There’s a lot of excitement in Querci household this week. We’re getting ready for our very first road trip! We will be driving from the Querci residence here in Southern California all the way to Denver, Colorado.
I’ve already bought the essentials, made packing lists, and planned our route. It’s so easy to map a route in this day and age. I love technology! All I need to do is plug a starting point and an ending point into my computer, and within seconds I have turn-by-turn driving directions and a map to wherever I want to go.
So handy! OK. You probably know where I'm going with this. Analogy time.
I’ve already bought the essentials, made packing lists, and planned our route. It’s so easy to map a route in this day and age. I love technology! All I need to do is plug a starting point and an ending point into my computer, and within seconds I have turn-by-turn driving directions and a map to wherever I want to go.
So handy! OK. You probably know where I'm going with this. Analogy time.
Destination:
Let’s sum it up as, “To Know God.”
Starting Point:
My Puzzle Piece i.e., my God-given gifts and talents.
(For more on this, see my post Puzzle Pieces.)
My Puzzle Piece i.e., my God-given gifts and talents.
(For more on this, see my post Puzzle Pieces.)
Map & Route:
Imitating Christ and serving others with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength.
Imitating Christ and serving others with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength.
If we have these pieces of information, we should be able to "chart a course," of sorts, to God. So what keeps us from our goal? The problem is that, unlike my cartoon characters, we don’t necessarily know what our “puzzle pieces” look like...we don't always know ourselves.
Haven’t philosophers been complaining about that since, like, forever?
It is wisdom to know others; It is enlightenment to know one's self.
~ Lao-Tse
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
~ St. Augustine
‘Know thyself?’ If I knew myself, I’d run away.
~ Goethe
It's not that we don’t know ourselves at all; what we've been lacking is an objective view of ourselves, our gifts, and our talents, and an objective way to measure them.
If there were a way to objectively assess and measure our human abilities, now that would be a game changer!
And so it is.
That's what I was talking about in my last post, Jung at Heart. Jung gave us a good vocabulary to talk about human abilities in an objective way.
What's more, inspired by this new vocabulary of Jung, two ladies named Katherine Briggs & Isabel Briggs-Myers took it all to the next level. While the scientific community focused on how these categories applied to crazy people, this mother-daughter team saw how the ideas could benefit regular folks, and created the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) tool.
The MBTI gives us a simple, accurate way to know ourselves.
This is a starting point.
If there were a way to objectively assess and measure our human abilities, now that would be a game changer!
And so it is.
That's what I was talking about in my last post, Jung at Heart. Jung gave us a good vocabulary to talk about human abilities in an objective way.
What's more, inspired by this new vocabulary of Jung, two ladies named Katherine Briggs & Isabel Briggs-Myers took it all to the next level. While the scientific community focused on how these categories applied to crazy people, this mother-daughter team saw how the ideas could benefit regular folks, and created the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) tool.
The MBTI gives us a simple, accurate way to know ourselves.
This is a starting point.
Querci, you didn't give us a link to the MBTI so we could get started at that starting point!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about why such a seemingly simple idea, like, imitating Christ, is actually very complex and requires simplexity. Let's say I decide that I want to go from point A to point B. I first decide if I want to walk, ride, by bike, take a car, or fly. There can be different reasons for choosing one over another, but let's say that in this case it is just based on what I want to do. I might choose to walk, if I am not very good at riding a bike or driving a car. Or maybe I'll take my Helicopter because it is fastest, and I happen to own one and know how to fly it. The problem is that if I use googlemaps, I will get driving directions and they may not be the best walking, or flying directions. Driving a car is fine, and sometimes it makes the most sense, but other times I'd like to use other methods of transportation. Is it wrong for me to want a particular kind of map for whatever form of transportation I decide upon? I might even want to go on a Zike bike!
ReplyDeleteAlso the amount of detail in the directions can really vary. If the map is taken from a very high and broad perspective, then I will loose out on detail. Is one better than the other? No! That's why we have the option to zoom in and out. What if it is a major concern to me to eat diner at In-N-Out on my way? In that case, I'd like for the locations to be flagged on my map. What if I hate In-N-Out? Then I could care less. But show me where the Starbucks are! Further, I could just go on a trip and do EXACTLY what some other person did, but that would probably create a lot of silliness and waste, "Well it says here on my directions. 'Get off at exit 23 and use the restroom. It's really clean'. Huh? I don't have to go, but it must be a very special bathroom. . . I guess I better stop and check it out." Or, maybe not, Mr. Sillyhead, maybe the person who wrote the directions has a really small bladder and they would rather go at exit 23 than on the side of the road, especially, given the Starbucks stop back at exit 5.
UYOJ, as my grade school teacher used to say; use your own judgment.
Well, Mr.Sillyhead, don't you know it's obscene to pee on the side of the road ?!? That's why you HAVE to take Exit 23 like the bonifide directions say. period.
ReplyDeleteMr. Crazyhead went by Zike bike, because he liked. Then he not only peed on the side of the road, but he camped there that night, and ate Frito's and an apple for dinner. That's obscene!
ReplyDeleteYou can only get the official MBTI if you pay $60 and have a certified professional give it to you.
ReplyDeleteThere free "Jung-based personality tests" that you can do online for free though.
I've had the professionally administered one and have been taking the free online ones for years and I always get the same result.
The Keirsey Temperment sorter is a good one:
http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/instruments2.aspx?partid=0
Here are a couple more that came up in a google search:
http://similarminds.com/index.html
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
What I think is most helpful about about knowing our MBTI types, is not the traditional use of it to better know and understand our own, or even others', preferences.
ReplyDeleteWhat excites me about it is that when we identify our preferences, we are also highlighting our NON preferences. When we peel apart what those 4 letters mean, buried within each type result is a snapshot of our highly-gifted abilities and low-gifted abilities ranked and laid bare for honest assessment.
Our low-gifted abilities are the parts of ourselves that we usually neglect or ignore. These low abilities are where our blind spots lay hidden from ourselves. This is a way we can bring them "to light" for honest assessment.
With an honest assessment of our gifts in each area, however big or small the gift, we can better know how to use that gift appropriately in service of God and others...to bring Christ into the world!
A simplextic explanation of this is what I was intending to work on next, but I've been sidetracked by another important topic which I'm currently working on.
So if you're interested to hear more about this process before I get back to it, then give me a call. I say this assuming that everyone who might read this note knows me personally.