So I have often heard great things about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality “tests” and wondered if there was anything to the hype. Once, about 5 years ago, I tried to take the test via a link a friend sent me, but I grew bored with the countless questions and just stopped before finishing. Until a couple of months ago, I’d not actually seen a results report from one of these tests, so I didn’t even know how detailed or general the “conclusions” or “assumptions” were in the analysis. A friend of mine, Miranda, who works as an IT manager for a consulting firm here in Houston began to grow weary of the mundane nature of daily job ins and outs and started to question her career choice. She went to a career counselor for advice on metering if she was in the right job and where to get information about matching her personality and skills to a career that might be more fulfilling. The councilor administered a Myers-Briggs exam to aid in the process. Once the results came back and she reviewed them, she told me they were startling accurate the test was the real deal. This got me curious. Curiosity killed the cat. So, last week, I started searching for an online exam I could take. Unfortunately, most of them are not free. I was curious, but not curious enough to pay for the test. I remembered my dear friend, Jason, telling me years ago about trying an Internet dating service that claimed to be better at matching people because of its use of the MBTI exam (eHarmony). Of course, I’m not looking for a dating service, but I am looking for a free test… what the hell. So I Google up the front page and low and behold, you can take the test… and more importantly, see the results… for free. I think some of the verbiage might be skewed more toward interpersonal relationship than career placement, but the underlying analysis is basically the same. Besides, since I just posted on people dealing with people, it fits. Anyway, here it is… unabridged. If you know me IRL well enough to know me, then I’m curious as to what your think of the accuracy of this rubbish… so let me know (once you stop laughing).
Introduction to Agreeableness
This section of your profile describes your interactions with other people. The ways we communicate our feelings, beliefs and ideas to others are influenced by our cultural backgrounds, the way we were raised, and sometimes which side of the bed we got up on this morning. Some of us are very mindful of others making decisions we hope will be in their best interests, even if it means sometimes neglecting our own interests. Others of us believe each person should be responsible for themselves, taking deep pride in our own character and independence with a firm belief that others are best served by doing the same. The following describes how you engage with others; illustrating the dimension of your personality that determines your independence or your desire to reach out and touch others in meaningful ways.
You are best described as:
USUALLY TAKING CARE OF OTHERS
Words that describe you:
Understanding
Unquestioning
Humane
Selfless
Gentle
Kindhearted
Gullible
Indulgent
A General Description of How You Interact with Others
Here’s one important truth about you: you have a tender heart. Yes, you know that others need to learn to take care of themselves. Yes, you know they need to accept the consequences of their foolish or bad behavior. And sometimes, even when your instinct is to help them, you will let them fend for themselves and let them suffer the consequences of their choices or circumstances.
But most of the time you are there to help when they need you. If they are in trouble, you offer compassion and go out of your way to be helpful. If they need someone who will listen, you are trustworthy and sympathetic. And you are direct with them; when they need advice or counsel, you offer it in a straightforward, direct manner, without beating around the bush.
You’re also smart enough to know that you cannot take good care of others if you fail to take good care of yourself, so you listen to your own wants and needs. If you’ve run out of sympathetic energy, you spend time restoring yourself. If you’ve ignored your own pain or frustration, you find a friend who will listen well, or go into your own private healing place and give yourself permission to focus on you.
But before long, you’re back at it with your friends, offering a sympathetic ear and compassion on which they learn to trust, also giving straightforward advice and counsel when they ask for it. You do know how to take care of yourself, but your genuine interest is in taking care of others.
Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You
Selfish people might be embarrassed by you. While they’re using their time and energy almost exclusively on themselves, they see you giving time to others, and your kindness puts them in a bad light.
Maybe they’ll think you’re a phony, that you use your altruism to get others indebted to you so they’ll then owe you a favor. Or perhaps they’ll accuse you, directly or behind your back, of focusing on the needs of others so no one ever focuses on your foibles or your genuine wounds.
All of these are false accusations; yours is a genuine compassion, because you truly have a tender heart. One criticism might be more substantial, though. People might notice when you let things get out of balance and spend so much time responding to others that you neglect your own needs.
Perhaps it’s true to some extent that you are more comfortable when the focus is on someone else’s needs than when you and your needs are front and center, and this may be a criticism worth paying attention to.
Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You
Positive responses to you are likely to far outweigh negative responses. For many people, your genuine kindness will be an example of a way to treat others and a way we want others to treat us. They will see in you the traits of compassion and sympathy which they might want to focus on in the development of their own character.
For those people you help you will be the friend they need, there at the right moment to help them when they’ve stepped into yet another thicket of pain or confusion. They will be grateful for your listening, for your straight talk when they need straight talk more than anything, and for the hand you extend so they can find their way, with your help, out of whatever tangle they’ve gotten themselves into.
Agreeableness: Modesty Introduction
While taking care of others and taking care of yourself, to what degree do you try to put yourself in the spotlight or keep your caring acts hidden? Are you out to make a name for yourself as “someone who really cares”, or are you content with the actions themselves and comfortable if no one recognizes you for your efforts? Is some desire for personal gain hidden in your acts of kindness? Are you or are you not a modest person?
Modesty: Your Personalized Description
When you set your mind to it, and especially when your heart’s in it, you listen carefully to the person in front of you and pay attention to their needs. With your closest friends or with a partner, what they say, what they want, whatever is on their minds matters to you. Which is where the part about “your mind” and “your heart” comes clear - you tell and show them you care.
If the person you’re listening to isn’t real close to you, you may not stay as focused on them. You may, sooner rather than later, turn the conversation to what’s on your mind, not theirs. Ah, but if your heart’s involved, it’s a different matter. When you deeply care for someone, your thoughts will follow your affection toward whatever your friend or partner is saying, and you listen very carefully, very patiently. In these moments, it’s not about who is getting to talk the most or whose needs are the focus of the conversation. You wrap your heart around whatever they have to share, and stay there, full of affection and attention.
