Personality tests - Who am I?
I wonder how many others go through their life following the rules and well worn paths of culture and then wake up one day and say, "How did I get here?" Who I was acting like, was not me. I piled on a burden of imagined responsibility (above and beyond what I was acting responsible for) and self-imposed conformity that was slowly strangling the true me. I feel a bit young for a mid-life crisis. Isn't that something you go through after a divorce or when you are an empty-nester? I'm 37, happily married, and have a four-year-old. So, what the mess?
Maybe there is a shift in the culture. You know the "follow your arrow wherever it goes," "do more of what makes you happy." Is it millennial culture? I'll be honest I'm not in love with the fact that I lumped in with millennials. I was born in 1981, my parents were far from helicopters - I mean, I was a latch key kid for pete's sake! Brace yourselves - I didn't have a cell phone until I was 21! This is not common millennial practice. Now, I am a child of the 90s prosperity era where people's earnings kept going up, up, up. Silly me, I thought the same would happen for me. So, maybe that is a little millennial.
I taught for 8 years in Virginia and loved my time there, and then when I moved to Florida, it was a whole different ball game. I was accustomed to autonomy and that my voice and thoughts mattered - here, not so much. So, I was miserable. I guess this the beginning of the rising action in this story. I was faced with a huge decision - push through a life-sucking situation or step into the complete unknown (and seemingly very irresponsible) direction and quit...mid-year. Well, I chose the later and I'm all the better for it because it set me off on figuring out my true self.
In addition to professional transformation journey I am on, my personal one was paralleling in heartbreaking ways. Back in 2011, my husband and I started the process to adopt from Ethiopia. It was a distinct call and direction in which God was leading. In the years that followed, we decided to try for a biological child, and along came Liv! However as our wait-time with our adoption continued to lengthen, we once again looked to having a biological child but this time, it didn't work and hasn't worked for nearly 4 years. Despite many doctors appointments and tests, we have not had a healthy pregnancy. In November of 2017 we found out we were pregnant only to soon learn it was an ectopic pregnancy where I lost the baby. In January of 2018, Ethiopia announced that they were closing their borders to international adoption. It was a one-two punch for sure.
I began to take on an identity that was not what God intended. It persisted even though I had a relationship with Christ. Through a lot of digging, I found that my lie that I wore like a heavy cloak was that God doesn't really see me. I'm overlooked and forgotten.
Through all of this, God has been peeling back the layers of things that are not me while simultaneously giving me a clearer picture of Him and His goodness and wooing me to combat the lies.
Recently I've been digging through a bunch of personality and broader self-discovery assessments with the idea in mind of the more I understand my tendencies, passions, and values the better my life will fit and the more successful I will feel. It's giving me a clearer path forward.
DiSC©
Enneagram®
The Enneagram® is a whole other process. It is more about a slow unveiling. Although they offer online assessments like a typical personality test, it is much different. I did, however, take an online test from the Ennegram Insitute®. My highest score was type 7, the enthusiast, followed by a 2nd place tie of type 4, the inividualist, and type 3, the achiever. Generally, Sevens are excitable, spontaneous, curious, optimistic, eager, outgoing, future-oriented, adventurous, variety-seeking, quick, and talkative. In brief, Sevens want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to have a wide variety of interesting, fun experiences and choices, to keep their options open, to avoid missing out on anything worthwhile, to have more pleasure, to keep themselves excited and occupied, and to avoid and discharge pain. Sevens do not want to feel trapped or limited by having few choices or options, to be bored or guilty, to let their anxieties arise for long, or to be slowed down.
StrengthsFinder
In 1998, the "father of Strengths Psychology," Don Clifton, developed the StrengthsFinder assessment for indviduals to identify their top 5 of the 34 telent themes. The theory is play to your strengths, develop these and you will experience more success and satisfaction than if you focus on correcting your weaknesses. After reading StregthFinder 2.0 and taking the online assessment, here is what I found:
1. Futuristic- Love to dream and peer over the horizon, seek inspiration, like connecting with other dreamers, want a role where I can contribute towards shaping the future and to be surrounded by people who can and want to put my visions into action. I use this talent in coaching others.
