Megan Estelle, NL Moore & Associates researcher, shares how her top five StrengthsFinder strengths are manifesting during the pandemic. How are yours manifesting?
Across the US, we’re all in the same boat. “Quarantine” is the name of the game, and it feels like forever since we’ve gone a full day without hearing or discussing Covid-19. It is a global pandemic, and it affects us all. Each one of us has been forced to adapt our routines and expectations to fit within the current reality. This has been easier for some than others. Our true colors are showing, and we’ve become glaringly aware of our natural defaults as we cope with the stress and changes.
In this season of feeling vulnerable and a little helpless, it’s interesting how our strengths come into play. I took Clifton’s StrengthsFinder assessment a couple of years ago and found out my top five strengths fall into the Relationship Building and Executing domains. If you’re not sure what that means, let me share how my top five strengths are manifesting during this pandemic.
As soon as I learned my children would be e-learning from home, the ACHIEVER strength in me went into high gear. I created a daily schedule to ensure my children’s education would not be compromised! But why stop there? When the e-learning assignments are done for the day, the DEVELOPER strength created a list of daily age-appropriate “life-skills” to practice. While I truly believe this season of homeschooling will benefit my children in the long run, you can imagine the emotions that bubble to the surface when I ask, “Is this really your best work?” as e-learning fatigue sets in with my third and first grader.
While many people across the country began hoarding toilet paper, I was doing the same – but with different paper products – notecards, stamps, and journals! If was going to be “self-isolating,” the CONNECTEDNESS strength in me was going to be reaching out daily via group texts, face-time, Zoom and good old-fashioned snail mail to check in on my people. I had a deep sense God was doing some greater work in all of us, and I was going to need to keep a log of it, and write it all down. That way, I could come back to it later and see how God used this time – so it’s no surprise there is 30 minutes on our daily schedule for journal writing.
Even though I am a rule follower, the EMPATHY strength just had to defy the “stay-at-home” order. You see, there are a couple of very special little boys in my life who I knew were going to be crushed at the notion of no birthday party this year. So even with the threat of violating the state governor’s ordinance, I just HAD to drop off a little birthday party-in-a-bag on their porch. (Please don’t hate this HARMONY strength government officials). Trust me, the mental anguish I went through was greater than any citation I could have received.
While this post is meant to be a light-hearted glimpse of how my strengths have surfaced in the midst of this crisis, the truth remains that God does gift each us with specific abilities to serve the Kingdom. You may be tempted to wish you had different strengths to get you through this pandemic, but I want to encourage you to lean into your natural gifting. I believe you’ll find that God has given you exactly what you need – even if it looks different than your neighbor down the street. The important thing is to USE them for His glory!
Stay safe friends!