Coaching practices for Peterson Seligman Strengths

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Peterson Seligman Strengths, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I’ve got a list of my strengths but it reads like a flat personality quiz
• I don’t want to lie to myself with forced positivity
• I don’t believe I can actually pull this off, and the things I do that take real grit I just wave away as nothing
• I know there are a couple of things I’m genuinely good at, but I use them just to get by
• I catch myself scanning everyone around me for what’s wrong with them, and I want to flip that lens

Practices that may help

1. VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
   Peterson and Seligman’s VIA Classification identifies 24 character strengths organized under six virtues, and multiple randomized trials find that using your top "signature strengths" in new ways reliably increases well-being and decreases depressive symptoms. The effect is most robust when strengths are deployed in engaged, relational ways — not just recognized but actively applied.
2. Connect individual strengths to the broader virtues they serve
   Understand which of the six VIA virtues your signature strengths express, and what that reveals about your character.
   VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
3. Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical
   Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
4. Positive Psychology, Made Practical
   Martin Seligman’s positive psychology studies what makes life worth living, organized around the PERMA model — Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Several of its signature interventions, including three good things, the gratitude visit, and using signature strengths, have genuine randomized-trial support for raising well-being and lowering depressive symptoms.
5. Learned Optimism: Seligman’s ABCDE Method
   Learned optimism, from Martin Seligman’s research program, teaches you to identify and dispute the pessimistic explanations you generate automatically after setbacks — using his ABCDE model (Adversity, Belief, Consequence, Disputation, Energization). Clinical and observational research links shifting from pessimistic to flexible explanatory style to reduced depression risk and better persistence; effects are real but modest, and the goal is accuracy, not forced positivity.
6. Calibrate toward accuracy, not positivity
   The target is a realistic, flexible explanatory style — not Pollyannaish optimism.
   Learned Optimism: Seligman’s ABCDE Method
7. Complimenting Strengths Throughout the Session
   Deliberately name real strengths, efforts, and resources the person displays — not as praise but as information.
   Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
8. Bridge from signature strengths to purpose
   Identify the top two or three things you do better than most people and trace how they can serve something larger.
   The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self
9. Spot and name character strengths in others
   Notice and explicitly name the character strengths you observe in people around you.
   VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
10. Use a signature strength in a new way each day for one week
    Apply one of your top character strengths to a context or relationship where you don’t normally use it.
    VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical

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