I originally wrote this letter to one client who sought a greater purpose in their life. Then reviewed this letter when thinking of another who struggled with different challenges. So this letter expanded to many clients… then the human race.
Hence this article is now for everyone — especially anyone struggling with parts of their life. An unexamined life is not worth living” was a powerful statement published in Plato’s “Apology”.
We all have considerable talents and strengths that we bring to our world. Do we stop and ponder this topic? Is this introspection a luxury, or something uncomfortable that you postpone?
Examine your strengths, accomplishments and background. It is a powerful way to be clear on the energy you bring to bear — and how you tackle the challenges life throws you.
1. How do you self-soothe?
Sometimes we turn up to see a Psychologist because we can’t cope with our distress. Maybe our ways of coping aren’t working for us anymore. We feel helpless. A sharp, deep sense of helplessness leads to depression. We cast our minds into the future and look for ways to bring about a sense of certainty… or control. Sharp, pervading worry about the future brings about anxiety.
We have our signature ways of coping. Drinking, substances, or overwork. Cleaning the house in a compulsive way. Other ways of coping feel forced upon us. Some ways of coping become symptoms that get explored in therapy. Sadness that won’t go away — not being able to get out of bed, and not gaining enjoyment out of hobbies. Not coping with strong emotions — then feeling shame after an ‘emotional outburst’.
Deep wounds from trauma lead to their own ways we might cope. Jeffrey Young, the founder of Schema Therapy, tells us that we might choose to overcompensate, avoid or surrender. So, we become a super-high achievers (overcompensate)… for example. Or a people-pleaser — or someone who achieves well below their abilities (avoid). Or sometimes we use substances, tonnes of comfort food or other distractions to numb us — or escape for a while (surrender).
Yet your ways of coping — as ‘abnormal’ to others as they may seem, or as hurtful to you in the long run, have served you until now. Certain ‘numbing’ behaviours (also known as safety behaviours) serve you — it’s not for anyone else to judge (as long as others are safe, of course). Yet strong emotions and hurtful self-talk are difficult opponents to unbalance. So, are there more constructive ways to self-soothe?
This is where a trained Psychologist can help you. It’s not easy to re-train old, comfortable ways to soothe ourselves. Nor easy for us to unpick the impacts of nasty thinking. Accepting and surfing the wave of strong emotions is also fraught with difficulty.
Yet a partner can act as a mirror to reflect these difficult parts of ourselves in a respectful, tentative way.
2. Could “wallowing” in our strengths and unique talents help energise us?
You might find learning about people’s backgrounds to be fascinating and rewarding. I do — it helps me walk in another’s shoes. We may juggle a ‘day job’, volunteer work, a side hustle, hobbies, study, or carer responsibility. How has each shaped your worldview?
Diverse backgrounds foster unique strengths. You become anti-fragile, a polymath — and more interesting conversation at dinner parties.
I used the word “wallowing” when referring to our strengths. It’s an odd word choice. Yet don’t we “wallow” in our failings? We often wallow in distressing emotions, our negative self-talk, and other’s belief about our failings. Yet think about a percentage of how much of our day is spent on savouring our wins, our strengths and enjoyment of life. What percentage would this be for you?
Yes, I know it’s hard to change and adapt to life’s challenges. Some of us aren’t ready to consider change yet, while some of us are at the starting line. We begin a new way of living — then relapse. Is relapse OK? Of course. Sometimes we don’t feel that we have a purpose. Yet when we accidentally discover cool things about ourselves, make small steps in any direction, or see failure as temporary, something changes in us.
These happy accidents take the edge off our psychological misery.
You may have failed in something significant. For instance, a romantic endeavour, a challenging goal or something else you were sure you should have achieved. Has your previous experience been a waste of time? It is unlikely. You may have picked up many above-average skills on the way.
Now, what if you combine your skills in unique ways? Perhaps the right skill combination, at the right time… with the right people? Coupled with persistence — usually a teeny bit more than the persistence we were originally prepared to give?
Our internal and external environment joins forces to help us realise how valuable we are — to others, and ourselves!
By now we may have identified above-average skills that we can combine. So, let’s move from introspection to helpful questions and tools.
3. What qualities do you bring to life?
We may rely on feedback from others around us. This feedback has value — but also may be laden with bias or agenda. Sometimes it helps to work with a professional — someone without this bias or agenda. Someone who holds your failures and strengths alike with unconditional positive regard.
One of the challenges of examining your life is not having ready access to helpful tools. Tools like the ones suggested in this article help you see your personality. Research suggests that your personality is quite fixed over the course of your life.
These tests help you focus on “what’s right with you”. This focus on your positives is an emerging field of psychology. Research suggests that our brains are hard-wired towards negativity. Yet, isn’t it more enjoyable to focus on your strengths? How draining would this exercise be if you thought only of your deficits, or how to reduce your distress?
The Values in Action Character survey (VIA) is a free, confidential survey. Your results show your unique constellation among twenty-four character strengths. You can see your top five strengths and interpret these considering your career. VIA also helps define the leading character strengths you can bring to your project team.
Psychologists are selective about personality tests they use on their clients and are well-versed in statistics. They are also ethically bound to select the most appropriate tests for their clients.
