strength and love

We had a workshop on women and leadership today, led by the same woman at the firm who wrote the book I've been reading on the topic. She is hilarious and irreverent and the workshop was a great correlary to what I've been thinking and experiencing this summer. In the workshop, we were forced to quickly and swiftly name our core strengths from a list provided (in the 5 buckets I've mentioned before). I scanned the full list, few jumped out. Some I was sure of...the others, less so.

I learned today that there is an assessment test [register, then go to survey of character strenghts] to go along with this framework and it was actually created by one of the very impressive psychology centers at Penn (go Quakers!). Given my predilection toward self-assessment and reflection, I of course took the test tonight. My gut check was largely correct:

Your Top Strength
Capacity to love and be loved

You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

I can't imagine a strength I'm more proud of or one I seek to cultivate more.

[I also love that appreciation of beauty and excellence is considered a strength. It's my #3, second being perspective. The only strength I think they missed in the quite interesting list or strengths is resilience--a quality that is shown to be increasingly important to success and one I was either born with or developed.]