On Self-Awareness: Your Personality
Understanding your personality is like having a roadmap to navigate the world.
Let's dive into the fascinating world of your personality. This is your personal operating system; it influences how you interact with the world, process information, and make decisions. Understanding your personality is like having a roadmap to navigate the complexities of your inner world.
Personality 101: The Basics
Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It's shaped by genetics and environmental factors, and remains consistent throughout life. However, this doesn't mean it's unchangeable. With awareness and effort, you can tweak aspects of your personality to better align with your goals and values.
Tools for Self-Discovery: Personality Assessments
To get a handle on your personality, consider taking a personality assessment. There are countless out there, but we’ll focus on common assessments that have scientific credibility and reliability:
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): this tool categorizes personalities into 16 types based on preferences in four areas: where you focus your attention (Extroversion or Introversion), how you take in information (Sensing or Intuition), how you make decisions (Thinking or Feeling), and how you deal with the world (Judging or Perceiving).
The Big Five Personality Traits: this model assesses personalities based on five broad dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (often remembered by the acronym OCEAN).
The Predictive Index Assessment: this model applies and investigates your personality to measure underlying traits and abilities across a wide spectrum of characteristics.
The DiSC Assessment: this model describes four primary personality profiles across Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness and articulates how your personality affects your collaborations with others.
What These Tests Can Tell You (And What They Can't)
Personality tests can provide valuable insights into your preferences and tendencies. They can help you understand why certain tasks energize you and others drain you, why you click with certain people and clash with others, and how you can leverage your natural strengths in your career.
However, remember that these tests have their limitations. They can't capture the full complexity of who you are, and they certainly don't dictate your future potential. Use them as a starting point for self-exploration, not as definitive labels.
Why Understanding Your Personality Makes a Difference
While knowing your personality type is important, understanding the impact of your personality is critical:
Understanding Your “Why”
Your personality is the key for why you think, feel, and act a certain way. Understanding this motivation is important, especially when other people around you may not think, feel, or act the same way. Once you unlock this motivation – your “why” – you have a foundational reference on how you respond in specific situations.
Determining Your “How”
Once you understand your “why”, it can be applied in day-to-day situations to evaluate the path to achieving more than what you have today. These insights are applicable to every situation in your life and will help you navigate the world around you. Common questions we hear: “how can I find a career I’m passionate about?”, “how can I motivate myself?”, “how can I better communicate my needs?”, or “how do I make better decisions for myself?” can be answered with your “why” and “how”.
Predicting Your Behavior
Understanding your personality within a frame of a specific situation will allow you to predict your behavior in that situation. This ability is important, as you identify common behaviors or habits associated with situation. You can learn how to mitigate, stop, influence, or enhance those behaviors rather than allowing them to run on autopilot.
Improving Your Happiness
While you may not have control over certain aspects of your personality, you do have control over your environment, schedule, reactions, and how you spend your time. Understanding your personality provides insight into what makes you comfortable or anxious, based on your personal preferences.
Collaborating With Others
Your personality is, well, personal, and understanding it unlocks knowledge about you. However, an additional benefit of understanding your personality is insight into how you interact and collaborate with other personalities. You are provided the language to communicate your preferences, how you make decisions, how you take in or process information, and more. A key part of self-awareness: ‘other’-awareness.
Evaluating and Evolving
As you observe your behaviors, actions, choices, responses, and the interactions you have with others, you will have a moment of clarity that begins to explain what you need and how you best function. This empowers evaluation and evolution of your personality, enabling you to make the changes you need for the better.
Reflecting on Your Personality Assessment Results
After taking a personality test, spend some time reflecting on the results:
Do they resonate with you? If so, how? If not, what is the conflict?
Can you think of real-life examples that demonstrate these traits?
How might these traits impact your career choices and work style?
The goal here isn't to put yourself in a box, but to gain a deeper understanding of your natural inclinations and how you can work with them. It's about leveraging your innate tendencies in order to carve out a fulfilling career path and build meaningful relationships.
Action Plan: Your Personality
Understanding your personality - what makes you you - requires ongoing assessment, reflection, and action. The steps for action are below, or you can utilize The Self-Awareness Workbook from Notes from the Field. Simply download this document, review the examples provided, and follow the path outlined to better understand your personality.
Step One: Self-Assessment and Reflection
Task: Take one or more of the personality assessments and receive the results
Objective: Gain a basic understanding of your personality traits
Step Two: Deep Dive into Personality Test Results
Task: Analyze and reflect on the test results. Identify which aspects feel accurate and which don’t
Objective: Understand the nuance of your personality and how it aligns with your self-perception
Step Three: Journaling for Self-Discovery
Task: Start a weekly journal. Document thoughts, feelings, reactions to events, and how these might relate to your personality
Objective: Recognize patterns in behavioral and emotional responses
Step Four: Seek Feedback from Trusted Sources
Task: Ask friends, family, or colleagues for feedback on your personality traits and behaviors
Objective: Gain external perspectives on your personality
Step Five: Evaluate Alignment with Personal and Professional Life
Task: Reflect on how your personality traits impact your personal relationships, career choices, and work performance
Objective: Assess the congruence between your personality and your life choices
Step Six: Identify Specific Personality Traits
Task: Based on your self-assessment and feedback, identify areas for personal growth
Objective: Develop a plan to enhance or mitigate specific personality traits, influencing your day-to-day behavior
Step Seven: Engage in Experiential Learning
Task: Participate in new activities that challenge different aspects of your personality
Objective: Understand how you adapt to new situations and what you can learn about yourself
Ongoing: Regular Review and Adaptation
Task: Regularly review your progress in understanding and developing your personality
Objective: Ensure continuous personal growth and adaptation of your self-awareness strategies
If Needed: Seek Professional Guidance
Task: Consider consulting with a coach, mentor, or therapist for deeper insights
Objective: Gain professional guidance to further explore and understand your personality
More Resources on Your Personality
Want to dive deeper into this topic? We recommend:
Read
“Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type” by Isabel Briggs Myers and Peter B. Myers
This book, written by the co-creator of the MBTI, is essential for anyone interested in understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It explains the theory behind the MBTI, details each of the 16 personality types, and discusses the practical applications of understanding personality differences. It's an authoritative guide on MBTI and a great starting point for exploring personality types.
"Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery" by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
While this book focuses on the Enneagram system of personality, it offers a comprehensive look at different personality types, which can be a valuable complement to the MBTI and Big Five traits. It provides deep insights into the strengths, weaknesses, and motivations of each personality type in the Enneagram system.
"The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing" by Merve Emre
This book provides an intriguing history of the MBTI, from its inception to its widespread use. It's a well-researched narrative that not only gives context to the MBTI but also critically examines the business of personality testing. While it doesn't delve deeply into explaining the types themselves, it offers a fascinating look at the test's impact on culture and society.
Listen
This personal development podcast focuses on exploring the daily actions that determine the results we gain in our lives. What you’ll get: simple strategies to implement in your life to start moving the needle for your personal self.
How to Be a Better Human: a TED Podcast
A weekly podcast to uncover sharp insights and clear takeaways on how you can be a better human.
Take Action
The Self-Awareness Playbook by Notes from the Field
Ready to deepen your self-awareness? Engage with the modules outlined in the playbook to understand, develop, and track your own self-awareness.
The Self-Awareness Journal by Notes from the Field
Self-awareness is a continuous journey. Our weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual journal templates are available in Notion to deepen the connection and evolve your own self-awareness.
As you explore your personality, what did you find useful? What insights did you discover? Where do you need additional help? Let us know - leave a comment below.
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