The result is that because you listen and care, they will want to listen to and care for you as well. They trust your attention to be genuine; they can tell you’re not trying to find fault with them or take advantage of what they tell you for your personal gain: the relational see-saw game of putting them down to elevate your own ego is not one you play. No, it’s about them, not you. So they are willing to give back what they receive, and turn their attention to whatever it is you want or need to share.
But if your heart’s not in it, it can be a different deal. Your mind wanders off of their concerns: “Is this a good use of my time? Don’t they realize I’ve got my own life to take care of, not just theirs?” And you lose your focus on them. When your heart’s not in it conversations drift off as your mind turns its attention from them to you, from them to something you need to be doing, from them to someone or something that you care about.
Maybe the smartest thing you can do, or at least the first thing, is to be aware of this in yourself. You know how to take care of other people. But it works best for you when the person in front of you is someone you’ve got your heart as well as your mind invested in. With others who you don’t have deep feelings for it is difficult for you to keep your mind’s huge capacity on them. Once you’re aware of this, you may or may not choose to try to change it. But at least it will keep you from being confused about why you are or are not able to stay focused on the needs of this particular person.
Agreeableness: Generosity Introduction
Generosity is both attitude and action. It is an attitude of genuine interest in the well-being of others, and a genuine desire to help them. And generosity is action: taking the time, gathering the resources, delivering the goods. When it comes to taking care of others and taking care of yourself, are you a generous person? The following paragraphs describe what it is like to be more or less generous in your relationships with people you are close to.
Generosity: Your Personalized Description
“What’s mine is yours.” Okay, not everything that is “mine” is “yours” in your attitude and actions, but it moves in that direction. You are very generous. You make time when someone needs your help. You offer yourself even before you’re asked, or anticipate a situation and bring a gift or make a call before your friend even knows they need you. And if someone needs comforting because they’ve lost a friend or a game or their pride in themselves, there’s something about the way you wrap them up in your arms and your affections that relieves the pain and helps them move forward again.
You must have a plentiful soul, a sense of abundance within yourself from which you draw to give to others. Some people get this abundance from a rich growing up, where friends and family filled them with the “mother’s milk” of love and positive attention. Others dig deep on their own until they hit a vein of gold, something inside themselves that feels like who they really are, and this becomes the source of all that good stuff they give so generously. Wherever you got it, it’s clear that you got it in abundance. You have a plentiful soul.
Ah, but how do you keep it? How do you continue to fill up the center of yourself so you can continue to give so much of yourself away? You probably need quite a bit of time by yourself, for yourself. Whether you read or meditate or walk in the woods, talk to a close friend or talk to yourself about who you are and what you want, you probably need this kind of time to restore your sense of abundance. Maybe there are some people - probably just a few - who can give and give and never run dry. But you’re not one of them. So you take the time to refresh yourself; then you’re ready again to dole out your generosity.
Your partner and your friends are much the better for having you so close. When they need you, and sometimes before they know they need you, there you are: time, energy, resources, all you’ve got available for all they need. Both they and you want to be careful that they don’t take unnecessary advantage. Because you’re so generous, they might call on you when what they need to do is call on resources within themselves that they don’t use, or don’t even know they have. It’s not good for either of you if they use your generosity as a substitute for their own abilities. They never grow, and you get tired of being used, and the whole things gets messed up. But most of the time their need is genuine, and your generosity is precisely the right response. “What’s mine is yours” is what turns this difficult circumstance into yet another experience of deepening intimacy.
Agreeableness: Social Awareness Introduction
While taking care of others and taking care of yourself, to what extent do you let people know what you really think and feel? Do you hide your foibles and failures, or can you laugh at yourself in front of someone else? If you believe in someone, will you speak up on their behalf even when it might cost you? Do you see yourself as part of a social system of equals or do you see yourself as part of a social system where you need to game the system a bit - never quite sure what others want or what you are willing to give. For some people, it’s true that what you see is what you get; there’s nothing hidden about them. For others, what you see is what they want you to see, and they keep a good bit of who they are out of sight. The following paragraphs describe your level of social awareness.
Social Awareness: Your Personalized Description
Sometimes you just lay your cards on the table, whether it’s aces and kings or a busted hand. “Here’s what I’ve got.” And people can play off that however they wish to play. At other times, you’ve got your cards pressed hard against you chest and no one knows if you’re holding deuces or jacks. You hope the other person folds their hand so you don’t have to lay your cards on the table, face up. Interesting, aren’t you? Open with some things about yourself, closed tight about other things. Open with some people, closed like a drum with others.
Maybe it depends upon how comfortable you are with yourself in a particular situation. If the conversation is about stuff in you you’re not ashamed of or things you know a lot about, you’re out there: cards on the table. You can laugh at foibles you’ve come to terms with, stand up for beliefs you know the person in front of you shares, even stand up for a disreputable person if their bad reputation doesn’t splash on you. But if the conversation drifts toward the uncomfortable - something you’ve done but want to keep secret, a belief you hold that no one else buys into, a friend this particular crowd finds a bit obnoxious - then it’s cards against the chest, secrets clung to, reputation protected by silence.
Or maybe it depends upon how comfortable you are with the people in front of you. With your partner or a trusted friend you can exhale about your who you are; they already know your through and through and love you still and all. So put it out there, whatever it is: you at your worst, you at your best (which is sometimes harder to share, because we’re afraid of seeming “too full of” ourselves), your goofiest or wildest behavior or belief. You trust them to take this, as they take everything about you, and hold it carefully. But if the person in front of you is a stranger, or a proven “untrustworthy-with-private-information” sort, then you smile as if everything is just dandy thank you, let only minimal truth leak out of you, and leave them as much in the dark about your true self as you can. Maybe that’s it: you rock between secrecy and openness depending upon who is standing in front of you.
One word of caution. Even if it makes sense to be discreet with what you share, if you are inconsistent in your openness you may get to be known as two-faced: candid when it’s convenient, but capable of hiding out when it suits you. Some people might find you hard to trust if they come to see you like this. What to do about it? Well, you’ve got to be true to yourself, even if that means being inconsistent. But in the long run you’re probably better off getting more comfortable with whatever is inside you and expanding the circle of people with whom you share this. At least this gives you a direction in which to move rather than continuing to rock between open and closed, open and closed, open and closed.
