Jordan B. Peterson is a former Clinical Psychologist and University of Toronto professor, among other titles. He’s most famous for his 2018 book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which sold over 4 million copies worldwide (and has been on the Amazon Bestsellers list since published). After that he did a lecture tour, inspiring individuals–especially young men–to take responsibility for their lives.
There’s a whole group of people who despise Peterson. These are generally people who don’t like taking responsibility for things.
The field of Personality is one of Dr. Peterson’s strongest areas of expertise. He developed his own personality test based on the Big 5 Model. You can find it at UnderstandMyself.com (code MP [from his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson] to pay 8 dollars instead of 9, lol).
I took the test and, not ironically, learned a lot about myself. Camille took it, too. Then we connected our results (a feature on the website) and got a report about the ways we might struggle and thrive as a couple. We both found this to be the most insightful test we’ve taken, far more telling than Myers-Briggs.
It got me thinking a lot about what personality actually is. I used to think of it as the way that you interacted with other people. “Oh, that’s just her personality,” or, “He has a dominant personality.” But now I’m starting to think of personality as something far deeper and more core to one’s being.
The way I’m beginning to understand it is this: Personality is the combination of all the psychological and physical processes which make you who you are. All your past experiences, beliefs, conceptions, genetic programming, and default patterning that have developed over your lifetime influence your personality. When you make an instinctual decision, it’s actually your personality–and all of its associated facets–making the decision. It’s far more than how you interact with others at a party.
Your personality is who you are. It’s part plastic, part fixed. Understanding it can tell you a lot about the unresolved work in your life and who (or what) is actually in control of your decsions.
What’s your personality?