I love personality styles.
Not that I always love dealing with certain personality styles. But boy do I find the different ways people respond, the variety of things that make people tick, absolutely fascinating.
When I think about personality styles and the variety of assessments out there to reveal certain aspects of personality, most of those assessments and quizzes are all about who you are today and the history and influences in your life that got you here. It’s a powerful tool, to understand a bit more about how you’re wired and why you look at life the way you do.
But there’s another set of personality styles that have got me thinking lately. And it’s this: What will people remember about me, about my personality, about my quirks and weaknesses and strengths when I’m gone? What’s the assessment then?
There are things I’d like to be known for…and then there are the things that it would be fair to remember me by. I want to be known as the person who would drop everything if you needed to have a heart to heart talk, but the reality is, I live by deadlines these days, and I’m probably not known for impromptu late-night chat sessions. I still desperately want to be known as having cracked the housekeeping code, maintaining a clutter-free, sophisticated homefront, but that’s not even in the realm of possibility at the moment. I want to be known as a dedicated fitness adherent, consistent and devoted in my running schedule and clean eating, but my latest season of deadlines has had me dipping into the Peanut M&Ms with greater and greater frequency and my running shoes have been relegated to a series of inconsistent late afternoon walks when I just can’t stand sitting in my desk chair for one more minute.
Do you experience it, too? The way you want to be seen versus the reality of how you’re actually spending your days? I’m all about personal growth and goal setting and doing better. I really am. But I’m also starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, there are things I’d like to be known for that simply aren’t me.
How does that hit you? For me, I at first want to push back against the thought. I can get this house into tip-top shape and keep it consistently there, I think. But following right on the heels of that is the realization that it would require a level of time and commitment from me that would come at the cost of a few other important items in my life. And so, what would happen if I let this one go, if I simply became more content with keeping things around here somewhat hygienic, sure, but if I stopped creating a pseudo-personality for myself and just rested in what is instead of what is Pinterest? What if I became okay with the fact that I’ll probably never be known for my stellar housekeeping abilities?
See, I think there are things we strive for, other’s opinions we are aiming for, that live far out there in the future, in that place of How I Will Be Remembered. It can be motivating, yes. But it can also be frustrating and dishonoring of who we really are and the way we really live. And then there is the irony of this: We don’t actually get to control how others choose to perceive us, in our present-day and in the days to come. It’s a little discombobulating, particularly for those of us who are confessed people pleasers. For us, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to work our way into people’s hearts by our efforts and performance and achievement. To suddenly let go of that game can be disorienting.
But what if? What if I stopped playing the game of how I want to be seen, how I want to be remembered and was simply faithful to what I’m doing today, in the best way I can get that done? What if I stopped measuring myself against the things I think I should be and I became grateful to God for what I am?
When I was writing my newest Bible study, Footnotes: Major Lessons from Minor Bible Characters, this is one of the primary things that struck me, that regardless of what these personalities strove for in their lives, regardless of how they might have preferred to have been remembered, their lives are commemorated and seen through a lens that they couldn’t have imagined in their present day. It’s humbling, encouraging, and mysterious, all at the same time. And it’s given me fresh perspective on the striving and busyness and efforts and filters through which I perceive just what I’m doing here on this planet. When all is said and done, it’s going to be what God thinks about the span of my days, not how well I crafted a narrative for future telling. There are those who thought they would go down in history who are now lost to us and there are those who surely thought they were living lives of anonymity who have become significant voices echoing into today.
It’s a freedom, really. We can’t control how our stories will be told forward if they will be told at all. But God has written them down. He’s keeping track. And He knows how He designed us. He knows our personalities. He knows where we have embraced how He created us and He knows where we try to push ourselves into a mold that doesn’t fit. I’m working on it, the embracing of this freedom. He’s going to use my story as He sees fit, not according to the script I may try to craft. And there’s freedom in it for you, too. You don’t have to be anything more than He created you to be. And you shouldn’t be anything less. That’s the healthiest, most complete personality type I know, the person who has fully accepted who God has created them to be and leaves the spin of the story up to the God who set the universe into its spiral. Whether you end up remembered as a title, a footnote, a mention, a supporting character, or a cameo, may it be said of you, may it be said of me, that we lived. Fully, in the way Jesus talks about in John 10:10, life to the full. Full means not feeling like you’ve missed your purpose, your opportunity. Full means content with how God designed you. Full means that you know your worth before God, whether the world recognizes it or remembers it or not.
Want to go deeper? Curious to know about the ‘personality styles’ of the Bridge, the Messenger, the Wrestler, and the Careerist? Check out my newest study, Footnotes: Major Lessons from Minor Bible Characters from Abingdon Women. You can find Footnotes wherever you buy your books.
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