The Life Drive Newsletter April 2013

The Life Drive Newsletter

April 2013

http://lifedriveorg.blogspot.in/

shaileshdesh@gmail.com

The Life Drive Newsletter April 2013

About The Life Drive Newsletter

This newsletter is meant for someone who is interested in improving his or her work on own Journey of Personal Growth. I believe that that this Journey is about becoming the best that you can be and expressing yourself in a manner that is most meaningful to you. Each one of us has two inbuilt and perpetual drives that influence all that we do The Life Drive inspires us to create new things, seek out our true selves and engage with external world with zest and affection. At the same time, The Death Drive within us scares us, makes us harm ourselves, makes us find comfort in the lazy status quo and gets us to look at external world and other people with suspicion and violence. The Death Drive within us does anything and everything it can do to stop and derail our Journey of Personal Growth. To succeed in its objective, the Death Drive throws many traps at us, such as convincing us that the problem is not within but outside us and convincing us that the comfortable life of status quo is better than risking the challenges of self exploration and self-expression. How well, and whether at all we progress on this Journey is entirely dependent on whether we constantly honor our Life Drive by giving life to newer expressions of our core self and whether we succeed in defeating that enemy within ( The Death Drive) every day. Nobody and nothing outside of us c an make us do this - it can happen if and only if we take complete personal responsibility of staying true to our precious and sacred Life Drive. This newsletter is meant to be a small reminder- that hopefully will make each of us ask this question to ourselves: Did I truly honor my Life Drive today?

http://lifedriveorg.blogspot.in/

shaileshdesh@gmail.com

The Life Drive Newsletter April 2013

THE CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN VIRTUES : WORK OF VIA INSTITUTE ON CHARACTER

SIGNIFICANCE OF UNDERSTANDING OUR CORE SELF It can be said that our work on personal growth needs to begin with a deep understanding the core self. Each one of us is a unique being and personal growth is all about knowing ourselves, developing ourselves and expressing ourselves in a manner that we find most fulfilling. Since human beings are so infinitely complex, there cannot exist a simple, single framework that can describe the core self in all possible dimensions. But at the same time, a few powerful tools and frameworks do exist, that help us in understanding few specific facets of our core selves. The VIA Institutes Character Strengths profile is one such very powerful tool. BACKGROUND TO VIA CHARACTER STRENGTHS PROFILE The field of psychology has made significant discoveries about human mind and behavior over last few centuries. However the focus has been far higher on studying what is wrong with human life (e.g. defining mental illnesses , studying aspects such as depression , divorces etc. ) and much lesser attention has been devoted to studying the positive side of human life ( e.g. what makes people happy and fulfilled , what are characters of institutions that facilitate human thriving etc. ) The positive psychology movement that started in 1998 set out to correct this imbalance. Martin Seligman (University of Pennsylvania) played a key role along with a few other senior scholars in starting this movement. While talking about the perspective of positive psychology, he said .. we are as focused on strength as on weakness, as interested in building the best things in life as repairing the worst, and as concerned with fulfilling the lives of normal people as with healing the wounds of distressed. One of the first projects that the Positive Psychology movement undertook was an attempt to create a universal classification of human virtues. The VIA Character Strengths profile and associated literature is the result of this effort, which saw some of the best minds in the world of Psychology coming together. HOW THE CLASSIFICATION OF CHARACTER STRENGTHS EVOLVED The team of scholars that worked on this project studied wide range of sources including philosophy, religion, youth development, psychiatry and psychology. While material across cultures and geographies was studied, the focus was on identifying human universals. The Character Strengths framework shares certain principles with modern personality trait theory: it recognizes individual differences that are stable and general but also shaped by the individuals setting and are capable of change. The classification has a two level structure at the higher level, it has Virtues: which are core characteristics that are universally valued. The six virtues that have been identified are : Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance and Transcendence Each category of Virtue further contains a set of Character Strengths these are psychological ingredients processes or mechanisms that define the virtue. For example, Character Strengths of Creativity, Curiosity, Open-mindedness, Love of Learning and Perspective form the virtue of Wisdom. http://lifedriveorg.blogspot.in/ shaileshdesh@gmail.com

The Life Drive Newsletter April 2013

Robust criteria were used to refine and logically sharpen the Character Strengths framework. Examples of few of the criteria used: Strengths contribute to fulfillments that constitute the good life. Although Strengths can and do produce desirable outcomes, each strength is morally valued in its own right, even in the absence of obvious beneficial outcomes Display of strength by one person does not diminish other people in the vicinity Strength manifests in the range of an individuals behavior thoughts, actions and feelings. It is trait like in the sense that it has degree of generalizability across situations and stability across time.

HOW IS IT HELPFUL TO KNOW YOUR KEY CHARACTER STRENGTHS As mentioned earlier, framework such as VIA Character Strengths provides a useful window and a starting point to know or core self. A better and sharper understanding of our core self can be greatly helpful in our personal growth as it helps us focus our efforts on developing ourselves and creating things and a life that we find meaningful. GETTING YOUR OWN PERSONALIZED REPOTR OF CHARACTER STRENGTHS You can visit the websites mentioned below, do a simple registration and take a survey (it is free of cost ) find out your top character strengths https://viame.org/www/ http://www.viacharacter.org

Note: The references for this write up have been drawn from the book Character Strengths and Virtues, edited by Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Christopher Peterson. This work attempts to tackle some of the most significant questions such as what is character and what is the foundation of a fulfilled life. It is work of great scholarship and has very deep moral and practical significance. On a separate note, the fact that even after ten years of its publication, this work is not so well known tells us something about the world that we live in and the nature of war that we need fight for personal growth.

http://lifedriveorg.blogspot.in/

shaileshdesh@gmail.com

The Life Drive Newsletter April 2013

THE NEW WAY TO WORK : TEDx Talk by Charlie Hohen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qUR3tpEdA&list=PL61743CFD43E9EC77&index=46

In this fifteen minute talk Charlie Hohen shares his ideas and experiences on how to become recession proof graduate. While the talk focuses on new graduates, the key messages are universal, and are fundamental to the process of personal growth. As you can see from the talk, these messages are about : not mechanically following the traditional advice, taking efforts to find work that you intrinsically value, having courage to listen to and act on your inner voice and constantly creating work ( without being obsessed about rewards ) Summary of Charlies book can be found here: http://charliehoehn.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/recession-proof-graduate1.pdf

I will be very keen to know your comments and feedback on the Newsletter. You can reach me at shaileshdesh@gmail.com The beautiful picture on the first page is a gift from my dear friend Rahul Inamdar (http://rainwork.blogspot.in/) http://lifedriveorg.blogspot.in/ shaileshdesh@gmail.com