Introduction to Openness
How firmly committed are you to the ideas and beliefs that govern your thinking and guide your behavior? Some people trust their current ideas and beliefs the way a climber trusts the mountain; whichever way they move, whether the climb is on a familiar trail or over new ground, there is something solid beneath them, something they count on.
For others, new ideas, new solutions to old problems, new beliefs that replace tired convictions are like welcome wind in their sails. They can hardly wait to tack in a new direction and ride a new idea through uncharted waters. If it’s new, it’s interesting, and they’re ready to explore.
The following paragraphs describe your responses to new ways of thinking and believing. How do you handle new information? Are you more like the climber on a familiar mountain or a sailor with a tiller in hand and a fresh breeze to propel you? How you integrate and process new information about the world and about others is a core aspect of your personality.
On the Openness Dimension you are:
CURIOUS
Words that describe you:
Original
Inventive
Thinker
Brave
Eccentric
Avant-Garde
Out-of-Touch
Unique
A General Description of How You Approach New Information and Experiences
You think like an artist. Or better, you SEE like an artist. While most people look at life’s straight lines, its height and depth and width, you’re bending the lines with your imagination and turning black and white into shades of blue and yellow. And in conversations at work or with your friends you want to ask, “Do you see what I see?” A few might, most don’t, but you’ve piqued everyone’s curiosity with your own original and inventive ways of thinking.
You can, if you must, think in conventional ways. But left on your own, you’ll usually opt for the eccentric or avant-garde; in fact you’re usually bored with what everyone else is comfortable with. You learn from reading, talking, watching people and other fauna and flora, and simply sitting in the soft chair of your mind and wondering how people would learn how to count if they could only use uneven numbers. You are out in front of conventional ideas, bravely originally defining true and false, right and wrong, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward Your Style of Thinking
You drive through life faster than the speed limit, and when you hit speed bumps, and you hit a lot of them with your mind distracted from the straight line ahead your wheels leave the ground.
For people who like life at a safer speed, you move too fast and lose touch too often with the solid ground they prefer, hence their discomfort with you. As odd as you might find this, many people feel safe in the shelter of the world they already know. They like the familiar. They breathe easily and sleep deeply knowing with more certainty how the world works. So although they might enjoy your company and be curious about your latest notion of how to count backwards by threes, they can only take you in small doses. And they wish you’d quit trying to push the boundaries of their personal and social cosmos.
Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You
Even those whom you make uncomfortable know, as just about everyone does, that you’re not a flake. You think well, and even your wildest fancies have their roots in the deep soil of sound ideas and tested beliefs. So even if some people don’t want to drive at high speed with you, they will respect you for your courage as an innovative and unconventional thinker. You lend color and imagination to what would otherwise be the straight black and white lines of their work world and social environments.
A few more daring people of your circle might even learn from you to take a risk they would otherwise never consider. As comfortable as they are on solid ground, they may be curious about what it would be like to go faster than the speed limit, or paint the living room two shades of blue, or question ideas or beliefs they’ve fingered like sacred beads since they were children.
After all, they watch you do it, and you seem no worse for the risks you take. In fact, your eyes are wider and your breath quicker, and maybe they can find at least a bit of this for themselves. To be certain, they don’t want their wheels to leave the ground, but maybe the next time they approach a speed bump they might just brace themselves and speed up just a little bit.
Openness: Information Processor Introduction
We’re reminded regularly that we live in “the information age”. With streams of email and phone messages and the vast sea of data on the internet it seems sometimes that we might drown in “TMI”, or “too much information.” How well do you do at taking all of this information in, making sense of it and using it wisely? This increased flow of information is also happening in our personal lives. If we talk honestly and listen carefully with our friends and our partners, there’s a lot of stuff to process: everyone we know wants us to listen to and understand their different opinions and beliefs and each of us brings our unique family history and our own records of personal successes and failures that make up the stories we want to tell to those we care about. The surge of feelings that result come at times like water from a fire hydrant.
Again, how well do you do at taking all this in, making sense of it and using it wisely? Put briefly, how effective are you as an Information Processor?
Information Processor: Your Personalized Description
You are very effective at processing information. This must mean that at least these two things are true of you: you love the rush of all this data, the flow of information coming at you day by day, and you have confidence in your ability to take it all in, sort it out and use it wisely. Because you love the rush and have the confidence, you are unafraid of the vast flow of information. It may surprise you to know that not everyone faces this onslaught with the pleasure you find in it. Some people are taken aback at the thought of another morning with dozens of emails, a Blackberry humming, instructions to submit a new proposal by noon, and a phone that seems to have no silent moment. But what they avoid you embrace, curious to find the pieces that fill out the current puzzle you are solving with the data rushing through your high-speed processor of a brain.
In the right job or the right relationship this ability will be a great asset. Your colleagues, your closest friends and your partner will appreciate that you take in what they tell you; you are someone who not only pays attention you remember what you have been told. And because you catch on quickly and analyze clearly, your responses to them will usually be on target in terms of what the information means and how it can be best used.
Two things to watch out for. First, don’t expect your colleagues and friends to process as much information as quickly as you do. You are so exceptional in this area that you won’t meet many people who are your match. So cut them some slack. Should you fail to do this you’ll have expectations of them they cannot meet and this will lead to frustration for them as well as for you. They’ll think you’re either arrogant or impatient or both, and you’ll consider them either slow-thinking or lazy when in fact they are closer to the norm than you just not in your exceptional category in this skill.
Second, if you live and work in a structure where you have to pass things to someone else - a work colleague or your children or a friend you’re collaborating with - be careful not to flood them with more than they can handle. Remember, you are able to take the rush of information and process it quickly while they are can handle less and will take more time. Don’t drown them with what you pass on.
On the whole, however, this quality is a real strength for you, so continue to develop ways to use it wisely on your own behalf and on behalf of those you work and live with. If you do this it will be an asset for everyone.
