Use Your Signature Strengths in a New Way
Find your top strengths, then deploy one a new way daily for two weeks
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 83%
This positive-psychology intervention flips the usual deficit focus. Instead of listing what to remove, you identify your signature character strengths, using a free survey that names your top traits like curiosity, perseverance, or love of beauty, and then use one strength in a new way every single day for two weeks. The novelty requirement is the mechanism: simply knowing you're curious does nothing, but taking a different route home, trying unfamiliar food, or starting a new language forces the strength into fresh expression and produces measurable gains in wellbeing. It embodies Boardman's core claim that the absence of what makes you miserable does not make you strong; you build strength by doing more of what you're good at and what brings you joy, closing the gap between what you value and how you actually spend your time.
Origin
Boardman draws on positive-psychology strengths research and free VIA-style surveys, contrasting it with the deficit-focused training of her medical and psychiatric education.
Core principles
- 01Wellbeing comes from adding good, not just removing bad
- 02Everyone has identifiable signature strengths
- 03Novel deployment, not mere awareness, produces the benefit
- 04Doing more of what you're good at beats only cutting what you're not
How to run it
- 1
Identify your strengths
Take a free character-strengths survey that tells you your top strengths, such as curiosity, perseverance, or love of beauty.
Pro tip These surveys are free, so there's no barrier to starting.
- 2
Pick one to focus on
Choose a single signature strength to work with over the next two weeks rather than spreading across all of them.
- 3
Deploy it a new way each day
Every day for two weeks, express that strength in a genuinely new way, never repeating the same expression.
Pro tip For curiosity: take a different route home, try new food, start a new language.
Watch out Just declaring the strength ('I'm curious') without a new action is the failure mode; novelty is required.
- 4
Let it steer your time
Notice the uplift and use it to close the gap between what you value and how you actually spend your days.
Pro tip Write down your three most-valued things and audit whether your Saturday reflects them.
In the wild
Someone's survey returns curiosity as a top strength. Rather than vaguely 'being curious,' they commit to a new expression daily: Monday a different route home, Tuesday an unfamiliar cuisine, Wednesday the first lesson of a new language, and so on for two weeks. Boardman notes this active, novel deployment, contrasted with the passive awareness she was taught to dismiss as 'icing on the cake' in medical school, is what actually shifts wellbeing, because it adds joy rather than merely subtracting a flaw.
→ Two weeks of novel strength use produces a measurable lift in wellbeing.
Common mistakes
Awareness without new action
Naming a strength but repeating the same behavior misses the intervention; the benefit lives in the novel expression.
Only subtracting flaws
Framing growth solely as quitting or losing ignores the faster lever of amplifying what you're good at and love.
Is it for you?
Best for
People who want a concrete, evidence-based wellbeing practice beyond just fixing what's wrong.
Not ideal for
Acute clinical crises where stabilization must come before flourishing work.
From the transcript
“you can do these surveys and they're free that just tells you exactly like, okay, your top strength is curiosity... now use your strength in…”
“the absence of stuff that makes you feel bad doesn't make you feel strong”
From the episode
Positive Psychology's Lessons For Coping With Stress - Dr Samantha Boardman - #358
Dr Samantha Boardman