We are all human, we have human bodies, we have a human mind, human thoughts, and feelings. However, although we are similar to each other, each of us distinguished from others due to different sets of elements (functions) of our psyche. Each of us is completely different and unique due to personality. Meanwhile, we are still generalized and labeled in today’s world instead of emphasizing individuality and uniqueness.
In this article you will learn:
- What personality is and what it means to be authentic.
- What the most popular personality theories are: Humoral Theory, Big Five, Enneagram, and Jungian Personality Model.
- Where to find online personality tests.
This is clearly seen especially in physical appearance. Trends in makeup, fashion, or plastic surgery make us become similar to each other in every aspect and we become a uniform mass of the same, boring copies. Our character, individuality, ingenuity, and creativity disappear.
We are afraid to be different than the rest, whether for fear of rejection or for laziness and convenience. We want to be somebody without being ourselves.
You remember one conversation during your stay in Ireland with two single friends, one German and another Swede both complained that in Dublin so many single women, and they can’t find a partner. They both wondered what the cause was and came to the conclusion that in personality. They complained that all the girls look the same, dress the same, behave the same, and they also like everything the same. In their opinion, they are attractive externally, but less and less internally.
Yes, it is the uniqueness that is what draws us to each other. Even we say “My only one” and not “My one copy of many”. Each of us is a unique mix of talents, skills, and various abilities.
Pretending to be someone else is dangerous to your psyche.
Authenticity is doing what is playing in your soul. In your soul, not in the soul of marketing specialists. So why do you let them tell you what you should look like, what to exercise, where to travel, what to be interested in, what kind of hobby you have, what to eat, how to organize your time, what series to watch and books read? Like mushrooms, after rain grows specialists from every area of life, who know better than you what you need, what you should do and when.
The Internet is bursting at the seams with an excess of lives of new specialists. How to save money, how to raise a child, how to do makeup, or how to meditate. And you sit and watch instead of living your life. Influencers influencing your every decision whether you are aware of it or not.
There is nothing wrong with looking for inspiration but copying someone? For what? You have one life, so why do you let someone tell you how to live it? You won’t have a second chance. Look for your way. You don’t know how? Know yourself. You have so much time during this quarantine so use it for yourself. Find out who you are, why you are here, what you should do. Listen to your intuition, your soul, instead of someone. Allow yourself authenticity, but also allow this authenticity to others. Your children, your partner. Stop telling them what to do and how. Don’t meet your expectations? It doesn’t matter. Accept them as they are, not as you would like them to be. Does your boyfriend like sneakers from two seasons ago? Let him wear them, don’t make him David Beckham. Let him be himself and be yourself too.
Life is the most beautiful in its ordinary mundane edition.
Discover the perfection of what it means to be yourself. See what uniqueness really means. Not as a concept, but what it means as your life. You are here not to imitate someone, but to have your own experience of this journey, your film, your own miracle of life, you can only achieve it through the experiment of being yourself.
An expression of your uniqueness is personality, which is a permanent set of various mental characteristics and various internal factors that affect your behavior. It is also the way you react to the surrounding environment and how it interacts with it. It’s your way of thinking, behaving and feeling. States of your ego.
Personality is shaped throughout life, especially during childhood and youth.
Personality development is affected by the environment that surrounds you, i.e. the home where you are raised, the people closest to you. Peers and many other factors, e.g. genes, the functioning of the nervous system, and hormones.
Every living person has a personality. However, some people are diagnosed with personality disorders, i.e. certain fixed features and procedures that can be considered abnormal, and that leads to the deterioration of human functioning in many different areas of life. There are many different personality disorders, including borderline personality, dissocial personality. schizoid personality etc.
Personality is a key concept of psychology that has created many different personality theories.
The Humoral Theory.
One of the oldest of them was built by the Greek doctor Hippocrates based on the so-called humoral theory. He called “humor” four fluids that he thought were in the human body and believed that depending on the proportion of these fluids in the body, people are characterized by a different disposition. He distinguished 4 personality types:
- Sangwinik (blood predominance) – optimistic, energetic;
- Phlegmatic (mucus predominance) – slow, phlegmatic;
- Choleric (predominantly bile) – explosive,
- Melancholic (mostly black bile) – sad, depressed,
The Big Five.
