I recently put up a post about something I’ve come across called Human Design, wondering if it was essentially a new-age version of the personality tests. While I was rummaging around in a folder at work I found some of our notes from a few years ago when we were brainstorming ideas. Part of that process was trying to assign personality assessments to the characters we were writing about, and then seeing who among us might have the closest personality to the characters as we had defined them. In this way, it might be useful to pick the brains of anyone who was close to a specific personality type to see how they might react in certain situations. We all took the personality tests from 16personalities.com.
I ended up with ENFP-A – the assertive campaigner. (I had to look that up- it was posted in July 4 2019)
But….in the percentages, I came out as:
61% extravert (mind)
51% intuitive (energy)
54% feeling (nature)
56% prospecting (tactics)
51% assertive (identity)
As you can see, I’m pretty much in the middle. But as I was answering the questions, it’s just a simple “where on a 7 point spectrum do you fall” answer. But I thought I’d take some time and answer these in some more depth. Given how close I am to the center, I imagine I could take this on four different days and come up with four different results.
These are the questions/statements from 16 personalities, here goes.
- You regularly make new friends
I make friends pretty easily. I feel like I’m a pretty open person, so I’ll start talking with people and relatively quickly be able and ready to share details about my life. Apparently there are some people who are put off by this. I’ve had people ask me sarcastically: What? Are you writin’ a book? So I guess I crossed over a line with them, but at that point I just stop asking them any more questions. Most people are pretty open in return. I did have the feeling with one brother at church awhile back that he thought I was oversharing… I suppose I was if he thought so. There’s probably an art to reading people better that I don’t know about that would help me grasp when to share and when not to.
For the most part, I think people respond well to me. I hope they can sense right off that I’m asking questions, or sharing, in earnest, and they reciprocate.
I suppose a distinction would be in order though: I talk to new people easily, but that doesn’t necessarily make them my friend. Being friends with someone would mean more than just breaking the ice, but actually doing things with that person.
We have had some work functions where we’ve invited people from other business to the office. I’m happy to meet and talk with people there, and as much as you can call consistent conversation partners ‘friends’, I’ve achieved that.
I feel like I’m friends with many of the people at our office.
But if I were to think about how many people I actually regularly spend time with, it’s a much lower number. So maybe I don’t “regularly make new friends”. Then again, who has like… a hundred people they regularly hang out with… and constantly add more friends as they go? I doubt many people do… we just don’t have THAT much time. So maybe I’m back to “Yes. I regularly make new friends.”
I suppose that’s why I’m spending some time processing some of these questions a little more deeply.
In summary, I regularly meet new people, and am friendly to them. Do they really count as friends? Probably not, but I’m not really sure who would regularly make friends in that way, so yes, I think I do.
2. You spend a lot of your free time exploring various random topics that pique your interest
Uh, yes, an inordinate amount of time. This happens to me all the time. I get interested in something and then I want to know something about it, and I launch off trying to teach myself. It’s probably the reason I read so much.
But as an example, my son and I have had a bunch of political discussions. He is on the opposite side of the spectrum as I am, and regularly refers to people on my side as a slur. Of course both sides do this. Conservatives tend to think leftists are all some level of socialist/communist, and progressives think anyone on the right is a fascist. This got me to thinking that I don’t really know anything about fascism, and while I considered myself a socialist in college, I still didn’t know all that much about that either. So I decided to start reading.
I’ve done this with a bunch of languages, having started into: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Romanian, German, Arabic, and Latin at one time or another.
I’ve looked into history, philosophy, theology, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism… I used to watch documentaries on countries I didn’t know anything about while I was doing brainless work. I’ll read about things and then follow rabbit trails looking for information on them. In short, yeah, I spend a fair amount of my free time exploring various random topics that pique my interest.