New Career & New Begining

A break for three months wasn’t bad! However, I did realize how hard it is to stay home 🙂 So, slowly I started looking for jobs and ended up accepting the offer from NYPL (New York Public Library).

One of the main reason I chose it because of the work life balance it offers. I wanted to work at a place where I can learn and grow without any pressure, and this is exactly the place! I am so happy. The other interesting thing is, since its a library I finally could force myself to visit the library once in a while and READ(though I worked as a Software Developer in an IT department, almost every office/branch is connected to one library :))! Yesterday, I made a library card and was walking around the book aisles, without even knowing what I want. And I ended up collecting 3 books, in fact I started reading one of them and loving it!

This is exactly the kind of life I was looking forward to: enough work to keep myself busy but not overwhelming, enough time to learn new technologies and grow, and enough time to keep in touch with friends and family!

Peace is what giving me most happiness right now. I hope to utilize this wonderful opportunity to do the things I always wanted to. For now, I want to finish two books this month, and the best part is I finished almost half of both books so far, so I see good chances of achieving what I plan already 😉

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

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Don't ever let somebody tell you… You can't do something!!

I love these words from the movie ‘Pursuit of Happiness’, by Will Smith to his son.

There are times when we want something, dream something and people discourage us or may tell us, “You can’t make it”. That should never drive our thoughts and our efforts toward our dreams. We should not let other decide what we can do or can not. It is we who should go for it, try our best, no matter what! Listen to our heart, take steps and all actions necessary towards making our dream come true, we should not be scared or confused by others.

And as it says in the movie we should always remember:

Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something, not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. You want something, go get it!!

Here is the clip from ‘Pursuit of Happiness’:

http://www.youtube.com/v/MEGSiX0JA-s&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1

Did I Give My Best Shots?

Is it hard to achieve something? Or its easier compare to the effort you have to give to keep it after achieving! There are things I regret very much which I easily achieved but was not able to keep it. I am not very proud of everything I did with my life. But when I look back to my past, and sometimes regret for not doing the things I should have done I realize that, this is how you grow. You can’t expect to be perfect. Life gives you chances, you make mistakes, loose the chance, and learn from it, and you get the chance again and you keep loosing unless you get the real lesson to implement the right decision during the practical moment!

The older I am getting the more I am realizing these subtle detail notions of life. I used to think, I am quite intelligent and I know a lot, but trust me, unless you really go through the practical challenges you face, you can barely know how it works! Its like you know the theory that you should be calm before you go to a speech or a presentation, and there are many ways to make yourself strong enough to face it, but when it is the time, you are infront of bunch of people, standing to give the best shot, all theories are gone, and you face the hard truth….the practical part isn’t that straight forward 🙂

With time, you will notice that half of the thing you cried over last few years, never meant anything to anyone, not even to you.  There are things I never noticed but now I do, and I realize how important they were, how valuable they were to me, and to my family and friends.

Sometimes I feel, if I could just start over, and then smile, I might make it even worse if I were to start again. Its better this way, I grow through practical lesson, through understanding myself and my surroundings more. And I hope and wish to grow more. I want to reach a point where I can look back and smile and say to myself that: I tried my best, I gave my best shots and can die in peace 🙂

Some Advice for the Road!

Great Piece of Advice from Study Hacks

Some Advice for the Road (link to this article)

I’m leaving this afternoon to attend a college graduation: my second in three weeks. As you might imagine, graduating is on my mind, and, I would guess, on many of your minds as well. To celebrate the season I thought I would turn my attention to some advice for finding your way after college.

I want to share with you the unique law I use to guide my life. It’s a twist on the standard graduation inducements, but it seems, from my limited experience, to work the best of the various strategies I’ve watched my peers try on for size in their first years out of college.

The advice goes like this:

Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there.

That’s it. Notice, I’m not talking about “avoiding taking yourself to seriously” or “always finding ways to give back.” I didn’t mention “the importance of a sense or humor” or why you need to “follow your passion, not money.” These are all reasonable words of wisdom, but they don’t necessarily direct you to a life that you’re happy to live.

My advice does.

Defining Lifestyle

What do I mean by lifestyle? Roughly speaking: a detailed feel for what your day to day existence would be like. Some questions to consider when imagining an ideal lifestyle:

  • How much control do I have over my schedule?
  • What’s the intensity level of my job?
  • What’s the importance of what I do?
  • What’s the prestige level?
  • What type of work?
  • Where do I live?
  • What’s my social life like?
  • What’s my work life balance?
  • What’s my family like?
  • How do other people think of me?
  • What am I known for?

