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.

Moses and The Worrier Pattern

In the Book of Exodus, God asks Moses to meet with Pharaoh and demand that the Hebrew slaves be set free.

And Moses’ reply? He exclaims, “But I’m not the person for a job like that!” (Ex 3:11).

God makes several more requests, and Moses responds:

O Lord, I’m just not a good speaker. I never have been, and I’m not now, even after you have spoken to me. 
I have a speech impediment. 
Lord, please! Send someone else. 
But look, my own people won’t even listen to me anymore; how can I expect Pharaoh to? I’m no orator!

Many people think of Moses as one of the strongest personalities in the Bible. But when God initially approaches him, Moses responds in the Worrier pattern: “I can’t do it and that’s that.” Ultimately, though, Moses’ meekness becomes the fulcrum for an eventual wholeness and friendship with God.

Like other people stuck on the Weakness compass point, Moses is plagued with self-doubt about his identity. An abandoned Hebrew child who grows up in Pharaoh’s palace, he never truly fits in. He wonders if he is Egyptian royalty or a Hebrew slave. He ends up ill-at-ease around everybody, as is typical of the Worrier. One day a crisis develops when he observes an Egyptian guard beating an Israelite mud worker. Moses’ repressed feelings erupt and he murders the guard, burying the body in the sand. When Pharaoh hears about it, he seeks to kill Moses.

Moses avoids his social troubles as Worriers do—he withdraws to Midian, a desert wilderness where he lives for forty years. He names a son Gershom, meaning “foreigner,” for Moses says, “I am a stranger in a foreign land” (Ex 2:22 TLB). 

The Self Compass and the Worrier Pattern

The Worrier pattern cuts you off from the Strength compass point. You shrink from the risks required for an actualizing personality in Christ. Disconnected from the Assertion compass point, you avoid standing up for yourself. Not exercising the Love compass point, you become incapable of giving and receiving trust and affection. You end up feeling all alone.

Leveraged out on the Weakness compass point, the Worrier withdraws from social situations, yet longs to participate in life. You lose the virtue of healthy weakness—its humility and empathy—and instead become helpless and held back by procrastination. “I’ll do it someday.” But that someday never comes.

God knew Moses’ potential for personality wholeness. After appearing to him in the burning bush, the Lord led him on a journey to make real his potential. Moses did not come around easily, but he cooperated enough to face his Worrier pattern.

Moses kept talking to God. Though he dragged his feet and complained a fair amount, Moses followed God’s directives. The result? Moses underwent a gradual but effective personality transformation.

Exodus describes how Moses confronted Pharaoh (Assertion compass point), encouraged people to trust in God (Love compass point), led the Israelites through the Red Sea (Strength compass point), and on Mount Sinai humbly received the Ten Commandments (Weakness compass point).

Slowly, Moses developed into a humbly competent leader, with great compassion for the people he led.

For more on how to do outgrow the Avoidant Worrier personality pattern like Moses did, read:

THE SELF COMPASS:

CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST

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