Strengths

At the close of last week’s therapy session, I was assigned some homework: to identify one strength or characteristic that I love about myself; something that gives me the “warm fuzzies.”  I pondered this on the short drive home and frequently throughout the week.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come up with anything.  It’s not that I do not have strengths or characteristics that I value.  I do.  It’s just that no e of them really give me the “warm fuzzies.”

I have taken Gallup’s StrengthsFinder survey twice in the last seven years and both times my top five strengths were identified as: 1. Achiever; 2. Competition; 3. Discipline; 4. Focus; and 5. Intellection.  While all of those things are valuable and I appreciate having them, especially in my professional life, none of them particularly endear me to myself… indeed, none of them make me feel warm and fuzzy.  I can also think of other strengths that didn’t show up in the StrengthsFinder assessment, like determination, commitment, and follow-through, but none of those make me feel warm and fuzzy either.  Maybe it’s because all of these things are inner-focusing (“me, me, me”) rather than being more focused on contributing to others or humanity at large that I don’t feel like they rise to the level of “warm and fuzzy?”  Or, maybe I’m grossly over-thinking the assignment?

 

On further reflection, I have been given a couple complements that have made me feel very good about myself.  The first one, given by a dear friend about 20 years ago, was that I “have presence.”  That’s obviously something I never recognized about myself at the time, and certainly nothing I ever worked at or cultivated in myself, but n it felt very good to hear that observation.  The other complement, given by a former co-worker 10 years ago is that I’m “the world’s most reasonable person.”  I did like the sound of that, and it made me feel very good about myself. 

 

I’m looking forward to therapy later today and learning more about why I was asked to do this assignment, though I suspect it ids related to my ongoing journey toward self-love. I am getting there—am certainly leaps and bounds further along since I began transitioning over a year ago—though I know I still have a long way to go.  This assignment should not have been so hard, and I know I’m not supposed to use words like “should,” but it was difficult and I definitely struggled with it.  I hope someday to get to a point where I can immediately articulate the things I love about myself.  

 

On a completely unrelated note, I celebrated my birthday on Friday and had a lovely night out with Eric on Saturday.  We went to a new place (for us) for dinner and had a great time.  I am very happy with how I looked and felt, and I love these two pics I took after getting ready.  I can honestly say, for the first time in a very long time, I actually felt “sexy!”