So I am working on an applied research paper for my Organizational Behavior & Leadership class... the assignment requires us to take a survey which asks a series of questions regarding how we feel about certain things and our perception of certain things in order to better understand our personal thinking style, how it is manifested in our lives, and how it affects the decisions that we make.
What do you think your thinking style is?
Humanistic-Encouraging: Gets satisfaction from helping others grow and develop
Affiliative: Values people & relationships
Achieving: Focused on excellence, interested in getting the job done and doing it well
Self-Actualizing: Strong interest in working to become everything they are capable of being
Approval: Bases level of self worth on their feelings of acceptance and approval
Conventional: Sticks with the status quo in order to be seen as "normal". Does not like to rock the boat
Dependent: Need for security and self-protection, typically feels that they have little control over their lives
Avoidance: Strong need to protect themselves by avoiding anything that may threaten them and their sense of security
Oppositional: Loves to argue and look for flaws in everything
Power: High need for power, status, prestige, influence, and control
Competitive: Associates self worth with winning and losing. Sees everything as a contest
Perfectionistic: Associates self-worth to accomplishment of tasks. Tends to place excessive demands on self and others.
(Ref: Human Synergistics: LSI Survey)
According to the survey, I am a Humanistic-Encouraging, Affiliative, Achieving, and Self-Actualizing thinker (as these scored the highest percentile based on my responses). Basically what this means is that I am an optimist that has a strong belief in peoples' strengths and their ability to improve. I tend to focus on ways to inspire and motivate people to be better. However, the same goes for myself. My way of thinking also revolves around ways that I can improve myself and get the most out of life. I have a great deal of confidence in myself despite the fact that I know I am bound to make mistakes and carry several flaws. In addition, I also value relationships and try to make sure that the relationships I have with people are meaningful.
In layman terms, I am a people person and all about finding ways to seek the best in everyone. There is so much truth to these findings, especially since the whole purpose of this website is to reach out to people by just lending an ear and even some guidance when they need it. Just like my tagline says, I live to INSPIRE and be INSPIRED. There isn't a day goes by that I don't seek some kind of inspiration or try to say or do something for someone to give them some.
Aside from the positive side of my thinking, my downfall is that although I try to be SUPERWOMAN, we all know that Superwoman has her days too... Just like me, there are some day when I let my thoughts get the best of me and low self-esteem might kick in. On these days, I will start to compare myself to others and think that I'm not doing good enough, that I need to be better and I need some sort of approval from others or feel that I need to be liked by everyone....And then, I snap out of it and realize that I don't have to be liked by everyone and that I know that I am doing the best I can and at the end of the day, it's my life so why be bothered with what everyone else thinks of it?
You see friends, if there is one thing I've learned from my experiences, it's that all the time wasted caring about what everyone else thinks or about what everyone else is doing is just more time that we will never get back to truly experience and enjoy our own lives.
Here is my tip of the day: Write down the top 3 or 5 or 10 or even 100 things that make your life awesome (whatever floats your boat).
By doing this, you can look back on it when you're having one of those lousy days and be reminded of how great your life really is :)
Looking forward to your thoughts!