Strengths Focused Environments 6 Weeks to a Happier Healthier You Quickstart Guide

Foreign I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation of Integrative Behavioral Health. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. And today we are talking about strengths, focused environments. When we are trying to reduce our stress, when we are trying to be happier and healthier, it helps to focus on the things that we can do in order to create a rich and meaningful life and not necessarily focus on what other people tell us we should do. I'm going to start out with a parable. It's a parable that theoretically came from Hispanic Latino culture. And, you know, I'm not sure exactly who came up with it. I found several different references. But anyway, it does give you something to think about. So the parable goes. A successful businessman was on vacation in a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large fish. The businessman complimented the fishermen and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman proudly replied, every morning I go out of my boat for 30 minutes to fish. I am the best fisherman in the village. The businessman, very perplexed, then asked the fisherman, well, if you're the best, why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish? What do you do the rest of the day? The fisherman replied, very happily, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend quality time with my wife, and every evening we stroll into the village to drink wine and play guitar with our friends. I have a full and happy life. The businessman replied, well, I'm a successful CEO and I am very good at spotting business opportunities. You really should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you can buy a bigger boat. And then with the proceeds from the bigger boat, you can buy even more boats. Eventually you'll have a fleet of boats with many fishermen. Then you can sell fish to thousands of people, move out of the village to the big city where you can oversee your growing empire. The fisherman asked, but how long will this take? The businessman replied, About 15 to 20 years. The fisherman said, but what then? The businessman laughed and said, that is the best part. At the right time, you will sell your company and make millions. The fisherman said, okay, I'll make millions. Then what? The businessman said, then you will retire, move to a small coastal fishing village where you will sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll into the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends. Obviously, the take home or take away from that parable is the fact that this fisherman didn't see the need for abundant material wealth because he had so much abundance in everything else in his life. He was very happy with what he had. He was using his strengths, he was the best fisherman to create a life that he wanted, a life that he could be happy with instead of a life that other people told him he should have. So when we talk about strengths, focused environments, one of the ways that we can achieve this life of peace and contentment is to figure out what our skills are, what our characteristics are that make us unique, and the things that we like doing. How can you create an environment that supports those they. Another analogy, or whatever the word I'm looking for is that people say, if you love your job, you will never work a day in your life. That's what the fisherman did. The fisherman loved his job. He loved fishing, but he also loved a lot of other things in his life. His family, his wife, his, his downtime, his ability to take a nap. So all of those things were important to him. And he figured out, or he asked himself, what is it that I need to do? What can I do right now to have a rich and meaningful life? And he was doing it. He didn't need the things that other people told him, he, quote, should have. So make a list of your skills, the things that you're good at, the things that you enjoy. Maybe it's not what you're doing right now, maybe you are considering a occupational change. And that is totally cool. I know a lot of people now who have two or three careers throughout their life, they do something when they first get out of school, they do that for a while and then they decide, hey, this other thing interests me and I would really rather do that. So they switch gears a little bit. And that is a growth activity. That is something that makes them happy. Instead of feeling like they're stuck and they have to do the same thing over and over again. Once you make a list of your skills, the things that you're good at and enjoy, then make a list of things that you need in order to live a rich and meaningful life. You know, what is it that you need? I mean, you could have, you could want for millions of dollars, you could want for a 10,000 square foot mansion on the hillside of somewhere. But do you need that? Is that actually going to make you happy? And determining those things, determining what goes into your rich and meaningful life and how you can use your skills and strengths in order to create the most conducive environment to you living happily and health, healthfully now is really important. The other thing to think about in strengths focused environments is your temperament. And I know we've talked about temperament before, but briefly, you know, going over those things again. Extroverts are going to want to be in environments that are filled with other people. We draw our energy from other people. So they may prefer being on a cruise ship to being on a sailboat. They may prefer to work in an office as opposed to working by themselves at home. Extroverts really thrive on a lot of being around a lot of people. Not necessarily because they need feedback from those people, but they draw energy from them. I can't really explain it, but they get energized when they are around others. Introverts, on the other hand, do prefer down time, prefer quiet time. And being around a