Creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality.

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Keep in mind that everyone has the potential to develop any and all of these strengths as they are not innate, fixed qualities.

 

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How to Get Started with Strengths

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To create more dissertation momentum, identify your top strengths, also called your "signature strength," and then learn to use them in new ways. Cultivating your top strengths has been consistently shown to increase your happiness and improve life satisfaction, well-being, and work engagement. Experiment with these user-friendly, tested strategies.

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Strategy 1: Identify Your Character Strengths

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Ryan Niemiec, Psy.D,. the global authority on character strengths, outlines a basic approach:

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1. To identify your top strengths, take the free VIA Survey, a quick self-assessment of your personal strengths. Over 5 million people throughout the world have already taken this highly validated test.

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2. Look at your VIA findings and identify your very own top five strengths. Choose the ones you consider most essential to who you are as an individual, even if they are not exactly the five top-ranked ones according to the survey.

 

3. Each week choose one of these strengths and find a novel way to use it each day. Notice what thoughts and feelings arise when you use this strength.

 

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Strategy 2: Apply Your Strengths to Your Dissertation and Life

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Explore ways to engage your strengths to propel yourself toward the dissertation finish line. While you will get the most traction from focusing on your top strengths, exercising your lesser strengths also offers benefits. Here are some examples to get you started, and then create your own as you go along.

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Perseverance: Staying on task toward what you start, despite challenge or obstacles.

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• On a daily or weekly basis, set small, manageable goals to complete your dissertation. 
• Track your progress on your calendar or computer. 
• When something gets in the way, be adaptive. Figure out how to move past it, and reach your goal.
• Identify your most productive hours of the day. Work on your dissertation during those times.

 

Kindness: Caring about the needs of others and being willing to do a good deed without expecting a return.

 

• Offer a kind word to people as you go through the day — at the coffee shop and grocery store, via email, in classes, or at the library. 
• Offer a small random act of kindness toward someone else who's working on their dissertation. 
• Share something with another person or offer to help them. 
• Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge your progress and achievements. Take good care of yourself with nutritious foods, exercise, and getting enough sleep.

 

Leadership: Developing and maintaining good relations among a group and engaging them toward accomplishment.

 

• Create your own dissertation team for sharing strategies and moral support with other ABD's. 
• Assist a friend who is struggling in the dissertation process. 
• Seek assistance and encouragement from others when you need it.

 

 

Strategy 3: Act "As If"

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To overcome the inherent negativity bias that leads to a focus on weaknesses rather than strengths, try this strategy recommended by Shannon Polly and Kathryn Britton in Character Strengths Matter:

 

Choose a lower-ranked strength and act "act as if" it is already a top strength. Think "fake it 'til you make it." Pretend you are an actor as you practice positive behaviors. Create new stories about you as a brave, prudent, self-regulating, hopeful, curious, or zestful person—and notice the signs that you find it more natural to engage with this strength.

 

Crossing the Finish Line

 

By practicing your strengths, you will reach the finish line faster and can celebrate your well-deserved doctoral degree and your enhanced well-being—two great assets for your next journey!