One of the 24 character strengths
Approaching things with energy. Going at what you do fully rather than halfway.
Zest is the strength of going at things fully rather than halfway. It is about how somebody arrives, not about whether they are cheerful.
The signature is that there is no low-effort setting. A Saturday gets used, a job gets done properly, and a conversation gets somebody's whole attention, because the half-version does not seem to be available.
It is physical as much as anything. This tends to show up as somebody who is awake in a way a room can feel, and it is why they change the temperature of a group by being in it.
It is also not the same as being busy. Plenty of very busy people are running at half strength across nine things, which is closer to the opposite of what this describes.
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Start your free assessmentA friend suggests a walk on a grey Sunday afternoon. Nobody else is enthusiastic. One person is already looking up where the good bit is, and the walk happens.
There is no reserve tank. Everything gets spent on the thing in front of them, which works until several things need it at once. Running at that setting through a genuinely hard patch is how people end up flattened.
It gets read as being an extravert, or as being relentlessly upbeat. Neither is required. A quiet person can lead here, and somebody having a terrible year can too. The strength is about how fully they go at things, not about the mood while they do.
Everybody has all 24 of these. A result puts them in order within one person, so a strength near the bottom of somebody's list is one they reach for less often rather than one they are missing.
That also means nothing here compares one person with another. There is no reference sample behind these scales, and an order made of somebody's own answers cannot say where they stand next to anybody.
Or start with what the 24 character strengths are.
Two hundred and thirteen questions, about twenty minutes. You get all 24 put in your own order, free, with the ones that lead in you named at the top.
96 questions · about 9 min · free
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