A Growing Self-Awareness

Recently I took a personality survey. 
I love those kinds of things. 
I mean it.
I. really. love. them.

There's this standing joke between my best friend and me about my disdain for learning how things work. 
I couldn't care less. 
I mean it.
I. really. don't. like. it.

But I love to learn about how people work. 
Why they do the things they do. 
What makes them tick.
Enter my romance with personality surveys. 
Exit my disdain for most things science-y.

And yet, for someone who loves the study of people, you'd think I would be a little more self-realized.

It's difficult for me to see myself clearly. 
I know how I want to see myself. 
And it's easy to see the benefits of varying personality traits in others. 
But with me, well...I either can't see myself accurately 
or if I do, I don't like what I see.

But, for now, after this last crack at a personality test, here are some of my thinkings about who I am and how I tick:

- I am an introvert who likes being around close friends.

- Big groups drain me and shut me up fast.

- Under pressure, I tend to choose the task over the people.

- I am a person interested in how others are feelings and what they are experiencing.

- I am detail-oriented. (Wouldn't it be funny for me to have a typo in this one?)

- I like to think of myself as a visionary, but I am actually not great at brand-new ideas. I do better with something to give me concrete direction.

- I fight the lie that my worth is determined by my performance because I am a recovering people pleaser.

- I like quiet. Too much noise induces stress.

- I am fairly intuitive but also look to my 5 senses to help confirm my gut.

-I am cautious. Not a risk-taker. But I wish I was.



There is a valuable benefit from this current awareness of myself. To understand these truths about myself provides me allowance for my own humanness.

So, when my children are screaming wild with fun but I am about to climb the walls, I can know there is a reason why. It's not that I am a bad parent who can't enjoy life. Instead, it's an indicator of personality.

When I am sensitive to another's feelings, wondering if that somehow disqualifies me as a decisive leader, I can remember that is part of how I'm wired.

One of these days, I want to be utterly comfortable in the skin God made for me. I want to be fully me without regret or apology. I want to embrace the whole of me because the world - my world - needs me to be me.

Every little piece of understanding I gain, about me or another, nudges ever so much closer to that day. And I am finding that journey is well worth it.