"The aim of this blog is to reflect on your core personal values, and your strengths and limitations.”
For this exercise, I wanted to go outside of the prescribed questions and write in a way that feels a bit more natural to me.
In this first week of answering the reflection questions from the handbook, I found myself overthinking my answers and really focused on how it will be read by someone.
One of my stronger values/characteristics is prudence which means I really think about what I’m gonna say or do before I say or do anything. This is both a good and bad thing. In digital communication, it also particularly stands out because I have a chance to edit and re-edit. I’m sure in some aspects of coding, this type of behaviour could come in handy but also in other ways could hinder me too.
So now I’m working on not trying to give the perceived ‘perfect’ response.
This is something I want to work on both here and in my personal life (where are the divisions anyway?). A blog like this gives me a chance to practice some authenticity!
I think I can achieve the aim of the blog, set out above, without the specific structure and still convey what you (facilitators) are wanting to know about me. In a way, this is a real life example of the demonstration of my strengths and weaknesses, and specifically addressing a weakness that I am working on.
I’m mindful these blog entries may come off a little journal-y but hopefully there are no rules against this, and it might even be interesting to read. For future me anyway.
My values and strengths are something I’ve been looking at a lot lately. When taking the VIA Character Strengths test, I realised I have an interesting point of comparison - it turns out I completed this survey 2 years ago. Back then, my number one strength was ‘Prudence’ followed by:
Now, I have ‘Love of Learning’ as my top strength, followed by:
Prudence is still in my top 5 but not quite as strong. What a win! (Also, I know with all of these types of personality tests that we should take them with a grain of salt yada-yada-ya.)
I remember when I first saw that result two years ago, I was a bit disappointed. Like…really? My top quality is keeping my mouth shut? Also I had all these negative assumptions about the word and people being named as a ‘prude’.
But as I looked into the test’s definition of prudence, there was a bit more to it.
“Prudence means being careful about your choices, stopping and thinking before acting. It is a strength of restraint. When you are prudent, you are not taking unnecessary risks, and not saying or doing things that you might later regret. If you are high in prudence, you are able to consider the long-term consequences of your actions. Prudence is a form of practical reasoning, the ability to examine the potential consequences of your actions objectively, and to control yourself based on that examination. Prudence involves far-sighted planning as well as short-term, goal-directed planning. It is often referred to as cautious wisdom, practical wisdom, and practical reason.”
And I could really relate to it. It was how I behaved in my everyday life, at both a micro and macro level. And as with any characteristic, there’s always a good and bad side - the double-edged cliché.
The optimistic way they’ve described it above does paint it in a great light. I’m not reckless, super-reactive, or short-sighted. However, where’s all the fun? In other types of tests I’ve done, I know that I rate highly in open-ness
Here are my results from the Big 5 test:
So I think my high open-mindedness, does create a lot of fun in my life. I’m always open to trying new things, talking to new people, exploring new things. However in my life, I also notice I will fully voice something in my head, before I’m ready to speak it. It’s like I’m vetting myself. And the way this usually plays out in a conversation with people is they say something, I think of a response, I say it aloud in my head, I anticipate how it will be received, and then before I’m ready to speak it, the conversation has of course already moved on. I stand there, wondering if it’s too late to mention it. Aw but it was so good! And now no one got to hear it except for me. These moments happen so often and are what I’m now training myself to avoid.
Geez, written out like that I sound so awkward. And I am! But I’m not gonna dwell on it. My main point here is that something that was a core strength of mine, has also become a real lesson for me in being genuine and feeling connected to people. It is part of how I am learning to be kind to myself while also sharing what I have to say with the world, and bringing my value-add to the table.
I’m sure there’ll be lots more to reflect on around this as I progress through the course, but for now, that’s all. I hope this gives way more of an idea of who I am along with how I think and feel, than what would be some heavily crafted Sae-answers to the original questions from this task.
See ya!