living my strengths

Our church has been offering a class called Living Your Strengths. It's a seven-week course designed for self-reflection and insight about the talents God has given each of us. Learning about our individual strengths and putting them into practice is the goal (as opposed to dwelling on and trying to change our weaknesses).

One of my mom-friends is facilitating a new class on Monday mornings, so I decided to sign up. We've only met once, but part of the first assignment was to take an online assessment called the Clifton Strengths Finder. You may have heard of it or taken it in another setting.

Out of 34 different "themes", the assessment reveals the results in order from strongest to weakest. According to Gallup Research statistics, only one person in 33 million will have the same top five strengths in the same order! For anyone to have the same top seven strengths? Not enough people born from the beginning of time through the next 100 years! Wow! God has definitely created each of us to be unique.

So I hopped online tonight and took the test. The results were not surprising to me (or to Scott who walked in, looked over my shoulder, chuckled and said, "Oh yeah."), but the explanation fascinated me. My top theme was "Discipline". Does this sound like anyone you know?

Your world needs to be predictable. [uh... yeah!] It needs to be ordered and planned. [that's the understatement of the century!] So you instinctively impose structure on your world. You set up routines. You focus on timelines and deadlines. You break long-term projects into a series of specific short-term plans, and you work through each plan diligently. You are not necessarily neat and clean, but you do need precision. Faced with the inherent messiness of life, you want to feel in control. The routines, the timelines, the structure, all of these help create this feeling of control. [it's a very nice feeling, thank you very much!]

Lacking this theme of Discipline, others may sometimes resent your need for order, but there need not be conflict. You must understand that not everyone feels your urge for predictability; they have other ways of getting things done. Likewise, you can help them understand and even appreciate your need for structure. Your dislike of surprises, your impatience with errors, your routines, and your detail orientation don’t need to be misinterpreted as controlling behaviors that box people in. Rather, these behaviors can be understood as your instinctive method for maintaining your progress and your productivity in the face of life’s many distractions.

And what I like best:
Discipline talents are valuable because they make you efficient and effective. First they motivate you to organize tasks. Then, they keep you motivated to complete those tasks. Some people may label you as compulsive or a control freak because of your ability to discipline yourself and structure your world. But these attributes make you productive - usually more so than your critics. [don't you just love the positive spin?]

Over the course of the next several weeks, each of us in the class will explore more about our assets. Oftentimes seen as a negative attribute, I'm anxious to learn how I can use this "Discipline" in real life. I can't wait until next Monday!