Superpowers: Can You Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound?
Quick, name everything you know about Superman!
He’s able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He has super strength. He’s pretty noble. He (a.k.a. Henry Cavill) is also pretty ripped—probably how he manages all that super strength, single-building bounding and all that.
Now, could you do the same thing with your own Super You? Could you run through your superpowers and weaknesses as dispassionately, as objectively? My guess is that it might be hard for you. If I were Superman and someone asked what my strengths were, I might say something like:
Well, I guess I’m pretty good at leaping. Why do you ask? Did someone mention it? I just want to help people. I can’t even be around Kryptonite though. I think it’s because when I was young I was around Kryptonite and it was really harsh for me, so I like, kinda shut down when I’m around it now. It’s so stupid. It’s just Kryptonite. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—everyone else seems fine with it. It might be because I’m an alien who just looks human. Anyway, tell me about yourself!
Clearly, extolling my own virtues is not one of my superpowers. For years I’d simultaneously be ashamed of my weaknesses and downplay the hell out of my strengths. I had no objective distance to see how I actually was—but even if I could have seen myself objectively, I probably still would have had no pride in myself. But if you look at any “intro to superheroes” website or comic book, every superhero’s powers and weaknesses are laid out so flatly, so objectively, that there’s no arguing with them. They are what they are what they are. Batman is a lonely guy who uses his money and training to fight criminals. Spiderman is a sarcastic kid who’s coming to grips with the powers bestowed upon him by a radioactive spider. And us? It’s time for us to learn how to assess ourselves as if we were—ahem, I mean, since we’re superheroes.
FUN SUPERHERO FACT!
Superman originally couldn’t fly—hence the “leaping tall buildings in a single bound.” But when they began making Superman cartoons in the 1940s, the animators complained that the leaping looked silly. The creators agreed, and Superman was upgraded to flying status.
How do we figure out what those best qualities, our superpowers, are? A few you might know right off the bat, since they’re how you describe yourself in your online dating profile—being a good friend, having a sense of justice, being thoughtful—and these are all great because they sound great to strangers. They would be good qualities in anyone’s personality, and should absolutely be included in your list of superpowers. But what about the ones that could belong only to you? The ones that make the person you are today, living in your skin and in the environment you’re in, special? What quieter, less flashy strengths do you have that are often overlooked? And note: strengths are just the qualities you possess that help you be the best version of yourself right now. They energize you. They’re the qualities that have led you to here and now in one piece, and they shift throughout your lifetime. They’re also the qualities you’ve had to develop based on what you’ve accomplished and endured. There are some days when your thoughtfulness toward others is a strength, and some days—days that you need to circle the wagons and take care of yourself more—when thoughtfulness towards others doesn’t serve you as well. The same is true with assertiveness, or positivity, or being a good friend. What’s most important about your superpowers is that you realize that you have them. That you have positive qualities. You have qualities that make you unique and help you be the best version of yourself right now.
But the sad thing is that many people don’t know they have superpowers. I meet so many people determined to self-deprecate into a hole in the ground, refusing to believe that they have anything good going for them, or that they have anything to offer. I’ve actually had this conversation with a near stranger in a bathroom:
Near stranger: But I don’t have any good qualities.
Me: I’m guessing that’s not true. At the very least, you are humble, and that is a lovely quality.
Why do we have such a hard time talking about our own superpowers? Maybe we think we’re being braggarts if we discuss them. Maybe we’ve been raised to be humble to the point of self-deprecation. Maybe we’re afraid people will disagree with what we see as our strengths.
Getting on Team Super You
If being able to recognize your positive qualities is hard for you, your first step is to get on Team Super You. You have to pull on the jersey of Team Super You and get on your own side. Instead of arguing with yourself (which we’ll discuss in the next chapter), or doubting yourself, or undermining yourself, it is imperative that you be on your own team. What has helped me in the past, when I’m pushing myself into the depths of self-esteem hell while on the way to a meeting or something, is to picture a basketball stadium. On the court is me versus all my fears and concerns. In that scenario, who is sitting in the bleachers on my side of the stadium? Parents, friends, my cat, sure—but am I also on my side of the stadium? Am I fighting for myself to succeed and do well? Or am I on the other side of the stadium, cheering for the bad guys?
