Who Even Are You? Part Three

Personality. What is it? Is it static or fluid? The answer is yes, personality is static or fluid. LOL! I think personality is static for people with a fixed mindset and fluid for those with a growth mindset.

But regardless of whether your personality is static or fluid, identifying your type is a useful part of getting to know yourself. Fortunately, today you can take a free online test and it will help you identify your personality type. The free test is available at 16personalities.com.

That personality model has been traditionally referred to as Myers Briggs, and it builds off of the psychology of Carl Jung. To the extent we understand our personality and those of the people we care about, our relationships will likely run most smoothly.

A while back, the late psychology professor David Keirsey wrote two books explaining the Myers Briggs system, and I highly recommend them. They are titled "Please Understand Me" and "Please Understand Me II."

For today, I will simply explain a brief overview of Keirsey's four temperaments, in no particular order. As a side note, each of the four temperaments manifest themselves in four ways, which is how they end up with sixteen possible personalities.

I will start with SJ. SJs are highly committed to maintaining tradition and social order. They are big on obedience and believe rules are made to be followed. In Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper, they are the ant. Busy busy busy. Work work work. They are big on duty and obligation, and believe that work must come before play. They detest freeloaders, believing all people must earn their keep. Ironically, SJs often marry SPs.

In Aesop's fable SPs are the grasshopper, and they are essentially the opposite of the SJ. SPs spend their days leisurely swinging on a blade of grass, singing their song and not taking things too seriously. SPs are centrally concerned with having fun, and they revile in their freedom from constraint. So, you won't get very far trying to order around an SP. SPs tend to think life come down to luck, so it doesn't make sense to try very hard, and they like to have fun warning SJs about how they are going to develop an ulcer with all the worrying. SPs would rather eat, drink and be merry!

Combined, SJs and SPs make up the majority of the population. One key thing to know about the "S's" is they think in concrete terms, meaning Who What When and Where. They want "Just the facts, Jack." This is important to know because the other two temperaments are the "N's," and the Ns think in abstract concepts. By the way, these temperaments aren't mutually exclusive. We are all combinations.

NTs are pretty much always thinking in mental models. The reader doesn't have to follow me for long to realize I am mostly an NT. Scientific theories are mental models, and whether it is the theory of Peter Drucker, Liah Greenfeld, Edward Deci, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, David Keirsey or whomever, I am always thinking in mental models. NTs are centrally concerned with truth and knowledge, effectiveness and efficiency. That said, I can also be an NF.

NFs are occupied with the search for self, uniqueness, authenticity, meaning and intimacy. Hello?! This is literally my third post in a row with the title "Who Even Are You?" LOL! Keirsey writes "The NF's truest self is the self in search or itself, or in other words, his purpose in life is to have a purpose in life." If you think that logic sounds circular, you would be correct. And because it is the most complicated temperament, it is usually best to speak of NFs last.

You see, the "N" stands for intuitive because "I" was already taken by introversion. So just as the Ss think and speak in concrete terms, the Ns use their intuition to think and speak in abstract concepts. Hopefully you can already spot a pattern. Knowing the difference in personalities, and knowing that I am an intuitive, when I communicate I consciously reminder myself to always include concrete examples for the S temperaments.

I hope this helps.

Again, please take the free test at 16personalities.com.

You see next time 😊

Who Even Are You? Part Two

According to Liah Greenfeld identity is the core structure of the human mind, and I think she is correct. Professor Greenfeld defines identity with four simple words, saying it is "The relationally constituted self." To put a little more meat on the bones of that definition, Otto Kernberg says "We call the combination of an integrated sense of self and an integrated sense of significant others identity."

Being so centrally important, it is great news that we are able to consciously develop our identities. An obvious first question would be; How?

Habit number two of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is "Begin with the end in mind." And if you have read the book, you know Covey gives us an exercise to perform (though I doubt many people actually do it). The exercise is to write your eulogy. Obviously, writing your own eulogy is a way of beginning with the end in mind.

Unrelated to the work of Covey, while speaking with Professor Greenfeld she told me she assigns the same exercise to her university students, because she has found it to be a useful way to cultivate your identity.

Peter Drucker has a similar but different exercise, which requires a less explicit contemplation of your own mortality. Drucker explains that his exercise goes back to at least Saint Augustine, but reveals he first learned of the exercise from economist Joseph Schumpeter. According to Drucker, Schumpeter and Augustine, everybody must answer the question "What do I want to be remembered for?"

To state the exercise in more humorous, and potentially more triggering terms, the French absurdist philosopher Albert Camus advocated contemplating the question "Why shouldn't I kill myself?" In other words, what do we have to live for?

Drucker said if we don't do this exercise we will waste our lives, and Greenfeld has shown how a malformed identity can lead to profound mental illness. So whichever way you look at it, the stakes are high and you should probably do the exercise!