Character Strengths Are Your Hidden Superpowers
Plug into Your Innate Potential
Character strengths—including hope—are power sources that are free, available on demand, universal, creative, and innate. They are within us always, yet are often dormant and waiting to be turned on.
There are a total of twenty-four of them—each with unique qualities. They are what allows you to face the next day or hour or moment, even when you wish you didn’t have to.
Our character strengths are an essential part of being human and the core of our capacity to survive and thrive. This is why they are essential to identify and cultivate. Without using them, we wither; with them, we have the potential to flourish. The important thing to know is that these strengths are there, waiting for something to help boost them and make them more accessible to us. This has been powerfully demonstrated during misfortunes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, mine collapses, or plane crashes.
The Tenacity of Hope
Consider what happened when a chartered flight carrying a rugby team traveling from Uruguay to Chile crashed in the Andes in 1972. Of the forty-five people on board, twenty-eight survived the crash. After ten days, rescue efforts were called off. In the bitter cold, high altitude, and icy snow of the Andes, the survivors were without food, warmth, or shelter. They heard the news of the abandoned rescue efforts on a transistor radio. By every measure and assessment of their condition, their situation was hopeless.
Ten weeks later—after seventy-two soul-shattering days on the mountain—sixteen men were rescued. In one of the most dramatic stories of human resilience, these men instinctively used their collective, creative intelligence to survive. Their story made headlines around the world, because it had a lot to teach us about the capacity of the human spirit.
What is informative about their adversity is that their rescue was not about passively maintaining themselves and waiting for something to happen. They didn’t just sit in the dark, frozen fuselage and wait. They were saved by their resilience and character.
The characteristics displayed by this group highlight both the survival instinct and the potential built into each of us. It gets activated personally and collectively, which means it’s part of our DNA: we are wired to survive.
But we are also wired to thrive.
Just like wires or circuits that carry electricity, our DNA wiring transports a form of energy. This energy pulses through the fiber of our being and ignites our essence, pushing us toward survival in creative ways.
“Turning on” Our Strengths
Just as electricity is available by plugging into an outlet or connecting to a battery, this power in us is readily accessible, to be used in specific applications. Just as electricity can turn on a light, a toaster, a TV, or a computer, a switch can flip inside us and turn on a deep reservoir of strength. Despite impossible odds and persistent failures, it seems one factor alone made the difference for the plane crash survivors: the belief it was possible. As Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t—you’re right.”
The rugby team demonstrated how essential character strengths like hope and perseverance are available during a disaster—as if the survivors turned on the hope switch. Right now, the same potential is poised inside each of us. Our character strengths are there for us, waiting to be called upon. The question is, how can we access them when we’re not in a crisis?
Character Strengths Are Your Hidden Superpowers
Traditionally, psychology focused on intelligence and skill as the measures of success. High IQ and high skill level were thought to be the best forecasts of achievement. As it turns out, how well we use our character predicts accomplishment in life about twice as well.
Think of the salesperson who is persistent and uses their social intelligence doing better than the one who knows more about the product. Or the teacher of the year who has humor and zest but whose colleagues graduated with higher GPAs. It’s true even of those we think of as being born with a gift. The comedian Steve Martin said of his own career: “Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.”
In the last fifteen years, a developing understanding and use of virtues and character strengths have profoundly influenced the fields of education, business, therapy, coaching, and even government and the military. Character strengths have become the flagship of positive psychology—influencing almost every area of human functioning. Ongoing research has demonstrated that these strengths are what we need not just to survive, but to flourish. They represent an enormous potential inside us.
But what sets them in motion? Do we need a catastrophe to awaken them? Or are they already planted inside us and we just need to nurture them?
