"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."      Rumi

        "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."      Edison

“ When you were born, everyone was smiling but you were crying. Live such a life that when you depart, everyone is weeping but you are smiling. ” - Sa'di of Shiraz

Courage.  Approach & avoidance.  Protection & risk.  Building courage.  What is wisdom.  Importance.    ‘Prevalence’.  Implication.  Character.  Character strengths.  Use.

        "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man"  Polonius in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

I have been writing a series of blog posts about character strengths - most recently "Twelve practical suggestions for exploring our character strengths (12): building up specific strengths exercise".  In today's post I give a personal example of using this building exercise with the character strengths of kindness and hope.

More to follow ...

                        (this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

In June I went to the biennial European Conference on Positive Psychology running this year in Angers, France.  I've blogged about this meeting - see, for example "European Positive Psychology conference: 1st day - a disappointing start & caution on over-selling mindfulness" and "European Positive Psychology conference: better 2nd day - culture, use of strengths, education & passion". It's been said that if you go to a conference and come away with one good idea and one good contact, then you're doing well.

                        (this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

                        (this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

                         (this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

I wrote yesterday about the "European Positive Psychology conference: 1st day - a disappointing start & caution on over-selling mindfulness" ... but today's conference presentations rapidly kicked my doubts about being here into touch. We started with a couple of fine keynotes ... Claudia Senik on "The cultural dimension of happiness" and Willibald Ruch on "Character strengths: Unresolved issues, new frontiers".  Both talks were excellent.  

I wrote a post a few days ago entitled "Resource activation: using clients' own strengths in psychotherapy and counseling - background (1st post)" giving some of the research basis for suggesting this territory is very relevant for therapists who are pushing to help their clients more effectively.  In order to follow up these ideas further I bought the short 'how to do it' 70 or so page book by Fluckiger, Wusten, Zinbarg & Wampold.