Strengths that Matter:
Focusing on What We Are Doing Well
Written by By Dr. Gira Bhatt, CURA Project Director
The news of negative events such as spousal abuse, gang-violence, and drug trafficking typically get hyper media attention leading to a climate of fear. Unfortunately, they also make us overlook the multiple acts of goodness and kindness that prevail in our community. The recent visit of the Dalai Lama in our city has created a hope that our attention will shift towards the good and the kind acts that surround us.
This focus on the positive, on our strengths rather than weaknesses, is very essential for making desirable changes in ourselves as well as in others. For example, if we are concerned about youth getting involved in a gang-related violent lifestyle, often the tendency is to look for targets to blame, for example, parents are not raising children well, the teachers are not doing their job, the education system is not quite right, the government is not providing enough support and dollars and so on. Whereas each of these negative factors may have some valid grounds, and collective criticism and protest may yield some relief, it can only provide half the solution. The other half of the solution lies in identifying the strengths, identifying what is working well such as parental involvement in children’s development, celebrating youth achievements, innovative education programs, parents-teachers collaboration and so on.
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Read the full column at the Indo-Canadian Voice.
Editors: Sandy Alfonso, Sandra Lenore Gutierrez & Meiko Assoon. Design: William Szilveszter