iServi News | 4 December 2020 | Term 4, Week 9
Character Strength Spotlight: Perspective
Provided by Cat Lamb, a consultant with the Institute of Positive Education at Geelong.
- Wisdom, practical intelligence.
- Understanding multiple sides before making decisions and giving helpful advice to others.
Perspective is a strength which is closely related to other strengths of Wisdom, including Curiosity and Open-Mindedness. These strengths are about gaining and using knowledge to benefit our world.
Perspective is about how we accumulate and draw on our life experiences. As the year comes to a close, let us utilise perspective to pause and reflect on the experiences we have had in 2020.
Activities to prompt perspective:
- Encourage young people to consider the feelings of different characters in a story, and talk about why they might feel the way they do.
- Play games like chess, where we need to anticipate the moves of other players, draw on our perspective.
- Enjoy a conversation over the dinner table about how different people might perceive an issue.
- Practice putting challenges into perspective, and think about the best- and worst-case scenarios.
- Consider how you are adding to your perspective and how this serves you and your community.
Three things to try:
- Podcast
The Astral Hustle - Movie
Sliding Doors (1998) - Book
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
Podcast
The Institute of Positive Education at Geelong Grammar has produced a 24-part mini-podcast series on Character Strengths. Each episode explores one of the character strengths in order to recognise, utilise and celebrate it in our daily lives. To listen to the Perspective podcast, click here
Mrs Franca Coutts
Vice Principal