Curtis / McGonigal The Joypowered Family

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-2652-1
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 232 Seiten

Are you intentional about creating a joyful family, or are you just waiting for it to happen? JoDee Curtis, SHRM-SCP, CPA, and Denise McGonigal, MA, challenge you to choose joy for yourself and your loved ones. Find out how to create a more positive family life by focusing on each member's strengths instead of fixating on their weaknesses.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Curtis, JoDee

McGonigal, Denise

Leseproben

Chapter 2:
Using Your Strengths as a JoyPowered™ Family
Although I had taken CliftonStrengths® several years earlier, I took it again in March of 2015, and this time it really made an impact on me. My husband, kids, siblings, and almost all of my friends were convinced (by me) to take the assessment as well. I was all in! What a difference it made for me as a parent, spouse, and friend. Finally embracing and fully integrating my strengths into my life transformed my ability to understand my own needs and to use my strengths and talents more effectively. Better still, discovering the nature of strengths moved me to be more appreciative of people’s gifts and talents and far less judgmental of their shortcomings and inabilities. I try to ask myself every single day: “What will happen when we think about what is right with people rather than fixating on what is wrong with them?” - Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. psychologist and business executive What a difference this has made for me! Although by this time, my kids were already in their late teens and early twenties, I felt I was able to be a much better parent and spouse by understanding their talents and the needs that go along with them. For Kyle, it was understanding his Adaptability; Kip, his Competition; Keeli’s need to problem-solve (or take on problems) with Restorative; for my husband, it was trying to understand his need for Consistency. Honestly, if nothing else, it was powerful for me to reflect on myself. I was asking different questions of myself: “What did I do well today? How can I be my best tomorrow? What do I feel good about?” You might think this was easy for me because I have Positivity, but I realized that I wasn’t being intentional about Positivity. Rather, I had previously been asking, “What didn’t go well today? What’s wrong with my appearance? What did I screw up on?” According to research done by Gallup®, focusing on your talents and strengths has a positive influence on your quality of life. As Tom Rath says in his book, Are You Fully Charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life, “The more people use their strengths to do what they do best, the less likely they are to experience physical pain, worry, stress, anger or sadness the prior day, even when they have health problems. The more people use their strengths to do what they do best, the more likely they are to report a boost in positive emotions such as enjoyment and happiness and to report having ample energy, feeling well-rested, being happy, smiling or laughing a lot, learning something interesting, and being treated with respect.” This is powerful stuff! Even if you only focus on your strengths part of the time or on certain days, imagine the impact this could have. And, as is the focus of this book, we think it makes a difference in your home if your whole family uses their strengths every day! I’ve been constantly fascinated by the differences in brothers and sisters - both my own siblings and my children as siblings. My siblings and I grew up in the same house; had the same parents; went to the same elementary, middle, and high schools; belonged to the same church; even mostly ate the same foods, yet I see us as vastly different. Interestingly, though, my husband thinks we are all alike. Of course, I’m looking for the differences, and he can only see the similarities. My own children have the same parents; we’ve moved a few times, but we ALL moved a few times; they went to the same elementary and middle schools; went to the same church; and yet, they, too, seem vastly different. It’s the continuing saga of nature vs. nurture; they intertwine to make us who we are. Since I became fascinated with strengths a few years ago, I constantly look for the strengths in my children, but I wonder if I would have been a better parent had I focused on strengths much earlier. Of course, there is no one right way to parent, and we wouldn’t even consider telling you otherwise. However, we do believe at least a part of a parent’s responsibility is to help their children discover and use their God-given talents. At the same time, we must focus on using our own gifts and talents to be good parents. It is at this crossroads, where the parent’s and the child’s talents intersect, that a family is likely to discover their unique JoyPower. Sounds simple, right? “Yet it’s so easy to focus on kids’ weaknesses. And, too often, parents and schools push children to be well-rounded and ‘good at everything.’ But the goal is to nurture kids so they can find what makes them happiest and most successful, what gives them passion, and help them to build their lives around that discovery. The best thing you can do is challenge your children in a way that inspires them to work toward growth and success.” – Strengths Based Parenting I think of all the birthday parties I hosted for my children when I insisted that they invite the entire class. Both of my boys have Relator, whereas I have WOO in my skill set. A Relator finds satisfaction in small, intimate groups of friends with deep ties. Someone with WOO is energized by large crowds of people and the challenge of greeting each person, if only for a few seconds. Thinking back to those large, whole-class parties I forced on my sons, I now have to ask myself, whose need was I engaging? Mine, of course! Generally, I think I tried to be supportive of their interests and nurture their individual talents, but if I could have articulated them earlier, how much better might I have guided them down paths that accommodated their strengths more intentionally? Would they have been more engaged? Would I have harnessed more JoyPower for them in their experiences? “An immense amount of research has brought to light that you do your best when you’re doing what you’re best at – when you’re using your strengths – and that goes for your children too. Every parent and every child is unique. There is no one right way to bring up a child. There is only the way you do it, given your talents, strengths, and environment.” - Strengths Based Parenting It’s easy to look back, of course, and doubt our choices and actions; yet, as a Maximizer, I believe we can always look for ways to be better. “I have become convinced that what makes the biggest developmental difference in someone’s life is having at least one person who not only loves and cares about him but who also recognizes and respects his individuality. Someone who encourages him to excel. Someone who sees the best in him. Someone who helps him find pathways that take him in positive directions.” - Mary Reckmeyer, Strengths Based Parenting I was first introduced to CilftonStrengths® in 2011. The youngest of our four daughters was a senior in college. So, yes, unfortunately, it was at the end of our long run of intense parenting that this gem of a parenting tool was revealed to me. As a Learner, though, I immediately became passionate about the possibilities that CliftonStrengths® held for my future! The self-discovery that CliftonStrengths® afforded me was invaluable. It was like identifying five giant pieces of the puzzle of my life that I suspected were operative, but that I could never quite put a name on, put a finger on. Why was I always so focused on achievement, HIGH achievement? Well, Achiever is my number one strength! Aha! So that’s why I always pushed myself and pushed our daughters to be high performers. Thankfully, two of them also have Achiever in their top five, and the other two have Competition or Positivity that motivated them to get good grades. Can you imagine the clash that would have occurred if I gave birth to an underachiever? I’m really not sure what I would have done with that, but I have friends who had to contend with such conflict. One friend of mine, Jane, has Competition as her number one strength. Her daughter was a swimmer, so Jane created a huge chart on her daughter’s bedroom wall to record all of her times in swim meets throughout middle school and high school – seven years of time records! It was Jane who filled in that chart after every competition. Her daughter, on the other hand, had no interest at all in her times, her records, her ribbons. She was in it for the social aspect – her friends were all swimmers, so she swam too. Turns out, years later, when Jane had her daughter take the CliftonStrengths® assessment, her daughter’s very last strength, number thirty-four, was Competition! For twenty-five years Jane and her daughter had struggled with Jane’s competitive passion and her daughter’s nonchalance about winning. How much easier would life have been for them had they discovered this literal mother-daughter conflict of strengths earlier in life? Let’s further explain CliftonStrengths®. When you take the CliftonStrengths® assessment, you receive your top five strengths. According to Donald Clifton, the creator of CliftonStrengths®, your top five strengths are all the information you need to achieve success and excellence. Clifton recommends that you NOT inquire about or pay for all thirty-four strengths. The main reason for this is that human nature compels us to go to the bottom to find out where we are “weak” and what we need to “work on.” In terms of a CliftonStrengths® approach, the strengths that rank at about the bottom third of the list of thirty-four are not considered “weaknesses.” They are simply strengths, or “paths to...