2. Activator- action based, like a level of autonomy, can get people out of the weeds and into action, can energize plans of others
3. Relator- derive a lot of pleasure and strength from close, authentic, sharpening relationships. I am friendly and can easily make friends and socialize with a variety of people, but I hone in on a small group of "ride or dies." Need friendship- interaction while working, a social culture. I care far more about character than status or title in a person. I am fed by time with friends, without it I feel dry. I like feeling valued.
4. Communication- (this is where me as a writer comes in). I bring ideas to life in story, this also manifests in a desire for clear communication from others, I'm good at capturing people's attention, very strong in social settings, also manifests in a strong need to be heard (I have really good ideas).
5. Maximizer-I shoot high, desire the amazing and awe-inspiring and believe a lot is possible. I want to spend time with people who appreciate my strengths. I like roles where I am helping people succeed or work towards something. I want to use my gifts to the benefit of something larger. Like partnership and teams where I can delegate tasks in areas that aren't my strength.
Five Fold Ministry
The five-fold ministry concept comes from Ephesians 4:11 where it refers to five offices in the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Online you can find descriptions and online assessments to identify which category you most allign. I was introduced to the five-fold ministry by the former pastor of my college church, J.R. Wooward (http://jrwoodward.net/about/). Here is what I found after taking my test:
The Apostle (Dream Awakener)
Dear Apostle and Dream Awakener. Your contribution to the ministry of God is to awaken people to their God designed potential. You are instrumental in people discovering who they really are, and walking alongside them to get there. You have a unique gifting that is essential to the ministry of God.
About You
You are able to see the potential in others giftings before they do
You are able to see clearly what needs to be done
You are opinionated for what people need to do in their own life.
You love to see things happen and get frustrated when they don’t.
You come alive when you are able to help others achieve something
You are able to make other people’s journey your own
You don’t mind bending the rules and coloring outside the lines.
You take joy in people’s victories and share in their struggles.
You are not afraid to share truth about a situation even if it costs you
Without you people don’t know what they are capable of
people don’t have someone to come alongside them and grow them
things stay the same. People remain unchanged.
The Vision for the Apostolic
Every person can know who they really are. Every person can know their potential in God. Every person can become who they were created to be.
As you dream, pray and plan, ask yourselves these questions:
How do we best accomplish helping people discover who they really are in Christ?
How can we best awaken people to their potential?
How do we help, walk alongside, and direct people to become who they were created to be?
Triperspectival Leadership
Triperspectivalism is a way to look at the world from multiple perspectives. Triperspectival Leadership is rooted in the fact that throughout history, God has always utilized three offices from which to lead His people: Prophet, Priest and King. The Prophet proclaimed the truth of God to the people. The Priest cared for the people by mediating reconciliation between God and people. The King was to order and advance God’s rule among his people so that they would be a signpost of God’s reign to the World. Jesus, of course, was all three in perfection. I most closely align with the priest, which means I am more existential and experience based, and loves on people in order to bring them to God's truth.
Myers-Briggs
I recently took a free Myers-Briggs style test, and although all tests of this nature are slightly different, I feel like the results are consistent to what I have seen before. According to this test, I am an ENFJ (extrovert, intuitive, feeling, judging). This test also had a bonus element on the end which indicates how confident we are in our abilities and mine was labeled "turbulent," which I'm guessing means more insecure. I enjoyed how this particular test takes each combination and give it a title, and mine is the protagonist. I have to admit, I throughly enjoy this literary themed title;) The protagonist is described as a "passionate altruist," which feels very true for me. The weakness that really resonated was that the protagonist (or at least this one) has fluctuating self-esteem, and, yes, at times I truly believe I have what it takes and others I am flooded by the thought, "who am I kidding?" Another interesting insight that came from reading the results of the assessment was that in the work place, I am flexible and able to be subordinate but thrive in managing others.
Spiritual Gift Test
In addition to the 5 gifts mentioned in Ephensians 4:11, Romans 12 and 1 Corintihians 12 also list a variety of gifts believers possess with the purpose of using the gifts for God's glory. At different points in my life when I have taken these gifts, they have changed slightly but some are always on the list, like my #1, Discernment. Like most, there are gifts that are not on this list that I wish were, but thankfully God created a diverse body to flesh out all of the possible gifts and when we work together, complimenting one another, we see the church function as God inteneded. My top gifts are Discernment, Word of Knowledge, Exhortation, Leadership, and Faith, which reinforces what I've been discovering through all of the other tests above.
