Remember Your Best Qualities (Highlighted Practice)

Paul SpurzemHighlighted Practice

This post is part of a series of highlighted practices from the Visionaria curriculum for “personal and civic development” classrooms in Peru.

Remember Your Best Qualities

Our minds naturally look for faults and threats in the world around us, and within ourselves. We can easily become harsh critics of ourselves — only recognizing and dwelling on our negative situation around us, or indications of our shortcomings. However, this negativity can make us closed off to the positive potential around, in some cases to the point of physically limiting your field of vision and ability to detect opportunities around you. 

It’s not necessary to be irrationally positive when you are sleep-deprived and your world is turned upside down… but if you can find at least one moment each day to remember your positive qualities, you will be more relaxed and ready for the opportunities that come your way.

ADAPTED PRACTICE: My Best Qualities

10-15 Minutes

  1. Write 10 qualities that you like or appreciate about yourself (Use descriptive adjectives like “Smart”, “Funny”, “Caring”, “Fast”, “Thorough”, etc. — what matters is that YOU like this quality in YOURself)
  2. From your ten (10) qualities, circle your top five (5).
  3. From your top five (5) circled qualities, write your top 3 (in any order) below your original list or on a new page. 
  4. Spend five minutes writing to the prompt, “When I’m at my best I am…“

ADAPTED PRACTICE: My TO-BE List *

5 Minutes

  1. Look back to your list of “My Best Qualities” and ask yourself, “which qualities do I want to shine through when I am at my best?”
  2. Create a small secondary list next to your daily to-do list and write 2-3 ways that you want “to-be” (e.g. “confident”, “focused”, “present”, or “caring”);
  3. Check your to-do list and see if there are things that you can focus on, or change to make sure that you can to BE the way you wish to be along the way!
  4. Just like your “to-do list”, your “to-be list” might change day-to-day, depending on the positive qualities that you wish to give more attention to in yourself. 

*Note: This practice is not currently in the Visionaria curriculum, but great for busy people who like to create and work from their to-do list. 😉