Every one of us has unique strengths and these are perhaps one of our most valuable assets when it comes to navigating through life.
Relying on them can create a roadmap for not only dealing with challenging situations but also thriving through positive ones.
Kate and Sara share how they used their strengths to get through cancer, drinking and divorce.
There are many practical ways to identify strengths, including taking formal assessment tools like StrengthsFinder, observing activities that bring joy and flow, reflecting on past successes, and seeking feedback from others.
Ultimately, understanding your strengths is key to self-awareness and provide a strong foundation for you to build your life on.
In this episode we refer the formal assessment tools for finding out your strengths:
Disclaimer: This podcast, along with associated websites and social media materials, are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are that of Sara Garska and Kate Campion, and that of our guests, respectively. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for medical questions.
Every one of us has unique strengths and these are perhaps one of our most valuable assets when it comes to navigating through life.
Relying on them can create a roadmap for not only dealing with challenging situations but also thriving through positive ones.
Kate and Sara share how they used their strengths to get through cancer, drinking and divorce.
There are many practical ways to identify strengths, including taking formal assessment tools like StrengthsFinder, observing activities that bring joy and flow, reflecting on past successes, and seeking feedback from others.
Ultimately, understanding your strengths is key to self-awareness and provide a strong foundation for you to build your life on.
In this episode we refer the formal assessment tools for finding out your strengths:
Disclaimer: This podcast, along with associated websites and social media materials, are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are that of Sara Garska and Kate Campion, and that of our guests, respectively. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for medical questions.
Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion -
Sara: and I’m Sara Garska -
Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.
This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.
Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act. I'm Kate Campion.
Sara: And I'm Sara Garska.
Kate: And in today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can use your strengths to not only survive, but thrive.
So, Sara, the reason I was thinking about this episode was two different reasons, I guess. One is that strengths and focusing on your strengths is something that's like really pivotal in positive psychology, which is something that I'm really passionate about and live my life about a lot.
But the other thing is that I was sort of sitting down the other day and thinking about a situation that we were having in our family that was causing a little bit of overwhelm and worry and things like that.
And I started to think about how I was going to cope with that particular situation and you how those thoughts can take over a little bit and you can sort of end up in a bit of a spiral and worrying about things like this might happen, that might happen, I might not be able to cope with this and so on.
And then when I was sitting there I just suddenly thought to myself, actually Kate, in your life, you have survived a lot of things.
And so what that did was it reminded me of those sort of situations that I'd experienced, but also what it was that I'd used to kind of get me through them, which is some strengths that I'm going to be unpacking a little bit with today.
And what that did too was it made me think about like what exactly strengths were.
And how our listeners, by knowing what their strengths are, can kind of use them as a tool to survive with things in their own life and also to thrive too.
So we're going to go a bit into the good side of using strengths.
Sara: I'm excited for this one when I was looking over your show notes because it is one of those things we tend to, so the best way I can explain it, because I was a career counselor for 10 years, a lot of times our strengths are just so innate in us.
We don't see them as strengths. So I'm so excited about this topic today.
Kate: Yeah, that's such a good point.
We just go and we do these certain things and we don't actually stop and look to see what it is that we were using that helped us in that situation, so what’s exactly what I’m thinking about.
So a couple of things before I go into my own experience with using my strengths is just to say like knowing your strengths and what they even are with those positive traits that are beneficial to you and that are beneficial to others as well.
Like you said in your career counseling example, you know, knowing what your strengths are, the things that you can use in your job and stuff to make sure that you actually are doing something that's aligned with your performance.
Another thing about our strengths is that when we use them, we actually feel more positive, like rather than if you think about consistently putting ourselves into situations that are not using our strengths, you know, that can feel quite overwhelming.
But when we're actually using them, there's that sort of feeling of comfort and positivity that comes from knowing them.
Knowing what your strengths are as a key part as well of knowing yourself. And the more I think about these mid-life transitions that we're going through and this sort of search for a new identity, kind of like a new life sort of post that midlife thing, the more it comes to me that actually it's not so much like finding new things, but it's really tapping into those things that have been in us for such a long time that we may not always have appreciated or made the most of.
And saying that I'm thinking very much of the episode eight that we did on The Invisible Woman, when we talked about those bits of us that we've hidden.
So knowing our strengths is a fantastic way of actually seeing have these strengths kind of been playing full out in my life, or have they been things that actually I could make more of to make my life more meaningful and fun for me.
