Thursday, March 19, 2015

The Tortoise & The Hare (Aka: The story of an ISFJ)

Have you ever heard of the Myers Briggs personality test? It is really quite insightful & useful in terms of understanding how a person takes things in, processes what happens to them & interprets events. My roommate is trained in giving the tests & helping understand the results. We've had fun as a household diving into our Myers Briggs results. We're nerds like that. I found out that I am an ISFJ, which stands for Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging. One of the biggest thing that resonates with me in regards to this is I LOVE balance. Deep down I want to live a balanced life. Homeostasis is my friend! I want things to be "even Steven". I also cherish traditions. This has actually proved challenging to me in the last several years (especially with my family & any sort of celebrations) because we've had a lot of changes where traditions that were once standard are no longer in effect. Anyway, taking this test has really helped me understand myself better in many areas of my life. It has also helped me better identify my strengths as well as weaknesses I can work on. 

I mention all of this detail because I was talking with a very wise counselor of mine about a situation where someone close to me was on a roller coaster of emotions. My first reaction was to not get sucked into the extreme aspects of the roller coaster & to back off in a way for some distance. I mentioned that to this mentor of mine, and she said that it's really apart of my personality to sort of mellow a situation out and personally not get sucked into heightened emotions. And then I said "yes, exactly. I like balance & homeostasis!" (Light bulb moment right there!) Then she proceeded to give the fun analogy that when she thinks of balanced or homeostasis, she thinks of Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare. In short, I am just like the tortoise in that story. Slowly,steadily winning the race. I'm not like the hare who is bouncing all around from place to place or screaming about how far ahead he is, only to then take breaks and get distracted then come in last. It was a fun little analogy for me. Also, upon looking up famous ISFJ I found that Mother Teresa was one. Mind blown!