Using these types of questions to guide you, construct an image in your mind about the ideal future you. Notice, specific jobs don’t need to enter the equation. They can if they help you visualize, but they aren’t necessary. Add little details. Really get a sense for what this lifestyle would feel like. If the image makes you happy and gets you excited about the possibilities for your future, then you’ve hit on a good match.

Example Lifestyles

There exists an infinite variety of possible lifestyles. Here are just a few examples:

  • The Power Broker: You live in a big city in a nice apartment. You climbed the ladder fast in a difficult business. You wield power. You’re good at what you do. You’re well respected. Your job is intense but you are super-organized so it doesn’t drive you crazy. You’re surrounded by good, loyal friends, and when you have fun, you have fun hard.
  • The Serial Entrepreneur: You live in a nice San Francisco townhouse. You’ve started several businesses. Some more successful than others. You tend to alternate between an intense year or two growing a business followed by some extended time off for intense relaxation. You’ve got a network of good friends across the country and a bar down the street that you visit every Friday night to catch-up with your closest buddies. You use your off time to develop extreme hobbies and indulge in grand, hopelessly ambitious and wildly fun projects.
  • The Virtual Voyager: You live in your dream house in a cozy community-oriented town, surrounded by natural beauty. You work virtually for several technology companies; setting your own hours. Three or four light days a week is enough to take care of your expenses. You and your family spend a lot of time outdoors, barbecuing with the neighbors, and, in general, enjoying small town life. You travel a lot for the sheer adventure of it.

Working Backwards

Once you’ve developed a detailed, visceral sense for your ideal lifestyle, use this image to guide your early career decisions. It’s a rough guide, to be sure, but it can still prove surprisingly useful.

Imagine, for example, that you’re faced with two options as graduation approaches. One is an elite project manager position at Microsoft and the other is acceptance to some good computer science graduate schools. Both are interesting and challenging. What do you choose? The power broker would go for the Microsoft position. The serial entrepreneur, on the other hand, would go for grad school — a perfect place to develop her first marketable technology.

The Power of Lifestyle-Centric Career Planning

Starting with a dream lifestyle — as oppose to a dream job — opens up more creativity. When thinking only about jobs, you’ll find yourself considering the same artificially-narrow menu of options troubled over by most talented college grads (banking, consulting, law, non-profit…) A lifestyle, on the other hand, provides much more flexibility — letting you discover potential paths previously hidden from your planning process.

The main advantage, however, is that, in the end, the whole point of worrying about your career is because you want to feel good about your life. By cutting to the bottom-line — what would make me feel best? — and then working backward from this answer, you are maximizing your odds that you’ll actually get somewhere worth going.

As with any graduation season advice, take this with a grain of salt. This is what I have seen work, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that will. It can’t hurt, however, to take a moment to ask yourself: what lifestyle would suit me best?

You might be surprised where the answer leads you.

The Awakening

Today I read a wonderful piece of articles, something I have been really looking forward to for long time. It gave me peace which could calm me and gave me enough energy to move forward with hope and prospects ahead. Loved reading it!! Here it is for you:

awake

The Awakening

Author: Unknown

“A time comes in your life when you finally get…when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out…ENOUGH1 Enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on. Then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon.

You realize that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings, and that any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you…and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are…and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions.

You learn the importance of loving and championing yourself…and in the process a sense of new found confidence is born of self-approval.

You stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you – or didn’t do for you – and you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected.

You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and everything isn’t always about you.

So, you learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself…and in the process a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.

You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties…and in the process a sense of peace and contentment is born of forgiveness.

You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. You begin reassessing and redefining who you are and what you really stand for.

You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you’ve outgrown, or should never have bought into to begin with.

You learn that there is power and glory in creating and contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a “consumer” looking for you next fix.

You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era, but the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life.

You learn that you don’t know everything, it’s not you job to save the world and that you can’t teach a pig to sing. You learn the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry and that martyrs get burned at the stake.

Then you learn about love. You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You learn that alone does not mean lonely.

You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of setting boundaries and learning to say NO.

You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs.

You learn that your body really is your temple. You begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin to eat a balanced diet, drinking more water, and take more time to exercise.

You learn that being tired fuels doubt, fear, and uncertainty and so you take more time to rest. And, just food fuels the body, laughter fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play.

