Fruits, Strengths, and Personalities..

So, today at church our priest talked a little bit about prayer and the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.  He said that often people will tell him that they find it hard to find time for prayer.  He then told us talked about how prayer doesn't just have to be those quiet moments where we are reciting our traditional prayers, giving thanks, or asking for help.  We can "pray" by doing what we do every day, IF we do it with Him in mind and for His glory.  We can "pray" by living our lives in a way that uses the Fruits of the Holy Spirit in our work and in our relationships and interactions with others.  But you can't just be lazy about it.  You must be intentional.  I thought it was an interesting take on prayer, and I thought it was a great reminder about using these fruits as strengths in our lives.

Speaking of strengths:  I've been meaning to blog about strengths for more than a year now.  Last school year, our school district started a "strengths" initiative.  All of the DISD staff members and select grade levels took the Gallup Strengths Finder/Clifton Strengths test.  Through extensive research in countries all over the world, the Gallup company has found 34 strengths that all people (regardless of age, race, gender, religion, etc.) possess.  This test will rank the presence of those strengths in your personality and give you your top 5.  Everyone I've talked to seems to be amazed at how accurate the results are.  But the idea is that "your greatest room for overall personal improvement isn't where you're weakest, but rather where you're strongest".  Below is a summary of my Top 5:

• Developer You see the potential in others. Very often, in fact, potential is all you see. In your view no individual is fully formed. On the contrary, each individual is a work in progress, alive with possibilities. And you are drawn toward people for this very reason. When you interact with others, your goal is to help them experience success. You look for ways to challenge them. 
• Empathy You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective. This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions. You anticipate the need.
• Achiever Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. Achiever describes a constant need for achievement. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself.  No matter how much you may feel you deserve a day of rest, if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small, you will feel dissatisfied. You have an internal fire burning inside you. It pushes you to do more, to achieve more. 
• Relator Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people, but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship
• Positivity You are generous with praise, quick to smile, and always on the lookout for the positive in the situation. Some call you lighthearted. Others just wish that their glass were as full as yours seems to be. You celebrate every achievement. Somehow you can’t quite escape your conviction that it is good to be alive, that work can be fun, and that no matter what the setbacks, one must never lose one’s sense of humor. 

And if I think about using the Fruits of the Holy Spirit as strengths as well, I think that all 9 of them fit right in with my top 5...and probably with everyone's top 5.  

In researching the idea of strengths (especially knowing that Hannah, as a freshman, would be taking the strengths finder test at school), I also came across another test.  This one is the Myers/Briggs Personality Test.  You can take a free (knock-off) version of the test here:  https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

I don't know how much that free version lines up with the official version, but I was pretty pleased with my results (ISFJ):  

That website will also tell you some famous people that have the same "personality" as you.  But when I Googled mine to try to find out more, I came across these cool things:

Neville, C-3PO, Wolverine, and Ned Stark?!  I'm in pretty good company...I'll take it!

If any of you have taken the Gallup-Clifton and/or Myers-Briggs tests, I'd love to know your results.  Here's to using the Fruits to strengthen our Strengths and enhance our Personalities all to the glory of God.