Strength Based Living Blog
A free, bi-monthly blog offering research-based strengths practices and resources
Discover new pathways to living a strength-based life!
Grounded in the latest strengths research, my Strength Based Living Blog is a resource that will help you craft your work and life around your strengths. As a subscriber, you will receive one or two monthly blog posts delivered to your email inbox. Each post offers a strengths practice that will help you understand different facets of strengths, put them into action, and inspire others to engage theirs.
People who are new to character strengths and seasoned strengths enthusiasts alike subscribe to my blog. They tend to have the following in common:
- Appreciate the need to use a lens of strengths in everyday situations, not just weaknesses and what’s wrong.
- Benefit from experimenting with strengths practices in different settings.
- Wish to receive updates from me at Strength Based Living.
If this resonates with you, please join our community!
POWER UP Session
A 1.5-hour character 1:1 strengths coaching session tailored to your unique strengths profile
Tap into your unique blend of character to develop a more meaningful understanding of who you are and what you do when at your best!
We all have different kinds of strengths like interests, passions, talents, and skills. In the POWER UP Session, we’ll work one-on-one to discover how you can harness your character strengths to meet challenges and lead a more robust life.
Our POWER UP session begins after you take the free VIA survey, or retake it if it has been more than a year. During this empowering 1.5-hour coaching session, you will:
- Experience the difference between fixing weaknesses and building strengths
- Understand the science behind character strengths, including what they are and why they matter
- Uncover surprising insights about how to apply your signature strengths more often, even when you’re under stress
- Examine the effects of overusing and underusing certain strengths, and what you can do about it
When you leave this session, you’ll feel fueled by your strengths and ready to put them into action in new ways.
Working with a strengths professional can help you develop meaningful insights about how to apply your strengths more intentionally in personal and/or professional settings.
Join more than 13 million others who have taken the free VIA survey! Then, schedule your POWER UP session.
“Jane’s Power Up session opened my eyes to what’s best in me. It’s hard for me to focus on that in myself, even though I can see the best in others. Learning to appreciate my own strengths was a turning point because in my job search I felt more confident and finally knew how to answer with confidence the questions: what are your strengths and how will you use them to help our organization? You could say engaging my strengths is a springboard to greater success!”
– Job Seeker
“I went into the session wondering why I feel haunted by leaders that came before me in my role. In 1.5 hours, I could see how my overuse of appreciation of excellence and judgment can lead to my own sense of unmet expectations. By applying perspective and other character strengths to help resolve my own problems, the way I would advise others, I noticed how understanding different facets of my strengths can help me solve my own problems the way I help others solve theirs.”
– Psychologist
Strength Based Coaching
A 3-6 month coaching engagement with a co-created agenda tailored to your goals and challenges
Discover direct pathways between your character strengths, challenges, and goals!
Investing in coaching can yield transformational changes in your happiness and success, both in personal and professional settings. In strength-based coaching, we will explore who you are and who you wish to be in the face of tough challenges.
What You Can Expect
In our confidential coaching relationship, we will:
- Create a safe, environment in which to reflect, experiment, learn, and grow
- Co-create a coaching agenda that is tailored to your work, life, and needs
- Develop clarity around your challenges, goals, and obstacles to success
- Uncover habits of thinking, feeling, and acting that don’t support you
- Reveal and practice habits that yield different results
- Identify and practice the steps that accelerate momentum toward your goals
- Build on your successes
By tapping into your character strengths along the way, you will:
- Feel more engaged and energized to tackle tough problems
- Gain essential insights about who you are when at your best
- Practice bringing forth your best in even challenging circumstances
Let’s fill your toolbox and break through your toughest challenges!
Who Is This For?
There are many reasons you might seek coaching. For example:
- Your work or life isn’t bad, but you instinctively know it can be better. You’re not sure what that means or how to get there.
- You have more on your plate than you can manage. The stress is becoming overwhelming.
- You’re navigating a challenging transition such as getting a promotion (yes, that can be challenging!), experiencing a loss, becoming a working parent or empty nester, and the like.
- You love to learn and grow personally or professionally.
