Page 36 - Mountain Medicine Directory - Winter 2017

MAXIMIZING HAPPINESS and the

BRIGGS-MEYERS PERSONALITY TEST

ost of life is spent finding out who People make the same mistakes in
you are, chiefly by trial and error. forming relationships. Friendships may be easily
When you are a child placed in left behind if they become problematic, but
Mthe wrong club or sport the error is when a relationship has commited you to a
easy to undo: you just quit. During the years of house and children, it’s hard to break it off.
childhood, these trials and errors are supposed Many people reach mid-life only to become
to lead to a good understanding of what you awre that they are despite the best intentions
can do, of what you like to do, and what you married to spouses with whom they are not
do particularly well. happy. Marriage counselors usually advise
Past a certain age, trials lead to errors partners on how they can change to better
that are much harder to undo. Many people fit one another’s needs. But, what if you are
major in a program in college which leads to being asked to change your very nature? Is it
an impossible, unworkable, or otherwise just possible to do--or even desirable to try?
wrong career, so they end up abandoning In the middle of life we can feel stuck in
a huge financial investment to do something lives that we don’t feel connected to--looking
else. Others follow the work plan they set out back it’s clear we made mistakes but at each
for themselves, bit a decade or two later, they point career and marriage choices seemed
are depressed or frustrated by work they both to make sense. For a while each decision
dislike and can’t do easily. In the middle of seemed right. But, something changed. What
their lives--instead of resting on the accolades changed? Did I change? Or, did the other
of a long and fruitful career they must suddenly person change?
launch themselves into sheep farming in New The process of learning who you are is
Zealand or optometry school. a combination of the plain facts about yourself
and understanding how you are different from
other people.
The Brigg-Meyers test is not something
that was cooked up in this century: The Four
Y RELATED OPPOSITES -- Humours can be traced back reliably to
Ancient Greek medicine and philosophy,
Both things are true: Birds of a feather notably in the work of Hippocrates and
flock together and opposites attract. in Plato’s ideas about character and
In Ruth Johnston’s new book, Re-Mod- personality. In Greek medicine around 2,500
elling the Mind: Personality in Balance, years ago it was believed that in order to
She explains,”I connect personality maintain health, people needed an even
types that have mostly different letters; balance of the four body fluids: blood,
in each case the only letter that’s the phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
same is either an S or an N. All other These four body fluids were linked
letters are completely opposite.” to certain organs and illnesses and also
represented the Four Temperaments of
personality as they later became known
in the Middle Ages: choleric, melancholic,
sanguine & phegmatic and these ideas were
“My Related Opposite pairs adopted by Jung into his own system and,--
have opposite skills & finally “codified” by Briggs-Meyers into a very
dominanace needs useful tool.
but also have related ideas
about what life is all about.” To make use of the information
here , Google a free Briggs-Meyers
personality test -- 20 questions sure
beats even one more minute of
navel-gazing.
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