photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg
I was just having a nice chat with Karl from Work Happy Now about his new focus on helping creative people find and use their superpowers. This reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to tell you about for awhile, so get a glass of milk, sit down, and open your ears… it’s Story Time.
Once upon a time in the deep dark woods of Brisvegas, there was a woman named Catherine who worked in tech support for a large web-hosting company. Catherine was very good at explaining technical concepts to non-technical people, and she realised that there were very many small business owners who needed her help to escape from the Maze of Website Confusion. She teamed up with a friend, Stalwart Kevin, and together they ventured forth to create a website that would help those small business owners solve their website woes.
It took a long time for Catherine to realise that the ability to demystify technology was not the only superpower she brought to bear. In fact, she started thinking about her results in the Core Character Strength questionnaire and the strengths that ranked highest every single time she repeated it. She realised that enthusiasm, curiosity, appreciation of excellence and social intelligence were important to her, as they kept turning up in positions 2-5 on the results. But there was one strength that always came in first place, one part of herself that defined her as a human being and so defined the website:
Her capacity to love and be loved.
She remembered that while to her the ability to give and receive love is… well, ridiculously easy, to other people it is not. This was an important strength, a core part of herself that other people valued. But did it work with a website about websites? Could hard tech and warm fuzzies go together?
“You’re damn right they can!” said Catherine. And so the website was born.
What are your core strengths? Tell me in the comments!