interview. Not surprisingly, because I made it up, I think it’s an awesome assignment. I suspect everyone will love it. On the other hand, you should be the judge of that, AND, you should give me feedback on this activity so I can expand my self-awareness!

This activity will feel weird and awkward. It’s not socially normal for you to do what I’m asking you to do this week. Nevertheless, because the brain is so inclined toward the negative, asking people who know you to share what they see as your positive qualities can be especially powerful and meaningful . . . which is well worth the awkwardness of this activity.

The activity -

Conduct Two Natural Talent Interviews: To do this activity, identify two people whom you respect and trust. Let them know that you have an assignment to get more in touch with your personal strengths and talents. Then, get a note pad, recorder (or commit yourself to making mental notes) and ask them the following question:

What do you think are my three greatest strengths or talents?

As you listen, be sure to ask the person for specific examples of each talent or strength. You can take notes, or just listen and then document the talents or strengths the person said you have. 

The purpose of this assignment is to get to know your personal strengths and talents from the perspective of others. Maybe you’ve done this sort of thing before. But because things change with time, it’s worth updating the feedback you get from others or worth asking new people for feedback.

At the end, consider sharing your insights with us or on social media.

Thanks, and happy feedback day.

John S-F

#MHPHappinessChallenge

#MontanaHappiness

https://www.youtube.com/@montanahappinessproject333 

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100073966896370 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/97180580/admin/feed/posts/ 

https://johnsommersflanagan.com/  

https://www.tiktok.com/@montana.happiness

Dr. John Sommers-Flanagan, University of Montana