1 Discovering Your Charismatic Character

In every journey, the first step is to find out where we want to go.

Burning desire is the name of the game.

Have you ever seen a software developer pretending that he is working?

I can clearly recall the image of a software developer looking at some crappy legacy code of a boring system that no-one uses. This person was surrounded by others, whose vision was to extend their teenage years, without taking responsibility.

This developer was not aware of what his intellectual capacity could have been used for. More importantly, he had no idea how much this attitude cost him in his everyday life.

I saw this developer during the beginning of my career quite often. Especially when I looked at myself in the mirror. Because this developer was me. I was horrified at work. I had no idea what I was doing there anymore. My drive was completely lost.

How did I end up in such a situation, you may ask. The answer is, I wanted to please other people instead of living my own dreams. My area of competence was useless outside my job.

I still pursued a dead-end job for almost half a year, trying to make things work.

Back then I didn’t realize that one day I would be dead. An average person lives around 80 years. Wasting half a year here and there may cost you a lot of amazing life experiences.

If you study human evolution, you know that we are not evolved to be happy. We are evolved to survive. Happiness and pursuing fulfillment is something new, modern life allows us to choose.

Our brain is a supercomputer, evolved and adapted to life hundreds of thousands of years ago. Back then, food was scarce.

Just imagine. One mistake in communication could get you exiled from your tribe. Exile meant an almost certain death in a hostile environment. Our brain hasn’t caught up with the modern environment we live in. We still act as if we fought for survival. This is why you might have fear of public speaking, or the fear of not being good enough.

If you did something that almost cost your life, no wonder you start procrastinating and pursuing unimportant goals. Trauma protects you from making a lethal mistake in life. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, your unconscious protected you from certain death by cutting your wings and making you risk-averse.

In the old days, wasting half a year might have protected your life. Trauma allowed you to slowly get a new perspective to increase your chances of survival. In today’s world, we are not fighting for survival. But we still act like it on a daily basis.

The part of you that holds you back is not bad. This part of you has his or her best intentions to protect you. Thank this part of you for doing its best to protect you. Trust it, appreciate it, then ask this part of you to retreat to the background. Because other parts of you serve you better.

Exercises

You will find some exercises at the end of each section.

Purchase a notebook to record your thoughts on this book. Writing stimulates your brain more than typing. Make use of this process. Once you get your journal, name it your personal Freedom Journal. Answer all future questions in your journal. The higher quality this journal is, the better.

Then answer the following questions:

1. Identify those parts of you that are active right now, and are sabotaging your success. You may feel anxious at times, you may feel the fear of getting fired, not getting respected, or taking things too seriously. In certain situations, we often have a hard time behaving in a way we really want to. Jot down your hurdles when a part of you is in command that does not serve you anymore.
2. Think of how these parts of you protected your survival in the past. Always assume positive intent from these parts.
3. Give thanks for these parts of you that they protected you.
4. Ask these parts to retreat and give way for others to run the show.

Defining Charisma

In order to learn how to be charismatic, we first need to know what charisma means. We will then construct our own definition that defines our expectations.

If you open some dictionaries¹, you will find many different definitions of charisma, defining its different aspects.

If you read a definition saying that charisma is something that some people have naturally, you have the right to debate and reject this definition. So do I. By the end of the book, you will have collected enough evidence to know that everyone is born with the ability to be charismatic. At the same time, no-one is born knowing how to be charismatic. Charisma is not a skill some people naturally have. It is available to everyone, and charisma can be trained.

Let’s collect what it means to be charismatic: it is an ability…

- to inspire others,
- to have interesting personality traits,
- to influence others,
- to attract the attention of others,
- to be seen as a naturally attractive person,
- to be seen as a leader.

Most of these traits are seen as positive. Being a leader, being attractive and magnetic, and inspiring others are usually great traits to have.

Influencing others is a context dependent term. When we influence someone, the result can be helpful, neutral, or harmful to the individual. Influencing someone does not mean that we are manipulative. Manipulation is the act of controlling a person, often by being dishonest. Anyone can act in a manipulative way, not only charismatic people. Unfortunately, charismatic people tend to get away with manipulation more. This does not mean though that this book teaches you techniques to manipulate others. My intention is the exact opposite: to inspire you to seek for win-win situations in life, without the use of manipulation.