Sara: So, great point.
Kate: Yeah, how I kind of wanted to unpack this was do a bit of what I call backwards mapping. So, and encourage our listeners to use these similar experiences to think about what these strengths might be.
So, in those challenging situations, That I mentioned in my life, probably the most significant of them was when I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 31.
And I went and did a little bit of stats research yesterday because I like to back up the things that things I say.
I do. So in 2022, there was 1.9 million cases of cancer diagnosed in the US. So that's a significant amount.
And within that, a cancer that's called a sarcoma is under 1% of all of those. So that in, I think the stats that I found for that was there were 13,400 cases of sarcomas diagnosed within that 1.9 million.
So not very much. And then the cancer that I had was called a proximal epithelioid sarcoma. And that's only 1% of sarcomas.
So when it comes down to it, really is out of that 1.9 million of cancer diagnosis year in the States.
Not that I'm American, but this was like the best, you know, comparative population that I could come up with.
So, only 134 people would have that. So not very much. And when I was actually diagnosed with cancer, I'd had a lump on my vulva of all places, or fun places to have them, that had kind of consistently grown over time.
And when I went to my general practitioner, so in New Zealand, I don't know if you have GPs, but in New Zealand. It's kind of like your primary care person.
Yeah. So I'd gone to him and he'd said, this looks really unusual. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before.I think this should be checked out.
So then I went to a gynecologist. He was like, this is nothing to worry about.
This is probably just a cyst. We'll pop you on a waiting list. We'll get it cut out.
Well, six months later, I did get it cut out.
So it was a long time to wait. In New Zealand we don't have to pay for health care by the way, so this was all free.
And unfortunately, after they did take it out, they sent it away for biopsy and discovered what it was. When I had that diagnosis, I had absolutely no idea what this particular cancer was that they were talking about because it was so rare.
How to cope with the fact that I had it when I was like 31 years old and also at the time, you know, because I had my kids quite young. I think my kids were like 12 and 9. And so there was a lot of fear, especially when at the time, the 5 year survival rate was 25%.
So I was thinking like this is a death sentence. You know, this is a death sentence. And how did I actually cope with it?
And I guess I have to say as the worst part is that I was in a really bad relationship as well.
With the man who would later become my second husband, which is another story. Cancer was a big reason why I married him to be fair.
I had a lot of fear about dying and taking care of myself and so on.
But when I was diagnosed with this thing, was like, okay, what am I actually dealing with? How can I deal with this?
And even though I think if I was 31, it must have been 2005, you know, we had the internet then.
I don't know. We did have the internet then. And one of the first things I did was actually find a community of people online who were suffering from the same things.
So there were two specific organizations or groups or whatever that I can remember now. And one was about people who had epithelioid sarcomas and the other one was about women who had had cancers of - gynecological cancers basically.
And so in those groups, like I was able to find people to kind of talk to and share my, you know, share my fears with.
And how I did that was through writing because actually in my life writing has been the primary way that I have expressed myself to the world other than talking but you know it's been like a huge part of my life.
You know as you and I are both bloggers and had our blogs for a long time, you know writing is huge.
So there was a lot of written communication like as I was kind of navigating my way through coping with this.
In fact the other day I was clearing out some stuff and I found some of the things that I wrote that I printed out you know and I just kind of like got it all out there trying to process my thoughts and feelings through writing.
Sara: So when you say writing you mean like journal writing or writing with the people in the group.
Kate: Writing with the people in the group. Yeah and a bit of journal writing as well so both of those things.
And I did a lot of research not always. I know -
Sara: I can imagine that, you can see it already.
And, you know, that wasn't always to my advantage because of the fact that prognosis wasn't particularly good.
Sara: Like, I know you're sitting here right in front of me, but I'm so engaged in the story. like, yeah, it has a good ending.
Kate: Yeah, it does have a good ending. Thank goodness it does. But yeah, so I was doing all this research and it was challenging, but I was also like learning as much as I could so that I could be informed because one of the things was like I see, you know, no one in New Zealand had had this that I was aware of, that the doctors were aware of.
In fact, funny story, another joyful thing that happens in midlife is the old prolapse, pelvic prolapse, I saw in gynecologist about the other day.
The doctor that I saw was now working in the same clinic with the doctor who did this second surgery that I had post cancer for margins and stuff. And when she heard what kind of cancer I’d had, she just didn't believe it.She was like, no, and she was like, no.