lot of people is stressful. So when you're thinking about creating an environment that reduces stress, what are your strengths? What are your preferences and identifying, you know, first and foremost, you know, do you like to be in environments where there may be frequent interruptions, where there are a lot of people, where there's a lot of energy going on, there's a lot to that you can pay attention to, or is it more relaxing, more conducive to being in an environment that is more peaceful, more tranquil, and to a certain extent, more isolated? Sensing and intuitive environments, especially when it comes to work. But even at home, sensing environments are environments that demand that you pay attention to details, whereas intuitive environments are environments that are more conducive to, you know, broad strokes. You don't have to be quite as specific. And you see this, you know, I'll give you the analogy of cooking. When you are baking, it is really important to be specific about what you're putting in. If you put in too much baking powder, you know, it's not going to taste right if. And it may not rise the way it's supposed to. So baking can be a little bit finicky if you aren't paying attention to the details. Whereas cooking, you tend to have a little bit more latitude and you can do a handful of this and a splash of that or a dash of this, and things will generally end up turning out pretty well. Now obviously if you go overboard, you can ruin that too. But you, you don't have to be quite as attentive to detail. So are you more of a baker or are you more of a cooking type person? Are you somebody who really likes to delve down deeply into details, or are you somebody who likes to see the big picture? Just Give me the overview please. And, and your work environments can, can be similarly conducive or work against your strengths and preferences. If you are an a broad strokes person, somebody who wants the, you know, the overview, being an accountant, probably not your thing. If you are a detail oriented person, then being in in some sort of job where you've got to think about the big picture, where you're thinking about meta concep may not be somewhere where you're happy thinking and feeling environments. Thinking environments are organized around things that are either true or false. And you know, when you're around other people, they may be motivated by truth and facts and justice and you know, those sorts of words. Those people tend to be thinkers. Feelers tend to be more motivated by what promotes harmony and promotes people being, wanting to be together and happiness. One is not more right than the other. We need truth and justice and we need harmony. So we're not saying one's good or bad. But when you're trying to design an environment that feels relaxing, that feels safe, that feels motivating to you, what types of motivations are going do you want to see in the people that are around you? What types of motivations do you feel more in. In alignment with, in tune with? And that's really important not to say that you should ignore people who have different motivations. You know, I think there's definitely a need for everybody and every perspective. But when you're trying to create a relaxing environment, an environment that promotes health and happiness and harmony, you want to figure out what is it that's going to help you feel most relaxed. And then there's judging and perceiving and this is really time management and thinking about your strengths and your preferences in terms of time management, judgment. Judgers really like structure, they like calendars. You know, they, they don't like to wait till the last minute. They make to do lists all the time. Perceivers tend to be a lot more flexible, tend to think that there's plenty of time, and tend to be a lot more spontaneous. We've talked before in other videos that you can watch on the YouTube channel about how these different temperaments interact in relationships. But for the purposes of this very short presentation, it's important to think about in what ways can you use your strengths if you are an extrovert, in what ways can you use your strengths in your current environment to make it more comfortable, relaxing, conducive? You know, I've shared before, my husband's an introvert, I'm an extrovert. Well, so there are some things that we need to get done that are extrovert oriented and I can do those and I do them very happily. There are some things that are introvert oriented and detail oriented, neither of which I am that he does very well, like Texas. So figuring out how to use your strengths in relationships, how to use your preferences to do the parts of what needs to be done that you really enjoy, that you like, that you have the abilities to do, and then partnering, synergizing with people who have other strengths, other preferences that can take up some of the other things that you either don't prefer or that they're not your strengths. All of those can contribute to reducing stress, increasing efficiency, reducing waste and energy. All of the things that we've been talking about over the past, you know, four weeks, what questions do you have or ideas do you have about creating strengths based or strengths focused environments in order to help you feel more relaxed, more at ease and accomplish your goals more efficiently? I do appreciate everybody being, tuning in and being with me on this Friday morning. I hope it is beautiful where you are. I hope you are looking forward to something or some things every day this weekend. Remember, one of the things that you can do to help set your day off correctly or in a good way is to be mindful in the morning identifying what you need, what you want, what you think, what you feel. Visualize a successful day. Even if you've got to do things that you don't like, visualize a successful day and identify at least one thing that you are looking forward to. Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you guys next week.