Traditional meanings of letter grouping, SOS range from “Save our Ship” to “Save our Souls.” The imlications are clear regardless of the meaning you choose to associate with this letter grouping.
I am taking part in a Learning and the Brain Conference today. During one of the sessions dealing with Resiliency, the presenter added another meaning to the familiar letter grouping. She said that SOS stands for “Sources of Strength” which makes sense when talking about personal resilience.
Sources of Strength. How often do we find ourselves initially tackling life challenges using sources other than our strengths? How often does our self talk move us toward debilitating, default strategies that keep us stuck, re-hashing pointless actions? I fear that it happens more than we care to admit. Instead of tapping our personal resinliency, we attempt to address difficulties using strategies that work for others but may not for us. We wind up “Squandering our Strengths.” Many times the main reason this happens is because we fail to recognize our personal “Sources of Strength.
How do we go about changing this? Here are a few ideas:
- We must recognize that strengths come in many forms – the ability to reach out to others; the ability to think critically; the ability to analyze information; the ability to organize people and/or resources; the ability to motivate others; the abilty to provide leadership for groups; the ability maintain a sense of humor in the face of difficulty; the ability to ask for assistance, etc. Strengths come in many forms and from many places. We have to recognize what they are in general before we can move to the next step.
- We must objectively determine what our personal strengths are. We can do this in one of several ways. We can take an assessment that helps us uncover our strengths. We can ask family, friends and colleagues to share with us what they view as our strengths. We can conduct an informal evaluation of the things we do best when under pressure. The point is, we have to determine what those strengths are.
- We must determine that when faced with life challenges, we will work to operate from our primary strengths. Making a decision to embrace and engage our personal strengths is essentially a choice. We must choose to act from a place of personal power and strength.
- We must take that first step. We never know how comfortable the task of tackling a life challenge from a platform of Personal Strength can be until we actually do it! We must act using our “Sources of Strength!” When we face life challenges in this way, we will always experience the satisfaction of knowing that we operated from a place of personal integrity. We will know that we have led from our personal Sources of Strength.
My challenge is this: The next time life deals you a hand that is less that stellar, determine to play that hand using your personal Sources of Strength! My guess is that you will experience more confidence in your ability to move through any challenge with purpose and direction.
Peace!
Mark E. Hundley