Sara: Because it was so rare:
Kate: Yeah. And then she was like, I'm going to go and look at those notes.
And she literally ran and found my old notes. And she came back and goes, wow. And then when she rang up, this other doctor to talk to him about or not it was safe for me to do to have HRT because I've had blood clots in the past. She said, and this woman's had this. And they were like, whoa. And so I was in a space with something that was very rare.
In fact, I remember someone telling me as well that bits of me had been sent all over New Zealand and Australia for different things like that.
Yeah, quite fascinating. But what that meant was that I needed to be really confident in my own self about what was going on so that I could be my own kind of best advocate, if that makes sense.
Sara: It does, yes.
Kate: Yeah. And then the other thing that I did a lot of at the time was even just using my planning skills.
Like I had to have, you know, it's not like now when you have an operation, they just expect you to work from home.
You know, while you recover. I had quite a bit of time off work. Through my research, I knew that things like chemotherapy and radiotherapy didn't work.
So the only thing that was going to work for me would be surgery. And so there was a lot of planning and organization that I had to do around that around who was going to look after my kids after I had these operations.
And so on. So in that whole experience, and I think it's only fair to say like that experience also, knocked me to my core.
Like I've mentioned before, I went through like a bad drinking period, which I'm going to get into after this.
And that was kind of like a direct result of this, like I sort of had that year where I had the surgeries, where I had the recovery.
Then it was after that kind of was gone, I was left with this real holy heck, this could have been my life over, that's when I went into the poorly adaptive coping patterns.
But still, looking back, the things that I did then just really, really did help me get through. It provided me with an outlet for my feelings, through my writing.
It gave me some sense of agency and control and what felt really uncontrollable. It just gave me a plan and a way to manage myself and to go forward.
And so what I pulled out from that in terms of my strengths was written communication, researching, learning, and planning.
And the funny thing to kind of like loop back to the beginning when I was talking about positive psychology, in one of the assessments that I'd done, like they were the things that actually came out.
So it was quite an interesting experience to think that these strengths that have been identified through a test that was essentially about my career actually had already played out in my life in quite a significant way that had really helped me.
Sara: Yeah, and hearing that experience with you and having worked with you on this, I can see all of those coming into play because they really are your strength, the researching, the planning.
You know, so it's such a great story of how what you naturally do well, you were able to harness and use for your own, your own wellbeing.
Kate: Totally. And then the same kind of thing happened with my drinking as well. So like when I realized that it was not good for me anymore and I was like, well, how am I going to cope with this?
Because the man that I was by this stage married to, we got married after the cancer diagnosis. He was a big drinker.
And so when it was clear to me that it was something I needed to stop, I really had to do it on my own.
There was no support for me at home to do that. In fact, I could say that there was actually active sabotage against stopping me from doing it because he wanted me to keep doing it right.It was more fun for him.
So when I look back again, exactly the same things happened like I joined Internet forums.
I went to a couple of AA meetings, but it wasn't something that really worked for me. I did like join other groups of people.
I did so much research into like drinking. I mean, my personal belief is it's a real, I don't believe it's a disease.
I believe it's a habitual pattern and and like all habits, it's created by certain triggers and cues and other things like that.
So like doing the research into those things and learning stuff from that. I was able to kind of. develop my own stop drinking plan. If that makes any sense.
Sara: Yeah.
Kate: And that was something that I was able to do, you know, so I was 32 when I stopped drinking, so you can see the two events were very, very closely correlated.
I'm and you know, I'm 49 now and I've never, never drunk again. And so like those same things really helped me.
Who were my community of people I could talk to when I was struggling? What's the research I know about drinking and how I can actually stop myself. What's a plan I can do, know, to help me get through this time? Yeah.
So that's kind of what I've got to share so far on how I reverse mapped some of those key strengths from my significant events that happened to my early 30s.
What do you have to share about it?
Sara: Well, no, just it's a comment on your process because your process is how we actually met - through your research.
And joining a community and you joined a community that I was in and I don't know how we came together.
You know, I can't remember that part. I mean, I remember the group we were in and stuff, but we connected and had, you know, what I would call social connection afterwards because I remembered like years ago, writing to you on Facebook when I was going through a breakup. You know, crying.
Kate: That is so true. And that's funny. I’d completely forgotten that.
