Who you are is so much more than one personality test!

I have been fascinated my entire life, by what makes us who we are and how does that affect our life experience?

• Why do some people seem to have easier lives (so far as our eyes can see)?
• Why is it that far more people fail at entrepreneurship than succeed?
• Why is it that career professionals remain stuck in jobs they hate?
• Why is it that a big salary doesn’t always equate to happiness and fulfillment?
• Why is it that most non profit leaders report being frazzled and frustrated unable to get enough donor funds or money from their own efforts to do the good that the organization is purposed to do in the first place?

I am doing a sign language class at the Cascade School for the Deaf. Yesterday I shared an observation with my teacher: signing wasn’t just about knowing what sign represents which word. If you have to truly understand when a deaf person is communicating with you, you have so many things to consider. Each signing style is different, each person’s hand is different (size of overall hand, length of fingers etc.), there are a couple of ways to sign certain words, some people sign so fast that it’s difficult for the newbie like me to read the signs (think about how we sometimes slur words when speaking quickly so a few words might sound like one word). And I am just at the tip of this iceberg of knowledge, it being only a couple of weeks since I started.

I think that the reason personality tests are so popular, is because we are looking for clues to better understand ourselves.

Tests help to give people a description of some aspect of themselves that on their own, might have difficulty putting what they know about themselves into words. Tests help employers sort through applications to decide who might be a best fit, depending on the attributes surfaced in the test.

In this Psychology Today article Jennifer V. Fayard Ph.D. says that there are three reasons we love personality tests, even the bad ones:

1. We want to learn something we didn’t know about ourselves
2. We want to belong
3. We want simple ways to understand other people

The reality is, that each human being is anything BUT simple.

I love personality tests. In fact I just took one while doing some research for this post.

I found out that my driving force is GROWTH.

You need to learn and have a strong desire for ongoing improvement. This constant growth is your fuel and prevents you from stagnating or feeling sluggish and bored.

No lies here but it’s definitely not my entire story.

Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

If you can know yourself, and master who you are, then you can master the game of life. Personality tests give us clues, but these clues are scattered throughout our lives.

The challenge is that most of us haven’t organized and synthesized the clues.

What lights you up? What are you insatiably curious about? What are some problems than stand out for you that you feel you have the ideal solution for? What do you stand for? What do you stand against? How do you do what you do? Why do you do what you do? Where and when are you most engaged? How do you work best with others? What absorbs your attention? What kind of management style most suits you?

What if you could get help figuring out where you are amazing and how you can succeed at your highest level?

This is important because what we read about, with regard to the route to success, the principles and habits required – they are not going to work unless we can execute in our own unique way, following our own unique path. Following someone else’s path without understanding WHO YOU ARE FULLY, is a recipe for disaster.

The more deeply you follow your path, the more deeply aligned you will become. You will begin showing up with greater confidence and commitment to your journey.

Once you can see yourself clearly, then making decisions becomes easier.

Greater clarity leads to greater confidence; greater confidence will lead to greater conviction; with great conviction you are bound to show up with more courage.

The first step to success is always self-awareness.

I am someone who believes in making sense of complex and challenging things – like personalities for example . I’ve been doing this in every area of my life from being a young girl helping her friends who were sometimes much older, solve their problems to now helping clients figure out how to package who they are, their expertise, and the real solutions they are bringing to the table in a way that those who most need them can find them.

I work best in situations that are complex, challenging and overwhelming. My clients say to me: “I have no idea what to do. I am tired of struggling. I know I’m good at what I do yet I can’t seem to get the traction I need to build the business, make an impact, earn what I think I’m worth.”

And I’m saying to you, as I’ve said to them:

Here’s your first step. If you find that your road to success feels a bit too rollercoaster-ish then let me help you figure yourself out FIRST and then we’ll figure the rest out.