The Self Compass In A Nutshell

Utilizing the LAWS embedded in the Self Compass allows you to intuitively cooperate with Christ’s transforming power in your personality. Employing your entire Self Compass means that you express both tender care and diplomatic assertion. You are competent and strong, yet at the same time humbly aware of your weakness, maintaining free and equal access to all four compass points.

Love lets you care for yourself and the world, drawing out your potential for nurturance, compassion, and forgiveness. Love provides the bridge of intimacy that connects you to others. 

But no one remains loving all the time. There are times to stand up for your self and negotiate with others for what is fair and just. Assertion allows you to do just that: express your point of view while still caring about others.
  
Weakness helps you accept as normal the times when you feel uncertain or anxious. When you admit these vulnerable feelings into awareness, you can freely acknowledge your clay feet and ask for help when needed.

Strength provides you with a sense of competence, confidence, and personal power. Healthy strength encourages you to achieve your best, while humbly acknowledging your weaknesses.

By synergistically integrating these LAWS of personality, and with God’s guidance, you become your true self in Christ.

For more, read Chapter One of The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ on Amazon.com.

How To Stop Arguing With Your Spouse

The Self Compass offers growth tools that really work for improving couples’ communication. The four compass points of the Self Compass (Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength) provide the framework for a growing and healthy couples' relationship.

In a nutshell, when you utilize all four compass points for couples' communication, you:

Love: Act considerately

Assertion: Express self tactfully

Weakness: Own up to blowing it

Strength: Listen respectfully

On the Self Compass, it looks like this:

Couples' Communication Self Compass

Here are some pointers to help you utilize your whole Self Compass in couples' communication:

Love and Assertion:

1. Avoid escalating a disagreement: restate it diplomatically in the here and now; agree where possible, and work toward a compromise.
2. Get rid of putdowns or sarcastic remarks (that read as aggressive to the unconscious) that make a partner self-conscious.
3. Instead, watch for ways to praise your partner, including around other people.  
4. Avoid painting your partner in a negative light, because the unconscious will always remember it.
5. Just as in car maintenance, keep your marriage well oiled and lubricated by a generous supply of basic kindness:  “Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” “Excuse me.” “Good morning.” “Sleep well.” “How are you?” “I need you.” “I’m sorry.” “I love you!”

Strength and Weakness:

1. Offer your opinion or preference with humility.
2. Give each other the benefit of the doubt. 
3. Assume you don't know everything.
4. Warm up your spouse up to the communication you wish to have. 
5. Realize that you experience things that your spouse has no way of knowing about, unless you tell them. Avoid the trap of believing that if a person really loves you, he or she will be able to read your mind. 
6. The only tools available for communication and communion are words and body language. So whatever you want to say, especially if it has a strong emotional valence to it, break it to your partner gently.
7. Avoid arguments and misunderstandings by willingly repeating whatever you’re trying to say in fresh new words. 
8. It is only natural for couples to mishear a communication, or to take something personally and react defensively, instead of continuing the communication. 
9. With practice you can learn to let your partner finish whatever they are trying to say without interrupting them, or short-circuiting the communication with an emotional reaction. 
10. The more grace you extend to your partner, the more grace they become willing to extend to you. 
11. Taking the time to humbly clarify any misunderstanding builds mutual goodwill.

And finally, bring God right into the center of your relationship. Couples need all the help they can get to develop creative caring, ongoing respect, and emotional intimacy. Hold hands together and pray out loud for God’s will in your relationship: “Dear God, please bring blessing and guidance in our couple’s life. Help us grow closer than ever through this. Thank you.”

Jesus Christ's Self Compass

A pastoral counseling colleague at Harvard Divinity School told me that, "Jesus Christ had no personality as we know it today. He has nothing in common with modern conceptions of personality. And there is no similarity between his behavior and ours."

I disagree. Jesus' behavior in the Gospels reveals what personality is all about—motivation, perception, learning, memory, emotion, cognition, and spirituality. The Son of God became fully human precisely so we can relate to him through our personalities. And in Christ's behavior we see God's personality wholeness, as well as a model for becoming more whole ourselves. 

Biblical names of Jesus Christ reveal crucial aspects of his personality. Four names in particular illustrate the complimentary dynamics of  Christ’s Self Compass. 