Sara: Yeah. I went back to Look, it was like, so we had got to that point, but it was all because of that quality of you where when you're going through something, part of your process is finding a group of people who are also going through it.
Kate: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How cute. I had forgotten that example. So there you go.
Sara: Yeah, you were learning to blog and I was learning to blog and we were doing it together.
Kate: Well, you always seemed much more expert than me, but there we go.
Sara: I wasn't. I just had a.daughter that was.
Kate: So those are two examples of kind of challenging situations that I got through. How about you, Sara?
What sort of challenging situations have you experienced in your life that you feel really showed your strengths?
Sara: Well, I'm going to focus on some of my midlife ones.
So I would say the biggest one was my divorce. I was married for 30 years and I had been with, I had met my ex husband when I was 20.
We were married by the time I was 21. And so I felt like I grew up with him. And in the marriage, he did not because he was a bad person or anything. He's fine. Just want to make that clear. yeah, because I just kind of handed these things over.
So he did the money parts. If we bought a house, he did all the negotiating and the paperwork. And he had done so much to make sure we had the things we needed at home, our bills were paid. After the marriage ended. And then I was on my own, I was just like, I don't know how to do anything.
So I had to really learn how to do some of these tasks, roles that I had not done in the marriage.
And so kind of like you when I look back to what were the qualities that helped me do that, like my strengths.
And so I had done a strength finder thing. So I went back and looked at that to kind of compare it. What I remember my strengths are as to ones that showed up on an assessment. So one of them was, I'm good at making decisions.
And one of my early decisions was, I'm going to not buy a house right away. I'm not ready for that. I’m going to rent for as long as it takes to, you know, feel more comfortable. So I made that decision and that served me well.
And, you know, when it was time to buy a house, then I decided to buy a house and I did that last year.
And so I see like my ability to make decisions through these past nine years as really, it's one thing that I didn't know I was good at before.
And now I'm like, I am good at making decisions. I;m very decisive. don't, don't dilly dally about it. But the second part of my decision making is, I never second guess myself.
When I make a decision, I make the decision that I'm going to get the result I want. Like, I don't decide to do something and go, I hope this turns out.
Part of my decision-making process is I always decide that it's going to turn out well. And that has probably served me well.
So it's one of those things, like when I started my blog, I just made the decision, like, I'm going to be successful at this.Wwith no time limit. And because if I had just given myself a year, I would’ve quit because, you know, that a year wasn't long enough.
And so that's one of my favorite qualities about myself. And so kind of tied into that, the other one is I'm persistent.
I used to think I was a quitter because when I was younger, I did quit a lot. But in this stage of my life, one of my strengths is I'm very persistent. I stick with things until I get the result I want. And I love that. And then my third is I'm adaptable.
And that's, you know, being in the moment and if something's... It sounds almost opposite of what I just said, but I'm willing to pivot or to change or to tweak something so that I get the result I want.
Kate: I love that. And again, when you're talking about our past and how we got to know each other, know, when I actually thought about the podcast, for our listeners, this was something that was my idea that I reached out to Sara about.
Sara: Yeah, super fun. Yeah. I was so excited.
Kate: Yeah, the reality can be a little bit more scary. But when I actually reached out to you and I was listening to my intuition that told me you were a good person, but when I actually unpacked it, it was one of the things where your persistence as well.
Because like you said, know, when you decided to start blogging, you knew that it would take some time. And I was also very much the same.
Like if I'd realized then it would take me till now to get to this point, I would have thought no way.
Now the same thing with this podcasting, it’s know, it's like, well, actually, I know that these things can take time to gain traction and to gain listeners and to do other stuff.
And that's okay. I know that I can keep working on things for a long time without like someone on the outside needing to give me external validation, I guess.
And I could see that in you very clearly. So, you know, your things come through too.
Sara: So, we have that in common, our persistence and our ability to stick with something.
And that's also why I agreed to do it with you because I knew you were not going to quit on me.
Kate:Yeah.
Sara: Without a lot of lead time. What I want to point out is your strengths, I think, so balanced mine out.
Because that part of me that's decisive, you sent me a message, Hey, do you want to do this? I was like, yes.
You know, there was like, no, it was such a clear yes. But then that's all I had. was like, I was a yes.
And then you, if you're planning and research, brought it all together. so that's how you can have something in common that makes something work, but then you each bring your own gifts to it when you're collaborating.
Kate: Yeah, that's like a good marriage, isn't it? Enough in common to make it work and enough not in common to make it work. To make it interesting.