You learn that, for the most part, you get in life what you deserve, and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making it happen.

More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You learn that no one can do it all alone, and that it’s OK to risk asking for help.

You learn the only thing you must truly fear is fear itself. You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your own terms.

You learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom.

You learn that life isn’t always fair, you don’t always get what you think you deserve and that sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people…and you lean not to always take it personally.

You learn that nobody’s punishing you and everything isn’t always somebody’s fault. It’s just life happening. You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls.

You lean that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about: a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower.

Then, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself and you make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never, ever settle for less than you heart’s desire.

You make it a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility.

You hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind.

Finally, with courage in you heart, you take a stand, you take a deep breath, and you begin to design the life you want to live as best as you can.”


Acknowledgement: Online Resource

I have Learned – Inspirational Thought!

(Online Collection)

An Inspirational Thought
Author unknown

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be some that can be loved. The rest is up to them.
I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back.
I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.
I’ve learned that it’s not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.
I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself to the best others can do.
I’ve learned that you can do some thing in an instant that will give you heartache for life.
I’ve learned that it’s taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.
I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.
I’ve learned that you can keep going long after you can’t.
I’ve learned that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel. That either you control your attitude or it controls you.
I’ve learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done regardless of the consequences.
I’ve learned that money is a lousy way to keep score.
I’ve learned that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.
I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.
I’ve learned that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you’ve had and what you’ve from them and less to do with how many birthdays you’ve celebrated.
I’ve learned that you should never tell a child their dreams are unlikely or outlandish. Few things are more humiliating, and what a tragedy it would be if they believed it.
I’ve learned that no matter good a friend is, they’re going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
I’ve learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn’t stop for your grief.
I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.
I’ve learned that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

New Changed Lipna!

I am a different person now. No more the same old Lipna. It surprises me when I see my acts these days. I have changed…changed a lot. Some of the changes are really good, I always wanted them to happen. One such example would be being very focused and serious about work. I have been bad about my work responsibilities in the past. I never used to take it much seriously and now I DO! And I love my new work!

Am also very controlled at certain weak things which used to give me hard time before.

But the changes scares me are: I lost my spirit of being lively all the time…smiling..enjoying every bit of life….I don’t want to be like that…I want to explore…be happpy…live …love…& laugh!!

I believe in continuous effort for improvements.

I believe: no matter what I need to work as much I can to improve myself in the things I lack….like my health…my diets which I have been trying forever and can never manage….yet I never want to give up trying…

Right now there are two things I really wish to focus and give my best effort:

1. Improving my health – have vitamins…have healthy food, drink lots of water.

2. Smile – I want to be lively again…..the spirit of Lipna…the identity of Lipna will be lost if I become a spiritless sad lady! I want to smile, enjoy and live my life. I have walked a long way through many obstacles..and I deserve to be happy 🙂

Cheers towards the new Lipna and wishes for her effort towards improvements!!

Quote of the Day:

“The most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well – Pierre de Courbertin”

Attitude!

A wonderful post by Charles Swindle on Attitude, I may have posted it before but its worth posting multiple times 😉

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.

My Status!!

Its been a while I got a chance to update my blog, so many changes and ups and downs in my life have made it difficult for me to keep track and to express those in my blog. Now things seem relatively better and in a stable shape 🙂

With all the happenings around me for last few months I am completely convinced that life is full of unexpected things and unstable situations. The more you try to keep it stable, handle things the more new things come up to make it worse! And it all happens when you strive for better things. If you just accept the life as it is without much of an expectation it remains more stable compare to when you strive for better goals, improvements. However, what i have learnt and which we all mostly know, no matter what, if you believe that you can do it and then go for it, it does give you some hard time, but persistence will make it happen and you will be able to stabilize with your destination with some time.  But, we are not generally happy with our goals, the better we become, we strive for even more, this never ending process goes on and we really never get a chance to have calm and quiet stage in our life!!

My philosophical thoughts are getting complex i guess 😛

Well, I have got myself into a nice job that is very stressful but interesting & exciting, have settled in a small sweet town, no city hype. This a stage of my life where I can completely focus on my past and future and decide on how I want to proceed with the knowledge from my past failures and weaknesses. This is perfect time to shape myself even better, stronger to manage things properly from now onwards.  Away from all friends and family and specially the city events and all, this is a wonderful opportunity to focus on myself and I am really happy and excited for getting the opportunity.

