Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [16]
Perhaps your skill is being a good listener? Perhaps you have a knack for solving problems? Perhaps you are really good with details and repetitive chores? Perhaps your talent is cooking? Perhaps you love cleaning house? Perhaps you enjoy solitude, or the opposite, having lots of people and noise around you?
Myers-Briggs
One of my favorite personality tests is the Myers-Briggs indicator. It helps you understand your need for solitude versus people interaction, your comfort level with facts versus intuition, whether you base your decisions on thoughts or feelings and how you deal with time structure and open-ended flow in your life. I highly recommend this test to anyone.
The first time I took the test, was soon after I left the corporate world. I tested INTJ. When I retook the test a few years ago, I had shifted to an INFP. So what do these letters stand for?
The first letter is either I for Introvert or E for Extrovert and has to do with how we recharge our batteries. An introvert uses solitary activities to relax and needs undisturbed time alone to find new inspiration. An extrovert gets energized by being around other people and finds inspiration by bouncing ideas off other people.
The second letter is either N for iNtuitive or S for Sensing. Someone who is good with details and facts is a sensor. The intuitive deals in visions and dreams and will make decisions without knowing all the facts. Sensors will tell us intuitives we “wing it” or “fly by the seat of our pants.”
The third letter is either F for Feeling or T for Thinking. A feeler makes decisions based on how they feel about something, whereas a thinker will think it through, it has to make logical sense to them. Another way to look at it, the feeler decides with his heart and the thinker decides with her head.
The fourth letter is either J for Judgment or P for Perceiving. The judger tends to be goal focused and does not easily get sidetracked. The perceiver can set out on a goal, but on the way stops to smell the roses, and loses sight of the goal. The judger likes closure and definite plans, whereas the perceiver needs a more open-ended approach to life. At the extreme ends the perceiver is into flow and the judger into structure.
If you know your MBTI profile, great! If not you may want to check it out. There are lots of really good books on the subject. I feel the MBTI has more to do with how we go about doing whatever we do, than the actual what we do. In other words, many professions can be practiced by several of the types, but each type would go about it in a different way and be most valuable, and happy, in a role where they could put their type to use.
Where is your passion?
Whether or not you've got your MBTI, you can continue the exercise to find your thread. Mentally go back through your life and remember each time you lost track of time and space. Focus on these activities. Write down what appears to be common denominators. What occurs in your life over and over? Look for repetition or similarities. Is there a uniqueness that you add to whatever you're doing?.
You may not get a definitive description of what it is, but you will start to get a sense. Ask your Higher Self to show you what your unique gifts are to the world. Remember that our logical brains often take us on side roads. It wants to be practical and will push aside the more imaginative ideas that pop up. Telling the logical brain to, “give it a rest” is sometimes appropriate!
In our life mission group, there was an artist who made a particular type of painting, which had been a commercial success. As he talked, his imagination mind would seed new ideas. His face would become animated and his gestures more alive as he explored other creative ideas. Then his logical mind would come in and remind him of the commercial success of his formula paintings and you could see the life energy disappear from his face.
To pay attention to life energy come alive or go dead