Thursday, April 25, 2013

The Recovering Histrionic Storyteller

As a recovering Storyteller, you keep your buoyancy and color, but now, because the Love compass point is balanced with the humility of Weakness, you are sensitive to people’s signals that they’ve heard enough funny stories.

Amazed by the genuine dialogue that ensues, you form relationships with increased depth and feel relaxed even when not in the limelight. Hidden insecurity is replaced by optimistic serenity.

Histrionic Storyteller Self Compass

As a recovering Storyteller: 
  • You stop to listen to other’s points of view.
  • You breathe more fully and speak with a slower delivery so that others are able to take in what you’re saying (the Strength compass point in rhythm with Weakness). 
  • You grow to enjoy more time alone, in quiet contemplation or in pursuit of hobbies.
  • Greater discipline in thinking and decision-making helps tap your intellectual potential (Strength compass point). 
  • By developing more confidence and capability, you no longer feel the need for center stage.  
  • Though you help others feel better with a lively and positive attitude, you acknowledge that it is normal to feel down sometimes
 
The Virtue of Good Cheer

With a fuller use of the Self Compass, the recovering Storyteller reaps the virtue of good cheer:
  • Makes life exciting, colorful and humorous.
  • Loves to laugh and play. 
  • Gregarious.
  • Doesn’t take the world too seriously.
  • Feels lighthearted most of the time.
  • Always ready for an adventure or surprise.
Instead of predictably patterned behavior, the Self Compass now offers you 360 degrees of choice to use as appropriate for any given situation.  

Now you are freed develop your own individual style in Christ. Precious in his eyes, there is no one else like you, because “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Mt 10:30).

For more, read: THE SELF COMPASS: Charting Your Personality in Christ

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Recovering Worrier


As a recovering Worrier, you move out of learned helplessness and into the world. You employ the Strength compass point of your Self Compass, in rhythm with your Weakness compass point. In so doing, you relate more effectively with people, bringing a much needed virtue to those interactions: empathy for human pain.  

Virtue of Empathy

It’s not that the times of feeling lonely disappear. It’s more that when they come, you do something to alleviate them. 
  • You actually get yourself to a new church group you’ve been thinking about checking out. 
  • You stop yourself from disappearing the moment the Bible study is over. 
  • You discipline yourself to stay at least five minutes and engage in some sort of conversation. 
  • You’re good at listening and getting better at talking. 
  • Even though it’s scary, you’re learning to stay with a feeling and express it, rather than avoid it.
  • Now daring to express needs and wants, you do it in a humble manner, sensitive to the other person’s point of view. 
 
Worrier Self Compass

Mobilizing your Strength and Assertion compass points brings a depth dimension to the events of your day that before had seemed flat and dreary.

You develop rhythmic access to all four compass points, yet since you favor the Weakness compass point, you are in the enviable position to readily own that you don’t have all the answers, and that you need God’s help in handling everyday life.

This is how redeemed Worriers reveal their growth in actual behavior when they access the LAWS of the Self Compass. And the virtue of empathy bears fruit:

Worrier—virtue of empathy.
  • Isn’t demanding or competitive.
  • Sensitive rapport with others.
  • Peacemaking. 
  • Has a high frustration tolerance.
  • Not motivated by status or material gain.
  • Is especially tender toward children, animals, and those who suffer. 
With the infusion of compass virtues, the locus of the self has changed. No longer is it fragmented, imbalanced, stuck on one or more of the compass points. Instead, your personality is now grounded in a balanced, God-oriented center that holds.

Instead of predictably patterned behavior, the Self Compass now offers you 360 degrees of choice to use as appropriate for any given situation. Now you are freed to express yourself through your own individual style in Christ. Precious in his eyes, there is no one else like you, because “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Mt 10:30 NKJV).

For more, read:



Thursday, April 4, 2013

Controllers Can Play, Too. Really.


What happens when someone stuck in the Controller pattern (Compulsive Perfectionist Disorder) enlists the help of the Self Compass?

You start appreciating appreciating yourself more. 
That you possess the virtue of discipline. That you are:

  • Conscientious, industrious, and reliable.
  • Value self-discipline and stick-to-itiveness.
  • Endorse social conventions and proprieties.
  • Pillar of the community. 
  • Emphasize rationality and logic.
  • A champion of morality.

It's a relief to know that by enlisting the Self Compass LAWS of personality, the recovering Controller gets to relax. And play. Instead of relying entirely on the Strength compass point, you grow by drawing in the wisdom offered through the Weakness and Love compass points.  

Compulsive Perfectionist Disorder



  • You find the grimness of constant competence replaced by tasks completed in due time without the need for perfection. 
  • You organize yourself to have fun. 
  • Going on walks for pleasure as much as exercise, you breathe in the air; listen for the sounds of a bird’s song. 
  • The fillips of joy floating up from your belly, you realize, come only from letting go.

When you hear that inner judge start up with the old tirades of self-condemnation about how you should have done something better, you stop. I’m human, you say. The planet will carry on without me being perfect. 


Feelings of Joy

Other people become less of an annoyance and more of a gift. You are amazed to discover that when you move into the Weakness compass point and ask for help, others actually do assist you. Caringly. Even efficiently. It shocks you to feel tears in your eyes when this happens. 

Taking in more deeply that other people love you brings emotional vulnerability. That is uncomfortable. But you are good at persevering, so you allow yourself a degree of surrender, with discernment, to the untidy, not always controllable, world of feelings.

And you begin experiencing what Jesus had in mind when he said, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (Jn 14:27). 


Peace As Christ Gives


Instead of predictably patterned behavior, the Self Compass now offers you 360 degrees of choice to use as appropriate for any given situation. Now you are freed to express your own individual style in Christ. Precious in his eyes, there is no one else like you, because “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Mt 10:30).

For more, read: