3 Reasons Why Knowing Your Personality Will Make Your Life Better

I love learning about my personality. I’ve taken around ten assessments, and I’m a certified coach in four (fifth in process!). The idea that we can gain more clarity around who we are and what makes us tick is really encouraging to me, and I’ve seen it make a huge difference in my life and the lives of my clients.

Here are 3 Reasons Knowing Your Personality Will Make Your Life Better

1) You’ll recalibrate what ‘normal’ means As I love to say to my clients: You’ve been hanging out with yourself for your whole life, so what makes you special might actually feel very normal to you. You might not even know that what feels very normal to you is a strength, and you may expect that everyone else has that ‘normalcy’ also.

For example, I remember the day I received the results of my StrengthsFinder report and read about one of my strengths called Belief.  The Belief strength shows up in people by them having certain core values that are unchanging and give them a defined purpose for life. That’s a strength, I wondered? I knew I’d always been passionate about changing the world and having a job that gave me the opportunity to make a difference, but wasn’t everyone supposed to be like that? Isn’t that normal? The answer I learned over time was, “Not necessarily.” As my older brother says, he really likes his work, but he works for the opportunity it gives him to enjoy his weekends and vacations with his family!  My normal isn’t his normal, just as my strengths  and personality aren’t his strengths and personality. And the two are very connected.

2) You’ll Know What You Need When you know where you’re strong, you also begin to see where you’re weak. From my perspective and the perspective of many psychometric assessments, our weaknesses are usually just overdone strengths or the behavioural result of not having our needs met. It’s like the flip side of the coin of what’s really good about us is what kinda sucks about us.

Say, for example, you’ve noticed one of your strengths is your ability to be analytical. Well you probably also sometimes suffer from analysis paralysis, right? You likely need someone to snap you out of it or give you a deadline you’ll adhere to in order to get the results you want. Flannery O’Connor says, “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks.” When we know who we are, we also know who we are not, which gives us an idea of who we need around us in order to succeed.

3) You’ll Notice What Makes Others Special When you get clear that you’re unique, you begin spotting other people’s uniqueness also. For example, just the other day I got into the shower and noticed my razor was very cleverly hanging from the soap dish. I usually just put it on the edge of the bathtub and knock it off on a regular basis while reaching for the shampoo (darnit!).  When I saw its new spot, I smiled to myself, “Ha, good idea Brynley!” My boyfriend had done it, and I delighted in knowing I never, ever would have thought to place it as he had. I immediately thought, “That’s totally his S.” If you’ve heard of Myers-Briggs, one of the areas this assessment helps you make sense of is how you perceive your environment (S-N). When I perceive my environment, I take it in with my five senses and immediately begin drawing patterns, insights or philosophical ideas from it (N), whereas when Brynley perceives his environment, he remains for a longer time in the world of the senses, taking time to understand the mechanics of things (S). From something as menial as his cleverness around how to strategically hang a razor from a soap dish, I get to delight in how his strengths show up everywhere because, well, I’m looking for them!

So now it’s your turn! If you’re interested in learning about your personality and strengths, go on over here and spend 15 USD to get access to your Top 5 Strengths according to the Clifton StrengthsFinder. Tell me what you discover, and if you’re interested in a deeper debrief, send me an email at hello@rosannatomiuk.com. xoxo.