Thus, Psychologists scrutinise a personality test’s psychometric properties. These psychometric properties include reliability (will the results stay mostly the same over time?), and validity (does the test examine what it says it should?).
The Big Five test is one of the major personality tests used by Psychologists due to its viable psychometric properties. The Big Five gets its name as it measures five significant personality factors. A useful acronym to help you remember what the Big Five measures is called ‘OCEAN’. OCEAN stands for O = Openness to Experience; C=Conscientiousness; E=Extroversion; A=Agreeableness; and N=Neuroticism.
The Big Five Aspects Scale is a 100-item, inexpensive survey which may help you understand the five major facets of your personality. A trained Psychologist can use another personality test called the NEO-PI-R, which uses the ‘Big Five’ too. The NEO-PI-R results, interpreted by a trained Psychologist, can provide you insight by a trained professional.
Similarly, the Clifton Strengths assessment looks at thirty-four strengths across four themes. This assessment ranks your preferred strengths — perhaps in the context of you as an employee. Each strength links to one of four themes. The four themes include executing, influencing, relationship-building and strategic thinking. Your top five strengths are likely those which you use most days at work. Seeing how your strengths intersect with each of the four themes can be a startling insight. For example, three of your top five strengths may relate to influencing. The remaining two may relate to executing. This pattern of results may suggest you are a “take charge and get it done” person.
Like the previous tests, there are no “wrong answers”. Tests relating to work also relate to life — how you “play the game of life” may be like how you might “play the game of work”. With some differences — your family and friends might have far different dynamics in the workplace. Also, you might show up to work as “your best self” — and portray a different persona when you’re at home.
Your personality reflects how you prefer to engage in a group. You may be action-oriented or an innovator or be the “peacemaker”. In most cases, you may fulfil two or three team “roles”. You can find out your contribution to your team using the Belbin team roles inventory. You can learn more about the nine different team roles portrayed in this test to see which roles resonate with you.
If you’re feeling down, you might not feel a great sense of purpose. So looking at what you are good at may instil a sense of purpose.
Tests like Holland’s RIASEC test examine the types of work you prefer to do (i.e. Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional). Your top two or three preferences form a code, and this code can help you look up job roles.
So far, we have looked at your self-reported strengths. Now let us look at the darker side of your personality. Let’s ask: what aspects of your personality might make your life needlessly complicated?
Everyone has a dark side, and most of us engage in it regularly. Perhaps more regularly than we care to admit! This is OK. Your dark side might emerge under pressure or sleep deprivation. The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) may help you delve into this dark side. Even reading through some of the common “career derailers” on the HDS website alone may resonate with you. Working with a trained Psychologist can help reveal this important aspect of you, and help you accept it.
I encourage clients to accept their entire selves — not just the more attractive, shiny parts. The dark side too — selfish, needy, envious, angry and self-serving. I’m not perfect. No-one is. Yet what happens when we suppress our needs and desires — regardless of how “virtuous” these needs and desires are?
I often use the image of holding a beach ball underwater. Have you tried to do this? How long is it before your beach ball slips out of your fingers, and rockets out of the water with a big splash? So too with our emotions. Accepting all parts of ourselves is healthy. Accepting other’s behaviours — or circumstances that we don’t like — is also healthy. Acceptance is difficult yet rewarding.
A significant question to ask: What activities and undertakings energise or drain you? Are there activities, types of interactions and circumstances that come to mind?
Energy drainers are likely to bring about your dark side — and vice versa for energy givers. Sometimes we turn up to therapy in great psychological distress, thinking our distress is due to us. Maybe so — or maybe a big part is that we have been around energy-draining activities, people and circumstances for far too long. We haven’t been able to (or allowed ourselves) to recharge our batteries.
4. Bringing your whole self to life
Here’s a horrifying question to ask you: What if your strengths and skills don’t seem to match your social, family or work environment?
For instance, the creative and intuitive soul working in a workplace which demands a vastly different skill set — surrounded by people who are indeed the opposite of creative and intuitive?
Firstly, you now have the tools to ‘know yourself’ — this is your catalyst for change.
Secondly, can you take proactive steps to craft your job role — and life? The idea of ‘job crafting’ was from an organisational psychologist interested in how some people viewed their work as a calling, rather than a career or simply a job. Her exploration of hospital cleaners was fascinating. One hospital cleaner saw their work as a calling — a way to bring beauty to people dying in hospital. Their job went from something others would see as menial — dirty, simple and ‘beneath them’ to something of beauty.
The psychology profession sees the merits of crafting one’s life. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ‘ACT’) takes this idea to its zenith. One of the tenets of ACT is to help clients live in accordance with their values. Trained Psychologists in ACT help their clients identify their values, in exercises like values card sorting — or asking targeted ‘coaching-style’ questions about the client’s life.
These steps may consider how you select and approach tasks, relationships and your perceptions about your life. This way, your experience of life becomes more aligned with your strengths and skills, and with the activities that energise you.
We cannot avoid every draining activity. Yet playing the long game on shaping the various domains of our life to suit us can help maximise our contribution to our project teams.
So, what is the answer to our original question — how can you unlock extra energy and drive to solve problems in your life? By taking steps towards better alignment between who you are and the demands of life.
Let’s challenge Plato’s statement. The examined life and some minor tweaks to the way you engage the ups and downs of life can help open your mind up to possibilities and better mental health.