Artistic strengths At age 21, Henri Matisse was a sickly and often depressed lawyer’s clerk. When his mother gave him a box of paints to cheer him up one day, he felt the darkness lift and his energy surge. He began to fill his days with painting and drawing and went on to art school and a life as one of the world’s great painters. For Matisse, doing art felt like “a comfortable armchair.” That is how exercising our strengths often feels.
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