Openness: Inquisitive Introduction
People who raise children talk about a period in early childhood when every bit of new information is met with the question, “Why?” “You need to eat your carrots.” “Why, mommy?” Or, “Why is the sky blue?” Or, “Why did Grandpa die?” Many of the questions never do get answered, but most children grow out of their incessant curiosity and find their own answers, however reliable, to the simplest and the most profound questions. Most children. But some never lose this curiosity. Into adulthood they are addictively inquisitive. “When a fly lands on the ceiling does it come in flying upside down, or does it do a quick flip-turn just before landing?” Most of us would say, “Who cares?”, but for the truly curious such questions taunt them and haunt them. How about you? The following paragraphs describe the extent to which you are or are not inquisitive.
Inquisitive: Your Personalized Description
Sometimes you’re the one asking the questions. “But why don’t we put paragraph C ahead of paragraph B in the work proposal; I think it fits better and isn’t as repetitious”. “That’s the third time we’ve quarreled over the same issue without figuring out why. I think we should take a time out, then come back and ask why we keep making this same dumb choice”.
At other times you just leave well enough alone. The routine at work gets the job done even if it’s become boring, so don’t tamper with it, just do it again. You already know that the conversation with your partner will run its familiar route. You say A, your partner says B, you say C, and both of you already know X, Y and Z because it’s the inevitable destination when you get on this subject. Oh well, we’ll go through the drill again, no harm, no foul.
It’s like you’ve got an On and Off switch for your curiosity. When you’re On, you’re full of questions, dissatisfied with familiar routines, and act like an explorer who wants to find a new pathway through the familiar mountain range. When you’re Off, you could care less. No questions, just a dull “Uh-huh,” or a flat-toned “Fine with me”.
Do you know what flips this switch? It could be the subject matter. There are only a few things at work you’re really interested in; for the rest, just get the job done. On for the few, Off for the rest.
Or it could be the person in front of you. Dumb as a stump? Why bother pushing the envelope with him? But if the person always has an inventive response, you switch your curiosity to On, ask “Why” or “Why not,” and launch into one of those conversations that light up both of you.
A word of caution. If you find your switch in the Off position for an extended time you might want to take a look at your circumstance. It could be a sign of depression, something having nothing to do with work or your relationship that is disturbing you and needs more direct attention. Or it could be that the work situation or this particular relationship has run its course, at least in its current mode, and you need to step back, make a careful assessment and decide whether to plunge back in at a deeper level or just move on. The point is that the presence or absence of your curiosity could simply be a matter of whom or what you’re dealing with, or it could be something more important going on inside you. It’s wise to pay attention so you know where you’re coming from, and why.
Openness: Perceptiveness Introduction
How well do you see? Not with your eyes but with your instincts. Do you read people like an open book or is it easy to slide something past you as if your inner vision blinked? Some of us misread other people’s intentions while others of us get it right away; some of us consistently misjudge situations while others of us seem to know what’s happening even if it isn’t obvious. How well do you see? The following paragraphs describe your Perceptiveness.
Perceptiveness: Your Personalized Description
When P. T. Barnum said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time” he didn’t take you into account. You are nearly impossible to fool. You quickly pick up the difference between someone selling an honest product and a peddler hawking the current rendition of snake oil. You aren’t fooled by some photo opportunity posing as an important moment or your partner’s subtly twisted logic to explain why they arrived late to the restaurant or the credit-card bill didn’t get paid. Barnum didn’t get it; you are nobody’s fool.
Your quick mind and keen eye serve not only to protect you from cheats and swindlers but also help you to make the best of constructive moments. In a conversation with someone you care about you pick up the details as well as the main themes; you catch the whole range of what they’re trying to tell you and they come away with the gratification of having been truly heard. In the complex environment of your work circumstances you can juggle lots of information about a variety of projects and keep all the balls in play. Because you pay such close attention seldom do you drop an important bit of what’s going on. Even out among ‘em in the public sphere you seem to catch not only the obvious meaning of events but also the nuances, those subtle shades of true and false that help you make good judgments and keep the public snake-oil peddlers from slipping one by you.
Not very often, but once in a while you’ll get fooled. Maybe you weren’t paying attention or you didn’t think it was a moment of enough importance to keep your mind’s eye open; nevertheless you wound up with your pants around your ankles or some elixir in your glass that wasn’t as advertised. Learn from it. Even the most benign circumstances deserve your best attention so you can be of use to whomever you are attending to and so you can deny the next Barnum the satisfaction of fooling even almost-never-fooled you.
Introduction to Emotional Stability
We’re born with the capacity to feel deeply, so it’s as natural as breathing to experience a range of emotions. Fear and joy and sadness, anger and shame and disgust lie somewhere within each of us. Ah, but to what extent do we control these emotions, and to what extent do they control us? How you answer this question of how your emotions play out in your life has a great deal to do with your levels of personal satisfaction and with the character of your relationships with others. Do you manage your emotions well, keeping them in check with your thinking and your willpower, or are you someone who lets emotions have their way, giving in to the wild dance of feelings? The following paragraphs describe your emotional range in terms of being a person who is emotionally steady or someone who is responsive to whatever feelings swell up in you.
On Emotional Stability you are:
VERY RESPONSIVE
Words that describe you:
Emotional
Insightful
Perceptive
Sensitive
Self-conscious
A General Description of Your Reactivity
Each one of us encounters some hard times; we get caught off guard, or feel a sudden swell of emotion, whether from fear, joy, anger or sadness. Life is just like this sometimes. You know that because you are an emotional person. Some people go to great lengths to keep their emotions under wraps, to keep a stiff upper lip, to not let others know what emotions they are feeling. But that is not you. You embrace all of life’s emotions, both the joys and the turmoil that life brings our way.
When you’re having fun with a group of friends you don’t even try to contain your pleasure; you laugh hard and feel every moment of the conversation because of the joy that comes from the experience. You make very intense friendships; ones where all of the depth of emotions that you feel can be shared. Emotions are such an essential part of your everyday life. You may cry at intense movies or when watching a sad story on the evening news. You get angry, at others or at yourself, and you do not stifle it. Emotions drive your personality and your relationships - you simply are what you feel.
