Examples, Templates, Prompts, and Exercises

How to Dive Deeply

Dive Deeply by Using Your Signature Strengths

Researchers Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania identified and classified 24 positive character strengths and virtues. They cataloged these as recognized historically and across different cultures as representing goodness in humans.

Most people have varying degrees of all 24 strengths and generally recognize the positive value of them all. But each individual person has certain of these strengths that are more important and natural to them. Some of these strengths we identify with closely and think of as part of our identity. Those strengths from this big list of 24 are called our Signature Strengths. They are the top three to five strengths that you most identify with.

Further research by Claudia Harzer from Medical School Hamburg and Willibald Ruch at University of Zurich showed that the more we make use of our Signature Strengths in our day to day work, the more we see that work as a “calling” instead of a “job”.

To figure out your personal list of Signature Strengths you can take a free quiz at The VIA Institute on Character’s website (www.viacharacter.org). Or you can look at the list of all 24 strengths and self-identify the ones that speak to you personally.

Wisdom Strengths: Creativity, Curiosity, Judgment, Love of Learning, Perspective.

Courage Strengths: Bravery, Honesty, Perseverance, Zest

Humanity Strengths: Kindness, Love, Social Intelligence

Justice Strengths: Fairness, Leadership, Teamwork

Temperance Strengths: Forgiveness, Humility, Prudence, Self-Regulation

Transcendence Strengths: Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Gratitude, Hope, Humor, Spirituality.

One approach you can take is to identify your personal Signature Strengths and then make sure that you are using them during your Learning Opportunities.

Let’s look at some examples.

What if you identify with the strength, Zest?

Zest refers to being energetic and enthusiastic. Someone who identifies Zest as a Signature Strength is going to do best in active and engaged activities. You might not do as well in passive learning settings. You might look for ways to do hands-on activities, internships, volunteering, project-based learning, and group work.

Compare that to someone who identifies with Prudence.

Prudence is about avoiding unnecessary risk, planning in advance, making sure that you can control for the unexpected. Someone who identifies Prudences as a signature strength might be most comfortable with a plan book that helps structure their days. They might not enjoy open-ended projects without clear cut outcomes. Working with ad hoc groups might be stressful. On the other hand, being able to plan out a Learning Journey with clear milestones might be a smart strategy.

If Creativity is one of your Signature Strengths you might get energized by the Learn by Creating list. Someone who is high in Curiosity might find inspiration in the Learn by Discovery list.

Whatever strengths make up your list of 4 or 5 Signature Strengths, look for ways to include them in your Learning Journey. It will not only make the journey easier and more enjoyable, it will also help you understand how to apply your Signature Strengths as a part of your life.

A good life, for you, will include utilizing your Signature Strengths.

Dive Deeply by Combining Skills and Knowledge with Exploring Widely

One approach to Dive Deeply is to seek out opportunities to practice and improve on skills and knowledge that are important and meaningful to you. A great way to to practice those skills or go deeper with knowledge is do apply it directly to key strategy number two, Explore Widely.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to explain this idea.

Marjory enjoys writing. It is something that she considers a strength already but she wants to keep building on that strength and keep improving as a writer. She has a mantra that she tells herself, “writers write.” Marjory has decided to apply her strength as a writer to the task of Exploring Widely. In her head she is creating a kind of magazine and she has created a list of topics that she is going to write magazine articles about. Each month she will decide what articles to write for the next “issue” of her magazine. This approach will give her a chance to research and learn about a wide range of topics including American History, science, psychology, religion, mythology, and technology. It will also give her an opportunity to practice her writing skills.

For Marjory, she will be Diving Deeply with her writing skills but also Exploring Widely by applying her writing skills to a wide variety of topics. In the process she will be developing her love of writing while exploring.

Let’s try one from the other direction.

Jamar loves anything to do with flying and space. Ever since he was young, he loved airplanes and pilots and astronauts. Jamar is using his love of flight as a starting point for exploring other topics. Jamar is Diving Deep into flight and learning more about history (eg. history of powered flight, the space race, the role of air power in World War II), science (eg. the physics of flight, the design of aircraft, aerodynamics, the biology of flying insects and animals), and art and literature (books, movies, and art related to flying and space).

Jamar is also Diving Deep into flying and space and exploring different ways of learning. His is Learning by Creating by trying his hand at animation and creating short animations of birds in flight and space craft. He is Learning by Doing with paper airplanes, balsa wood planes, and saving up money to buy a drone. He is Learning by Discovery by testing different wing designs in a do-it-yourself wind tunnel that he learned to build by watching YouTube videos.

Jamar’s knowledge about flight is growing deep but it is also serving as a vehicle to Explore Widely.

You can see from the examples of Marjory and Jamar, having a passion for a skill (like writing) or a topic (like flight) can be a great starting point. It combines the key strategies of Diving Deep and Exploring Widely by following your passions.

Dive Deeply by Pursuing a Long Term Goal

Not everyone has a specific skill or topic that they are passionate about. Sometimes they have a long term goal that they are pursuing, even if it isn’t tied to a skill or topic. Let’s examine a Dive Deeply strategy that involves a long term goal.

Let’s imagine a planner like Earl. They are in their freshman year but are already looking far into their future. For a long time they want to go to college and study something to do with wild animals. They have done some research on careers and college majors and think they are heading towards something along the lines of zoology, wildlife management, or wildlife biology but they aren’t 100% sure yet. That makes them a touch nervous because they like to have everything lined up. For right now they think they are heading in the right direction.