Even if I was faking it at first, I made a conscious effort to be sure I was standing on my own side of the stadium. Life is hard enough without there being one more detractor hollering at us from the other side. We are all alive, and engaged enough in our lives to be reading this book, so we all have qualities that have made us strong enough to get right here, right now. Sadly, not everyone has made it this far. Even more sadly, not everyone is reading this book. (I kid!) You make up an elite group, and being in that group, you absolutely have superpowers. Today, here and now, I want you to make a vow to yourself that you will, at least outwardly, rep your own Team Super You. You will think of yourself as an ally, as a friend, as a supporter.
Your next step, now that you’re wearing a Super You jersey, is to take a step backward so you can catch a glimpse of yourself and your powers. I can’t always be waiting for you in the women’s bathroom, ready to have a deep talk with you! (Fun facts: One of the reasons I became a therapist was that, for as long as I could remember, I would get into extremely intense life talks with strangers in public bathrooms.) We’ve talked a few times about stepping back to evaluate ourselves, and it’s time to use that technique again. Picture your life as a reality show, or picture yourself as the star of a show you’re watching on TV—whatever works for you.
The Blockbuster Superpowers
From Team Super You’s side of the gymnasium, take a few quiet minutes to yourself and think about your positive qualities. Refer back to “Realization 1: Who I Am Depends on a Lot of Factors” in Chapter 1 and revisit the qualities you learned about yourself either from taking the www.character.org personality strengths quiz or from my shorter list of questions. Write down your positive qualities, big or small. If you need help, think of yourself as a stranger you’ve recently met and interacted with. If you still need help, here are a few more questions to ask yourself. (If you would feel comfortable getting some help from a friend for some of these, go for it.)
At work or in life, what kinds of tasks do I look forward to doing?
How would I describe myself on a dating profile?
I’m a guest on a morning talk show—how would the host describe me in his intro?
If I were a superhero, what qualities would the bad guys use to witheringly describe me?
What am I passionate about?
What are my best qualities, according to my coworkers?
What are my best qualities, according to my family?
What are my best qualities, according to my friends?
What are my best qualities, according to my romantic partner?
What do I do throughout my day that brings me joy?
What have I been proud of in my life?
What kind of situations do I thrive in that not everyone thrives in?
What qualities do I admire in the people who raised me? Did any of them transfer to me?
What qualities do I admire in others? Do any of those echo my own qualities?
What qualities do I like for people to notice in me?
Yes, these might seem a bit like Ms. America questions, but they’re designed to help you home in on some of your best qualities: the qualities that serve you and make you strong.
The Less Obvious Superpowers
Now, let’s move on to the host of positive qualities that are often dismissed or swept aside but that are just as important. For example, below are a few qualities that my friends possess that they probably wouldn’t think of as being too important but which mean the world to me. To me, these qualities make my friends strong and amazing human beings to be around. And if some of these seem like weird superpowers, consider: the superhero Color Kid can change the color of anything, and Matter-Eater Lad can eat anything. So even real superheroes have some weird superpowers.
Some Qualities I Love in My Friends
Being a good storyteller
Being a hard worker
Being able to complain to wait staff without seeming like a monster
Being able to eat almost anything without complaining
Being ambitious
Being comfortable showing emotion
Being interested in lots of different hobbies
Being truly interested in other people
Bringing the right amount of humor to a serious situation
Having a quality I like to call “Fuck it, let’s give it a try!”
Knowing all the latest trends
Knowing none of the latest trends
Knowing which celebrities are dating
Looking at things in a truly original way, and sharing that viewpoint equally originally
Not being afraid of conflict
Not taking bad moods out on other people
Remembering people’s birthdays
Staying calm in crises
Thinking deeply before responding when asked a question
Do any of these ring true for you? If so, write them down! If you’re still having trouble coming up with superpowers, think of times in your life—however long ago—that you’ve felt proud of yourself, and explore why you were proud. Those qualities, whatever they were, are still with you. This is also an excellent activity to do with a friend, especially when you’re having one of those cornball “Let’s talk about real shit” get-togethers. Tell your friend what you think his or her strengths are, and ask for some strengths in return. You might notice that you and your friends share strengths—shared superpowers are often what keep people invested in each other. Everyone leaves happy.
If you’re still having trouble, or just want to find more positive qualities in yourself, let’s dig around in your past and see what we can find. If you’ll recall, in chapter 1 we talked about looking back at your life and defining the identities you created along the way—even naming them. Let’s go back and take another look at those identities and see what superpowers we can find that are still with us today—and, beyond that, what gifts our past selves have given us that have helped usher us to where we are today. I’ll show you what I mean with a few of my defined identities.