You experience both the highs and the lows more profoundly than most. And you usually relish the intensity of your emotions. For sure you enjoy the positive times. There are those times, though, when your feelings get the best of you and you wonder how you will manage the moment. But because you are so in tune with all of your emotions you will experience something very pleasant and will be able to engage with that positive feeling to again enjoy the wonderful intensity that life brings you.
Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You
If we were to ask you what negative reactions may result from your approach to your emotions, it would likely be that some people find it hard to deal with your strong feelings. They might think of you as emotionally “over the top,” and wish you would be more like those who are always emotionally composed and less prone to fully engage their emotions.
Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You
Despite any negative reactions others may have toward you, many people will be grateful for your strong emotions and your willingness to experience these emotions. They will appreciate the candor with which you express even your deepest feelings, feelings they themselves might want to express but may find difficult to share. Your openness will be an encouragement to them as well. Still others may find your intensity compelling; they feel emotionally flat, and you could be a burst of passion in their dull worlds, and an encouragement to them to “get with” their own feelings. Any or all of these people will be grateful for a friend who is so emotionally present.
Emotional Stability: Anger Management Introduction
Anger is as natural as love is, as much a part of what it means to be human as sadness or fear or joy. But for most people anger is a more troubling - perhaps the most troubling - of our emotions. Some people refuse to express anger directly; they hold it in, like holding their breath, until the moment passes and the anger slips out like a subtle sigh. Other people explode with the frequency of popcorn, littering their lives with necessary and unnecessary conflict. What about you? You get angry of course; everyone does. But how do you manage those angry moments? The following paragraphs describe your ability to manage your anger.
Anger Management: Your Personalized Description
You relate to your anger the same way most people relate to a bad memory: it’s there, you know it’s there, but you do whatever it takes not to pay attention to it. The sequence goes something like this: Try not to acknowledge it. Even if you acknowledge it, try not to show it. Even if you show it, try not to say it. Even if you say it, try not to lose control. You operate with something like this ascending scale of effort when it comes to controlling your anger. And “control” is the correct word; you want to control the existence, and if not the existence the expression, of anger before it controls you. Either you convinced yourself or someone told you that anger is bad or dangerous, or both. So you won’t go there. Sad? Okay, you can be sad. Or frightened. Or joyous. But not angry.
This strategy works quite well. Because you don’t let yourself get angry you seldom find yourself in those arguments, either the silly or the serious ones, which other people seem to live in as if it’s their natural habitat. You make your way through difficult discussions with your civility in tact, and despite levels of provocation that might get even mild-mannered people riled up you maintain your cool. This strategy with anger keeps your life uncluttered with the debris that emotional warfare always produces. You like it like this.
Most of your friends and maybe your partner will manage anger differently. A few of them might be exploders, tossing anger around like hand-grenades and creating the predictable relational wounds. Others may be less volatile but still more willing to shout out their anger in certain circumstances. Still others may concentrate their anger like a laser, confining it to certain situations but, when expressing it, doing so with lethal force. And all of them may have a hard time understanding your strategy with anger. “Come on, just let it out; show us how you feel”. “Don’t give us that calm-cool-and-collected routine; you must be boiling inside.” Because they cannot control their anger they will not trust your control of yours.
Two pieces of advice. First, it’s important to acknowledge your anger, if not to anyone else then at least to yourself. Remember, anger is as natural as breathing, as normal and healthy as love. Anger begins as that set of biological responses that help us deal with danger, whether in the form of a runaway train or a friend who betrays us. Anger helps us protect ourselves. So it’s down there somewhere, even in you. It may not boil or explode, but it’s there. So learn to listen for it, and to recognize it even when it disguises itself as indifference or that flattened out feeling that is often the prelude to depression. Become friends with your anger so it doesn’t have its unacknowledged way with you.
Second, don’t try to be like your friends or your partner by expressing anger in ways that are not natural to you. You’re not an exploder, so don’t fake explosions. You’re not a shouter, so don’t shout. Maybe the best rule of thumb for you is to wait out the high-heat of an angry encounter and then talk about what happened between you when everyone involved has cooled down. You’ll probably discover, to your friends’ surprise as well as your own, that you can’t remember what started the argument an hour after it’s over or if you remember it will seem trivial. On those occasions when the cause was significant, in a cooler conversation you may be able to work out the problem in ways that never succeed in an argument.
Don’t forget: anger is a tricky emotion for most people. So get to know your anger, and learn how to manage those tense moments in ways that best suit you.
Emotional Stability: Emotional Strength Introduction
Over twenty years ago Scott Peck began his best-selling book The Road Less Traveled with this profound statement of the obvious: “Life is difficult”. Two decades of learning later, we want to say, “Duh!! Of course it is”. Life comes at us at too fast a pace, just to get by we need to take on more than we can handle, stress outweighs pleasure by a ton - we know all these things because this is the river we swim in, the life we both choose and cannot avoid. And more often than we’d like, it’s difficult to make such a life work. So how do we handle the pressure? Do we manage the stress or does it control us? Are we able to cope beyond simple survival and actually experience our lives as happy and hopeful? Or do we collapse under the weight of it all, panic at the thought of what tomorrow morning brings, and look for some way out of what has become more than we can handle? The following paragraphs describe your emotional strength, which is your ability or lack of ability to deal with the fact that life is difficult.
Emotional Strength: Your Personalized Description
You can take it. More than that, you can get up on top of whatever the stress is, master the circumstances and actually enjoy your life. You have enormous emotional strength.
You may not always feel that this is so. Sometimes the river you swim in turns from a gentle current to white water littered with boulders and free-fall drops that seem impassable. And you find yourself in trouble, trying to keep your work life and your love life and whatever you define as your spiritual life from going under. But almost always you find a way. Even when the stress is acute you manage to keep your head about you, think clearly, control whatever emotions might want to carry you away and get through to calmer waters.