5 Love Languages
I threw this in here to really round things out. The book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman came out in 1995 and took the Christian world by storm. The book outlines five ways to express and experience love that Chapman calls "love languages": receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), and physical touch.
Even though the five love languages are mostly how you receive love from your mate, it does offer a lot of insight in how people feel cared for my close friends and even possibly colleagues. Similar to the spiritual gifts test, my secondary love language has changed in different seasons of my life, but my primary one remains the same - words of encouragement. At this point in my life, my secondary gift is quality time. It's so beneficial to know the love languages of not only your mate, but also close friends so you can show them love and encouragement in the way they most receive it.
A New Name
So what now is my new name? Not the one I've taken on out of responsibility and cultural pressure. Moving forward I'm going to tackling the lies, labels and untruths I've allowed myself to absorb and actively combat this with who God says I am.
The question I keep asking is, "who was I before anyone told me what I had to be?" The vision that pops in my mind is me as a 3 year old. It's not too hard to visualize the blond haired-blue eyed spunky girl because I have one at home. After my older brother's 5th birthday party, my dad video taped the family at home. The video captured each of our personalities - my dad -goofy and making us all laugh, my mom - dancing and full of affection, JJ- wanting the limelight to share his thoughts with a captive audience, Jesse - fun-loving and full of personality. Then, there is me. I asked my dad to capture my daydream come to life of being a great circus aerialist. The crowds were cheering and there was magic and excitement all around. However, when it came to doing the actual aerial feat, I was nervous and in need of support and encouragement.
A lot of life happened between then and now, and now I look at what I believed about myself all of these years and question its validity. Who was I before anyone told me who I had to be?
For all of my years in walking with Christ, I have identified with certain verses and some continuously circle around and around again. The first is Phillipians 4:12-14. Here Paul speaks of how God has shown him how to live with both a lot and a little and been with him to give him strength in difficulty. The next is James 1:2-12 where James, the half-brother of Jesus exhorts believers to consider it joy when you suffer and the suffering develops your faith and matures you. While this verses are 100% true and God's word, I find that I need a new verse.
I have pushed and persevered for years and no doubt there will be seasons where this will happen again, but now in faith I pray I soar. I'm praying God uses my process of discovery to give me a new name, new verse, a new song to sing.
Maybe there is a shift in the culture. You know the "follow your arrow wherever it goes," "do more of what makes you happy." Is it millennial culture? I'll be honest I'm not in love with the fact that I lumped in with millennials. I was born in 1981, my parents were far from helicopters - I mean, I was a latch key kid for pete's sake! Brace yourselves - I didn't have a cell phone until I was 21! This is not common millennial practice. Now, I am a child of the 90s prosperity era where people's earnings kept going up, up, up. Silly me, I thought the same would happen for me. So, maybe that is a little millennial.
I taught for 8 years in Virginia and loved my time there, and then when I moved to Florida, it was a whole different ball game. I was accustomed to autonomy and that my voice and thoughts mattered - here, not so much. So, I was miserable. I guess this the beginning of the rising action in this story. I was faced with a huge decision - push through a life-sucking situation or step into the complete unknown (and seemingly very irresponsible) direction and quit...mid-year. Well, I chose the later and I'm all the better for it because it set me off on figuring out my true self.
In addition to professional transformation journey I am on, my personal one was paralleling in heartbreaking ways. Back in 2011, my husband and I started the process to adopt from Ethiopia. It was a distinct call and direction in which God was leading. In the years that followed, we decided to try for a biological child, and along came Liv! However as our wait-time with our adoption continued to lengthen, we once again looked to having a biological child but this time, it didn't work and hasn't worked for nearly 4 years. Despite many doctors appointments and tests, we have not had a healthy pregnancy. In November of 2017 we found out we were pregnant only to soon learn it was an ectopic pregnancy where I lost the baby. In January of 2018, Ethiopia announced that they were closing their borders to international adoption. It was a one-two punch for sure.
I began to take on an identity that was not what God intended. It persisted even though I had a relationship with Christ. Through a lot of digging, I found that my lie that I wore like a heavy cloak was that God doesn't really see me. I'm overlooked and forgotten.
