Understanding Yourself Changes the Decisions You Make

I've always been fascinated by personality assessments.

DISC, Human Design, different behavioural profiles — give me almost anything that might help me understand why people think or behave the way they do and I'll probably want to explore it.

But what interests me isn't really the assessment.

It's what happens when someone reads something about themselves and thinks, Oh. That's why I do that.

There is something useful about having language for something you've probably known about yourself for years.

And I think that kind of self-awareness has a much bigger impact on our lives than we sometimes give it credit for.

It changes the decisions we make.

It's not because knowing your personality type will suddenly give you the answers, but because you have more information about yourself when you're making them.

I've seen this a lot in business.

Someone will tell me they're struggling with some part of their business and immediately start looking for a strategy to fix it.

They need to prospect more. They need better time management. They need to hire someone. They need to become more disciplined.

Maybe.

But I usually want to know more before deciding that's the problem.

What are they naturally good at?

What do they avoid?

What kind of work do they lose themselves in?

Where do they consistently get stuck?

What do other people rely on them for?

What are they trying to build in the first place?

Once you understand the person, the problem can start to look different.

I've watched people spend years trying to become better at something because they assumed success required it. Meanwhile, there was another way to get to the same result that suited them much better.

I've also seen people overlook their strongest abilities because those abilities came so naturally that they didn't recognize them as strengths.

That's one of the things I find most interesting about self-awareness.

The things that are most obvious to other people can be surprisingly difficult to see in ourselves.

It also changes the way we look at opportunities.

We're taught to recognize a good opportunity when we see one. More money, more responsibility, a bigger role, a chance to grow.

But knowing yourself makes you ask different questions.

Do I actually want to spend my time doing what this opportunity requires?

Will I enjoy the role I'm creating for myself?

Does this take me closer to the kind of work I want to be doing?

Am I saying yes because I want it, or because it feels like something I should want?

That last question is an important one.

It's very easy to build a life around things that look right from the outside.

It's also easy to mistake being capable of something for wanting it.

Those distinctions become easier to see when you've spent some time understanding yourself.

And this is where I think personality assessments can be useful — with one fairly significant caveat.

I don't think any assessment gets to tell you who you are.

I've had results that felt almost uncomfortably accurate and others that didn't resonate with me at all. Both were useful because they made me think.

That's the value I see in them.

They give you something to react to.

Is this true about me? Where does this show up? Has this helped me? Has it gotten in my way? Am I trying to work against something that is simply part of how I operate?

The point isn't to get a label and organize your life around it.

It's to become more curious about yourself.

Because every piece of advice you receive, every opportunity you're offered and every decision you make eventually has to pass through one person.

You.

The better you understand that person, the better context you have for deciding what fits.

And sometimes the most useful question isn't, “What's the right thing to do?”

It's simply:

“Is this right for me?”