{"id":7899,"date":"2016-11-28T06:27:26","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T10:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=7899"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:48:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:48:05","slug":"increase-your-happiness-use-your-strengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/7899\/increase-your-happiness-use-your-strengths\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase Your Happiness:  Use Your Strengths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>This article is in our series about\u00a0<strong>increasing happiness<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>life satisfaction<\/strong>. \u00a0Many people with chronic pain can\u2019t\u00a0decrease their pain. \u00a0So another way to live a more enjoyable and fulfilling life \u2013\u00a0perhaps even more\u00a0important \u2013\u00a0is to\u00a0increase the positive. \u00a0That\u2019s what we\u2019ll look at in this series.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s\u00a0look at the other big component of happiness:\u00a0 life satisfaction and meaning.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mainImage accessible nofocus\" tabindex=\"0\" title=\"View source image\" src=\"http:\/\/deehatherell.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/the-meaning-of-life.png\" alt=\"Image result for meaning of life\" width=\"246\" height=\"206\" data-bm=\"14\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Positive psychology believes that we&#8217;ll find our life&#8217;s purpose and be happier if we use our <em>core strengths<\/em> as much as possible.\u00a0 And this is even more important than trying to improve ourselves and fix our weaknesses.\u00a0The core strengths are in these areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>wisdom and knowledge\u00a0 (curiosity, learning, open mindedness)<\/li>\n<li>courage (bravery, integrity)<\/li>\n<li>love and humanity (kindness, love, equality)<\/li>\n<li>justice (teamwork, leadership)<\/li>\n<li>temperance (self control, humility)<\/li>\n<li>spirituality (gratitude, faith, hope)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We can identify our core strengths by learning what gives us the most sense of purpose, what matches best with our values, what comes naturally to us, what others say are our true strengths.\u00a0 Then our life&#8217;s meaning can come from using these strengths and values every day in our work, relationships and leisure.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s look at some examples:<\/p>\n<p>For some professions, it&#8217;s easy to see what kind of strengths could be used.\u00a0 A doctor could use knowledge and humanity.\u00a0 A teacher could use learning and kindness.\u00a0 A yoga teacher could use temperance and spirituality.\u00a0 However, if someone went into medicine but\u00a0wasn&#8217;t much of a people person, trying to\u00a0do clinical care might not match very well.\u00a0 This person might make a better researcher.\u00a0 A second point is that you don&#8217;t have to have a profession to be able to match your values to your work. There&#8217;s a front desk worker at my gym who is the friendliest, most personable person I know.\u00a0 So that kind of job could be a wonderful way to express values such as\u00a0open mindedness, kindness,\u00a0 and hope.<\/p>\n<p>So to be happiest and get the most satisfaction out of life, be sure your work, relationships and leisure match your strengths and values.\u00a0 And, always be on the lookout for additional ways to use your strengths and values in these areas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Your assignments (you will have to register at the site)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Take the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu\/questionnaires\/brief-strengths-test\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Brief Strengths Test<\/a> or the more comprehensive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu\/questionnaires\/survey-character-strengths\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Survey of Character Strengths<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Take some time to identify what strengths you&#8217;re already using, as well as which ones you want to include more often and how specifically you could do this<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is in our series about\u00a0increasing happiness\u00a0and\u00a0life satisfaction. \u00a0Many people with chronic pain can\u2019t\u00a0decrease their pain. \u00a0So another way to live a more enjoyable and fulfilling life \u2013\u00a0perhaps even more\u00a0important \u2013\u00a0is to\u00a0increase the positive. \u00a0That\u2019s what we\u2019ll look at in this series. Let&#8217;s\u00a0look at the other big component of happiness:\u00a0 life satisfaction and meaning. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7899"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8068,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899\/revisions\/8068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}