Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

For our week 1 assignment, the writer was asked to take the VIA 120 survey in order to discover the writer's top 24 character strengths. This self-assessment survey was made up of 120 questions regarding the survey takers thoughts about statements such as "you use humor in everyday life" or "you treat all people fairly regardless of differences" and the survey taker was asked to choose from 5 different responses such as "Very much like me", "Like me", "Neutral", "Unlike Me" and "Very much unlike me" (VIA Institute on Character, 2019).

Once completed the survey generated 24 results and the top 5 results will be written about in this essay. The writer's results are as follows:

Character Strength 1: Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

While appreciating someone's beauty and excellence is not necessarily a bad thing, good looks can create a sort of bias on the beholder. In a study by Ken Podratz of Rice University, it has been shown that the physical attractiveness of a person can create favorable outcomes in relationships, job compensation and social settings (Maccarone, 2016).

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The counselor could get caught up in the person's overall attractiveness and this could lead to unethical behavior between the counselor and the client, it could bias the counselor's opinion of what is actually going on in the client's life pertaining to his/her problems. In the realm of ethical practice, seeing the beauty in the client can help the counselor assist the client to see the beauty in the world around them and in themselves.

Character Strength 2: Humor

While humor can bring levity to a tense or uncomfortable situation and help the client to feel more at ease, humor can also damage the start of a relationship between client and counselor.

While the counselor may not think the humor they are introducing to the session is inappropriate, the client may perceive what the counselor is saying and take offense, thereby causing hurt feelings and the client to possibly never return, therefore hurting the clients chances of recovery.

Character Strength 3: Fairness

Fairness can contribute to ethical practice by enabling the counselor to see each and every client on a level playing field. Evaluating every client the same can also be detrimental, as each client is not the same and must be evaluated on a case by case basis. In order to achieve fairness with each client the counselor must ask him or herself would I make the same decision for each one of my clients?

Character Strength 4: Kindness

The old saying "kill them with kindness" can be a good thing in the eyes of the person doling out the kindness, however being kind to someone can also go a bit too far. Showing a client kindness is not in and of itself wrong, but when the counselor allows themselves to be taken advantage by the client for their kindness, the counselor can make some bad decisions that might end up hurting themselves and the client. For example, giving the client money. The counselor may think that they are helping and committing a kind act, but by giving the client money might cause the client harm if the client has an addiction the counselor is not yet aware of.

Character Strength 5: Spirituality

Being a counselor with a spiritual side and wanting to share that spiritual side with the client is not a bad thing, but the counselor's spirituality and promotion of that spirituality, must be considered as to how it might affect the client before being shared. Questions such as, How will the client react? Will the client be offended? Does the client have any spiritual leanings? need to be asked before the counselor would share this part of themselves. This is where finding out more about the client in the beginning and meeting the client where he/she is at to know if the client has a spiritual side is the starting point to gain knowledge before sharing.