The thing I am most excited doing is learning few new technologies @ work. To name a few, I am working on OOP PHP, Symfony Framework and Ajax. I never had much exposure to these things before, I have mostly worked on Java and Struts framework (Database off course). I am so happy to get into these web technologies which is diversifying my skill. I believe this is the time when web technologies are very important and has more project opportunities than other technologies. So, the more I expertize in these fields the more I have opportunities open for myself. Also, so many things i have always wanted to do of my own greatly require this skills. I have got some very good & helping colleagues and its a wonderful journey for me to learn all these exciting technologies.

I guess this is the first time in my life, I am really into work. I am enjoying what I am doing and I am  doing it passionately.  I have always wanted to know & learn things, work hard and succeed. But for one reason or another I could not do so. Now, the time has come and I am excited having this chance.

With a new life started, I hope to update my blogs from now on with new happenings! With work pressure and all, I don’t know how frequent I can be. But I will try 🙂

(Online Collection)

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How Creative People Can Be!!!!

I stumbled upon to this amazing art work of Jannifer Maestre. She is such a creative person who created all these amazing artistic sculpture just using pencils. What amazed me most is the innovative way of creating these objects  using a very common thing  – pencil 🙂

Her art works are really impressive. According to her she took “hundreds of pencils, cut them into 1-inch sections, drill a hole in each section (to turn them into beads), sharpen them all and sew them together.”

Here are few photo collection of her amazing art work:

pens91

pens71

What Exactly Do We Want??

I was talking to my friend today who reads ALL THE TIME. In 24 hours, she either sleeps, or works at office or read books. During weekends whole day she reads. Its not like technical or academic books. She reads mostly fictional books, magazines.
I suddenly asked her today, what exactly she wants from her life except for writing C code for chips 😛 (She works at Broadcom Bluetooth department and write C codes for chips that are integrated in iPhones). To my surprise, she replied, she wants to become a literature professor!!!! She like what she does now but she can not imagine doing this (coding) for the rest of her life. She plans to get into some literature major and change her so far acquired track of Computer Science and become a literature lecturer!!!! I was speechless for a while and was wondering how crystal clear she is about what she wants. Irrespective of any other things like getting married or having children she knows what she wants and she is determined to pursue it.
And then the most obvious question popped up in my mind: Do I really know what I want?? Or even if I know it am I prepared to really pursue it?? Am I prepared to give up the so called social pressure around me and go forward with my own choices?? And am I really sure what I want is what I really want?? Ok, now its getting confused!! So am I confused?? Why?? Why can’t I be crystal clear like many other people and go ahead with what exactly I dream of and I’m capable of??What are the boundaries that hinders my decisions?? Do I want to spend my life doing these Java/C Code?? Do I envision myself doing that forever (till I die)??
Honestly speaking, so far I lived my life exactly the way I wanted to. Then why I am scared to think different, step ahead with something that I’ll enjoy, I’ll love to do. Am I scared of my age?? My birthday is in few days and as I can see, I am getting really old 😦
So, am I scared of accepting my age?? But then one day I’ll be 40…50?? How will I accept those ages then??
One of my friend who’s 26 was crying the other day and praying if she could be 22 and reorganize her life. So can I really say age matters??
I know a senior brother who’s 37 years old, have two kids and just finished his PhD, it took him 6 years to finish and he never took the age or his family as an obstacle for doing what his heart always asked for and dreamed of. At the age of 32, he would have cried and thought if he could be 25, he would have done the PhD, he would have lived like rest thousands others doing the same thing each day, and getting old. But he did something different, he get into the school at that time, and now after finishing his PhD he immediately joined Yahoo in some senior position.
I have been thinking about another very good friend of mine, who is planning for a family now at the age of 35. She has always went for what she wanted and now when she is completely stabled with her choices and desires and really looking forward to start her family. She seems very excited and happy!! She loves her job and can’t wait to have a nice family soon!!
My best friend who lives in Australia have 3 kids, she was the person among all of our friend circle who we thought would get married last and become some scientist. But while doing her BS she realized her dream of life is to have a family and kids, and that’s all she cared for. So she went ahead with that and now living an amazing housewife life with family.
Life is too short to decide what we really want, and when sometimes fortunately we somewhat discover what we really want, our choices are restricted by other elements of life – the things which are out of our reach and we have no control of. These days because of too much leisure time 😛 I have been thinking about all these things, the more I think the more I realize how pathetically we limit our choices, we restrict our steps, and instead of spending this short life happily, we end up messing it up even more miserably and this short life is lived under sadness and depression even before we notice its over!!!!!!
So I believe, when we know what we want we should try to stick to it, we should let the intention give a chance to evolve, to grow irrespective of our age limits, our surrounding choices, our boundaries and obstacles. We should at least give a try for a while and see the impacts. If we die without even trying we would never know the result of those ‘what ifs’!!! “What exactly do we want” or “What exactly we are passionate about” is the first question we need to answer and then if we can figure out the answer (atleast to some extent), we must give our best try in every possible way to go for it!!!!

