Resilience is closely related to positive psychology. Building resilience comes from building the positive/beneficial factors that help us cope better with change and prevent negative impact on our health and wellbeing. One important part of positive psychology is the science about character strengths.

As VIA Intstitute on Character ( https://www.viacharacter.org/ ) defines them “Character strengths are the positive parts of your personality that make you feel authentic and engaged”. The Institute is a world leading research institution into character strengths. It has identified 24 universal character strengths that each of us possesses to a different extent. Interestingly, there are over 600 sextillion possible combinations (i.e. the number 6 followed by 23 zeros!) of the 24 strengths, so profiles can be extremely rarely exactly the same. Although the 24-character strengths are ubiquitous, the way people manifest their qualities is unique. The individual combination of strengths in each person predetermines our unique human nature.

Research shows that strengths such as gratitude, kindness, hope, and bravery have the power to act as protective factors against life’s adversities, helping us adapt positively and cope with difficulties. (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013). Another study by Martínez-Martí and Ruch (2017) found that hope, bravery, and zest have the highest correlation with positive adaptation to challenge.

Do you know which your character strengths are? This is one of the daily tasks of the Practice Resilience Programme of COPE: Do VIA Character test (https://www.viacharacter.org/) and save your results. After that find a character strength in a friend and compliment them. Motivate your friend to make the VIA Character test too and learn about their strengths.

The whole programme you can find here:

https://www.happinessacademy.eu/uploads/COPE/BG/Practice%20Resilience%20Exercises%20BG%20Version%20for%20Upload%20Final.pdf

OR you can also go through it via our training app Happiness Accelerator: https://www.happinessacademy.eu/uprazhnenia

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