Student Success Plan: My Top Five Strengths

It can be very easy during stressful times to only think of our weaknesses. It is crucial to one’s mental well-being and one’s path to success to be able to focus on our strengths and to be able to build upon them. Once strengths are identified, it can open a person’s eyes to understand where they have been striving in their lives where they didn’t notice before. My top five strengths determined by the Via Character Survey were as follows: honesty, love, appreciation of beauty and excellence, perspective, and kindness. When I found out that this survey determined honesty was my number one strength, I was very proud of this. I have been striving to be very honest with others as of late, as well as being very honest with myself.

I consider honesty as being true to oneself, which includes being open about my faults, emotions, and feelings. It involves taking responsibility for my actions, and understanding how my actions may have affected someone else positively or negatively. I will use honesty to be successful in my education by always being honest with myself; I will be honest with myself when writing assignments, and evaluating if I really did my best or if I need to put more effort in. I will use this strength in my self-care plan by being honest with myself about if I am feeling overwhelmed, and then decide what aspects of my life may need changes to lessen feeling overwhelmed. This strength will also be used in my social and professional circle. I will be honest in my interactions with others and take responsibility for situations in which I may have not acted in the best way and work to make amends. My next top strength is love. Love takes honesty a step further, because to love someone you need to be able to put your trust in them, as well as allow them to be able to trust you. Love allows for a deeper bond with a person, and allows for a bigger value to be placed on another person. Making priorities also becomes easier when love is a strength because you are able to decide what, or who, is the most important to your life. It allows you to devote the most passion and time to the what you love the most.

The way I will use this strength to help me succeed in my program is by focussing on what I love to do. Recognizing that I am so passionate and determined to become a social service worker makes it easier for me to stay focused on my end goal. It will help me to identify demographic I am most passionate about helping, thus helping guide my choices in where I want to do my placements in my second and third semesters at Centennial College. Appreciation of beauty and excellence allows you to experiences wonder all around you externally, as well as internally. On one hand, you are able to appreciate simplistic things in your every day surroundings that other people may not notice. You are also able to appreciate other people’s exceptional qualities and inner beauties; this appreciation could come from realizing someone’s strengths and aspiring to be similar to that person, or appreciating the little things your support system does for you on a daily basis. It can be also incredibly motivating to appreciate your own personal excellence. I believe being able to recognize and appreciate others’ beauty is a necessary step towards self-actualization. I will use my strength of appreciation of beauty and excellence to my advantage by recognizing the value in even the most tedious tasks, because in the long run they all serve a higher purpose.

These small tasks that I question the worth of some tasks over others all work towards helping me to perfect my performance and gain valuable experience. I will use this strength to improve my self-care by taking time out of my day, especially my more stressful days, to relax and evaluate all the positive things I appreciate and ma grateful for in my life, such as my relationships, my home, my personal successes, and my surroundings. I also believe that recognizing my own excellence when deserved is important to self-motivation and improving my own self esteem. I appreciate when I have done an excellent job on an assignment, or even in my professional life and this appreciation of my own excellence pushes me to continue to strive for that level of excellence in everything I do. Perspective, also known as wisdom, involves a combination of a high level of knowledge and judgement. Having perspective allows a person to be able to view many sides of a situation, thus allowing that person to counsel others. It also allows a person to be more critical of their own morality, and to be aware of their own strengths, habits, and shortcomings. Perspective allows people to understand others’ feelings and situations, which allows for not only a high level of sympathy, but an extensive ability to empathize with others.

I will use this strength to help me in my studies when I am frustrated with a task. Perspective will allow me to take a step back and think about if the situation really calls for the amount of frustration I am experiencing, or if I need to simply re-think my priorities. It will also help me when I am working in group projects where I do not always see eye-to-eye with everyone; I will be able to better understand where someone else’s biases or points of view may have originated from. On the other side, it will also allow me to fully understand my own biases, and how that may be affecting how I communicate with others. I will use this strength as a part of my self-care plan as a way to manage frustrations and minor inconveniences. When I recognize I am getting frustrated or beginning to spiral, I can compare the current situation to past situations I have overcome, or compare my handling of these minor situations to the situations of others and understand my own privilege. Kindness involves having a caring, nurturing, and compassionate attitude towards life and people. It also involves acting altruistically, meaning to expect no gain or recognition for these acts of kindness. I will use kindness as part of my self-care plan by doing my best to help others, without the expectation that I will receive any favours in return. I know personally that when I know that I have really helped someone or had a positive impact on someone else’s life, it makes me feel intrinsically good. If I am able to push myself to help others, even when I am feeling low, it will help to build my own personal positivity. It will also help me to foster strong relationships with my classmates, broadening my social network. It is not easy to assign yourself a list of what you believe your strengths are. Some of the strengths that the VIA Character Survey objectively chose for me did not surprise me.

I expected to see honesty, as becoming a more honest person to myself has been one of my goals over the last year. I also was not surprised by seeing perspective; I believe I have had a variety of experiences in my life that have allowed me to better understand the reasons people the way they do, and how to see all sides of a problem. I did not expect to see appreciation of beauty and excellence, but in learning this it has motivated me to continue to practice mindfulness, and to push myself to recognize the value in every situation. I am happy I took this survey because it has made me more aware of my strengths, and has also allowed to me critically think about how to apply my strengths to my every day life.