Another known theory of personality is the so-called Big Five, or a set of personality – building features:
- Conscientiousness – a feature that shows your organization skills, perseverance, motivation, and goal-oriented behavior. A high level testifies to your diligence, organization, punctuality, orderliness, ambition, and perseverance. A low level indicates laziness, carelessness, and non-discipline.
- Extraversion – a feature that characterizes you in personal contacts. If you have a high level of extraversion, then you are sociable, talkative, people-oriented, optimistic, fun-loving, and tender. The low level of extraversion says that you are restrained, serious, quiet, and withdrawn.
- Settlement – a feature that helps you understand how you relate to other people. A high degree of the agreement indicates that you are compassionate, kind, confident, attentive, and not mean. A low level indicates that you are cynical, rude, suspicious. Competitive, vindictive, ruthless, irritable and you like to manipulate others.
- Openness – is a feature that shows your tolerance and exploration of unknown situations. A high level of openness shows that you are interesting, creative, original, inventive. You have many interests and are not a traditionalist. A low level indicates that you are pragmatic, realistic, conventional, and have little interest.
- Neuroticism – shows your emotional adaptation to emotional instability, people with higher levels of neuroticism tend to worry, nervousness, emotionality, uncertainty, or hypochondria. People with lower levels are relaxed, emotionless, resilient, self-satisfied, and have high self-esteem.
The Enneagram.
Another system of personality types is Enneagram based on a nine-pointed star chart, it divides people into 9 types. This system assumes that every person belongs to one of these types throughout their life and can only develop in their type. According to this system, how you perceive the world depends on what first shook your sense of security in your childhood, which of emotions overcame you most – and as a result – which defense mechanism you developed at the very beginning.
The enneagram symbol represents all types with a circle. Each type, therefore, has two adjacent types that more or less affect the type.
In addition, the Enneagram symbol shows which types are connected to which types. It also assumes that the emotional states of stress or relaxation cause that for a moment, you take over certain characteristic features of the type with which you are connected.
The Nine Enneagram Type Descriptions.
- Perfectionist (reformer) – realist, obligatory, meticulous, self-critical, and demanding person, living according to strictly defined rules.
- Donor (altruist) – a warm, caring person who is looking after for the needs of others.
- Contractor (winner) – an energetic person, often extroverted, trusting their abilities, and striving to achieve another goal.
- Individualist (tragic romantic) – a romantic, sensitive and perceptive person. Has a sense of difference, forever waiting for happiness, which is yet to come.
- Observer (thinker) – an introverted person, curious about the world, with a need for knowledge about themselves, analytical and insightful.
- Loyalist (devil’s advocate) – a trustworthy, responsible, loyal, and obligatory person. A devoted friend.
- Epicurean (fantast) – energetic, lively, and optimistic person. `they trust life as one great adventure and fun. They always have a lot of plans and look to the future with optimism.
- Boss (warrior) – a direct, confident, brave, and caring person. They is not afraid to defend what is important to them.
- Mediator (settler) – a good person by nature, sensitive, looking for unity with other people and the world around us. Indecisive, calm, and slow.
Many large corporations use the enneagram to study personality and leadership roles.
It is also a very important self-awareness tool in spirituality. It adapts the spiritual tradition of each type of personality by directing the person using it towards their spiritual search. Connects people based on their spirituality.
Jung Personality Types theory.
Another personality type system was created by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist. This is one of the world’s most recognized and respected personality and behavior models. Test using this typology model is widely used by organizations in team building, coaching, and personal development.
According to his theory, extended a little later by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, people can be characterized by:
- Extroverted or introverted attitude – an introvert likes to spend time alone or in a smaller group of people and has internal calmness, while the extroverted attitude is its opposite.
- Information gathering method (cognition or intuition) – it tells you whether you like acquiring information in the form of hard evidence and facts or whether you rely on your own intuition, internal thoughts, and imagination.
- Decision making (thinking or feeling) – it tells you whether you rely on logical thinking or rather how you feel the situation and people.
- The way you manage your life and achieve your goals (judging and observing) – it tells you whether you make settlements first, organize something, and then stick firmly to your plans and specific rules. Or you have a more flexible approach, you don’t like to embed, you have an open mind, you like to improvise and consider alternative options.
