So I'm curious to hear you talk about the role of strengths in your own life. As character strengths is an issue that I'm very interested in as well, and I have some issues with the way they're presented. The character strength lists which is 24. Twenty four. I think it's an important list. Nobody's made a list like that, and it's one of my favorite books, the Peterson Seligman book. But there are two kinds of things in there. One of them are competences like wisdom and things like that, and others are what I would call moral like compassion or trustworthiness. I think there are two very different kinds of things. So I think there's very good reason to play to you a signature competence strengths. For example, if you're not good at music, why should you do it? If Michael Jordan is good at basketball, he should play basketball, he shouldn't compete in crossword puzzles. Basically, the way you succeed in our culture and in many cultures, is to be really good at something. So I think it pays to play to your signatures strengths. When we get to the moral domain- Can I just ask you. So going back to the gratitude story you started out with, I believe it was Howard Gardner you said, right? It's not Gardner, Howard Gardner is somebody else. He's a positive psychologist. Right. Howard Garland, did I say Howard? I thought so but- I may have said Howard Gardner, I meant Howard Garland. Howard Garland. So Howard Garland then, part of the reason why you're grateful for him, if I understand you correctly, is because he helped you to steer your life in the direction of your competencies. Yes. Absolutely. If you don't swim well, there's a lot of other things you can do in life. In sports, you see people incredibly specialized. Maybe it's unfortunate, but in sports, top performances is very critical, and it doesn't matter if you're not a good jumper if you're shooting arrows. My wife Susie and I just went to hear Simone Biles who was in town- Yes. Oh yeah. Recently, and she said she'd never tried another sport. Right. Gymnastics was it, and she is- That's one reason she's- Fantastic. Obviously there's other things, but you have to give up your life to be an Olympic athlete. So it's interesting because my daughter is an actress, was an actress, now a therapist, and her strength was versatility. So she could sing, she could dance, then she can play any dialect, she's very good at a lot of different things. That isn't valued, and I feel she might be the third choice for a particular role. Now, the person who got that role would not even be able to compete for one or the other roles, but unless you had a repertory theater which well, out now, where you had a bunch of people who did all the stuff. Versatility is of no importance to play a role and you play it really well. Sometimes that's unfortunate because it gets people to be often a little too focused, and they'll see Mobiles for example when she's 28 or whatever age it is that you can't do gymnastics, she has to start out her life again. Now, she'll have a lot of good self behind her. Okay. What do you think it is in your own life that was the competency or a key competency that has allowed you to succeed in psychology? It's a good question. I have a couple of characteristics. I don't know if they call me signature strengths. I tend to be contrarian. I tend to not like what's going on now, not because what's going on now is bad because everybody is doing what's going on now. So what I like to do is work where I can start with almost zero knowledge, and therefore anything I find out is pretty good, rather than doing the 50th study on the same thing. So I don't know how I got to be that way. It's not a great way to be, because I can't get grants and I have trouble publishing because people say, "Why are you studying that when we haven't figured out this?" So I just had a paper on food and music, and the editor said, "Well, relate this to psychology? Oh food and music are a major part of psychology" So that's one thing. Another is that I guess creativity is my strong point. I think of things in different ways than most people do. Sometimes those ways are silly, sometimes they not, and to meet creativity involves two things. It involves coming up with something potentially interesting, and then being able to judge whether it's really interesting. So you could be good at one of those and not the other. People who are just very creative but they've no judgment, need somebody next to them who says, "Of those 12 ideas, this is the one that's good." So I think those are things I like to teach a lot, and I learn a lot from teaching. I teach big classes, 600 students. I also teach these little seminars. But I learn from teaching, and I love it, and where I got that I don't know. I did in TA ever as a graduate student. I had a National Science Foundation Fellowship which as it were, protected me from it. Then because some faculty member left while I was aggressive, and then there was no one to teach physiological psychology, which was my field, I taught undergraduate physiological psychos at Harvard as a graduate student, and I loved it, and the students were just great. A couple of them became well-known people actually, and it was just exciting to me. So I don't know what that is. So going back to the issue of character strengths, when you get to moral character strengths, I believe it's a mistake to build on your strengths. Because I think as a person, your character is judged by your weakness. So if you're a kind and dishonest person, people are going to focus on the dishonesty. There's a tendency for people to look at negative features, which I think is built-in. So calling dishonest person is not a person of good character, and a person of pretty kind and pretty honest is probably better regarded. So I think what you should do in the moral domain is, if you see that am not good at some moral character strength, say, "How can I improve that?" Because this is a case where the chain is as strong as its weakest link. Whereas in the case of competence, the chain is as strong as its strongest link. That's fascinating point. I think you're right, and it's a very important point. So how would you respond to the advice about how to strengthen that weakest link? So some folks in positive psychology have argued that a good way to show up your weaknesses is by using your strengths, because you tend to enjoy that more. So if you're not a kind person, might you use the things that you are good at to help bolster your kindness? Do you think that's a promising approach? Let me first confess that I really haven't thought a lot about how to boost your moral weakness as opposed to your competence weaknesses, which in most cases is the best thing to do at the competence weaknesses together. But it is important to boost your moral because I really don't quite know how you'd make yourself more kind or more trustworthy, this is a problem. You could use other moral strengths to say, "It's unkind to others to be untrustworthy." I mean, you could try to link them in a way, or you could try your more competence areas to do it. This is a problem I have not addressed that I think, one reason may be that I'm not quite sure how you do it.