We can conclude that the difference between influencing and manipulation is inversion of control. It’s like the difference between a library or a framework. An influencer helps his or her audience to get inspiration and take action. A manipulator pushes buttons of others to trigger calculated reactions. The former is a charismatic act, the latter is not.

The book The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane places charismatic traits into three categories: presence, power, and warmth.

Believe it or not, most of this book is about a journey to discover presence. Without giving you any spoilers, let me ask you some questions. Would you like to know the operating system behind your everyday actions without worrying about them? Would you like to know where you are heading in life to stop doubting yourself if you are on the right track? Would you like to spend a lot of time engaged in the present moment, heading towards what you want, immersed so deeply that you lose track of time? Would you like to be present in social situations instead of worrying about how you are perceived? What about telling engaging stories without making an effort to impress others? If you just read the table of contents, you will know which chapters to read to answer these questions.

Obviously, this book will not tell you how to get a powerful job title, how to make a lot of money, or how to increase your competence as an expert. If you do any of these things, you will get more power, and this adds up to your charisma.

You will still improve the power aspect of charisma. In the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, research has been presented and cited saying that your work performance positively correlates with your emotional intelligence. This book will give you a lot of tools to raise your self-awareness, eliminate your limiting beliefs, and become more emotionally intelligent and free.

The beauty of raising one’s emotional intelligence is an interesting side-effect: warmth. Letting go of anxiety, worry, and self-centeredness comes with less obstacles standing in front of your naturally charismatic character. Replacing fear and worry with gratitude also helps you develop the warmth of your character. The cherry on top is the ability to tell engaging stories inspiring others.

Now that we approached charisma from different aspects, let me take the opportunity to construct my definition of charisma for the purpose of defining the message I intend to convey in this book.

My definition may be surprising to you at first glance.

The center of my definition is presence, which has an inspirational effect on others. This presence is magnetic, because it lures in the attention of other people.

The word comforting may be surprising at first. In this context, comfort is needed, because a charismatic person should be on his or her mission, while being centered and grounded. Even if everything else collapses, a charismatic person stays the stable point of reference, having the power to lead others to safety.

This power is not the power of authority, but the power of character. Think about it. In most stories, the hero often appears more charismatic before they become an authority. In the Disney story, in my opinion, Aladdin appears the most charismatic when believing that he is enough and worthy of the attention of princess Jasmine before he became a prince.

In most stories, the hero goes through trials, and these trials equip them with charisma. This is why adversity is important. The audience is captivated if they sense that a charismatic person is living on his or her edge. Once in a method acting class, my coach, Shredy Jabarin asked me to tell a short story while fighting for balance standing on two yoga balls². The story was recorded with my phone. We both concluded that the story was more captivating than anything that I had ever presented in front of him for a year. It is not the words that matter, but the underlying emotional state. I faced danger by falling, but I had enough experience to keep my balance and continuously talk. In other words, I kept my comforting magnetic presence in the face of adversity.

Does this mean that you have to take your yoga balls to your next presentation? No. Once you experience the emotional state of living on the edge, you will be able to anchor it into you and replicate it under some circumstances. Experiencing this state makes you conscious about it. Training increases your competence. Enough exposure makes this skill automatic, without consciously paying attention to it. At this stage, you don’t need your yoga balls to deliver an engaging presentation. You just need to take your emotional experiences with you.

If you learn how to face adversity, you don’t need adversity to display the same character traits.

In this book, you will find many challenges and exercises that your nervous system may perceive as adversity in a controlled, harmless environment. These exercises are there to make you more charismatic. We will do some more in-depth exercises and emotional work in a video course at a later stage.

Focus

The most expensive thing in your life is your attention. If you focus on passing time watching Youtube videos, your career will suffer. If you focus on coding without ever talking to anyone, your social skills will suffer.

Tech skills and soft skills have one thing in common: use them or you lose them.

We all say at times that we lack confidence in an area of our lives. Let me give you a challenge. Make just one little step every single day towards your goals. You can refine these steps later once your career vision is ready. Right now, just plan some steps in.

Of course you will face challenges along the way. You can be grateful for these challenges, because they shape your character. You will be fed up with your challenges at times. This is when the feeling of gratitude helps you the most. Just imagine. Who would you be if you never faced a challenge? Would you get a chance to enjoy your life at all?

