Do you still have nightmares about school? Last night, I dreamt I was sitting in a classroom as an adult, and I was supposed to be there as some kind of support staff, maybe a speech therapist? Anyway, the teacher was assigning some reading passages with comprehension questions, and I busted out, chanting, “This is dumb, this is dumb, this is dumb,” or something equally silly. In the dream, it seemed much more intelligent, yet also clearly petulant and ineffective. The teacher and students looked at me with disgust, clearly annoyed at the disruption, but other than that, my protest fell on deaf ears.
I woke up and wrote another scathing post about education. I realized that’s all I’m producing right now and may be portraying myself as just angry and cynical. So I thought I’d schedule that one for a later date and try to write about something a little less depressing.
Let’s talk a moment about the culture of Strengthsfinder 2.0. I love this assessment, mostly because I love how individualized it is and I love what I call “labels for good.” Most personality tests have 16 possible boxes to place people in and anyone who follows my blog knows how I feel about boxes. Is there such a thing as a box phobia?
Whoa!! I just realized a weird contradiction in myself. I always claim to hate metaphorical boxes, yet I am an obsessive collector of actual boxes. I have the strangest aversion to getting rid of any type of potentially reusable container, be it square or otherwise. There are numerous shelves in my house storing unsightly stacks (though nested whenever possible!) of empty boxes of various sizes. Hmm, what does it mean?!
Okay, climbing back up out of that rabbit hole. Maybe that’s an analysis for another day.
First things, first. When you ask someone what is meant by strengths and weaknesses, typically that person will say “strengths are what you do well and weaknesses are what you’re not good at.” If we broaden the definition of “strengths” we can start imagining a very different world. In Strengthsfinder culture, strengths are those activities that make you feel strong, they energize you, and have the capacity to put you in flow—that creative state where you lose yourself and all track of time in the doing. And the opposite, your weaknesses, are those things that drain you, that suck the life out of you, those things you desperately wish others would just do for you.
Now we may or may not be talking about your talents. Typically your strengths are also your talents, but you’ve probably engaged in activities you were naturally good at and had them drain you. When this is the case, I encourage people to really explore the context of the activity. Why, where, when, and with whom you do the activity often matter and can totally destroy something that could actually bring you much joy and energy.
And on the flipside, there can be things you are obsessed with that you’re not at all good at. If you’re energized by the learning and driven to push through the tough times (or willing to eat the “shit sandwich” that goes with learning that particular skill as Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in her book, Big Magic,) then consider it a strength!
I’m not going to get into the details of the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment and all the many reasons I love it, and I think it’s important to share than I am not affiliated with Gallup and thereby not incentivized by them to promote this personality assessment, but I consider myself an evangelist because I am passionate about the culture around it.
I am passionate because I can imagine this world where more people have spent their childhood free to discover and engage in their strengths. Using these discoveries to guide and motivate their activity choices and explore possibilities for lifestyles that keep them in their strengths zone. How different would this world look if more people figured out how to make meaningful contributions that kept them in this zone? A world where when we met anyone new, we were looking for the unique contribution that person is here to make (instead of what’s wrong with them that needs fixing?)
What if we were energized by and valued for our work purely because we discovered our zone? Would we care as much about keeping up with the Jones’s? Would we have the same levels of anxiety and depression? What about lifestyle diseases? Or even cancer?
We know that stress is the culprit in most illnesses of all types. Wouldn’t a culture where we have meaningful work (that I would argue can be found in any field) that calls on our strengths and keeps us highly engaged, lead to reduced cortisol levels, increased empathy, increased intuition, increased creativity and innovation? How could it not?
There’s a movie coming out soon, Self-Taught: Life Stories from Self-Directed Learners, (the Kickstarter Campaign) that I cannot wait to see. In it we’ll meet adults who spent their childhoods outside of the mainstream schooling complex, adults who weren’t reprogrammed through years of “education.” I’ve been a member of the Alliance for Self-directed Education for awhile now and I finally have hope that such a world can exist—if only we have the courage to step away from what we know to try a different way.
It’s a huge cultural shift to imagine and we’re nowhere near the tipping point, but there’s still rapidly growing communities who can see this world also. They’re out there. And thanks to modern technology, if you’re truly ready to free your children and your family, you can find one–or create one. Are you ready?
Restoring Justis 