Earl knows they will need to have some knowledge and skills in the areas of science and math and so they are mentally planning ways to get that accomplished in the four years of high school. Their plan is to take one or more lab science classes at a local community college before they graduate. They might take a math class, too. Earl’s local community college requires you to be 16 years old before you can take a class on campus so that gives them a couple of years to prepare and be ready for the community college classes.

In the meantime, Earl is going to pursue a mix of self-directed projects, online classes, in person classes, and field experiences. They heard that their local zoo allows high school students to do internships, so that is definitely something they are going to look into. They also like hiking and camping and so they are planning weekend trips and looking into joining a local bird watching group.

Because Earl likes to be busy and likes to know their schedule, they are planning out their Learning Journey months and years in advance. This isn’t the way everyone likes to operate but it works best for Earl.

Earl uses a paper date planner and schedules out their weeks in advance. They start with any Learning Opportunities that have fixed schedules. For instance, they are taking a photography class through their local high school and it meets three days a week in the morning. They also have an online biology class that meets two days a week. Those are the first things that are locked down in their schedule.

Being a planner, Earl puts specific times on their calendar to work on their self-directed projects, independent reading, and any homework from the two structured classes they are taking this semester. Earl pencils those times in, so they can be erased if necessary. They don’t like erasing but sometimes they have to.

As a self-directed project, Earl has decided to read a few books from a list of banned and removed books they saw online. Earl wants to know why these books have been banned or removed from libraries and schools. They plan on reading a few of the books and then writing an Op-Ed or letter to the editor of their local newspaper. They doubt that they would actually submit it to the local newspaper and even if they did, they doubt the paper would print it, but who knows. They still want to get their thoughts on the page and organizing it as an Op-Ed is helpful. It gives them an audience to consider while writing.

Math was never Earl’s favorite subject in school but they also understand that it might be part of their life if they want to pursue wildlife biology. They also think that if they can control the pace of what they are learning about, they might not hate math as much as they used to. It’s a theory.

Earl’s plan for math this semester is to use an online math program that allows them to go at their own pace and also work with a tutor once a week to answer questions, and explain concepts, etc. They have put slots for “work on math” and “meet with a tutor” into their date book. Eventually Earl would like to be confident enough in their ability to learn math that they can take a math class at their local community college. If they can slowly build up to the community college math class, they are sure that once they go off to college, math won’t be as intimidating.

Earl plans on capturing weekend hiking and birding trips as Learning Opportunities including considering the planning of those trips as separate Learning Opportunities with their own Records. They plan on doing trips for all of the years of high school and decided that the best approach would be to create a new Learning Opportunity for each season.

Earl’s plan, as of now, is to try to be ready to graduate high school in 3 years and either travel for year before going to college or to go to college a year early. Some of it will depend on how well they end up doing in the community college classes. That will probably give them a pretty good sense of how ready they are to handle college level classes.

As far as using Explore Widely and Dive Deeply, Earl plans on going deep in the areas of math, science, wildlife, and animals. That will allow them to develop the right skills, habits, and knowledge in this area and also be a good test if that direction is really where they want their life to head. It will be a good preparation for their long term goal of studying wildlife in college.

The Learning Opportunities that will be part of the Dive Deeply strategy will include high school classes, community college classes, internships, and self-directed projects.

At the same time, Earl will keep their mind open with an Explore Widely strategy. The banned books Learning Opportunity came to them in a flash when they ran across a story online. They would like to always have one or more self-directed Learning Opportunities going, even if they are just re-watching David Attenborough documentaries.

Not everyone will be as committed to planning out their Learning Journey like Earl. Even if you are not as organized, you can use long term goals to drive the places where you Dive Deeply.

College classes, internships, big projects, jobs, travel, are all examples of Learning Opportunities where you can Dive Deeply. If your long term goals include going to college or starting a business or learning a language or becoming proficient playing an instrument, that goal can help drive you to Dive Deeply.

Dive Deeply by Pursuing Signature Learning Opportunities

In the course of your Learning Journey you may complete certain Learning Opportunities that truly represent who you are and what you are capable of. It could be getting a major part in a community theater production, completing a internship at an architectural firm, publishing a short story in a literary magazine, producing a fashion show to raise money for a cause, passing a college algebra class, or making a documentary about your local skateboarding scene. Those are called Signature Learning Opportunities.

When someone asks you about your Learning Journey, those would be the first things to come to mind to brag about. They are kind of like the highlight reel or featured stories.

Signature Learning Opportunities are almost always places where you dive deeply. They are not only chances for you to practice and develop skills, they are places where you get a chance to utilize the skills and knowledge you have built up along the way.

You might be ready to tackle a Signature Learning Opportunity on the first day of your Learning Journey or you might build up to it and seek out Signature Learning Opportunities closer to the end of your Learning Journey. There is no right or wrong way to go about it. The important thing is that the Signature Learning Opportunity makes sense for you.

Think of it this way, this is your chance to do something to impress yourself. What is on your bucket list? What kind of activity makes you think, “I want to do that!” What kind of Learning Opportunity would you be excited to brag about?

Don’t worry if you can’t answer those questions yet. You might need to spend some time Exploring Widely before an idea for a Notable Learning Opportunity comes to you. That is normal. Sometimes a Signature Learning Opportunity presents itself to you when you aren’t expecting. Be open to ideas and opportunities.

In the meantime, here is a list of Signature Learning Opportunity ideas that might help trigger something that makes sense for you.

Finding Existing Learning Opportunities

Making Your Own Learning Opportunities

Making Sure You Explore Widely

How to Dive Deeply

Examples of Learning Opportunities

Interviewing as a Learning Opportunity

Telling Your Story for College Admissions

Examples of A Summary of a Learning Journey