Expressive and Proud

I haven't been the biggest fan of personality tests in the past.  I think they can put you in a fictitious 'box'.  However, a few weeks ago we had someone come speak to my psychotherapy class about a particular classification of personalities.  Before he came, we all were required to take a personality/communication style test online.  I was 'diagnosed' as expressive/expressive.  I didn't pay too much attention, but I took the test and whatever.
So this guy comes to class, looks around, points at someone and says "Expressive/Dominant?  And you, amiable, right?"  He was DEAD on, just from looking at them!  That got my attention.

As I listened, and read the profile of my own personality, it was like shining a blazing spotlight on the mysteries of my life!  It helped me understand myself in a way I never had before!  So here are some descriptions of my personality type.

How I see myself

"You volunteer for tasks, even if you are unsure of the responsibilities or consequences of the job you face."  

Erin, remember when we used to do this as pruners?  

"You dislike activities of a routine nature. You hate anything monotonous or repetitive. You don't like doing meticulous, data-intensive work, and hate working alone. No matter what the situation is, if others are involved, you will do your best to make it memorable."

Yes, guilty guilty guilty.  Generally speaking, I cannot do routine.  Give me a procedure and you better believe I will skim it, reinterpret it, and basically do it the way I think I should.  Case in point: my recipe-following skills.

How others see me

"An energetic, friendly person who is fun to talk with. Others know that you love to be involved in everything, and the more active and outgoing the activity is the better you like it. They like the way you carefully state your opinions and how your approach to communication prevents misunderstandings that could lead to conflicts." 

Ok so that's totally flattering.  I hope it's true!

Behavior at work

This one really nailed me, I don't know how people work with me sometimes.

"You are capable of tremendous working effort, accomplishing a great amount of work in a short amount of time, but your endurance is limited because of your need to interact with others."

"It is easy for you to grasp broad objectives and the primary goals of a situation, but when co-workers try to describe things to you in lists of supporting details, you find yourself asking them what it all means."

Yep!  I find myself interrupting meetings to restate whatever is being talked about in terms of the big picture.  

"Because you keep the overall picture in your mind, you are able to explore other lines of thought and jump from one point to the next in a way that can confuse some people."

Now that they mentioned it...I have noticed that some of what I consider my most profound and useful thoughts are met with looks of confusion...yes this is very common for me.

Need for improvement: My favorite section.  Nailed me again.

"Because of the level of excitement under which you operate as you rush through life, you can fail to see many details which most people find important."

Kaela, how many times have you reminded me of important things that I have absolutely no recollection of?

You have a need for constant stimulation. Because of this, you find yourself easily distracted and tend to commit yourself to activities which may conflict with or overload your schedule. Although you are full of good intentions and your main desire is to make others happy, you are often unorganized and over-committed. You tend to forget some agreements and be unsure of past communications. 

I am so sorry to all my dear patient friends for this one.  I try to keep a planner to compensate.  The jury is still out, but it might be hopeless.

Every personality has strengths and weaknesses and you have to make them work for you, not against you.  My weaknesses are part of who I am.  Not to say I'm not working on them, but this helped me recognize things that I had been in denial about because I consider them undesirable.  I'm not goal-driven, I get bored easily, I want to say yes to everyone and do everything I said yes to even though I kind of know I can't, I wait to the last minute to get things done, and I don't care about details. 

I think this helps explain why, despite her patient efforts, my mom was never able to convince me to have a clean room.  Cleaning it took too long and keeping it clean took too much attention to details.  

This is why my goals and my parents' goals didn't always match.  My parents are fun and interactive people and they LOVE to get things done and done right.  I only inherited the fun and interactive part.  Essentially, I have to force myself to finish just about anything.  I have learned to do it and for that I am ever grateful...but in my spare time,  I start things, not finish them.

It also explained why I had sort of a personality change on my mission.  He said if there is another person who is a more dominant expressive in your family, the less dominant one will sort of go into hiding until they leave home.  HELLO!  That is me.  Wow.  On my mission, I feel like my personality exploded out of me, and I hardly even knew myself.  I came to love myself, and feel like myself for the first time in my life.  This gave me a context in which to understand why that happened.  It helped me embrace what I am and what I'm not, and learn to compensate.

http://www.persogenics.com/event.php?g=fws&c=45
There, now you can take this test too!