Through all of this, God has been peeling back the layers of things that are not me while simultaneously giving me a clearer picture of Him and His goodness and wooing me to combat the lies.
Recently I've been digging through a bunch of personality and broader self-discovery assessments with the idea in mind of the more I understand my tendencies, passions, and values the better my life will fit and the more successful I will feel. It's giving me a clearer path forward.
DiSC©
Enneagram®
The Enneagram® is a whole other process. It is more about a slow unveiling. Although they offer online assessments like a typical personality test, it is much different. I did, however, take an online test from the Ennegram Insitute®. My highest score was type 7, the enthusiast, followed by a 2nd place tie of type 4, the inividualist, and type 3, the achiever. Generally, Sevens are excitable, spontaneous, curious, optimistic, eager, outgoing, future-oriented, adventurous, variety-seeking, quick, and talkative. In brief, Sevens want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to have a wide variety of interesting, fun experiences and choices, to keep their options open, to avoid missing out on anything worthwhile, to have more pleasure, to keep themselves excited and occupied, and to avoid and discharge pain. Sevens do not want to feel trapped or limited by having few choices or options, to be bored or guilty, to let their anxieties arise for long, or to be slowed down.
StrengthsFinder
In 1998, the "father of Strengths Psychology," Don Clifton, developed the StrengthsFinder assessment for indviduals to identify their top 5 of the 34 telent themes. The theory is play to your strengths, develop these and you will experience more success and satisfaction than if you focus on correcting your weaknesses. After reading StregthFinder 2.0 and taking the online assessment, here is what I found:
1. Futuristic- Love to dream and peer over the horizon, seek inspiration, like connecting with other dreamers, want a role where I can contribute towards shaping the future and to be surrounded by people who can and want to put my visions into action. I use this talent in coaching others.
2. Activator- action based, like a level of autonomy, can get people out of the weeds and into action, can energize plans of others
3. Relator- derive a lot of pleasure and strength from close, authentic, sharpening relationships. I am friendly and can easily make friends and socialize with a variety of people, but I hone in on a small group of "ride or dies." Need friendship- interaction while working, a social culture. I care far more about character than status or title in a person. I am fed by time with friends, without it I feel dry. I like feeling valued.
4. Communication- (this is where me as a writer comes in). I bring ideas to life in story, this also manifests in a desire for clear communication from others, I'm good at capturing people's attention, very strong in social settings, also manifests in a strong need to be heard (I have really good ideas).
5. Maximizer-I shoot high, desire the amazing and awe-inspiring and believe a lot is possible. I want to spend time with people who appreciate my strengths. I like roles where I am helping people succeed or work towards something. I want to use my gifts to the benefit of something larger. Like partnership and teams where I can delegate tasks in areas that aren't my strength.
Five Fold Ministry
The five-fold ministry concept comes from Ephesians 4:11 where it refers to five offices in the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Online you can find descriptions and online assessments to identify which category you most allign. I was introduced to the five-fold ministry by the former pastor of my college church, J.R. Wooward (http://jrwoodward.net/about/). Here is what I found after taking my test:
The Apostle (Dream Awakener)
Dear Apostle and Dream Awakener. Your contribution to the ministry of God is to awaken people to their God designed potential. You are instrumental in people discovering who they really are, and walking alongside them to get there. You have a unique gifting that is essential to the ministry of God.
About You
You are able to see the potential in others giftings before they do
You are able to see clearly what needs to be done
You are opinionated for what people need to do in their own life.
You love to see things happen and get frustrated when they don’t.
You come alive when you are able to help others achieve something
You are able to make other people’s journey your own
You don’t mind bending the rules and coloring outside the lines.
You take joy in people’s victories and share in their struggles.
You are not afraid to share truth about a situation even if it costs you
Without you people don’t know what they are capable of
people don’t have someone to come alongside them and grow them
things stay the same. People remain unchanged.
The Vision for the Apostolic
Every person can know who they really are. Every person can know their potential in God. Every person can become who they were created to be.
As you dream, pray and plan, ask yourselves these questions:
How do we best accomplish helping people discover who they really are in Christ?
How can we best awaken people to their potential?
How do we help, walk alongside, and direct people to become who they were created to be?