Clever Girl: This first identity I constructed was young and intoxicated with the idea that her intelligence could win her praise, so she wasn’t afraid to be clever. I consider her cleverness, and her pride in her cleverness, an important superpower that I’ve kept with me, whether or not I’m using it.
Monster Girl: At this age, I was painfully and acutely aware of my size. I drew incorrect conclusions about that awareness, assuming everyone thought I stuck out as much as I thought I did. Though my intense, exclusion-of-everything-else focus on other people’s reactions to me wasn’t used wonderfully back then, this is a strength that carried me through grad school and my career as a therapist—with the adjustment that I broadened my focus to include reactions beyond reactions to me. For example, I can always tell if a couple has just been fighting in the moments before I run into them. I can usually tell if someone is preoccupied, and when to ask about it. I thank my overly attentive focus on others for this.
Freak Girl: At this age I was angry. Soooo angry. The anger I felt toward myself for so long was spilling out of me, and there was power in that anger. It helped motivate me—maybe not always in the right direction, but being able to aim my anger in the correct direction has been a key step in becoming my Super You. I learned to have anger as the Freak Girl.
Punk Rock Stepford Wife: Oy, this girl. This is a tough one to find strengths in, so let’s work it out together. When I was a Punk Rock Stepford Wife, I had a wall up that would make the Great Wall of China jealous. I was impenetrable, a smiling, fishnets-clad cool girl, because I was too scared to let anyone see the real me. None of this is fantastic. Clearly, at that point in time I couldn’t have handled being myself around boys, so I am grateful to have had such intense protection at the time. I needed the protection, and my psyche provided it for me. It might as well have been a magnetic force field keeping the bad guys away from my weak and confused heart. What an amazing superpower that is!
To sum up, here are the superpowers I’ve collected from this: cleverness, hyper-observance of others’ emotional states, motivating anger, and a protective force field around my heart. Not bad, huh? I could go on and on, but I think you see my point. Your Super You is merely a step in the evolution of you as a person. None of these identities was perfect for me—they all had serious problems—but they each served a valuable purpose. So instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it’s time we start acknowledging the gifts our past identities have given us and realize how we can use their strengths now. Each of these identities was part of the journey of becoming who I am now, and they will continue to be part of the journey of becoming who I want to be. Were I a superhero, these strengths would be applauded and used against bad guys. But because I am me, I have spent many years downplaying and refusing to acknowledge their value. But no more.
Now, it’s important to note that your superpowers or strengths are not always the things that you are “good at.”
Positive psychology—which is a framework of thinking about human functioning that focuses on the characteristics of a fulfilled and satisfactory life, rather than just focusing on what is wrong—has something to say about the difference. In positive psychology, both strengths and competencies enable your best performance, but whereas your strengths’ best performance energizes you, your competencies yield no similar enjoyment. So, you may be fantastic at responding to emails quickly and efficiently, but if you’re just doing it because you’re terrified of a full in-box, this is not one of your strengths; it’s merely a competency. However, if you get a genuine thrill from giving information to people, answering their questions, and solving issues quickly over email, then this for you would be a strength. Make sense?
Our superpowers are large and small, world-changing and impossibly specific, weird and common, useful and rarely employed. Once you’ve made them official by writing them in your notebook, it’s time to accept the strengths you have without bemoaning the ones you don’t. We have to meet ourselves where we are; it does no one any good if we constantly yell at ourselves from the finish line miles away. You may not be good at small talk at parties—who cares? We can’t live our lives focusing on the things we don’t have—because that’s how to make an empty life. Accept your superpowers. Accept what makes you you. Keep your list of superpowers with you for a bit, and just take a glance at them every once in a while. You might even find it necessary to stare into the mirror, hands on your hips, and say:
I am [your name here]! I am [shout out your strengths in as superheroey a fashion as possible]! In brightest day, in blackest night, no maladaptive thought patterns or life choices shall escape my sight! To those who aren’t supportive of me being a badass Super You—beware my power!
Note: this is an adaptation of Green Lantern’s oath, and a weird one at that. I’m a big fan of repeating things like this into a mirror; it’s something I learned in dance classes. At first you feel very weird confronting yourself doing something new and potentially silly, but if you keep looking yourself in the eye and really seeing yourself, the mirror becomes your ally. Then it’s not so silly anymore. You learn to look yourself in the eye, and it feels more official.