This typology distinguishes 16 personality types:
- ENFJ – extraversion, intuition, feeling, judgment
- ENFP – extraversion, intuition, feeling, perceiving
- ENTJ – extraversion, intuition, thinking, judgment
- ENTP – extraversion, intuition, thinking, perceiving
- ESFJ – extraversion, sensing, feeling, judgment
- ESTP – extraversion, sensing, thinking, perceiving
- ESTJ – extraversion, sensing, thinking, judgment
- ENFP – extraversion, intuition, feeling, perceiving
- INFJ – introversion, intuition, feeling, judgment
- INFP – extraversion, intuition, feeling, perceiving
- INTJ – introversion, intuition, thinking, judgment
- INTP -introversion, intuition, thinking, perceiving
- ISFJ –introversion sensing, feeling, judgment
- ISFP – introversion sensing, feeling, perceiving
- ISTJ – introversion, sensing, thinking, judgment
- ISTP –introversion, sensing, thinking, perceiving
Can you change your personality?
Each personality type has its strengths and weaknesses. None of us are perfect. Sometimes you may regret having no other personality. You may want to be more extraverted or optimistic. Unfortunately, you can’t change the aspects of your personality that you are not proud of, which causes you some discomfort. Working on yourself will help you strengthen your strengths.
Are you interested in your personality type?
Do the following tests online and check what personality type you are. If you want, you can share your results in the comments below the text.
Why do all these personality tests? What does this have to do with spirituality?
It helps you distinguish automatic response patterns from deeper invitations to freedom and relationships with the soul. They will increase your respect, understanding, and compassion for the diversity of human expression. You will get a fresh spiritual view on repetitive life and spiritual challenges. They can help you be ready and able to go beyond ego to reach something more. They will help you experience a part of yourself that has nothing to do with your personality program. At the same time. You must also be ready to experience the limitations and pain that your ego habits inflict on you.
Source: https://www.ajourneytoyourself.com/surgery-who-am-i/
From time to time, you have the need for self-analysis and you are reflecting on yourself. You then carry out the secret operation “Who am I?”. What do I know about me how I am? How much do I know? Do I know what drives my behavior? Why am I behaving this way?
In this article, you will learn what soul overlays are and what are their types: goal, mode, attitude, center, and main chief feature.
You know this situation very well. The time of your annual performance review at work is approaching and you promise yourself that this time you will ask your boss for your salary raise. In the end, he praised you for the last project that ended with a huge success. Not surprising, because you spend so many hours working overtime on it, like an exemplary corporation employee, neglecting your private life. Maybe you missed the best date of your life because of it, or maybe just a movie night with your hubby.
Anita from the desk next to you has a conversation at the same time as you. However, she doesn’t seem to care too much about it. Does she ever get upset about anything? You often think about it. She does worse at work than you do, but she doesn’t seem to care about it all. You both complain about the pay rise system in the company, but objectively speaking, among you two you are the one who should get the raise. You give a lot more from yourself in this job than her.
So you want to prepare for the talk. You practice the whole course of the conversation every day, prepare a list of all arguments, and wait for you to win. He won’t have an option, he will have to give you the raise.
Finally, the time of your annual review is coming.
In a fighting mood, you are walking towards your manager’s office. But as soon as you cross the doorstep, all your courage vanishes somewhere…. You can’t say a word out of what you have prepared yourself, although you know exactly what you want to say to him. You are only silently nodding your head when he says how difficult times for the company have come and that he is so sorry but he will not be able to give you a raise. He praises you, of course, he is satisfied with your work, but you have to forget about the wage hike this year, in the end, he only throws: “Keep up the good work!” and you leave the office disappointed and angry on yourself, that you did not succeed again.
Sometime after, Anita pours fuel on the fire, when she runs out of the boss’s office, so happy because she’s got the raise. Apparently she fought for it like a lion. She almost pulls it out of his throat. Maybe it is not too impressive, but at least she got something. Blood floods you, you are so angry with yourself. Why can’t you be like her, brave and successful? So many self-development courses, so many hours of training and nothing?
Why are you just like what you are like?
Sometimes you would like to be a bit bolder or maybe more pragmatic than you are. You try to control yourself, but your true nature always wins. But what does true nature really mean? What is true for you and what is not? What makes you exactly that, and not different? Why do you react like this and not in a different way in a specific situation? Where did your personality come from and what shaped it? Why do you have such a personality and not another personality? Who decides about it? Why aren’t you alike your parents or siblings? Why does your partner have a different personality than you? How did it happen?
