So, steps four and five of Defining Who You Are from The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand is Identify Your Ideal Traits and discuss the results with family and friends. I looked at the list on that page and immediately thought, “Eh, I don’t know.”
But look! There is a link to a test that will tell you what your traits are! Here are my results: My Big 5 Personality Traits Results and here they are in list form:
- You are somewhat conventional.
- You are well-organized, and are reliable.
- You tend to shy away from social situations.
- You find it easy to express irritation with others (Who? Me? Insert innocent face).
- You are generally relaxed.
I can’t agree more with the results and I’m sure my family and friends would agree with these most of these results. It turns out that I need to work on “well-organized” (I just found out my perception of me being organized is not shared by others) AND “shying away from social situations”. See, there are many times when it feels like there is a disconnect between my brain and my mouth. When I type, it’s like channeling a smart person. When I speak, I feel like an ignorant fool (with a foul mouth). That is what has held me back from speaking on any more radio programs/podcasts … the intellectual disconnect. I stumble over words, have difficulty remembering proper terminology, and it comes out of my mouth as “that doo-hickey or thingamajig or whatsitsnuts”. Then, I curse. 🙂
Working on organization will require me to get out of my own head: actually ask others for their opinions/help. That’s not an easy thing for me to do. I’m the kind of person who, when something needs to be done, dives headlong into a project. I learn everything I can about how to do it properly and, if I get stuck, I just learn more (putting the project on hold). When did this attitude first develop? When I had a broken down car and every male who promised they would work on it didn’t. I bought a Chilton’s and got going on it (it never ran again … contaminated fuel system) but I knew how to figure that out and realize what I could and could not do myself. That’s when I first discovered that the only person you can truly rely on is yourself.
So, that’s it. I’ve completed all the steps of figuring out who I am. Now, I need to reflect on everything I’ve come up with. That last sentence of the last paragraph kinda threw me for a loop. I can see being that way then (single parent) but I’ve been married for almost 15 years and didn’t realize I still felt that way. That’s not a reflection on my husband but on me. Hmmm … need to think.