Exercises

1. Think of three actions you have been putting off. One action should be something you can do right now. A small, simple action is enough here. Make time for the other two actions.
2. Take action right now on your first item. Record what it feels once it’s done.
3. Schedule your other two actions for the next two days. If you need continuous action, make some time for it every single day.
4. Once you run out of action items, make sure you always schedule something for yourself to make yourself a better person every single day.

Now that you see that challenges are good, let’s take some steps. First, you will discover your character strengths and weaknesses. Based on your character, you will be able to make better career and lifestyle choices.

The Roles We Play

Every human on the planet has potential to accomplish extraordinary things in life. Unfortunately, there is a big difference between what people will do and can do.

Ask yourself, how much time have you allocated in your life to determine your own character strengths.

I have conducted hundreds of tech interviews in my professional career, and concluded that most candidates have a hard time knowing whether they want to become a tech lead or an expert.

If you don’t have plans for yourself, your destiny will be in the fate of other people.

When we are born, we are innocent and pure. Young children are not self-conscious. They do whatever they want. As we grow up, society forces us into roles. These roles require us to adapt. Our true self goes back to the background, and a false adaptive self takes control.

You may ask, what are you talking about, Zsolt? I am not playing roles!

Most of us had to play a role for our parents. We had to play a different role at school, in sports communities, during our playtime with our friends, and also at work. These roles shape our character.

My role as a child was a pleaser and an achiever. When I got a mediocre grade, my mother was very unhappy with me. So I always did my best to get the best grades from every subject. Whenever I got the second best grade, I felt anxious, worried, and I felt the world was about to end. This was my fear as an achiever and a pleaser.

We spend most of our lives playing roles. Therefore, most people hardly ever think about their own character strengths.

Exercises

1. Think of a few environments where you are forced to play a role.
2. Identify actions and behavior you are not taking or expressing because you feel you are expected to play a role.
3. Think of three ways to let go of the burden of expectations in each of your role.

The Victim Role

Originally, I wanted to discuss the victim role inside The Roles We Play section, but I find this role so important that I gave it a different section. Because your life depends on understanding that in most scenarios it is your choice whether you are a victim or not.

I get it, there are exceptions. In a war situation, or during tribal days tens of thousands of years ago, you had no choice. If you were born a lobster, you may have no choice. But as a human, you have everything you need to take yourself out from victimhood. More on lobsters later.

In my private coaching practice, a software engineer called Maurizio shared a problem with me that he felt bullied on a regular basis. Thinking back at my own situation, I concluded that it always takes two people to tango. Maurizio wanted results and not sugarcoated lies. This is good, because he was ready for a change.

I asked him what he was doing on a regular basis to attract the attention of people that bullied him. He didn’t understand me first. Because he thought of himself as a victim of evil people.

Maurizio happened to follow the work of Jordan Peterson. In his book, 12 Rules for Life: an Antidote to Chaos, Jordan described how dominance hierarchies work³.

If you think of yourself as a winner, your body language will come across as intimidating, and your predators will look for a different prey. They may test you for a while, but eventually they give up.

If you think of yourself as a victim, a loser, you will occupy less space, your body language will communicate, I am a victim, take advantage of me! Bully me! Harrass me!

I know it is easy to consume free content of Jordan Peterson then conclude, “These evil dominance hierarchies, it’s so unjust! Why can’t we just live our lives?”. But let me ask you a question, is it easier to change the whole world, or is it easier to change yourself?

If you recall my story from the introduction, I was bullied at school on a regular basis. My first childhood memory of getting bullied was at kindergarten. People made fun of me, because I wanted to play with LEGO alone. At school, I was an easy victim, because I went to school with an experience that I am not worthy of the attention of my mother. School kids sized me up and unconsciously ranked me lower than themselves.

The day after my mother died, I can still recall that I sat in an English grammar class. I felt puzzled and disturbed all day, I didn’t even bother retaliating to any of the attackes that day. Our head teacher was a chain smoker. Although she had never asked anyone to buy her cigarettes, she called my name during the middle of the class, gave me some money, and asked me to buy some tobacco from the store next door. Yes, back in the early 90s, this was possible. An eleven year old kid could buy cigarettes without getting asked why.

As I came back, the class was already over. I saw one of the bullies approaching me, and to my surprise, he side-hugged me and showed empathy. As I was anticipating an attack, I quickly jumped away from him. He said he would take my gym clothes down to the changing room. Still puzzled, I gave it to him.

On my way to the head teacher, I realized that she told everyone what happened. Later I found out she ordered them not to bully me with a possible threat of getting expelled from school.

