Strengths

One of the classes I'm taking this term for my minor is "Women and Leadership." For this class we were required to take the StrengthsQuest evaluation, which is run by Gallup, to determine where our individual strengths lie. The idea behind this is to focus on building your strengths instead of focusing on weaknesses, which can often lead to less success or even failure. The evaluation consisted of a series of paired descriptors, and I had to choose which one best described me. After 35 minutes, I was done and assigned my top five strengths. They were, in order:

Intellection
Learner
Ideation
Empathy
Input

At first I was leary of descriptors consisting of made-up words (intellection?), but after reading the descriptions I feel that I was well categorized.

In short, what my five strengths say about me is that I am a constant thinker, I love to learn and come up with new ideas, I can empathize well with others, and I seek input to further my goals. It did not surprise me in the least that I did not have any of the strengths related to connecting well with other people. I've know almost my entire life that this is an area of weakness for me.

I have often been plauged by feelings of guilt over the amount of time I spend by myself just thinking. I usually feel like there are other things I "should" be doing, such as being out in the world and meeting people. But when I give up my thinking alone time I quickly become miserable and frustrated. Now I have a better idea of why that is, and why my alone time is so important to me. I'm not going to become a hermit, and I am going to continue working on overcoming my fear of meeting new people, but I won't feel guilty when I just want me time to think things over.