Strength Quests Creating My Future English Literature Essay

Every person in this world has a set of themes that makes them who they are. Whether you choose to agree with the themes or strengths is entirely up to you. The fact of the matter is your life consists of these qualities. When I first looked at my five signature themes via Strengths Quest, I was unsure if some of the themes actually fit me. I saw some qualities in those themes that might fit me but the rest of the qualities I thought were nothing like me. It was not until I sat down and really thought to myself, maybe they’re right. My whole life flashed before my eyes. Who was I? I never really knew who exactly I was. I mean I had an assumption, but never really thought or cared enough about what my main strengths were. The program picked out five main themes for me, which were: futuristic, belief, adaptability, input and command. These were five broad themes that described my goals, my strengths and everything else inside my head. This described me. It is very important that I truly come to understand what each of these five quests mean to me because eventually I will need to use these in the future for a countless number of reasons that include relationships, friendships and my career. The career I want to pursue in my life is a history professor. I want to teach college students the last few hundred years of U.S. history. The objective of this paper is to explain how I am going to use these five quests towards my teaching career and the rest of my future because how I interpret these strengths will greatly affect the outcome of my life. It is my goal to understand me.

Belief

The most important strength that came about me was belief. To myself this is the most important aspect in my life and I truly agree with the fact that the program thinks it’s one of my main quests. It describes belief as having certain core values that are enduring. It also says it causes you to be family oriented, altruistic and even spiritual. (www.strengthquest.com). All of the above is full of so much truth. Out of those I really want to talk about my spiritual belief. I am a Christian and am very proud of it. God is the most important aspect in my life. In whatever I do in my future, I want to reflect my religion. This includes my future job. I want to show people how Christianity and peoples beliefs effected how our country was formed. Most people say their spiritual beliefs bring them closer to loved ones and they help them to solve problems in their life (Walsh, 2010). I truly believe that my belief and religion will help me solve my main personal problems. The results say that consistency is the foundation for all your relationships. My life is full of ups and downs, if I am not consistent with it. If I stop acting like a good Christian, I fall away from God. If I stop being good to my girlfriend, our relationship starts to crumble. These are many reasons why this one strength to me is the most important of them all. It affects my everyday life and will be the number one thing in my future even when I am dead. I know religion has had such a huge influence on this planets history and I want to tell the all the people about it and even relate it to how it influences today’s society. This is how I will be able to relate belief into my future.

Futuristic is another strength that came up and in a huge way, supports how I feel on life. No matter how much I don’t want to admit it, I am always looking towards the future. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I just sometimes think too far ahead. I have my future planned out in my head, not in black in white but in full color, almost like a painting on a wall. It’s sort of funny because it’s written that futuristic people tend to have people look to them to describe their visions.(www.strengthquest.com) This happens to me all the time as people always want me to describe my strange, detailed descriptions of my future. People always tend to cling to me and follow what I want to do, because they realize that my thoughts are as real as it gets. The world has the resources to address its challenges (Docksai, 2010). What I get from this is, the world has the tools for me to succeed so I need to use them. Later on in my life, being futuristic can only be thought of as successful. It is said that everything in life is considered the future and if that is true, how can I go wrong? If I am always looking towards my future, planning towards my future, and preparing for the future, nothing can stop me from doing what I want to do. Whether or not I like the fact that I am futuristic I have to embrace it. The more I think about it, the more I see it as an important strength for my future. Go figure.

Command

There was a strength that made the top five that I didn’t necessarily agree with at first. And that was command. I never was the one to take charge or to lead other people. However I started looking into it more and it said things like you show no discomfort with imposing your views on others. I realized I really don’t, and I looked even farther down and realized I really do and wouldn’t mind taking command in a lot of situations. I always feel that if I get an opinion set in my mind, I have to share it with everyone around me. As time goes on, I found that your speech and actions will say a lot about you and how you treat others (Rivera, 2009). This is the honest to god truth. You can tell what a person is like based on what they do and the way they talk. Having command as a part of your self-being can never be a bad thing in my eyes. It shows you have initiative and are ready to take the next big leap. When looking for a teaching job, this can be a huge deciding factor whether you get the job. Whenever someone around me is in command, I always look up to them. I look up to them as being special or I think highly of them. People really do look up to people with command. This is what I want in my life because I want to be regarded in a special manner and be treated differently than my peers because it shows that people who have take command, gain much more respect.

Adaptability

Adaptability is a very important way of thinking. Basically, you live in the moment. Honestly, this ties in a little with futuristic. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when this showed up on the list. You’re not seeing the future as a fixed destination but a place you create with the choices you make in current times. The biggest aspect that adaptability affects in your life is stress. Stress, in my mind, is ranked as one of the top killers among humans in the world. The way it affects the brain is terrifying. A lot of times when people worry about the choices they are going to make in the future, it tends to stress them out and worries them. If you were to just focus on the decisions you have to make now, the present times and the future will not be such a worry. It’s always good to look towards the future, but don’t worry about your decision making for your future right now, worry about your decision making for this time period. A month or two ago, I was somewhat worried about which colleges were hiring history professors, which college would give me the best education to major in history and so forth. Then I realized, things will work out as long as I just focus on the schooling I’m getting now and just taking my time. I became a much happier person when I finally discovered how to fully embrace adaptability.

Input

It is to my understanding that everyone in life has something that they collect, whether it is a certain item, words, facts or thoughts. This is what is called having input. I am inquisitive. The reason I collect the things I do is because it is interesting to me. I have many things in my life that I collect, which include things like memories, music, and photographs. Do I keep a lot of the things that I collect because I am too afraid to throw them away or let them go? That could be true, but I have this feeling in the back of my ahead that one day these things might become valuable one day but they are still valuable to me right now. A big reason why I keep some of my world war II memorabilia and not sell it is because one day I could possibly bring these into my classroom when were studying about the Germans and their equipment during WWII. I can tell you that when I look in the through my old wooden chest that I do revisit the event or evening, recalling the birthday party or the carnival ride (Greenman, 2005). I love this quote because the same goes for me. When I look back at everything I collected, for the most part I can remember the story that goes along with it. Later on in life, they could really come in handy. For example, those photographs that I could never just give or throw away could be sought after by a huge graphic designing company for a commercial or a billboard. You really just don’t know what the things you collect mean to others. What I do collect I do because it gives me a special feeling that reminds me of my childhood and gives me a sort of fresh feeling. Having input has helped me save some of my precious items that I really could use to show examples in my future classroom and I plan on continuing to use the theme to help me collect materials for my future classes.

Conclusion

When I was first asked to take the test that would decide my five Strength Quests, I cannot lie, I was skeptical. I thought it was just going to be another one of those tests that tried to figure out who I was and would not have any sort of effect on me. Never did I think that self realization would come into play and a review of my whole life come crashing down. The test really did explain me on a piece of paper printed out. I must have looked at the results over nine thousand times. Every single strength described who I was and gave me a new sense of how to portray my future. With these being my strengths, the smartest thing I can do is to use them to my best ability and be the best professor I can be. This world needs to be ready for the next great history professor.