November 11, 2014　=========
☆ harmony　　調和
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Have you heard of the book, “Now Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton? It is all about finding your top five strengths so that you can develop your unique talents and strengths. There is a test connected to the book (if you buy the book you can get a free code to take the online test, but there’s no need to do that, unless you’re interested, the book is also available in Japanese.)
The idea of the book and test is that you discover your top five strengths. You can see the main themes (strengths) here:
http://www.strengthstest.com/strengthsfinderthemes/strengths-themes.html
There are 34 main themes, and you can see a quick one sentence description of each one on the page link above.
So, when I took the test, my top strength was actually “harmony”… I wasn’t really sure what that meant at first, but the description is this:
Harmony – “People strong in the Harmony theme look for consensus. They don’t enjoy conflict; rather, they seek areas of agreement.”
I think that is quite true for me, and perhaps that is one of the reasons I like Japan so much, because there is an underlying sense of harmony. Even though people realize they are individuals, they also know that the group benefits when everyone is in harmony. What do you think? Is “harmony” a strength of Japan and Japanese people?
What do you think your top five strengths are? Why not take a look at this list and see which ones apply to you.
Bye,
Chris