Triperspectival Leadership
Triperspectivalism is a way to look at the world from multiple perspectives. Triperspectival Leadership is rooted in the fact that throughout history, God has always utilized three offices from which to lead His people: Prophet, Priest and King. The Prophet proclaimed the truth of God to the people. The Priest cared for the people by mediating reconciliation between God and people. The King was to order and advance God’s rule among his people so that they would be a signpost of God’s reign to the World. Jesus, of course, was all three in perfection. I most closely align with the priest, which means I am more existential and experience based, and loves on people in order to bring them to God's truth.
Myers-Briggs
I recently took a free Myers-Briggs style test, and although all tests of this nature are slightly different, I feel like the results are consistent to what I have seen before. According to this test, I am an ENFJ (extrovert, intuitive, feeling, judging). This test also had a bonus element on the end which indicates how confident we are in our abilities and mine was labeled "turbulent," which I'm guessing means more insecure. I enjoyed how this particular test takes each combination and give it a title, and mine is the protagonist. I have to admit, I throughly enjoy this literary themed title;) The protagonist is described as a "passionate altruist," which feels very true for me. The weakness that really resonated was that the protagonist (or at least this one) has fluctuating self-esteem, and, yes, at times I truly believe I have what it takes and others I am flooded by the thought, "who am I kidding?" Another interesting insight that came from reading the results of the assessment was that in the work place, I am flexible and able to be subordinate but thrive in managing others.
Spiritual Gift Test
In addition to the 5 gifts mentioned in Ephensians 4:11, Romans 12 and 1 Corintihians 12 also list a variety of gifts believers possess with the purpose of using the gifts for God's glory. At different points in my life when I have taken these gifts, they have changed slightly but some are always on the list, like my #1, Discernment. Like most, there are gifts that are not on this list that I wish were, but thankfully God created a diverse body to flesh out all of the possible gifts and when we work together, complimenting one another, we see the church function as God inteneded. My top gifts are Discernment, Word of Knowledge, Exhortation, Leadership, and Faith, which reinforces what I've been discovering through all of the other tests above.
5 Love Languages
I threw this in here to really round things out. The book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman came out in 1995 and took the Christian world by storm. The book outlines five ways to express and experience love that Chapman calls "love languages": receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), and physical touch.
Even though the five love languages are mostly how you receive love from your mate, it does offer a lot of insight in how people feel cared for my close friends and even possibly colleagues. Similar to the spiritual gifts test, my secondary love language has changed in different seasons of my life, but my primary one remains the same - words of encouragement. At this point in my life, my secondary gift is quality time. It's so beneficial to know the love languages of not only your mate, but also close friends so you can show them love and encouragement in the way they most receive it.
A New Name
So what now is my new name? Not the one I've taken on out of responsibility and cultural pressure. Moving forward I'm going to tackling the lies, labels and untruths I've allowed myself to absorb and actively combat this with who God says I am.
The question I keep asking is, "who was I before anyone told me what I had to be?" The vision that pops in my mind is me as a 3 year old. It's not too hard to visualize the blond haired-blue eyed spunky girl because I have one at home. After my older brother's 5th birthday party, my dad video taped the family at home. The video captured each of our personalities - my dad -goofy and making us all laugh, my mom - dancing and full of affection, JJ- wanting the limelight to share his thoughts with a captive audience, Jesse - fun-loving and full of personality. Then, there is me. I asked my dad to capture my daydream come to life of being a great circus aerialist. The crowds were cheering and there was magic and excitement all around. However, when it came to doing the actual aerial feat, I was nervous and in need of support and encouragement.
A lot of life happened between then and now, and now I look at what I believed about myself all of these years and question its validity. Who was I before anyone told me who I had to be?
For all of my years in walking with Christ, I have identified with certain verses and some continuously circle around and around again. The first is Phillipians 4:12-14. Here Paul speaks of how God has shown him how to live with both a lot and a little and been with him to give him strength in difficulty. The next is James 1:2-12 where James, the half-brother of Jesus exhorts believers to consider it joy when you suffer and the suffering develops your faith and matures you. While this verses are 100% true and God's word, I find that I need a new verse.
I have pushed and persevered for years and no doubt there will be seasons where this will happen again, but now in faith I pray I soar. I'm praying God uses my process of discovery to give me a new name, new verse, a new song to sing.
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