As I arrived in the changing room, I didn’t have enough space to change my clothes, because a guy from another class occupied more space as soon as he saw I was about to sit down there. My classmates saw this, and the same people who had bullied me on the same day, grabbed this guy, took him out, and beat him up.

This was the first time I felt some sense of status. This was weird, I never asked for any of this treatment. I didn’t really like it.

A few weeks later, one of the bullies found out that I had a Super Nintendo, so he started playing with me during the weekend. We developed some commonalities and we had a lot of fun. This opened up a new experience for me.

Unfortunately, this experience didn’t last long. A few months later, the novelty of me losing my mother wore off, and the same person who defended me in the gym and played computer games with me, started bullying me again.

It took me another five years of victimhood until I realized that it was my behavior that attracted this whole experience. I wonder why it took me so much time after changing schools. I was already bullied at the bootcamp, before school started.

After more than ten years of continuous bullying, one day I woke up and said to myself, I am not taking this anymore. Back then, I had no clue about dominance hierarchies or Jordan Peterson. I just knew that death was a better option for me than one more day of getting bullied.

To this day, I have no idea where my inner strength and charisma came from. But whoever wanted to make fun of me got humiliated in front of everyone. If someone attacked me verbally, I genuinely didn’t care. I literally heard some funny little innocent words, and I was so good at creating a parody of these messages that everyone stopped bullying me within a week.

Not as if I saught their company, but I was accepted as a new cool kid. In my last year, the same people took good care of me when I tested my limits and got drunk at a school excursion.

If you were a victim for ten years, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you’re going to do in the future.

After this story, I asked Maurizio, how he could have attracted bullying.

He started opening up. One character trait of his was that he was continuously caught up in unimportant debates, where he defended his opinion religiously. I had picked up on this character trait of Maurizio before as well. In fact, I asked him to channel his energy towards creating meaningful things, not debating for no reason.

I recalled my first mentor from ten years ago. He asked me, “How would you describe unsuccessful people?”. I looked at him puzzled. Then he added: “They are always right.” They have to be right all the time, and this is why they are not open to learning new experiences. If you cannot learn, you are destined to be unsuccessful.

So there is this ego thing in Maurizio. Where may it come from? Possibly some form of narcissism.

Maurizio’s second issue was the quality of his communication. During our video calls, I picked up on him sending me mixed signals at time, and having trouble with clearly explaining what he wanted. If I didn’t always understand him, others might have had the same problem.

When I asked him why he talks in such a complicated way, he kept rejecting my simple sentences. “It is not that easy, others may perceive me as a bad person”. Bingo. Caring too much about what other people think of you. Do you remember The Roles We Play section? Same problem. Lack of self-esteem. You think your message is not important.

As Maurizio kept worrying about how he is perceived, he created a false self that no-one wanted to interact with. So others made fun of him and they started bullying him.

I recommended Maurizio to start catching his thoughts each time he finds himself in a useless debate, and instead of debating, his new mission will be to understand the opinion of the other side.

Clear communication was another mission that needed practice.

On top of the new actions, I recommended continuous therapy for Maurizio until he processes this issue of wanting to be right all the time.

Exercises

1. Find three areas in your life, where you have a belief that your circumstances define who you are and what you are capable of.
2. Find three past events for each area in your life that imply why your belief is false.
3. Find three actions you can start doing right now to stop being a victim.

In question 2, if you didn’t find any reasons, or your reasons seem fake, chances are that your belief is actually true. For instance, your genetics may not make it possible for you to win an olympic gold medal at swimming, whatever you do. You may never grow 25cm (10 inches) in height. You can still reframe the situation and find an empowering meaning in things you can control in your life.

What Are Your Character Strengths?

If you accept that the expectations of other people is more important than your own future, no wonder that your burning desire to accomplish anything in your life vanishes. You may spend your life feeling a victim of circumstances that are beyond your control.

Our character is shaped by the roles we spend our lives in. If you are in a destructive community, your character will be shaped in the wrong direction.

In my first book, The Developer’s Edge, I dedicated a full section on unlocking your potential by building your self-esteem. Check out Section 2.2 of the free sample on Leanpub.

One sign of a low self-esteem is when you compare yourself to others. This is unhealthy, because there will always be someone who is better than you at something.