Sara: I'll have to keep that in mind if it ever comes up again in my life.
Kate: Oh, classic.And you also talked about starting a business as well. Did those qualities reflect?
Sara: 100%. I was thinking about that as I was coming down to my office.
I was like, what if I hadn't done all this because I've replaced my income from when I was a counselor in a college and it did not happen overnight.
So that persistence part, I'm like, wow. This is something I can do. I can do these things that I love for as long as I feel like doing them.
And it's the persistence of, I call it times when we worked without pay, because blogging is so classic. Even if you're amazing at it, you will still spend, you'll have a year or so before a blog pays anything.
And so, I don't know, where was I going with this? Oh, my business.
Sara: So then, you know, I had the blog and then from that, then I decided to be a life coach.
And I did the training for that. And then I was in another situation where, oh, I have no idea how to find clients or anything.
So, there was another year of not being paid for being a life coach. But in year, how many of this is, the two together have created a way to make a living for me.
And so, those, the decision making, what did I say, the adaptability and persistence. All came together to create this result.
And I feel like it's only up from here.
Kate: I love that. That's so exciting.
And what you’ve done is nicely segue. We've used examples that in some ways we're really challenging, like cancer, drinking, divorce, starting a new business.
But there's also been times in my life where I've realized those things have come through. My husband and I built a home in 2015 and that involved - 2016.
That involved a lot of research into how I wanted it to look, the fittings, colors, all that sort of stuff was a really fun process for me.
They always say when you build a house that people that change their minds are the ones that end up paying more, well we never changed our mind on anything because by the time we'd started, I'd done all the research.
I had all the vision of how it was going to be.
Same thing with trips when we take vacations and
Things like that. There's often a lot of research that goes into the places that we're going to and what we want to see, what we want to do.
I like to learn a bit about the place as well and then plan a trip that's actually going to meet our needs.
There's lots of like thriving ways to that knowing your strengths can come into play and you've kind of mentioned that as well with your growing family after your divorce.
Sara: Oh yeah. So one of the, so I've been divorced nine years and I have three grown children and I have three grandchildren and then my children, some of them are married, one has a partner and then there's the in-laws, my parents.
So I was trying to think what do you call them? But anyway, so we've grown into this big family.
But one of the decisions we made early on and it was a family decision. So me, my ex-husband, the three kids, we've just decided we're going to get along.
We're going to do holidays together. We’re going to do birthdays together. And it wasn't super easy in the beginning, but I just knew that that's what we wanted to do.
And so my ex-husband got married a couple years ago, and so now his wife is in the mix. I'm so glad we did this because it allows us to celebrate with our children.
And sometimes we celebrate separately. Like tonight, I'm going out with my son and daughter-in-law to celebrate his birthday. But in general, for our big things, for our holidays and some of the birthdays, we all get together.
There might be, depending on who's available, 11 to 15 people. And I never feel more proud than when we're all together.
And that's that same thing, like that decision.
We made the decision. And I don't want to paint it like we always get along because we don't.
We had something come up a month or so ago. And whichever daughter I was talking to was like, don't text, don't text that.
And I said, I'm going to limit myself to one snarky text. So I'm not perfect, but overall, like, but we worked it out and then we ended up having, but I would say was one of our best get-togethers ever.
And so we keep, you know, that adaptability, we keep coming up with ways that work even better for our family.
So, you know, so I think what we're saying is like, our strengths not only help our professional lives, but they are really important to our personal life.
Kate: Exactly. Yeah.
Sara:And like, as you pointed out to your health and your wellness and...
Kate: Yeah. And I think it's really great that we have got these two kind of so different examples because one of the things, and I guess this is a bit of a plug for coaching as well, you know, a lot of the times people might try and sell you a course or a way of doing things and they might choose the way that's worked for them.
So it might be like, you know, let's go and learn how to do this. Maybe if it was the Kate Campion method.
It would be, let's do all this research, let's have a community, let's learn this plan. For you, know, it might be, right, this is my decision that I'm going to make and I'm going to do this and I'm going to be adaptable to the process.
And that can show up very differently, can't it? And so like, yeah, when you're coaching, it's actually about like, what are the strengths that this person is bringing to the table to that I can actually like help them bring out.
And so I guess knowing what your strengths are is just so key because I view it as like, if you've got your own toolkit, it's a New Zealand we call it like having something in your kete, which is like a flax basket.
