Consistency

"Balance is important to you. You are keenly aware of the need to treat people the same, no matter what their station in life, so you do not want to see the scales tipped too far in any one person’s favor. In your view this leads to selfishness and individualism. It leads to a world where some people gain an unfair advantage because of their connections or their background or their greasing of the wheels. This is truly offensive to you. You see yourself as a guardian against it. In direct contrast to this world of special favors, you believe that people function best in a consistent environment where the rules are clear and are applied to everyone equally. This is an environment where people know what is expected. It is predictable and evenhanded. It is fair. Here each person has an even chance to show his or her worth."

This is sooooo me! It even works backwards, if Stu buys his lunch I feel like I'm entiltled to buy mine - fair enough you say, if I buy my lunch I feel like he should be entitled to buy his (which is random because he doesn't really care whether he buys lunch or has a cheese and pickle sandwhich from home).

Just today I was having a conversation about double standards and how much they annoy me!

Harmony

"You look for areas of agreement. In your view there is little to be gained from conflict and friction, so you seek to hold them to a minimum. When you know that the people around you hold differing views, you try to find the common ground. You try to steer them away from confrontation and toward harmony. In fact, harmony is one of your guiding values. You can’t quite believe how much time is wasted by people trying to impose their views on others. Wouldn’t we all be more productive if we kept our opinions in check and instead looked for consensus and support? You believe we would, and you live by that belief. When others are sounding off about their goals, their claims, and their fervently held opinions, you hold your peace. When others strike out in a direction, you will willingly, in the service of harmony, modify your own objectives to merge with theirs (as long as their basic values do not clash with yours). When others start to argue about their pet theory or concept, you steer clear of the debate, preferring to talk about practical, down-to-earth matters on which you can all agree. In your view we are all in the same boat, and we need this boat to get where we are going. It is a good boat. There is no need to rock it just to show that you can."

This is so me... It's funny though how I would usually describe this part of me as a "bad thing" - Generally I would say "I like to avoid conflict" or "I need to get better at difficult conversations" I'm not sure I agree with the last couple of sentences though, I'm not sure why, maybe the boat analogy just doesn't do it for me... And I'm not sure if it's just productivity that drives me to dislike conflict, I think there's more to it than that.

Today I am 30

And it feels the same as being 29 ;-) I am thankful for 30 mostly good years and for almost 30 years of having a relationship with God, which, as MIke reminded us on Sunday at church, is perfect because of Jesus!

As part of a work exercise this week, I took the Clifton Strengthsfinder test which measures the presence of talent in 34 categories called "themes." These themes were determined by The Gallup Organization as those that most consistently predict outstanding performance. The greater the presence of a theme of talent within a person, the more likely that person is to spontaneously exhibit those talents in day-to-day behaviors.

My five themes were: Harmony, Consistency, Connectedness, Responsibility and Individualization. I was going to post all of the descriptions but they're a bit long for one post, maybe I'll post them one by one and you can see if they really do describe me... I think some of them do quite well!