Re-Release Applying Strengths to Family of Origin (podcast)

Hello, everyone, it’s Sara Schlipp-Riedel, and we’re taking a break from new podcast episodes over the holiday’s and also to help Nathan’s voice recover from his tonsil surgery. What 40-year-old get’s their tonsils out? Anyway… rather than going quiet for a month, we decided to re-release some of our favorites from the archives.

One of my favorite podcast episodes is Episode 35: Applying Strengths to Family of Origin. I especially appreciate this episode because it’s emphasis is what I believe differentiates Leadership Vision’s approach to the interpretation and application of the CliftonStrengths Assessment results. Beginning to connect your results to your life’s experiences brings them to life in ways that allow you and others to further understand and contextualize what makes you truly unique.

As you listen to this episode today, perhaps for the second time, think about who from your Family of Origin has especially shaped who you are today and consider which of your Strength(s) you’d attribute to them having shaped in your life? Then perhaps begin to think about the shaping influence you’re currently having or could have on the future generations of your family. Who or what might you help foster in those you deeply care for?

We’ll be back with new episodes on January 13, 2020. Enjoy!

People use Strengths as one of many tools for self-understanding, personal growth, and professional development. Any journey to self-understanding needs to remember the beginnings; integrating where we come from; our family of origin. This can shed light on the pathway to our self-understanding.

In the original episode, Brian Schubring and Nathan Freeburg talk about how to take our origin stories and frame them in ways that put them in their rightful place. They shared five steps that will help us acknowledge the role our past has played in shaping our present, and future.

RELATED: Earliest Strengths Memories Podcast

The Five Steps

Each of these five words indicates an action to take in reflecting on your strengths begun and evolved from our families of origin.

1. Fight – Sometimes there is an unnecessary tension or an unnecessary rising of conflict that we tend to bring up because we’re fighting against how we’ve been raised. Recognize this tension for what it is and genuinely admit that some circumstances are going to have somewhat of a grip on you for your entire life.
2. Forgive – Forgiveness is a concept that is an act and an ask. An act of saying ‘I forgive you’ and an ask. Will you forgive me? There’s something in the process of asking for forgiveness. It is an equalizer; a level set is an opportunity for something to start again.
3. Frame – People often frame an experience with their family that keeps them focused on who they were as a child and does not give them the opportunity to lead into and lean into being an adult. The idea of the frame is the idea of the framework of a house. The frame of a house is merely a structure; a structure upon which we can add, expand or build into something, that we can live within, around, and outside of.
4. Fuel – Once you have created a framework, you have a choice on how to build that framework out. Stop fueling negative experiences from your past and instead, feed the good ones.
5. Future – We can’t run very far from our family of origin. It’s not if we can break away from our origins but how are we going to build a future from that place. This is something that you can shape.