Strength Based Coaching is designed for professionals and “unpaid professionals” (stay-at-home parents, students, grandparents, retirees, and others) aged 18 and up to help them cultivate more happiness, meaning, and success.
If you are open to being challenged, looking inward to reflect, learning new skills and tools, and feeling supported along the way, let’s connect!
Schedule a complimentary 30-minute Q and A session or send me an email to learn more.
“Jane is an incredible coach who has helped me to make major breakthroughs in my life to create new healthier habits… by helping me recognize my strengths.
She is fantastic at spotting my strengths… this has significantly helped me recognize who I am as an individual, my natural tendencies, and gain clarity on why things upset or excite me. This has made a tremendous impact on increasing my self awareness and honoring my most authentic self. The sense of coherence that resulted really helped me accept my situation, as well as reduce my anxiety level and frustration.
She also likes to start our sessions with “what went well”. This sets the tone of the session by celebrating our successes… She’s excellent at recounting how I was before and comparing to my current thought patterns so I can also recognize my improvements.
I have made dramatic changes in so many areas of my life since I started coaching with Jane. Our sessions have been so helpful that coaching with Jane has become a routine self-care activity and a special gift I gave myself. My sincere heartfelt thanks to Jane!”
– Public Health Professional
Inspired Living
A 10-week, bi-monthly 1:1 program to expand your horizons
Life doesn’t offer a roadmap that leads us to meaningful aspirations, but Inspired Living does. Living an inspired life calls for great courage to dig into one’s deepest desires, flexibility to find the right pathways forward, and support to stay on the path when it becomes difficult.
We often know what to move away from, like toxic relationships or unfulfilling work. Working towards those goals requires a different approach than moving toward something aspirational. Something you want more of. Something you want to build or create. Something you want to do.
My Inspired Living program is grounded in a scientific appreciative inquiry approach to creating rapid, sustainable, transformational change, one that builds on strengths and what works.
What You Can Expect
The agenda for our six, 1-hour coaching sessions spread over 10 weeks is:
- Session 1: DISCOVER who you are at your best
- Session 2: DREAM a purpose-driven, strengths-fueled future
- Session 3: DESIGN multiple practical pathways forward
- Session 4: DELIVER strengths-based habits that will support you in action
- Session 5: PRACTICE taking concrete steps forward
- Session 6: REFLECT on what’s working and what to build on
During each session, I offer tools and content that will help you envision an exciting future and empower you to break through barriers and move towards that future. This future is based on what feels substantive and meaningful to you.
There are times when life feels relatively balanced in terms of relationships, health, work, leisure and other important domains. Nonetheless, some people still seek something elusive, adventurous, or enlivening. Something you want to create more of or accomplish.
Who Is This For?
Inspired Living is a program designed for people who are open, ready, and committed to trying an approach grounded in research on transformational change. This includes:
- People starting a new chapter of life, like those moving into a new position at work, moving on after a loss or divorce, or becoming empty nesters or retiring
- High performance individuals like managers and leaders in organizations, coaches, teachers, and consultants
- Anyone who holds even a glimmer of inspiration about shifting in an aspirational direction
Some have tried but didn’t make satisfactory progress. Some have thought about it extensively but not taken a first step. If it were easy, we’d all be living an inspired life already!
If this resonates with you, and if you’re excited about investing in yourself and your future, this program might be for you.
Schedule a complimentary 30-minute Q and A session or send me an email to learn more.
“I started working with Jane and her Inspired Living course after a personal transition that left me feeling drained and a bit aimless. I knew what I DIDN’T want in my life, but I didn’t know what I wanted MORE of. Through this course, I discovered hidden AND overused strengths, and learned to tap into all of them in healthier, more effective ways. Character strengths work is grounded in evidence, which is appealing to the skeptic in me.
It’s not therapy but rather an approach I can use in all areas of my life. I’m still learning, but already I’ve seen how this work has opened more head space and heart space for joy, adventure, curiosity and healthy companionship – all things I was seeking but couldn’t name. Jane’s patient but persistent probing helped me unpack some of the challenges I was facing and reframe them through the lens of my character strengths. This work is changing my life in surprising ways, and I look forward to seeing how it will continue to unfold.”
– Non-Profit Executive, Transition to Consulting