Christ's Self Compass

Jesus as the Good Shepherd reveals the Love compass point. He watches over his sheep and calls them by name. As he lays his life down for his sheep out of love, so he commands: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (Jn 13:34). Jesus shows us how: In caring service Christ taught the disciples, and healed and fed the multitudes. He formed close friendships that revealed loyalty and emotional fulfillment, yet cared for himself by taking time to pull back from his ministry and restore his energies.

The Lion of Judah reveals the Assertion compass point of Jesus’ personality. A fierce opponent of injustice, Jesus rebuked the self-righteous Pharisees and drove the moneychangers out of his Father’s temple. Though tempted by Satan, he resisted and affirmed the Father's will, and will return to judge the living and the dead. And Jesus challenges us all to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation" (Mk 16:15). It is from Assertion that we find the courage to live out Christ's commands, imperfectly, yet courageously.

Growing Christlike

The Lamb of God reveals the Weakness compass point of Jesus' personality when he gives his life to save people from the inseparable breach that sin creates between them and God. And he knows, too, that "since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you" (Jn 15:20 NLT). Through Jesus' suffering we draw comfort from him who shares in all human suffering; our God who stands with and for us in both adversity and need.

The Prince of Peace reveals the Strength compass point of Jesus' personality. As God’s reigning Messiah who overcomes sin and the devil to inaugurate the kingdom of God, Jesus alone can say, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (Jn 14:27).  Jesus is the source of a believer's Strength, a confidence balanced by trust in the Lord and sensitivity to others.

Jesus gifts humanity with a redemptive psychology of personal and relational transformation, and lives within us to empower our healthy personality transformation throughout the lifespan.

For more on how the Self Compass forms a dynamic living connection between you and Christ, see:  

Compass Psychotheology:  

Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet.

Benefit from the Self Compass LAWS of Personality

Utilizing the LAWS embedded in the Self Compass allows you to intuitively cooperate with Christ’s transforming power in your personality. Employing your entire Self Compass means that you express both tender care and diplomatic assertion. You are competent and strong, yet at the same time humbly aware of your weakness, maintaining free and equal access to all four compass points.

Love lets you care for yourself and the world, drawing out your potential for nurturance, compassion, and forgiveness. Love provides the bridge of intimacy that connects you to others. 

But no one remains loving all the time. There are times to stand up for your self and negotiate with others for what is fair and just. Assertion allows you to do just that: express your point of view while still caring about others.
  
Weakness helps you accept as normal the times when you feel uncertain or anxious. When you admit these vulnerable feelings into awareness, you can freely acknowledge your clay feet and ask for help when needed.

Strength provides you with a sense of competence, confidence, and personal power. Healthy strength encourages you to achieve your best, while humbly acknowledging your weaknesses.

By synergistically integrating these LAWS of personality, and with God’s guidance, you become your true self in Christ.

For more, read Chapter One of The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ on Amazon.com.

Top Personality Model for the 21st Century

Hi. I'm Dan Montgomery. Welcome! I've been a Psychologist and Marriage Therapist for 35 years, and a Christian theologian for about as long. Related to this integration of psychology and Christian faith,  my wife Kate and I have devoted our lives to the development and practical application of the Self Compass, a simple yet sophisticated growth tool for navigating life in the 21st century. 

Tell me. Would you enjoy having a trustworthy way to understand your personality and relationships, whether at work, at home, or in times of stress? Would you like to parent your children in a way that helps them develop a balanced personality? Would you like a way to grow more connected with God, feeling his love for you more strongly as life progresses? 

The Self Compass offers these benefits and more. Just as the discovery of the physical compass opened a new era in humanity's ability to travel from place to place, and navigate the earth, so the Self Compass opens a new era for finding your way to personality health and relationship fulfillment.

I assure you that by becoming a faithful reader of these postings, your knowledge of self and others will grow exponentially. What used to baffled you about your own or other people's behavior will make sense. You'll gain x-ray vision into people's real motivations, even when they are trying to conceal something from you.  

Most of all, you'll learn the art of growing psychologically and spiritually more whole, a treasured legacy you can pass on to those you love.

So Kate and I invite you to join our blog adventure. Take a moment to enjoy a brief video about our Compass Series books. The next posting I'll show you the Self Compass and how it works.

Dr. Dan Speaking About the Compass Series Books