It's like, I know my strengths, so I know if this situation comes to pass, this is what I'll do.
I will reach out to people that I can connect with that are having that same experience. I will research what I need to know.
I will learn all I can and I'll make a plan. You know, for you, if something comes up, Right.
I know I can cope with this. I'm going to make your decision on how I'm going to deal with it.
I'm going to be persistent and I'm going to believe it's going to succeed. Whatever that decision is, it will work for me.
I'll persist through whatever it takes, but I'll also be adaptable along the way. It just helps to create the sense of self-confidence, self-confidence in your own abilities to manage what it becomes your way.
Sara: It really does. Even just talking through this with you, I feel even more confident because even though I knew those were there, having this discussion with you and kind of seeing how they played out in all my situations, but also hearing you, how those same three strengths helped you through various things.
It just made it really kind of snap together for me. It was really powerful. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Kate: You're welcome. I keep trying to listen to If they're thinking to themselves, know, okay, what actually are my strengths?
One of the things that I've noted down is that we've talked about is there are formal assessment tools that you can do.
You mentioned strengths finder and the one I think you've done before.
Sara: It's the Gallup, the one I did. think it used to be kind of thinking it might have called DISC.
I could be totally wrong, but I believe it's a strength finder now and it's definitely through Gallup. They have like a not super expensive one where you can get five of your strengths, which is the only one that I've ever done.I think you can do more, but wherever I'd seen it recommended, were like the top five is fine.
Kate: Yeah, exactly. mean, and that kind of keeps it manageable as well if you're just focusing on a small group of them.
And strengths profile is the one that I've done recently and another one is VIA character strengths. That's designed by the people that do positive psychology, so there more can be a more character traits than actually practical things, but altogether, you know, that definitely strategies that you can use to find out about your strengths and we'll link to those three different things in the show notes.
Next thing you can do is do what we just did today. You know, what are those challenging situations that you've experienced in your life?
Okay, how did you actually get through them? Because if you start to look at enough of them, you'll see that there is a really common thread and then you can also see how that applies to the good stuff as well.
Another strategy is to just observe yourself and notice like, what do you enjoy doing? What gets you in flow?
I've just realized like learning is just something that is so crucial to me. I get very bored on the rinse and repeat of things.
I always like to learn something regardless of if it's about podcasting, blogging or, you know, our trip that we're taking next year.
That's always fun. And then what we kind of did today, ask you free. Ask friends and colleagues, what do you notice about me?
And what do people appreciate about you? A lot of people used to say to me, Kate, very organized. So I know that organization is one of my strengths, although not one that I've focused on today.
They'll come to me for help in planning out things and stuff like that.
Sara: I can believe that about you.
But one of your wonderful qualities, I just have to add, like when you were talking about travel and stuff, I'm one of those people.
I'll get somewhere, usually some, and be like, wow, like I will have done zero research. And I'll be like, I didn't know this was near that. Every trip for me is like, my goodness, this is so cool. But anyway.
Kate: It is different approaches, isn't it? I'm trying to be more spontaneous. We're doing a trip next year. I actually, I thought, you know what, I'm not going to research too much about this. I'm not going to research too much about this cruise.
I'm just going to see what presents itself to me.
So Sara, is there anything else you want to say about strengths?
Sara: So I guess the last little bit I'd like to add is sometimes, and I said this at the beginning, sometimes your strengths, you will not recognize it as a strength because it's so natural to you. Kate mentioned being organized. And when I was teaching career decision, and I was helping students identify their strengths without a formal assessment, I would just have them think...
I think of these things that they're really good at or that people might ask them about. But one example I would always use is I would look around the room and I could always pinpoint the organized students because they would have a notebook binder and it would have color-coded label things.
It was just so clear. And so I wasn't picking on people, but I would be like, are you organized?
They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, do all this. And it was like, do you think it's valuable? And to a person they would be like, no, it's no big deal.
And then I would ask the best of the class, is that a valuable thing? And everybody would be like, yes, I wish I was organized.
And because I was a career counselor, was like, people pay for organization. That is a valuable skill. And so I could do that with almost any strength.
Like, this is something somebody will value. So that's why I think this is so important. This is such an important conversation is because we don't always realized that our strength is so valuable in so many ways. so I think this was a great topic and really enjoyed it.
Thank you, Kate.
Kate: Awesome. Thank you.
Kate: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can't wait to see you next week.