Who chose all these advantages and disadvantages for you and what was the main reason for the choice? Current trends probably not, because sometimes you get the impression that you do not completely fit today’s world. Genes probably also not, because sometimes you wonder if you are not adopted, you are so different from the rest of the family. And these flaws couldn’t be less bothersome or a bit less flawed? Probably no one matched the appearance either, otherwise, where do the pugnacity and self-confidence come from in the little and filigree Anita?
What are you like? What can you say about yourself?
Neurobiology estimates that 95% of human brain activity is adaptive unconsciousness. This means that you do act automatically, including talking for example. Much of what you say in casual conversation comes automatically. How many times have you wished you hadn’t said something? Your behaviors are also automatic. We are all programmed and conditioned in a way mainly through interaction with others. But each of us also has some default or “factory” settings that you should know to understand yourself, to increase your awareness, and become a better person.
The soul plans its life chooses several attributes of personality, called overlays that overlap your essence.
Something like those overlays you put on your Facebook profile picture. In the picture it’s you but with the overlay some much prettier. These include your main goal (motivator of action), mode (the dominant mode of action), attitude (the way you perceive life), the centering (the part of you that you usually respond from) the chief feature or character flaw. They are to help it achieve it’s a life goal.
This set of overlays the soul changes from life to life to provide itself a variety of experiences and evolve. So in other words, you have a different personality in every incarnation. These overlays are part of a comprehensive plan of life that the soul creates for each new incarnation. The soul chooses them for this plan. These overlays are kind of tools which the soul uses to experience life on a physical plane with all its emotions, sensations, and chills.
You can compare it to a computer game in which you choose your avatar – your virtual identity. You get a basic template of your player and you choose specific characteristics for it such as size, shape, hair color, clothes, etc. Then you can also choose specific features of its character like courage, diligence, persistence, etc. These characteristics will determine the actions and reactions of your character and will affect the character of the whole game.
Understanding how your overlays work in this game of life will help you increase your tolerance and acceptance, both for yourself and others, because it will help you realize how others work in life. They will also provide you with information on how you decided to experience life before reincarnation.
Overlays.
These overlays are also something that makes you unique. This is one of the typologies that you should know striving for self-realization. They constitute a sort of a road map of what it means to be a human being and how to act accordingly.
- Goal – affects what you do,
- Mode – shows how you do it,
- Attitude – shows why you do it,
- Centering- shows which part of yourself do it,
- Chief feature or a character flaw – shows what blocks or distorts your action,
The goal.
It provides you with a clear motivation, pushing your choices in the direction of your plan of life. It’s your driving force. Your preferred result in all situations. It shapes your choices in life. It is both a goal and a personal challenge e.g. domination.
The mode.
Gives you a different way of acting in various decisions that are consistent with your plan of life. It is your way of expressing yourself. Your usual way of doing things like caution.
Attitude.
Adds a clear interpretation of your perception, which is consistent with your plan of life. It is your view of life, a philosophical style. Your normal way of perceiving things. e.g. idealism.
Centering, on the other hand, is a quick and easy way to respond to direct experiences. It determines how you experience life moment by moment. It’s your operation centre.
Chief features or character flaw.
Emerge from your growing fears and insecurities, which has a negative impact on your choices. This is your main overriding character defect. Everyone has it.
Three of these overlays are already established at the time of your birth as a goal, mode, and attitude. The other ones are shaped during your life.
Of course, as happens in the dual world, each of these overlays also has two poles: negative and positive. For example, domination in the positive sense is leadership and in the negative is a dictatorship. The negative poles are similar to the concept of the Jung Shadow Self and relate to the zone of false personality, or area in the psyche, where the incarnating soul is temporarily disconnected from the essence.
As with soul types, there are 7 goals, modes, attitudes, etc. You will learn them in detail in subsequent articles.
So it turns out that it is not entirely your fault that you are not like Anita. You are just different because the soul of each of you has chosen a different set of overlays in this life. But once you recognize your set, you will know how to react in the future and what to do with it, how to use it. It will also help you better understand others because although we are all so different in some ways we are all the same.
,
Understanding why you like certain things is very helpful and even crucial in self-development. That is why I often perform surgery on who I am, what I know about me, and how I am, and you?
Understanding why you like certain things is very helpful and even crucial in self-development. That is why I often perform surgery on who I am, what I know about me, and how I am, and you?
Source:
www.personalityspirituality.net
