The Power of Character Strengths: A Positive Psychology Approach to Thriving

Character strengths became part of the positive psychology vocabulary about 15-20 years ago when they were introduced to the research community by Martin Seligman, the founding father of positive psychology and his team of specialists. They identified 24 character strengths that all people possess that are seen as positive parts of our personality.

In this time over 1,000 peer reviewed research studies have been undertaken to assess their benefits and the overall results report that when we use them mindfully they are essential to improving our wellbeing and helping us overcome adversities. Here is a table of the character strengths to help highlight the resources we can use to help us.

A Classification of VIA Character Strengths and Virtues –

Source: https://www.viacharacter.org

WISDOM	COURAGE	HUMANITY	JUSTICE	TEMPERANCE	TRANSCENDENCE
Creativity	Bravery	Love	Teamwork	Forgiveness	Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
Curiosity	Perseverance	Kindness	Fairness	Humility	Gratitude
Judgement	Honesty	Social Intelligence	Leadership	Prudence	Hope
Love of Learning	Zest			Self-Regulation	Humour
Perspective					Spirituality

1.     The first activity to increase our awareness of our own strengths would be to complete the free online survey at www.viacharacter.org

On completion, a report is returned to you that identifies all these strengths in rank order. It may be that it matches your expectations, or you may find surprises in there. It is important to remember they are all strengths! Over 35 million people have now taken this survey so you are in good company.

2.     The next activity is then to decide how you want to develop your strengths. The website has lots of user-friendly information that you can explore to increase your understanding and confidence. An easy win is to read around the top 5 signature strengths - these are the ones that are your strongest qualities and reflect who you are. A more challenging option is to select one that is lower in the list and focus on how to bolster that one.

3.     When we know our strengths, we can then understand how we can build on them. Consequently, a third activity could be to notice strengths in others to help reinforce engagement and relationships with others from colleagues to family members and those in our care.

They are an important part of our toolkit to help improve our overall health and support us when life goes wrong. Interestingly, we are often more at ease with identifying our weaknesses than our strengths, making this positive psychology intervention invaluable in helping us to become more aware of our talents and abilities.

We need to be mindful that any of the strengths can be overplayed and underplayed, which may result in adverse responses from others. Seligman (2014) named these as a ‘shadow side’. For instance, overplaying my strengths of ‘love’ can be seen as being too involved, ‘love of learning’ can be viewed as a know it all and ‘perseverance’ as stubborn. Conversely, underplaying ‘love’ can be seen as being distant, ‘love of learning’ as not being interested in knowing the facts, and ‘perseverance’ as giving up too soon.

Therefore, as in learning any skill practicing using them more creatively and consistently will help to locate the optimum ‘sweet spot’ more readily and effectively (Macfarlane, 2019,2022).

Strengths in Action: Everyday Examples

It may be that you are demonstrating your own strengths already, here are some examples of character strengths in action.

Kindness – perform an act of kindness for someone without expecting a favour back, be gentle in communication

Honesty – keep your promises

Fairness – give credit to a deserving person

Love – take time to really listen to a person

Teamwork – volunteer to help a colleague out when your work is done

A Strength-Based Life: Why It Matters

The philosophy of character strengths is to help us create a more fulfilled life and also contribute to the collective good in a balanced way. The world authority on Character Strengths is Dr Ryan Niemiec. He makes the case that Character Strengths Psychology has the capacity to revolutionise and cultivate the workplace for the better, as it is demonstrating detectable psychological benefit to employees through the power of increased self-awareness and the drive to continually improve our lives for the better (2020). What an exciting prospect to bring in this knowledge into our lives both at home and at work to improve our own and others future!

I hope this blog inspires you to learn more about the topic and increases your self-awareness around your own unique talents and potential.

Dr Jan

REFERENCES

Macfarlane, J. (2019). Exploring how awareness of character strengths can benefit mental health nurses. British Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 8(3), 145-152. https://doi.org/10.12968/bjmh.2019.8.3.145

Macfarlane J. (2022).Positive psychology pioneers: Ryan Niemiec’s  power and potential to influence mental health nursing. British Journal of Mental Health Nursing.11(4).  https://doi.org/10.12968/bjmh.2022.0032

Niemiec, R. M. (2020). Six functions of character strengths for thriving at times of adversity and opportunity: A theoretical perspective. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 15(2), 551-572. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9692-2

Niemiec, R.M. (2025). The Dual Role of Character Strengths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63oPIK8Ogb4

Seligman, M. E. (2014). Chris Peterson’s unfinished masterwork: The real mental illnesses. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(1), 3-6.

https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888582