Throughout the beginning of my software developer career, I worked for a self-made entrepreneur. His message initially resonated with me, because he inspired me to become an entrepreneur myself one day. He clearly valued risk taking over common sense. This lead to his downfall.

After a while, things changed. He started behaving like a jerk when we talked to him. He hacked his way to high status body language, and always wanted to exert control and dominance over others.

We, software developers tend to be intimidated by hardcore business people, especially if we are treated as lower status individuals. In that environment, software developers were “programmers paid to get things done”.

Some risk takers emerged from the pack, not because they did a good job, but because they shared or mimicked character traits of our business leader. These people could keep their jobs even though they did absolutely nothing. Some of them even got raises.

There was a developer who often worked overtime to get things done. He received the lowest salary out of the whole team.

If you want to become a better professional, you have to take some decisions.

What is your best, second best, third best, and fourth best option?

1. See what you need to do to get ahead, get promoted and make more money, even if you have to act against your values and beliefs
2. Stay true to your values, and continue working hard
3. Stay true to your values, but learn how to sell your performance
4. Resign

You will find some hints after the Exercises section. Before continuing reading, do this exercise.

To break free from the expectations of other people, you have to shift your focus.

Unfortunately, most of us pay a lot of attention on things we don’t want in our lives. Think about it. In most magazines and news TV shows, there are more bad news than positive news. Even if most people hate bad news, they still spend a lot of time talking about politics, murder, violence, and things they don’t want in their own lives.

When we pay attention to things, we pay the price of where our attention is. We also pay the opportunity cost of where our attention is not.

If you face challenges in your life, wouldn’t it be logical to fix these problems before checking out the latest airplane disaster?

If you are frustrated because you are overweight, wouldn’t it be logical to focus on losing fat and gaining muscle instead of eating chocolate every day?

Unfortunately, most of these processes are not conscious. These unconscious choices are driven by our need to survive in an environment. We learned in the previous section that our life is not in immediate danger anyomore. However, we are evolved for those dangers. When we feel fear, we overeat, or we get depressed, we just run our genetic program.

A chocolate bar would have increased your chances of survival hundreds of thousands of years ago. Today, you just get obese.

When I determined my values, health was an important factor for me. At the same time, I drank two to three liters of diet coke every single day. This horrible liquid weakened my bones and made my body acidic. Sometimes I also ate chocolate and fast food.

Back then, I didn’t realize the following truth:

Your focus is valuable. Treat it accordingly.

Taking a Career Decision - Hints

Remember the story of the entrepreneur and risk taking? It’s time to revisit the question. Which option did you choose?

1. See what you need to do to get ahead, get promoted and make more money, even if you have to act against your values and beliefs
2. Stay true to your values, and continue working hard
3. Stay true to your values, but learn how to sell your performance
4. Resign

You can read my answers here.

Option (a) may give you the highest short term benefit. Unfortunately, your self-esteem will suffer, and therefore, you will eventually make less money in the long run. Why? Because you concentrate on developing skills that you don’t need. One day, you will resign or you will get fired.

Option (b) is not much better for your self-esteem even if you are treated like trash on a regular basis. Settling for horrible working conditions is not advised.

Back in the days, I chose option (c). This was a suboptimal choice for me. Selling your performance is a great thing in general. Unfortunately, I did it, because I compared myself to others, and I also wanted to impress my boss.

You can also choose option (c) because of a better motivation: out of the desire to help others understand how they can cooperate with us. I know, some of you may associate shame with marketing and sales. Deception is indeed not the best thing for your self-esteem if your product is bad. But hey, you are offering one of the best products out there an entrepreneur can rely on. Being shy does not serve you. Being shy does not serve your leaders either.

Having lived through this situation, today, I would clearly choose (d). I had options to make more money and be respected at the same time. I just didn’t know about them, and I believed I didn’t have them.

Your priorities may be different. Maybe option (a) makes you a lot of money and helps you develop skills that are important to you. Maybe you are in the middle of a recession, and need a job badly, so you may choose (c) in favor of (d). Everything is relative.

Exercises

Open your journal, and write down the answers to the following questions:

1. Why did you become a software developer?
2. Identify and describe three social roles you play on a weekly basis. Include at least one role from your work.
3. Identify three activities in life that you focus on way too much even though you don’t need them. Describe these activities in a few sentences, and write down what it costs you to keep pursuing these activities.
4. Identify three activities in life that you should focus on and want to focus on, but you still neglect them. Describe these activities in a few sentences, and write down what it costs you to keep postponing these activities.

