Sport Psych Saturday

Where I talk about just examples of sports psychology principles that I've encountered throughout the week. And one that I want to talk about today is, as always, it's applicable to athletes, but it's applicable to everybody because it's about one thing that we all have, and that is character strengths. I think this is really well timed from watching Doctor Sharice's video earlier this day about mental fitness for athletes. If you haven't watched that, if you're gonna go all out on this Saturday, go ahead and watch that as well, because I think it was just a really great conversation, talking about how we can visualize or rather see past successes in our life and how that can fuel our brain's motivation, our confidence, and just feeling better about our performances and about who we are as a person.

And this will do the same. Talking about character strengths. I have a really cool analogy at the end that once I heard it recently, it really resonated with me and I hope it will resonate with you. But first, it's. It's about character strengths and also signature character strengths. And I learned this from taking for work. We're working with the military, the soldiers and I. We all took this, this little survey of our character strengths. It's called the via survey. It's from the University of Pennsylvania.

And that's where positive psychology started with Doctor Martin Seligman, who's the pioneer figure behind positive psychology. And really, I think a big part of what this app is, I speak wonder. From there we go, Erie, Pennsylvania. So the University of Penn has this program that they started in positive psychology. And that this is where you can see right there is where this survey is from. So I took, that takes 24 top character strengths for you. So as you're listening to this, just think and reflect on some character strengths that you have.

And for mine, just to give you some ideas, my top three was love of learning, humor and playfulness and curiosity and interest in the world. And we're going to talk about why that's important to know your character strengths and most importantly, how to be aware of it, how to incorporate it in your daily life and how it can give you a little bit more meaning and success in your daily life. Some others that just to give you some more ideas is hope, optimism and future mindedness, gratitude, leadership, social intelligence, creativity, ingenuity, originality, self control and self regulation, modesty and humility, forgiveness and mercy, spirituality, sense of purpose and faith, capacity to love and be loved.

There's just so many. So just take a second. What are your strengths as a person, be creative. It doesn't have to be off the ones that it's listed, but reflect on those strengths. And then as you do that, another little distinguisher is signature character strengths. And that is what, what is helpful to think of that is the acronym met, m e t. And that it that stands for strengths in your character that motivate you. They just intrinsically motivate you to do them. No one else has to motivate you.

No one else has to tell you to have a love of learning. No one else has to tell me to be humorous and playful. Right? No one else has. Tell me to be curious and have interest in the world. Speak wonder, creativity. Poetic bent. I like that poem, poetic bent. It's an interesting way of saying I like it by showing your strength or there, that's creative. So that's great. So motivating, energizing. It energizes you. You feel energized. Like I, when I'm reading a book, I feel energized. Sometimes I get sleepy at the end of the night.

But that's. I still love to learn. Right. I enjoy being humorous and playful in my daily interactions with people. That energizes me. And then the t of that met acronym stands for true to yourself. All right. Humor and curiosity. There you go. See, those are great ones as well. To have. So it motivates you, it energizes you, and it's true to yourself. It feels natural and authentic to you. Right. Those are your signature character strengths. And one, I'll get to the acronym here in a second, but those, or the analogy rather, but those character strengths are really important.

It defines who you are. And if it follows that met acronym, they're what make you you. They're your signature character strengths. Now, this analogy that I think is the main message I want to hit home with you all today is if you are sitting on a desk or if you have a paper in front of you and a pen, and even if you don't, you can just think about it. But using your dominant hand, write your name out. So I did that at the top of my paper. I wrote my name here with my. I'm a righty. So I wrote with my right hand.

Alright? And again, even if you're just listening in the car or doing errands or whatever you're doing, you can still just think about what would that name look like? You know, your penmanship, right? You've written your name probably hundreds, if not thousands of times throughout your life. Now, do that same thing with your non dominant hand. Right, and I did that. It looks a little messy here. I know it's backwards, but it looks a little messy when I did it with my left hand. Right. So I can see the clear difference between writing it with my dominant hand and writing it with my non dominant hand, there's a very big difference.

It looks scraggly, if that's a word. It looks honestly ugly a little bit. And it felt unnatural. Writing with your dominant hand is like using your signature character strengths. Writing with your non dominant hand is going through life only thinking about your weaknesses, only thinking about what you need to improve in life. That can be motivating, that can, you know, improve yourself. But use those signature character strengths just like you would using your non or your dominant hand. And if you incorporate that in your daily life, if you're constantly aware of your signature strengths, writing will seem seamless.

Living will seem seamless. It'll be a little bit easier and more rewarding. You'll feel a little bit more positive about your experience in life by using your character strengths. So if I'm going to go out and rather than live life by writing out with my non dominant hand and focusing on, like I said, there's 24 character strengths on the sheet. If I went to the bottom three and I just thought about that and try to just think, I'm not good at that, I need to improve that. That's like writing with my non dominant hand as opposed to the flip side, my top three.

Incorporating my love of learning, incorporating my humor and playfulness, incorporating that curiosity and interest in the world. If I go about doing that on a daily level, then that is going to feel like writing with my dominant hand. It's going to feel natural, it's going to look better, and I feel much better by doing it that way. So think about your character strengths, your signature character strengths, ones that motivate you, one that energizes you, and ones that are true to yourself and incorporate that as if you're writing with your dominant hand.

So today I'm going to incorporate love of learning by reading a good book. Right after this, I'll probably read for at least 1520 minutes or so. Curiosity and interest in the world. I'm going to go for a hike later and just not have my phone out and just be curious. Then humor and playfulness. I'm going to be hanging out with some friends later and that comes naturally to me. So I'll be humorous and playful and that's going to just like write it with my dominant hand. It's going to feel natural and authentic to myself.

So think about your signature strengths and go out and incorporate those. Hope you have a great rest of your Saturday and enjoy.