Today in a sudden burst of thought and curiousity, I decided to a) look up, and b) do a personality test on the internet. I was piqued by someone's comment saying that I might be an 'introvert'. I had never thought of the possibility before. I have always assumed that because I talk so much, it meant I am an extrovert.
I googled 'Personality Test' and came up with the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. It measures your personality from four aspects: rational, idealist, artisan and guardian. And guess what? One of my result scores are 'slightly expressed introvert'. I have yet to find out what that means. More of what it said about me (Counselor Idealist type):
*'Counselors focus on human potentials, think in terms of ethical values, and come easily to decisions.' -Some decisions, yes, but not on clothes!
*'The small number of this type (little more than 2 percent) is regrettable, since Counselors have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their companions.'-Description is pretty true, but surely it's more than 2 percent. I find that these 'small percentage' statistics tend to be exaggerated, such as in online IQ tests that usually give people a higher than average score for the feel good factor it brings them.
*'Although Counselors tend to be private, sensitive people, and are not generally visible leaders, they nevertheless work quite intensely with those close to them, quietly exerting their influence behind the scenes with their families, friends, and colleagues.'-'Private' is not what I would call myself, but my dad would definitely agree with 'sensitive'!
*'Counselors have strong empathic abilities and can become aware of another's emotions or intentions -- good or evil -- even before that person is conscious of them. This "mind-reading" can take the form of feeling the hidden distress or illnesses of others to an extent which is difficult for other types to comprehend.'-Although I have not yet experienced this, it would be supercool to have that ability, don't you think?
*'Such supernormal intuition is found frequently in the Counselor, and can extend to people, things, and often events, taking the form of visions, episodes of foreknowledge, premonitions, auditory and visual images of things to come, as well as uncanny communications with certain individuals at a distance.'-Hmm...now this part sounds a little unscientific, I'm not sure how much I subscribe to the 'communications between distant individuals' theory.
*All quotes taken from http://keirsey.com
Why don't you try one of these tests and find out what there really is hidden in your personality? One part of the website that offered this description has a profound point to make (If you're lazy, just read the bold points):
' The point of this book is that people are different from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them. Nor is there any reason to change them, because the differences are probably good, not bad.
People are different in fundamental ways. They want different things; they have different motives, purposes, aims, values, needs, drives, impulses, urges. Nothing is more fundamental than that. They believe differently: they think, cognize, conceptualize, perceive, understand, comprehend, and cogitate differently. And of course, manners of acting and emoting, governed as they are by wants and beliefs, follow suit and differ radically among people.
Differences abound and are not at all difficult to see, if one looks. And it is precisely these variations in behavior and attitude that trigger in each of us a common response: Seeing others around us differing from us, we conclude that these differences in individual behavior are but temporary manifestations of madness, badness, stupidity, or sickness. In other words, we rather naturally account for variations in the behavior of others in terms of flaw and afflictions. Our job, at least for those near us, would seem to be to correct these flaws. Our Pygmalion project, then, is to make all those near us just like us.
Fortunately, this project is impossible. To sculpt the other into our own likeness fails before it begins. People can't change form no matter how much and in what manner we require them to. Form is inherent, ingrained, indelible. Ask a snake to swallow itself. Ask a person to change form--think or want differently--and you ask the impossible, for it is the thinking and wanting that is required to change the thinking and wanting. Form cannot be self-changing.
Of course, some change is possible, but it is a twisting and distortion of underlying form. Remove the fangs of a lion and behold a toothless lion, not a domestic cat. Our attempts to change spouse, offspring, or others can result in change, but the result is a scar and not a transformation. '
-Copyright © 1998 David Keirsey, All rights reserved
There's some serious truth in there about appreciating and savouring the vastly different types of personalities that God has put in mankind. It isn't something that can be taught or trained, it goes much deeper than that. And that's what I love about God; He isn't trying to change who we are. He has created us with our unique likes and dislikes, gifts and talents and personality. What He wants to do is to 'transform us from glory to glory' (2 Cor 3:18).
Only then can we truly be everything He has made us to be, making full use of our personalities and unique characteristics to glorify him.
1 comment:
Well said.
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