Know Yourself

I love learning about personalities and individual's differences. We all have different strengths and weaknesses and have to interact with other people who have different combinations. As you probably know, this can cause all sorts of reactions when two people try to relate to eachother. Sometimes the resulting interactions are positive, and other times negative. Some people live easily with eachother, and some people are always getting on eachother's nerves!

I believe that God has knitted us together from before we were even born, and has given us each and completely unique combination of gifts, so that we can go into the world and do good things which He has designed us to do. Some people are put together with the ideal temperament, personality, abilities etc to be a tradesman. Others, to be a nurse, a teacher, a lawyer, etc.

One huge reason why I love personality studies etc, is because I know it can help people find what they are good at, and therefore, what area of work they should get into... and then they are more likely to enjoy their lives! No one person is the same as the next, and we should never put ourselves into a labelled box, but having a general idea is better than having no idea, don't you think! As I said earlier, we have been DESIGNED with a certain purpose in mind. I personally think that you NEED TO KNOW who you are, in order to live out God's will for your life. If you don't spend time figuring out who you were made to be, then you will spend your life being who you THINK YOU ARE. There's a difference. For example, I could think that I am an awesome bank manager, and do everything I can to live out this belief. As long as everyone else thinks i'm cool and I am earning money etc who cares right?! Wrong! The reality is that my personality, how my brain works, what I enjoy, etc, don't line up with that! I am being fake, for whatever reason... maybe to fit in or please others?

(btw, I once worked in a bank and didn't enjoy it! But I did get to wear a suit to impress other people! Sounds lame to me now, but I actually wanted to wear a suit back then so that other people would be impressed. How embarrassing!)

If I had known about my strengths and weaknesses and giftings, then I wouldn't have struggled away for months in that bank! Don't get me wrong, God can use all things for good, and I did learn a few things, but sometimes you just don't need to do everything the hard way!

One one the most life changing times of my life was at Ministry Training College, when I discovered The Myers-Briggs personality test. It gave me such a clear picture of who I am. As I said, it's just a guide, but a scarily accurate one at that! Sometimes I fit the box, sometimes a bit less, but it has been incredibly helpful to me in the last 5 years when dealing with other people and myself. I highly recommend this tool, to help you learn about yourself, because if you don't continually learn about yourself, how can you love others as youself? And how can you live an authentic life if you are pretending to be something you aren't? If you know you you are, then you can start to accept that, then you are free to love others.

There's heaps of different sites to try out, but these are a couple of good ones :)

hwww.personalitypage.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator