Skills Guide
Teaching: Expanding Opportunities by Projecting Your Strengths
Expanding Opportunities by Projecting Your Strengths
Why This Skill Matters
Students who can identify and project their strengths are better positioned to create opportunities for themselves. When this skill is underdeveloped, strengths often remain unseen, and students may underestimate their potential. Teaching students how to show strengths through actions builds confidence, agency, and resilience by reinforcing the belief that effort and character open doors.
Student Challenges This Skill Helps Address
- Low confidence
- Missed opportunities
- Difficulty advocating for self
How WhyTry Builds This Skill
WhyTry builds this skill through Positive Self-Image, where students learn to define themselves by actions rather than labels. This is reinforced in Future Ready Vision & Self-Efficacy, which helps students connect strengths to future goals and opportunities. Facilitators guide students to practice demonstrating strengths through behavior, effort, and perseverance.
Positive Self-Image
(“Labels”)
In Positive Self-Image, students learn to define themselves through strengths, effort, and actions rather than labels or past mistakes. Facilitators help students reflect on how the way they carry themselves, speak, and behave communicates strengths to others. Processing focuses on building confidence and helping students recognize that projecting strengths opens doors to trust, leadership, and opportunity.
Future Ready Vision & Self-Efficacy
(“The Wall”)
Future Ready Vision & Self-Efficacy reinforces this skill by helping students connect strengths to future goals. Facilitators guide students to see how consistently demonstrating strengths—such as effort, responsibility, and perseverance—creates new opportunities over time. Processing emphasizes agency and belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes through intentional action.