Character Strengths Matter - Polly & Britton (2015)

How to Live a Full Life

A fundamental tenet of zZense and Positive Psychology is that our Centric Skills, a.k.a. character strengths, are key to Flourishing in life. Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life (Positive Psychology News) has material to better help us understand those Centric Skills. Importantly, it also includes ideas about how to build each.

The book is edited by Shannon Polly, MAPP and Kathyrn Britton, MAPP (Master's degrees in Applied Positive Psychology). Its 250 pages include contributions by more than thirty Positive Psychologists, including Kathryn Britton, Neal Mayerson, Senia Maymin, Ryan Niemiec, Shannon Polly, Tayyab Rashid, George Vaillant, Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, and many others.

A section is devoted to each of the twenty four character strengths (Centric Skills in zZense parlance). Each section discusses that skill at some length. This gives the reader a better understanding of the skill and how it is used. This reference was carefully considered, along with many others, as we formulated the definitions and descriptions of the twenty four Centric Skills in zZense.

Each section continues with five ways to build its skill. Then it presents a brief writing to be read aloud. This gives the reader a chance to "try on" that skill using words that exemplify it, reading "as if" that skill were one of the reader's own strengths.

With good reviews on Amazon, Character Strengths Matter has proven popular.