Thursday 15 January 2009

What's your type? According to the Keirsey Temperment Sorter, I'm an................


When I first took this test a few years ago, in the days when I still had delusions of being a career woman, my results outed me as an INTJ. These four letters are pretty good ones to have after your name if you're looking for a job at Nissan. Allegedly, these Japanese car makers look for this personality profile when employing new staff. Don't ask me why. Sales companies, however, prefer the E (extrovert) personalities to the I (introvert) types like me. My acronym was as different to my colleagues' as my sales technique. I felt quite silly sitting there, in the training room, a lonely I drowning in a sea of Es. Maybe that's when I began to question my vocation.

I managed to avoid making any decisions on the career front when Nature deemed that I was to indulge my maternal instincts for a while. After a break of 12 months from the pressure and money driven world of sales, I realised that I didn't miss it. Since making the decision not to go back, I've tried my hand at a few things. The last 10 years have provided me with a number of firsts and new experiences. My body has been stretched out of shape by babies and kept supple with yoga, it's balanced on skis, danced around (and fallen off) a pole, scaled a climbing wall and parascended over the Mediterranean but other than a few more lines and the occasional grey hair, I don't really look that different on the outside.

I've suspected for some time that things are different on the inside. I'd always assumed that by my late 20s, I had become who I was going to be. Not what........WHO. I thought I knew myself and that I wouldn't change, but the results of my most recent Keirsey test seem to suggest otherwise.

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