A few weeks ago I splurged, and in a fit of “I can do anything business is so great” feel-good rays, I bought the Strengths Finder book and assessment.

Funnily enough (#NoCoincidences), it was one of the books waiting in my new office, along with Mere Christianity.

I took the quiz under the influence of a strategic-project high, so I suspect the results are a bit more skewed to the heady intellectual side (or maybe I’m just more out of touch than I thought).

Anyhow, I’m hoping that writing them out will help me leverage these to bend my new job to my will and to fit my strengths, but also to put them to work accomplishing my other goals.

Here are my strengths:

  1. Strategic
  2. Learner
  3. Intellection
  4. Analytical
  5. Ideation

In my normal overthinking style, I have a rebuttal. It occurs to me that my instinctual reaction to this list is basically…this list.

  1. I certainly don’t feel strategic (but that really doesn’t mean anything)
  2. This is true. I love to learn. I live to learn.
  3. …guilty. I live in my head.
  4. I think I’m fairly analytical, but I’m not as data-oriented as, say, most data analysts. I believe that data should inform, but not dictate. The logic, however, must be sound.
  5. SHUT UP I LIKE IDEAS OKAY?

Maybe it’s not so wrong after all?

That said, it’s still just another filter on truth, and not Truth itself. A list of “strengths” is not the same as the mind, body, and spirit of me.

Clearly, to give my brain something to chew on, I need to get back into reading old books and keeping up on news. Finding an intellectual group of friends with which to have conversations would not, then, be an indulgence, but an essential opportunity for growth and development.