Maybe you got this inner strength from the environment you grew up in, where there was an abundance of affirmation and the encouragement to believe in yourself. Or maybe it was the opposite: you grew up in a tough neighborhood or a difficult family and you just learned how to make life work, exemplifying the adage that says “what doesn’t kill me can only make me stronger”. Wherever you got this emotional strength, you’ve used it in enough situations now to know it isn’t a come-and-go thing; it’s really the truth about you.
And it’s likely that your friends and your partner know this about you, too. They’ve seen what you can handle and they’re impressed. They know it isn’t arrogance that you exude; it’s the real thing, the strength you need to get you through. And they have probably learned to turn to you when they get into trouble. Seeing how you manage your own life, they call upon you when their lives go upside down. You may or may not want the job; after all, you’ve got your own stresses to deal with. Whether you accept or not, it’s likely that your friends and your partner will ask. How you respond will have a great deal to do with the character of the relationships between you. If they become too dependent upon you it will spoil that reciprocity we want in our best relationships. If you say “No” they might step away in disappointment and trust you less. It will be up to you - yet one more test of your emotional strength - to figure just how much of their load to shoulder and for how long, and how to keep your strength from overwhelming the mutual character of all great relationships.
One more thing. Whatever happens with your partner or most of your friends, you’ll want to have at least one friend who is as resilient as you, whose inner strength matches yours. With this person you can have the kind of candid interaction that helps both of you understand the situations you find yourself in; and when one of you hits that white water and is dragged toward the level-five drop, the other will be there to ride over the falls and if necessary to pull you out when you’re in over your head.
Emotional Stability: Ease with Others Introduction
Most of us have at least one or two friends or family members we know we can trust; many of us have a whole crowd of people we think of as reliable. But some people just aren’t sure; they don’t know if it’s foolish to trust even the person they feel closest too. After all, they’ve been let down before and what’s to keep it from happening again, even from someone close at hand? Many of us walk out the door into the world believing that there is fun and goodness and even love to find out there; we embrace the opportunity to explore new places with new or familiar friends. But some people just aren’t sure; the world is a dangerous place, and whatever fun or goodness or love there is out there is compromised by the danger of some people and the random acts of violence that no one is safe from. What about you? Do you leave your home every day with a buoyant expectation that you’ll find pleasure and kindness out there, or do you anticipate the worst and guard against it with prudence and caution and a very observant eye? The following paragraphs describe ways in which you view the world and the people in it as you venture forth.
Ease with Others: Your Personalized Description
When some people leave the house in the morning the thought they carry out the door is, “Be careful”. Not you. “Have a great time” is more like it. After all, there are people out there to meet who are interesting, even if they’re strangers to you. And who knows what new adventure awaits you at work or where you stop on the way home? As long as you open yourself to whatever comes, what you say to yourself walking out the door may describe what actually happens: you have a great time.
You’re not about to be duped, you aren’t careless. You know that life can be dangerous. Thoughtless drivers, irresponsible colleagues, truly dangerous thugs, ill people who don’t know that they’re spreading whatever they carry. You’re cautious enough to be on guard when you wade into contact with these people. But with you, it’s caution, not fear. You want to be careful around these people, but you’re not frightened of them, or of the world in general.
Because you are not afraid but expectant, you have more, and more varied, experiences than most other people. You’ll try new restaurants or weekend vacation spots, introduce yourself to strangers, even some of the strangest of them, and trust people even before they’ve earned your trust, just because you’re that kind of person. Some of your friends may admire and try to emulate your gregarious way with the world. But others, who are more motivated by fear than you are, will hold back and play it safe. This may create some friction between you and them, which you’ll have to talk through. The secret to success in these conversations is to understand and respect one another, even in your differences, and to realize the futility of trying to make the other person more like you.
Lucky you. You step into each day with the expectation that you’re going to meet people with whom you will have a good time, and more often than not that’s what the day provides. It’s great to live without unnecessary fear, and to enjoy life as much as you do. Again, lucky you.
Introduction to Conscientiousness
It’s a work day, breakfast is over, and you’re dressed and ready. So how will you approach the tasks at hand? Some people work best with a clear schedule, a set of priorities and a due date for every step in the process. Others are, shall we say, less regimented. They approach a task with as much imagination as organization, and with a willingness to bend and modify in order to exercise some urge of creativity.
How about you? Do you walk in a straight line toward a clear goal, or are you more likely to dance your way down whatever path will get you wherever it is you’re headed? The following paragraphs describe ways in which you approach the tasks life brings to you, and to what extent you are focused or flexible in how you choose to proceed.
Your approach toward your obligations is:
FOCUSED AND FLEXIBLE
Words that describe you:
Casual
Informal
Compliant
Reliable
Organized
Solid
Dependable
Uncommitted
Genuine
A General Description of How You Interact with Others
When you take on a task at work or at home, you are reliable; you get the job done. In an organized way, you define the goal, lay out a plan, figure how long the task will take, and get to work “solid and dependable you”.
But and this is important you’re not a slave to the plan. You’re committed to it, but not chained to it; the connection is more casual and informal. You know that sometimes “the best laid plans” fall off the tracks; when this happens, you clean up the train wreck and start over, undeterred.
Though not happening often, when plans change, you’re okay with it. In fact, sometimes you change the plan. It’s too nice of a Saturday to finish organizing the garage. Let’s go for a bike ride instead. True, the next rainy Saturday will likely find you back in the garage, but for now the work can wait.
What an interesting combination of qualities in you’re organized, but casual; solid, but compliant; and dependable, but informal. At home and at work, people know they can rely on you. You take great satisfaction in knowing that people think of you as disciplined and responsible, but you also know that you have something of a free spirit in you, and when this spirit moves you, off you go, following the impulse of the moment. You are rightly proud of your work ethic, but you also enjoy your willingness to lay the tools down, crank up the music and play like a child.
Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You
Some people live like Marines: duty-bound, disciplined and driven. To these people you might seem uncommitted; where they would never leave work for play or change plans in the middle of their life’s forced march, you let the circumstance sway you and move in a different direction, and they don’t understand.