Values and Charisma

When I was eight years old, once I fantasized about skipping school. Sure enough, I pretended going to school in the morning, but instead, I started discovering the streets near my house.

As time passed, I felt more and more guilty. I was supposed to be in the classroom already. I had never done anything similar before.

A few hours later, I met a friend of our family. We greeted each other, and I immediately started explaining myself. “There are dangerous dogs out there!” - I said, justifying what I am doing there during school time.

Our neighbor then warned my mother about me wandering around the district. She jumped in her car and found me.

Actually, I can clearly recall that at that time, my punishment was my own guilt. She respected me for my adventurous side, and asked me to promise her that I would not do this again in the future.

Fast forward more than twenty years. As a tech lead, I had a team member whose performance was not too good. We considered firing him, and he was aware of the pressure.

One day, I heard from a non-technical person that our team member apologetically explained himself why it takes him so much time to complete his task. He had never done this before. He felt guilty for being a lazy developer for years.

I know this developer very well. He is a genuinely good person, and he wanted to help. Unfortunately, instead of living his values, he took most of his decisions out of fear. The fear of not getting fired or punished.

When we don’t live according to our values, we tend to feel guilt, and we tend to explain ourselves even when we don’t need to. Others pick up on our insecurities. After all, no-one finds an overly apologetic person charming.

When we stay true to our values, we tend to be unapologetic. We tend to be charming. Why?

Because unapologetic and confident behavior creates a vacuum. This vacuum attracts and absorbs the attention of other people.

When you act according to your values, you are unshakeable, centered, and grounded. We can even conclude the following:

Let me conclude with one disclaimer. Pretending that you act according to your values does not work. You are charismatic if you don’t try to be charismatic.

Charisma is a side-effect of acting according to your values. If you act just to be charismatic, your efforts won’t work. Acting charismatic is not valuable. Your values are valuable. People are drawn to your values, not to fake behavior.

Exercises

1. Recall a situation when you explained yourself for something that needed no explanation. Did you act according to your values?
2. Recall another situation when you acted according to your values, and others looked up to you or praised your action. Did you feel charismatic?
3. Recall a situation when you wanted to look charismatic, yet you failed to impress others with your efforts. Was there anything fake in your behavior?

Discovering Your Own Values

We are approaching the highlight of this chapter. You already know why values are important in life.

Your values are what you focus on. When you live according to your values, your self-esteem grows, because you respect yourself more. When you think of your values, think of the person you really want to be.

I will now lead you through a process of discovering your own values. I used this process when I wanted to discover why I was not happy with my life.

Step 0: Select some inspiring music you will play in the background. Be playful, and make sure the music does not drain your intellect. The Shire track from The Lord of the Rings will do. You could also use the Southampton Montage from the Titanic⁴.

Step 1: For at least ten minutes uninterrupted, write about what you find important in your life today. What is your life about? What do you do on a regular basis? How do you act with friends, family, colleagues? What side-projects you pursue? What adventures do you enjoy?

It is important that you should continuously write. If you can’t think of anything, just write, “I ran out of thoughts”. This exercise is called stream of consciousness.

Don’t worry about structure. Just let your imagination flow.

Step 2: For priming you a bit more, let me share a great article with you on Values inspired by the work of Tony Robbins. Read this article, and start reflecting on your own life.

Step 3: Go to viacharter.org, and check out the six groups of character strengths on the Character Strengths page. You can also use the PDF version.

Select your top ten values and order them.

If the order is not obvious, ask yourself which one is more important for you. Think deeply about edge cases and imagine yourself in situations when you can live according to one of your values, but you cannot live according to the other.

Don’t limit yourself to the values in the VIA character strengths list. If you find another value important in your life, go for it!

Step 4: Register an account on viacharter.org, and fill out the character strengths survey by clicking the Take the Free VIA Survey button on the Character Strengths page.

Creating an account, filling in the survey, and evaluating the survey is free.

Once you are done, you get a list of values to your inbox.

Step 5: Compare and contrast your results from the survey and resolve the conflicts between the two lists. Just like a good old git merge.

Congratulations for going through the exercises! You are a champion.

Hopefully you have more clarity over what behavior and actions are worth allowing in your life, and what behavior and actions you should stay away from.

In the next chapter, you will gain some confidence and courage to live according to your values.