I recently took the Myers Briggs personality test and my results were INFP - Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving. Whatever your feeling about these profiling tools, I find them quite fascinating and generally enlightening and helpful. Taking the test again (last time was back in college days) reminded me that I am high on the 'feeling' spectrum and that I need to express that 'introvertedly'. What that has come to mean for me is that I need time to reflect on my feelings and exercises such as journaling (and blogging!) are really helpful for me. I used to be a die-hard, daily journaller...Then I had kids :)
Needless to say, the last 5 years or so have seen a big drop off in my pen reaching the beautiful pages of my journal. (I really love journals...something about blank pages of handmade paper just waiting to be filled :))
So here I am, seeing the need to reflect some more on life and the world within and around me.
One of the books I read recently was called 'The Gift of Being Yourself'by David Benner. It looked at the fact that each of us is uniquely designed and that we discover our true potential in life as we really get to know who we are. I have to admit that sometimes I don't feel like my self is much of a gift - there are times I'd like to exchange this gift for something more useful or efficient! But I do believe it is true that the more we really understand who we are, who we have been created to be, the more we can understand people and the world around us. Not merely 'navel-gazing' but discovering our identity, our true selves.
"In all of creation, identity is a challenge only for humans. A tulip knows exactly what it is. It is never tempted by false ways of being. Nor does it face complicated decisions in the process of becoming....Humans, however, encounter a more challenging existence. We think. We consider options. We decide. We act. We doubt. Simple being is tremendously difficult to achieve and fully authentic being is extremely rare....There is, however, a way of being for each of us that is as natural and deeply congruent as the life of the tulip. Beneath the roles and masks lies a possibility of a self that is as unique as a snowflake. It is an originality that has existed since God first loved us into existence."
So knowing my personality type may be simply amusing information about my preferences and quirks, or it may help me understand a bit more about myself in a way that allows me to embrace the uniqueness and purpose for which I was created.
For example, knowing that my inner core values guide my interactions and decisions, and that I want to be involved in work that contributes to both my own growth and inner development and those of others - to have a purpose beyond my paycheque - helps me to order my time so that I pay attention to those things that are of deep value to me and not just get bogged down by routine tasks. As I develop more and more into the person I was created to be, it is there that I find great joy.
As Fredrick Buechner said about finding your unique purpose in life, "the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
As I continue on the journey I desire to discover more deeply that for which I was uniquely designed - and I hope to get a few more journal pages filled in the process :)