We Know Our Strengths: So Now What?
Once we know our superpowers, what do we do with that information? Other than shouting our strengths to ourselves in the mirror for a self-esteem boost, what good does knowing about our superpowers bring us? Well, Superman knows that if a bad guy needs to be assaulted with a sarcastic one-liner and physically wrapped up and left dangling from the side of a building, that task might be better left to Spiderman. In knowing himself, Superman knows how he is most useful and how he is less useful. He learns to utilize his contribution appropriately. When we know our superpowers, we have a greater sense of what our jobs are in life, so to speak. So let’s say one of your superpowers is helping people feel socially comfortable; then, when a new employee joins your team at work, you might volunteer to help acclimate him or her to the office. Or, you might not sign up for the office softball team if your superpowers do not include organized sports. Having an inventory of the ways in which you are proficient, and the proficiencies that bring you joy—versus the proficiencies that do not bring you joy, can help your day-to-day life both make more sense and be more meaningful. Once you’ve created your list of strengths with objectivity and rationality, I encourage you to see yourself as a Swiss army knife—and to see the world as a collection of tiny strings to be cut or tiny screws to be tightened. You’ve essentially created a toolbox for yourself that you can consult when problems arise.
For years, I resisted the fact that I am an incredibly organized person. All the signs have always been there: I’ve been organizing my stuffed animals since childhood, I looked forward more to buying school supplies every fall than I looked forward to Christmas, and I volunteered for every secretary job in every club I was forced to join. In my fantasy world, I am a freewheeling, loose, “anything could happen” kind of girl, but in reality, I am always punctual, I am always organized, and my assignments are always turned in on time. Not only does being organized scratch an itch that I didn’t know I had, but it genuinely (and dorkily) brings me joy to organize something that is chaotic. Realizing this strength opened me up to job opportunities I didn’t previously think I’d be into, like producing stand-up comedy. So not only do I get the little boost of listing the strengths that make me the best version of myself, I also know to look for opportunities to use those strengths—as well as to avoid the opportunities that don’t employ them.
Now, let’s take a brief diversion to talk about superpowers I wish I had, and then we’ll dig into weaknesses.
Superpowers I Wish I Had
I wish I had the ability to pick the dish off the menu that would satisfy me the most. I constantly have eater’s remorse.
I am terrible at wrapping up small-talk conversations at parties, and will often keep those conversations going for way longer than necessary out of not knowing how to get out of them. (I’m talking crying at a party over dead relatives with a bare acquaintance.) I wish I could gracefully exit small talk.
It would be great to be able to talk about myself in a positive way in public without sweating profusely.
Actually, it would be great just not sweat profusely. Would that even count as a superpower?
I wish I had the power to see myself as my husband sees me. He thinks I’m beautiful. I wish I could see what that looks like.
I would love to have the ability to know how much further I could go on the amount of gas in my tank. I irrationally hate getting gas, although I love the smell of gas.
I would love to never again compare my own success to others’ success. I want the power to greet every accomplishment of another human being, regardless if we’re in the same field or not, with genuine pleasure and enthusiasm—and never with a scowl or scathing comment that just masks my jealousy.
Even though I fully embrace and love my past for all the gifts it’s given me, I sometimes wish I had the ability to start a day with a different past being my experience. It’s not that I wish I’d never been diagnosed with a serious illness, or that I wish I’d never been fat. I’m glad for both of those things, and wouldn’t delete them from my experience. I just would like to know temporarily what it would feel like not to have had those experiences.
I wish my cat and I could talk, although that would be more her superpower than my own. I wish I had the ability to understand my cat’s attempts at communication. Just my cat, though; I don’t want to be Dr. Dolittle.
I wish I could take a person who is being ignorant and small-minded and a jackass and make her experience life as a member of the group she is hating on. I wish I could Freaky Friday people, basically, but for social awareness reasons rather than just hijinks.
I would love it if social interactions with friends, acquaintances, audience members, and family members didn’t exhaust me terribly.
I would love to fly, obviously.
I wish I had absolute and utter confidence in my work, at all times, rather than sometimes downplaying myself around people who I feel are more talented.
I wish my fingertips contained just a smidge of hair product, to be used in times of flyaways.