How to Know Yourself

Excerpt from Living Learning Loving

Personality is the term commonly accepted to describe the way we define our human uniqueness. Your personality style indicates your consistent patterns of behavior. Your personality traits are motivating factors that influence your decision-making. Faced with similar situations, people will make decisions determined by their own personality styles. If you find yourself making choices and then wondering why, your personality profile may reveal insightful clues. Then you can discern if you are making choices that are true to who you were meant to be.

Knowing your personality style brings self-awareness and with it freedom. This requires an honest look in the mirror. It is crucial to truthfully acknowledge and accept your personality before you make major decisions. You may take a short personality profile by visiting, http://www.personalityprinciples.com/

Since discovering my personality type’s natural behaviors, I have been able to focus on building my strengths instead of always managing my struggles. Knowing your personality type will open doors to self-awareness. The way you respond to life’s events is primarily determined by your natural built-in personality type and followed up by learned behaviors.Whatever type you are has a significant effect on how you cope with life’s difficulties and how you make decisions. When you complete a personality assessment you will discover both your strengths and your weaknesses̶—we all have them: strengths and weaknesses.  (from Living Learning Loving) 

Every mom who does this will benefit and so will her family. It is easy to think only of your weaknesses, but it is your strengths that will sustain you and concentrating on your strengths will turn your life around. If you will acknowledge your strengths and downplay your weaknesses, you will discover a clear image of yourself and how you act, react, and interact with others. Bu concentrating on your strengths they will increase and grow stronger.

Once in a while a woman will say to me during life coaching, “I’d like to have a better spiritual life,” or “I’d like to feel closer to God.” I believe the first step is to come to an intimate relationship with ourselves. the 12-Step Program, that I am particularly fond of, guides those who commit to it in this direction.  I think that self awareness is crucial in our spiritual development. Sister Teresa of Avila refers to this in her Interior Castle. She called it her “interior journey for purification, illumination and union with the sacred.

Life coaching is one way to gain self awareness. Spiritual Direction is as well. We – or most of us – think we know ourselves.

After my divorce, I had another chance to let my joys come out. Expressing myself became a passion for me and my personality reinforced this. Now as a Life Coach, I help my clients discover their God-given personality, so we can make a personalized plan that works for them. You must understand your true nature before you can develop your strengths so they work in your favor.

“Make it they business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.”
– Miguel de Cervantes

Gail holds a degree from Lamar University in Speech and a Master’s from the University of Texas. She was an educator in regular and special education for twenty years, finishing her professional career as a Braille teacher. She is a Certified Professional Coach with Fowler International Academy.
She married Sam after raising three children as a single mother.
In 2007 She founded SMORE for Women. SMORE is a nonprofit association whose goal is Single Moms, Overjoyed, Rejuvenated, & Empowered. Her stories have been published in several Christian books and magazines. Her book, Living Learning Loving, published in July 2015, is available for purchase on CreateSpace, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble online.