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Here is Marty Seligman’s
original posting on Strength of Character:
Week 1
1/16/03 Why Positive
Psychology
Strength Introduction
Objectives:
1. To introduce each other to the
rest of the class.
2. To learn to tell a complete
story, with beginning, middle, and end
that tells about strength.
3. To learn to skills of rhetoric,
speaking and listening.
Procedures:
1. Teacher welcomes students to
the class, and tells them that for the first class, they will be
introducing themselves to the class. Instead of the same old “My
name is Mary. I’m a junior psychology major” introduction, they
instead tell a story that shows the student
exemplifying their highest
strength. Teacher tells class that this is also a lesson in
rhetoric: listening and speaking. After each introduction, the class
is expected to comment on each story, learning how to listen and respond
appropriately. The storyteller as well should be able to accept
whatever compliments and comments come from the class not with modesty,
but assertive gratitude. Teacher should start with
either a sample anecdote or a
story of their own. (20 min)
2. After teacher’s story, have
the class go one by one introducing themselves, allowing about 8 minutes
for each story, questions, and comments. (80 min). Be sure and eliminate
“like’s” and “uh’s” by gently pointing them out.
3. After students tell their
story, assign them to write their introduction as homework.
Example Anecdotes:
a. Sarah, a perky senior, told us
a story about herself when she was about ten years of age. She had noticed
that her father was working very hard and that a chilliness had descended
between her parents. She was worried that they might divorce. Without
telling her parents, she went to the local library and read books on
marital therapy, which is
remarkable enough, but what really
made us marvel was the rest of her story. She turned dinner conversations
with the family into deliberate interventions, encouraging her parents to
solve problems jointly, to argue fairly, to express their likes and
dislikes about one another in behavioral terms, and so on. She was, at age
ten, a prodigy,
specifically with respect to the
character strength of social intelligence.
b. In the summer of 1998, I got a
job working at the Concerto, a 34-story apartment building. My
father was the afternoon concierge at the time. I was convinced that
I was being hired as a doorman. This was unfortunately not the case.
On my first day, the
superintendent takes me to the sub-basement to be a porter. A porter
at the Concerto was not exactly the most glamorous job one could find.
Every morning, after punching in, I would have to go down to the
sub-basement to empty out the trash compactor. A trash compactor is
pretty much exactly what its name implies; it takes trash and crushes it
as much as possible, then stuffs it into a large, industrial sized trash
bag. The trash comes into the compactor through a large chute that
extends through the apartment building. Anyone who’s lived in an
apartment building knows these things well. I spent my summer on the
other end of that chute. Unfortunately, crushing the trash over and over
again takes a lot of time so my co-workers taught me a trick to make
emptying the compactor easier. The first thing is to open the side
of the compactor. Then, put on the big industrial gloves that were
next to the compactor. Next,
take a deep breath, and start
pulling garbage out of the compactor. While still holding your breath, put
the garbage into another industrial-sized garbage bag. This is as
disgusting as it sounds, worse actually. One morning, I put on the big
yellow gloves, opened the side of the compactor and started pulling out
bags of garbage. While removing the bags, I heard a noise coming
from up in the chute. Something was on its
way down. My co-workers
warned me about incoming garbage. If you hear
something coming down, get out of
the way as fast as you can. One of my
co-workers was emptying the
compactor a few years ago, and a Snapple bottle feel, breaking apart and
slicing his arm pretty deeply.
With this thought in mind, I
backed away from the compactor, thinking I was safe from whatever was
coming down. How wrong I was. CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, BOOM!
Some stupid idiot in the building threw down an open can of blue paint.
I remember seeing a blue tsunami heading my way right before I closed my
eyes. SPLASH! After I felt the paint stop hitting me, I opened
my eyes, not being able to see anything because there was blue paint
covering my glasses. I wiped the paint off my glasses,
looked down, and saw that I was
covered head to toe in blue paint. I was a little angry because I
still had 8 hours left in my shift, and I was covered in blue paint!!!
I started muttering, screaming and
yelling to myself, to the compactor and to the mental midget living in the
apartment who decided not to close his bucket of paint. CLANG,
CLANG, CLANG, again, I heard something coming down. I thought to
myself, “Now what, red paint?!?” CLANG, CLANG, RIIIIIIIIIIIP, WHOOSH.
Apparently, what followed the blue paint was a ripped open trash bag of
kitty litter… used kitty litter.
Well, I went from a tsunami to a
dust cloud. Again, I closed my eyes. When I opened them a bit later,
I looked at myself, this time, covered in blue paint and cat feces.
I had just become the long lost Smurf, Stinky… There really was
nothing that could have been done, so I hung my head low, and laughed
myself silly.
Variants of Strength Introduction
Same process, but the story of
one’s “Highest Moment.”
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