Journaling To Reveal Your Strengths
Our objective in these posts is to give examples of prompts to get you started and to inspire you to create your own original prompts and hopefully you will share your prompts with us and others by posting them here on journalz.com.
However, there are some highly evolved personality tests which are available to reveal your personality traits and your strengths. Beyond just simple day-to-day quick diagnostic prompts to keep you on track, these more in depth surveys can be extremely useful in formulating major goals such as career paths and courses of study.
A good free 5 minute personality survey I recently took, which really was spot on for me, was at
16personalities.com. The survey evaluates where you land on the scales of Introvert vs. Extrovert, Intuitive vs. Observant, Thinking vs Feeling, Tactics vs. Judging, Prospecting vs. Identity and Assertive vs. Turbulent. Also based on your specific personality type, the survey provides summaries on your;
- • Strengths & Weaknesses
- • Romantic Relationships
- • Friendships
- • Parenthood
- • Career Paths
- • Workplace Habits
It’s important when taking these personality test to take the time to think and answer based on how you have actually behaved, not how you think you should have behaved or characteristics you would like to have.
I advocate sharing the results with close friends and encourage them to take the test also but by themselves so they don’t feel like it’s some kind of competition.
Have a page in one of your journals that asks and answers the question, “Who Am I?”.
For example mine reads:
I am KJ. I am a Advocate Personality (INFJ, -A/-T) making up less than one percent of the population. I have an inborn sense of idealism and morality, but I am not an idle dreamer.
I am capable of taking concrete steps to realize my goals and make a lasting positive impact.
I tend to see helping each other get through life - as the purpose in life.
My real passion is to get to the heart of the issue so that people need not be rescued at all. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Nicole Kidman are Advocate types.
In my activities, my romantic relationships, and my friendships, I yearn for authenticity and sincerity. I am less unlikely to go for friendships of circumstance, like workplace social circles or chatting up my local baristas. I seek out people who share my passions, interests and ideologies, people with whom I can explore philosophies and subjects that I find truly meaningful.
Sure there are sceptics with regards to personality tests as “labeling” and “categorization” as too confining, like putting yourself in a box. There are many other important factors that make us who were are; our DNA, our faith, our family dynamic, for some their astrological sign, and I do journal about these things but as more of a
Legacy not as much for self-assessment. Keep in mind personality tests are not 100%. Yet still, 80-90% accurate insights can be revealing and helpful, particularly when it comes to relationships and endeavors which might be more aligned with my qualities.
Google tracks on average more than 400,000 searches per month for "personality tests"; 89 of the
Forbes Top 100 companies turn to the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to help them understand their employees. 165 million people have taken the
16Personalities free test. It’s important to note that you do not need to register or give your name or any additional personal information to take the test on
16Personalities.com
Another test gaining traction is the enneagram. Here is an overview article in
Real Simple...to keep it real simple. I couldn’t find a free enneagram site I felt comfortable with recommending but this site has a good depiction of the
enneagram wheel.
There is a trending resurgence amongst “progressive” Christians use of enneagrams. Enneagrams first gained acceptance by Christians 20 years ago, likely due to the book "
The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective" by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest from New Mexico, around that time. Here is another article on the
evangelical and even conservative acceptance of personality tests.
Before taking any personality test research the methodology of the test before taking the results to herat. Be weary of short pop-up online tests they could often be market research companies just trying to collect data.
Stay tuned for more posts on self-actualization and personality trait exploration.
