Take the VIA Character Strengths Questionnaire

Identify your strengths

It is sometimes hard to think of these off the top of our heads because strengths can come naturally to us so we don’t notice them, or we focus only on one aspect or even we don’t thing we have any strengths. For this reason psychologists have developed questionnaires to help us.

One of the most widely used strength questionnaires was developed by two of the founders of positive psychology, Dr Martin Seligman and Dr Chris Peterson. Their research identified 24 character strengths that were universally valued across cultures. Of course there are more possible strengths than 24, but it’s a good place to start exploring what your strengths are.

Take the VIA Character Strengths Questionnaire. It’s free and takes about 30 minutes to do. Make sure you answer the questions as you really are, not how you think you should be. Note: The free version gives you a short feedback report showing the rank order of your VIA character strengths. This is enough to get you thinking. A detailed report is available for $40.