The Career Life Coaching Newsletter
January, 2004    Edition 3

We are HERE in a New Year and … has anything changed? Are you behaving differently? Have you successfully broken whatever habits you RESOLVED to change on January 1^st? Or did you come to realize that making resolutions is not particularly productive as you will probably not keep them this year any better than you did in year’s past and so didn’t do any? (Thus saving you from guilt and frustration?) We continue year after year to start out "fresh" with the best intentions of making changes in our lives. Why is it then, we so rarely do so? Why is it some people seem to be able to and others of us know matter how well intentioned, just cannot follow through?

Well there are lots of reasons we could come up with but here’s one: we were born that way. (Yeah, I like that reason too!!!) Carl Jung, the well-known Swiss psychiatrist, concluded that differences in behavior result from people’s inborn tendencies to use their minds in different ways. As we act on those tendencies, we develop patterns of behavior. Building on Jung’s theory, Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs designed an assessment to measure peoples natural preferences or ways of thinking known today as the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory® or MBTI®. This wondrous tool measures our preferences, tendencies and gifts clustering us into 16 personality types. The most widely used personality assessment in the world today, it is incredibly enlightening and useful.

What are preferences? Consider if you are right handed, brushing your teeth with the left hand for a few days. You can probably manage it but it’s more difficult and less efficient than if you used your "preferred" hand, and probably more time consuming and frustrating. (I know this example first hand, pardon the pun; I spent almost 4 years cumulatively with my right hand in a cast! Yup, I am right handed though I learned to use the left remarkably well). The point is, each of us have preferences or natural ways of perceiving and taking in information, decision making, of relating to the outside world, and getting energy. For example, do you need quiet alone time to re-charge yourself after a busy day or are you craving to connect with other people and socialize? Do you pop into the grocery store and buy what looks good or is on sale or do you turn around in the parking lot when you realize you don’t have your list with you?

Our natural ways of thinking and BE-ing effect our communications, our interactions with others, our decision making, and our career paths, even our choice of significant others!

Intrigued by the notion that Personality Type can help you find joy and satisfaction in your work? Well, check out this book:

Do What You Are, Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, Little-Brown, 2001.

Presenter: Dee Relyea, M. Ed, President of the Madison Chapter of the Association of Personality Type and qualified MBTI® practitioner.

Please call Dee at: 513-9675 or Coleen at 836-1706 to reserve your space.