Others live like kites on a string, attached by thin threads to the solid ground of responsibility and are blown about by every gust of impulse or imagination. To these people you might seem too cowardly, like you’ll flirt with your impulses but never give in fully, play on a Saturday but never blow of the entire work-week to “follow your bliss”.
While these Marines and kite-flyers might look down on you for your combination of focus and flexibility, others might be envious. They can’t free themselves from a sense that they’re not doing enough, or from the equally frustrating feeling that they’re not free enough.
And here you are with your accomplishments and your pleasures, getting the job done but also getting your hair blown back as you run with the wind. As far as these people are concerned, you’re lucky you’ve got the best of both of the worlds in which they feel they fail.
Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You
What a great life you have, and a great attitude to boot. You know when to buckle down and push ahead to get the job done, and you do it well. You know when to lay the tools of your trade aside, grab your kite and head for the meadow where you can run with the wind. Many people will see and admire in you this lovely combination of a person who can focus, but who is flexible enough to know when to let the spirit move you in some new and livelier direction.
It’s a life they aspire to, and they delight in seeing it played out in your life. They may ask your advice and turn you into a mentor of the full and balanced experience. They will want to know how you do it, what the costs are, and if you get frightened that you’re not working hard enough or playing often enough. They may make you think about your own life more than you have, so you can share it with those who want to emulate this balance between flexibility and focus. They may be correct lucky you!
Conscientiousness: Efficient Introduction
As you set out into your day, are you efficient in your use of time, or at the end of your day do look back and feel you wasted time? Do you get done those things you set out to do, or at the end of the day is there still a stack of unfinished business? Have you cleaned up yesterday’s mess or left as much of a mess at the end of the day as you found at the beginning? In a word, are you or are you not efficient?
Efficient: Your Personalized Description
Somewhere inside your brain someone hung a neon sign that reads A Place for Everything, and Everything in its Place. So as soon as you open your mind’s eye it lights up: the organizing principle you live by. If it belongs on the shelf and not in the closet, put it on the self. If the desk drawer is too full, sort stuff out and throw away what’s unnecessary so you can use the drawer properly. If the tires are out of line get them aligned and balanced. If the day’s work leaves that mess of a pile where you want to work tomorrow, straighten it up before you think about sleeping. That way when you close your eyes at night the sign turns off and you sleep like a baby.
And if you don’t get it done - if for some unforeseen reason there’s unfinished business from the day - somewhere around two thirty-seven in the morning your brain monitor flips the switch, the neon glows, and you’re awake: A Place for Everything, and Everything in its Place interrupts another night’s sleep. You can’t help it. You didn’t implant that sign; it seems to have been there when your brain was born as far as you can tell. That’s right, you’re one of those people whose mind requires order in order to function smoothly. Straight lines and clean desks and things done on schedule and, Ahhhh!, your brain can relax. But clutter and chaos and not on time, and your brain throws the switch and your eyes pop open. You can’t help it; it’s no more of a choice than the color of your eyes.
The good news for you is that yours is usually a gentle tyrant. Some people get so stressed by disorder they can’t function until everything is in place. You can function; even if some stuff got left undone and you lost a little sleep, your brain doesn’t trash you completely. You wake up, for sure; but you’ll probably get back to sleep. You worry through the weekend about what got left on the desk on Friday, but you still enjoy the hike or the evening out with friends. And - good for you! - you don’t let your unfinished business spoil it for the people you’re with. You may get distracted for a moment, but soon you return to the conversation. “Nothing, really. I was just thinking about something. So, how was your trip to...” And you’re back. If anyone suffers from what’s left undone, it’s you. You’re as gentle on others as your tyrant-brain is on you.
Conscientiousness: Leader Introduction
If you were to be in the perfect job where would you fit in the power hierarchy? Are you best suited to be at the front of the company-making tough decisions, pushing things forward and living with the consequences, or would you be better suited to be a worker, someone who has a clear job description, puts in their time and moves on to the next task? We all don’t have the Donald Trump instinct, far from it. And thank God for that, no?
Leader: Your Personalized Description
You can take it or leave it. If they need someone to be in charge and you know something about the lay of the land, you’ll raise your hand and point the way and others will line up behind you. Or you feel fine if someone else gets their hand up first; they probably know this issue better than you do, have some experience in making important decisions, and deserve to have you and others go in what they decide is the best direction to take. You can lead or follow, whichever place in the group you’re best suited for at the moment.
Maybe this flexibility about leadership suits you because you know yourself so well. You’ve been at it long enough to know what you’re good at and when you’re just upper-mediocre; you’ve got some clear strengths, but you also lack either the brains or the charisma or the vision to take charge in certain situations, and you are fine with that. If this is so, no wonder you’re comfortable either leading or following. But maybe it’s something else; maybe you’re stronger than you let on, and you just don’t want the responsibilities of leadership. You’re smart enough, people trust you, you know how to make decisions, but you just don’t want the job. Maybe you got burned in a leadership role and don’t want to risk it again, or maybe you’d rather go about the business that really interests you, even if it means leaving the group looking for the leader you refuse to be. When the opportunity to lead presents itself and you choose instead to follow, are you aware of what’s going on inside you that governs this decision? It’s probably worth exploring, so at least you know why you do what you do when you say Yes or No to leadership.
Another thing. Other people may like the fact that you are willing to follow even though you and they know you’re also capable of leading. They may want the leadership role at times, and will appreciate you deference. Or they may agree that someone else in the group is the more natural leader than either they or you are, and by deferring you actually help the group get the best leader available. But they may also get confused by you: one time you lead, and do it well; another time, when they may look to you for leadership, you stare at your shoes instead of raising your hand and they can’t figure out what to make of you. “Sometimes Yes, sometimes No. Which is it? Can we or can we not count on you as one of the leaders in this group?”
