Blog Posts For Our Practitioner Community

As part of our curriculum for the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, Jill and I are studying the character strengths, or the positive defining characteristics of an individual’s personality.

The VIA Institute on Character defines character strengths as:

“The positive parts of your personality that impact how you think, feel and behave and are the keys to you being your best self. When applied effectively, they are beneficial both to you and society as a whole. They are different than your other strengths, such as your unique skills, talents, interests and resources, because character strengths reflect the ‘real’ you — who you are at your core.”

The Institute has identified 24 character strengths – and every person possesses all 24 strengths in varying degrees. They fall under six broad virtue categories: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. (You can discover your unique character strengths profile by taking the free VIA survey.)

We’re studying the strengths because, as health coaches, we can help clients identify not only the reasons for their health complaints that brought them to us in the first place, but also help them pinpoint what’s best in them – because it’s their strengths that are going to help them reach their health goals.

One suggestion that Jill and I found so helpful was to, at the beginning of a client’s program, ask, “I’d love to learn what’s best in you. What’s core to your personality that can help you work with your challenges, reach your goals, and help us work together?”

Powerful, huh?

And the power of this question doesn’t have to only apply to one-on-one coaching; it can also be used at the beginning of any group or teleclass that you lead.

For example, if a person ranks high in the character strength of self-regulation (the ability to be disciplined and control one’s food intake and emotions), she can leverage that strength to say no to the cookies and donuts that have been spiking her blood sugar. If zest, or approaching life with excitement and energy, is one of her top skills, she may be able to use that strength to get intrigued and excited by new adventures in gluten-free baking.

But we’re also studying character strengths so that we can leverage our own strengths as coaches. When we lean into what we do well, we’re that much more effective at helping our clients feel better – and when clients feel better, they’re that much more likely to recommend us to their friends and family. (What is good for clients is also good for business.)

One of the things that intrigued me most about the character strengths lesson was learning that we can overuse them. Take the strength of curiosity: rely on it too much and too persistently and it can cross over into nosiness. Too much self-regulation can translate into a dearth of joy. Too much appreciation of beauty and excellence (my top strength) can translate into the prison of perfectionism and making sure everything “looks just so.”

I wanted to write about this today because it’s such a good reminder that everything, even our positive attributes, runs on a spectrum and that self-reflection is one of the best ways we can serve ourselves and our clients.

What are your top strengths? Do they ever cross over and become too much of a good thing? How do you use them with clients? How do you help clients identify their strengths?

It’s an interesting exercise to take some time and think about your strengths – and your lesser strengths. Our instructor reminded us not to fixate on our lowest-ranked strengths, but it’s hard not to dwell on them and think of them as weaknesses.

My lowest-ranked strength is perseverance, or having an interest in finishing what I start. I felt a rush of low self-esteem when I read that, until it dawned on me that maybe I could really lean into it and not finish this post! (I’m terrible at writing conclusions.)

But just as our top strengths require us to be mindful and not overuse them, our lower-ranked strengths require similar loving attention. I’m never going to turn perseverance into one of my top strengths – our strengths are endogenous – but I can make sure I’m paying attention to those attributes and not using them as an excuse for incomplete projects or a job poorly done.

So in that spirit, here is a proper conclusion: Consider incorporating work with the character strengths into your practice. You stand to benefit personally (with more self-awareness and acceptance) and professionally (with more satisfied clients and a more robust practice)!