How To Know Who You Are?

I think it is very hard to figure out who you are, and I think no matter how hard you try you cant just figure out yourself properly. Knowing thyself is always a mystery I guess!!

However, I found this interesting website where they explained “How to know who you are in 20 minutes?”

It was interesting for me as how come this one article can help me figure who I am in less than 20 minutes where all my family, friends or even myself can’t figure it out in all these years 🙂

Well, even though it sounds wired, may be somewhat impossible to work, but it seems pretty interesting & helpful. And I guess if it can be followed properly at least we can sketch ourselves to some extent  and find out (to some extent:P ) who we are!!(??)

Here is part of the exercise I am putting from this link.  Special  acknowledgment to Patricia for such interesting and helpful article.

This exercise requires you to be honest. If you are answering what others want to hear, you will not be seeing yourself, but a superficial image you project. Be real with yourself as you do this and you will discover the richness of your existence! It is that simple, but it is not easy. It requires the courage to be honest, and recognize you will find areas for change. Get out a paper and writing implement, and be ready to write (a computer will do, but writing by hand can trigger more creativity).

1. Beliefs: What are your beliefs? Begin writing down the first thing that you think about, and continue to write on each of these belief system components until you feel your answer is complete (or force yourself to stop at 5 minutes for this first round, and to address each part with at least a few sentences). Think about what drives your moral compass, brings you strength, what values contribute to your sense of worth and your life philosophy. Here are the three components:

beliefs about God and your spiritual life
beliefs about yourself: what messages you send mentally, physically, and emotionally
beliefs about life: how you fit into the world (your purpose), attitude, outlook, and what character traits you value

2. Personality: What traits are contained in your unique and special personality? Take 5 minutes to find and record descriptive words about yours. I have included a handy way to answer this in less than 5 minutes. God designed us all differently. Can you imagine if everyone wanted to be in charge of little details, and there were no people to see the big picture? What if everyone was a great listener, but nobody could think of anything to say? Your personality is filled with a unique combination of traits that can be used for bettering yourself and others, or for tearing yourself and others down. A person gifted in organization, for example, can choose to be domineering and manipulative, or can choose to better others with encouragement as they see the big picture and help complete projects.

Knowing your personality and giftings can help you understand areas for change, and can help you feel proud of who God made you to be. If you have never taken a personality profile test, they can be fun to try, so why not do one now? Remember, be honest. Here is a link to one I found via a google search. It is free, easy to do, and gives quick results (it took me about two minutes to answer). Give it a try! When you return, I will share my results with you too (and we will get to the most important part of this exercise!). If anyone would like to suggest another test, I am happy to review it and add it to this list (there are also excellent personality profiles tests in print). http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Are you back? What did you find out? Do you see yourself described in the results? You may only identify with part of the description, or you may feel you are more of a combination of two descriptions. If you are puzzled by the results, did you answer the questions honestly, or did you answer as you thought you should (rather than how you really feel)? Select the words that best describe your personality and write them down.

If anyone is curious, I scored as INFJ, and I especially liked the description by Butt and Hess (linked on the results page). It is amazing when you see parts of you described! Now, while some personality-types are eager to analyze and assess their strengths and qualities, there are other personalities that see it as a waste of time, or that hate to be labeled and “put into a box”. I suspect if that is you, you skipped the test and continued to read- am I right? No problem, you have only proven my point. People have different personalities, and this diversity is what makes life interesting.

3. Actions: Take 5 minutes to list how this identity manifests itself in actions by recording your:

priorities, interests, hobbies, talents, and giftings
influence and initiative
coping skills/ how you manage adversity
accomplishments and goals
relationships

The most important finishing touch on your identity will use up the last 5 minutes: now that you have figured out who you are, create who you want to be by making changes immediately. Look at the results. Your beliefs, your personality, and your resulting actions all merge together as pieces of your puzzle. This is how you perceive yourself, which in turn, determines how you portray yourself.