It might help, especially with those you live very close with or work with day by day, to talk candidly about you and them and leadership. If they understand how you approach roles it might keep them and you from confusion about your place in the crowd. And you could learn something about yourself as a leader from the feed-back they give you; they may think of you as better as a leader than you think of yourself, or - and wouldn’t this be awkward - they may advise you to keep your hand down because there are others who do the job more effectively. But isn’t it best to get as many perspectives as possible?
Conscientiousness: Planner Introduction
The need for order is one of those peculiar aspects of personality that makes or breaks a seemingly inordinate number of relationships. If you are orderly and have a place for everything few things likely get under your skin more than someone who puts your tools or your office supplies in the wrong place. And if you are the one who truly finds a clean desk to be a sign of a troubled mind you often really do get a bit irked with the person who feels a need to try and reform your disorderly ways. The Planner section will tell you what you probably already know - do you need order to feel comfortable. And while you may know where you already stand on this scale hopefully this will help you plan how to deal with those who differ from you, or perhaps more importantly how to deal with others who are the same as you.
Planner: Your Personalized Description
Around the same time each year you buy yourself a new planner, or sit down in front of a scheduling program and, when you can find an hour of the time between meetings and social events you organize dates that are already committed: monthly meetings of various work and volunteer organizations, the date of your cousin’s wedding, tentative vacations plans to ski for a weekend in January and take two weeks in the summer somewhere where it’s warm. Then week by week, or sometimes every two weeks, you keep the planner up to date with stuff that comes up at work, dates with friends, a concert you bought tickets for and need to find a friend to take, reminders of your parents’ anniversary, various birthdays and baby showers - the dedicated times that form the skeleton you hang the flesh and blood of your life on.
Maybe the person you’re closest to at work or your best friend or your partner is a little more organized than you are; they’ve written in lunch commitments two months in advance, every staff meeting at work, and notes to themselves to read for an evening or hike on a Saturday: they’ve lined out their lives on the pages of their planner. You’re more willing than they are to make up most of it as you go along; you plan enough not to miss the essential commitments, but then keep yourself flexible so you can respond in a day - or sometimes in an hour, or a few minutes - to something that comes up. And you’re comfortable with this much order combined with this much spontaneity. You don’t forget important things, but you allow yourself the breathing room to say Yes or No depending upon what comes walking toward you.
This doesn’t make you a flake, or mean that you’re irresponsible. In fact you are at your most efficient and productive, make your best contributions and find the greatest satisfaction precisely because you have just enough structure to know where you’re going and enough freedom to take your time with work or friends, respond when something unexpected comes along, and really concentrate on what’s in front of you without being distracted by some note in your calendar reminding you to run off to the stationary store because you’ll run out of supplies by a week from Friday.
People with more detailed plans might find you frustrating; when they can answer immediately Yes or No to an invitation weeks in advance just by checking their well-documented calendars, you have to say, “I’m not sure, let me get back to you”. But frankly, that’s the best response for you. You need the time, because you always want room to commit or not commit, depending upon what emerges as the next best use of your time and energy. This is in fact one of your great strengths; you know how to marshal your resources and allot time and energy in ways that keep you both productive and happy. Enough planning to know the general lay of the land, and enough flexibility to change directions or priorities: it works very well for you.
So at the same time next year you’ll buy your annual planner, find an hour sooner or later, and go through this ritual of ordering your life just enough to keep yourself on track but not so much that you give up the freedom to say Yes to something new that seems in the moment to be exactly what you want to do.
Introduction to Extraversion
Some days you want to hang out by yourself, not answer the phone, and make the world go away. The next day you e-mail everyone, schedule lunch with a friend, and try to find an evening gathering to take part in. It may be the phases of the moon, or something you ate; some days are just like that. In actuality, your desire to be with others or to be alone reflects something deep in your personality. Some of us are more comfortable by ourselves or with one or two friends, while others of us crave the crowd and can’t stand it when the house is empty or the phone doesn’t ring. The following paragraphs describe your fundamental desires about being with other people; whether you are generally an outgoing person or more reserved, if you seek adventures with others, if you tend toward assertiveness or kindness.
When it comes to Extraversion you are:
OUTGOING
Words that describe you:
Friendly
Gregarious
Full of Life
Unreserved
Kindhearted
Talkative
Emotional
Spontaneous
Vigorous
A General Description of How You Interact with Others
People light you up. In conversations, planning meetings or almost any social situation, you bring your energy and your friendly, outgoing personality into these engagements with other people, and you come away pumped up. You can hardly wait for the next event, as long as other people will be there. And you’re good at it.
You know how to communicate. You listen well, the first rule of good communication, and then, when it’s your turn, you talk vigorously and with animation; in your uninhibited way you give all that you’ve got to the encounter.
In situations where you feel very safe, when you know and trust the people you’re with, you can be very kindhearted and unrestrained. You let your affection for and pleasure in being with others flow freely. You’re wide open And when you get back this same kind of unrestrained warmth, you are deeply satisfied. Because you are so friendly and full of life, these are among your favorite moments.
Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You
As much as you like being with other people, not everyone will like being with you. Hard to believe, but your gregarious and warm manner is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people are more cautious than you in personal encounters; others think the work place should be more formal, more impersonal than is comfortable for you. Still others, who may want more of the spotlight, will find you too much to compete with once you get your lively and outgoing self in motion.
Here’s another word of caution. You’ve been at this warm and open way of relating for a while, but for some people it’s a brand new experience. They may be protecting something inside themselves, some fear or guilt or shame, or some private part of their story that they’re not yet ready to share. Your openness might threaten them, and they’ll take a step back and be reluctant the next time to engage you in the kind of exchange you find so easy and satisfying but they find so dangerous.
Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You
Many people, most probably, will be glad to be in the room you’re in. At work you make the environment livelier and the banter more interesting, so the time moves swiftly and the experience is a happier one. At home you keep everyone connected because you engage each of them in the conversational action, and as a result they are more connected as well with one another. You make home a warmer and more interesting place for everyone who lives there.
You might also be helpful to some people. There are those who need to talk but aren’t very good at it. They don’t know how to begin the kind of conversation that would allow them to share whatever is in their personal stories that they’d like or need to talk about. Yo
