Signature Strengths are one’s top (i.e. strongest) Character Strengths from the free assessment on the VIA site. I will opt for Top 7 to have a more varied suite of Signature Strengths compared to some other popular small grouping like Top 4 or Top 3. This will give me more Signature Strengths to work on, and to have more options from which to draw any time I need to refer to my Signature Strengths, as will be required in future rewirements. Having a Top 7 list is also more practical than just Top 3 or Top 4, from what I had seen of other content on how to use Signature Strengths. Finally, My Top 7 Character Strengths are all very strong so they could be true Signature Strengths, rather than just some Character Strengths picked out to fill slots for Signature Strengths.
Happiness
A Character Strength Reference for the Science of Well-Being Course
This is my reference for the concept of character strengths, from the VIA Institute on Character website that has far more information. However, it doesn’t have everything I have here, and some content is not focused or organized as I have here that I prefer. The test to get your relative character strengths, that is how they stack up among each other rather than against anyone else’s results, is free to take on the VIA site.
VIA Free Character Strengths Test (Science of Well-being Week 1 Optional Rewirements)
The next optional rewirement in Week 1 of the Science of Well-being course is the free Character Strengths test on the VIA website. The test comprises of 120 questions and takes 15 minutes or so to complete. There are no right/wrong answers, and there are no better/worse answers. The key is to be authentic, so that you can derive the most from the experience.
PERMA Flourishing Inventory (Science of Well-being Week 1 Optional Rewirements)
The Science of Well-being course’s Week 1 Rewirements also recommended, but not required, other tests in the greater Authentic Happiness Inventory. The course especially recommended the PERMA™ (an acronym for Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment— the basic dimensions of psychological flourishing). Since they asked those who take it to keep score, I took it to get the most out of the course.
But first, I had to find out what psychological flourishing was. From Wikipedia, flourishing is described as “a state where people experience positive emotions, positive psychological functioning and positive social functioning, most of the time,” living “within an optimal range of human functioning.” If I were to describe it in plain language, it’s how positive someone is in a general lifestyle range (rather than in distress or euphoria moments or spans of time). Further from Wikipedia, flourising is a descriptor and measure of positive mental health and overall life well-being, and includes multiple components and concepts, such as cultivating strengths, subjective well-being, “goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.” Flourishing is the opposite of both pathology and languishing, which are described as living a life that feels hollow and empty. It is a central concept in positive psychology, developed by Corey Keyes and Barabara Fredrickson.
If you want to know more about the dimensions, which I will cover with my PERMA results, I found a more comprehensive description on the Positive Psychology Program site.
Authentic Happiness Inventory (Science of Well-being Week 1 Rewirements)
After the optional pre-course survey that was more about reasons for taking the course, there was another optional pre-course survey to see how I perceive certain things that might be in my future, and how I feel about my life and myself in the past two weeks or today. Results were only going to be explained after the course were over, so I’ll wait till then to share since the survey has a lot of questions. It takes 15-20 minutes to go through, they say, but when you think about how you can rattle off probably 3 or more quick questions a minute, that’s a LOT of questions to document, try to explain and such.
Besides, if you are reading this and might be doing the course, I don’t want to bias how you might take this optional survey that has a few unexpected things in it which you would be prepared for if I told you about it in detail. This little spoiler shouldn’t skew things much, though. 🙂
Now came the first real meaty part of the course, the rewirements that are homework activities from the course to do each day. They are called “rewirements” because they’re practices aimed at rewiring your habits. Research suggests that if you do these rewirements as prescribed, you should get a boost in your mood and overall well-being.
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