Do you know those people who seem to focus on everything they’re not instead of seeing everything they are? Guilty! (You’d probably know that though if you read my last post, Success). In a psychology for effective living class I took, I had to take a survey where it ranked, from strongest to weakest, 24 characteristics that were seen as admirable across different cultures. As my professor predicted we would, once I got my results, I scrolled down to the bottom to see what I sucked at. Apparently, love. Although it’s a little disconcerting, it’s not surprising considering I only tell animals (non Homo sapiens) that I love them. Mostly cats. My aunt even got mad at me for it once. Back to what I was saying. The purpose of the assignment wasn’t to see what I’m terrible at, but what five or six traits are my strongest in order to showcase them. So I scrolled back up to the top. Honesty. Humor. Creativity. Perspective. Hope. Spirituality. Alright, I can live with those.
The excellent thing about this test is you can’t have a bad combination. Sure, you can scroll to the bottom and think your chances of ever getting married might be in the toilet, but that’s not what we’re focusing on here. The point is, it’s easy to see what you’re not good at, to think you need to put your effort into those shortcomings, and improve them in order to be a solid well-rounded person. Except by doing that, you take attention away from enhancing and embracing what you naturally excel at. It’s not to say that things can’t be worked on, but to be obsessive about it or beat yourself up for it is not beneficial. You’re already complete with the characteristics that best suit you. It’s time to accept them and put them in the forefront.
If you’re interested in taking the test, the link is below. It takes about 30 minutes, so give yourself enough uninterrupted time. I’d also recommend creating a profile or writing down your results or else you won’t be able to access them again.
https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register
If you want to watch a documentary on positive psychology that we saw in class, I highly recommend checking out Happy. I believe it is on Netflix.
Another interesting thing to note that I learned in that class is the difference between OCD and OCPD. People often say they have OCD when they’re particular in the way they do something, but that isn’t technically correct.
•OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is when someone believes they have to do a particular ritual or else something bad will happen. For example, triple checking to make sure the toaster is unplugged because if it’s not, the house will burn down.
•OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) is when a person is an extreme perfectionist and takes order and neatness to the next level. They don’t see that anything is wrong with them because their way is the proper way. For example, expecting to get full credit on a paper they turned in two weeks late because they rewrote it 16 times in order for it to be perfect.
Honesty, Humor & Hope 