This is my plea to you before we end our short series on the Temperament Key: Be who you are!  Reading through the core strengths in the previous article, you may have remembered:

• The strengths of each temperament are the dominant strengths of that temperament.
• We may from time to time feel we have some of the strengths of the other temperaments, so don’t lose sight of the emphasis on the word dominant.
• The strengths listed under each temperament are the dominant ones for that temperament’s design, not the only strengths you may or can develop. Self-made strengths can fill up the complex background of your life’s journey.

The takeaway is: Our dominant strengths fulfill us like none of the others can! They guide us to be who we are by virtue of our individual, unique design.

To Be Who You Are Is Life At Its Best

To feel fulfilled when we use and develop our temperament’s strengths is life at its best for us. We feel complete, on cloud nine. It is to feel consummated, having made it to the top, peerless, and feeling perfected. Therefore, let’s concentrate daily on developing our dominant strengths. That also means we must not waste the majority of our time trying to correct our weaknesses, either. We grow faster and happier when we focus on our dominant strengths.

What About the “Other” Strengths, the Non-dominant Ones?

Other strengths that are dominant in another temperament may also be present in us to a lessor degree, though not dominant. Discovery of the core urges and drives are calling you to be who you are —not some other person. Learn other skills, by all means.  But don’t focus on them to the neglect of your dominant strengths. Our temperament’s strengths are the highway of life we were meant to travel in order to find life’s fulfillment.  We were not meant to follow the back roads where we can become lost. Don’t try to be “anything” or “everything”. It is a grave error.

Try to be your best, which is how you have been designed.  And learn to love who you are. The good thing is, you will always be the judge of what is truly you. It will always be your call. Therefore,  your dominant strengths are a guide to getting life’s core decisions right and being fulfilled.

An NF once told me, “ I feel my life’s calling is to be kind and to understand how to use this urge in me. I feel so satisfied with my life when I am,”

If a strength feels foreign to you, what then?

Because many of us have not used our core strengths consistently, even some of our dominant strengths may feel foreign to us. Therefore, don’t feel you don’t have a strength that is listed under your temperament’s strengths.  Just because you don’t sense it in you at this stage in your life does not mean it is not there. Let it lie there until one day its presence grabs you.

If your temperament’s strengths don’t all feel like you, ask yourself, “Do I not recognize them because I have not used them much?” or “Do I dislike them because I have misused and misunderstood them?” or “Do they maybe feel more like a weakness because of misuse?”

Think more before you conclude you don’t have that strength. It’s true, all of the strengths of a given temperament may not appear to be you or appear equally dominant to you. Each individual’s motivations and goals are different and that alone can shape our minds, our emotions, and the use of our core strengths. We are the most complex organism in the universe and, at the same time, unique as persons.

How Did We Arrive at Identifying the Strengths of Each Temperament?

They are determined by the repetitions of the same strengths gleaned from the millions of responses that tell us what people see and recognize of themselves and what shapes the core of who they are. Authors of novels — at least those who cast their characters by the mounting evidence of these strengths that are found in the widely differing four temperaments — find they have hit the jackpot and their readers concur, chanting the author’s success in understanding how we complex humans are designed.

Is this Information Reliable?

These descriptions have been written down and reported over more than 2 millenniums. The experiences of real people, who think, feel and act similarly, soon form a picture of the different temperaments. For such a long time with remarkable consistency humans have been seen and further defined by this continually mounting evidence of the different temperaments and the variations of those temperaments.

Repeated human feelings, thoughts, and actions are a convincing trail that our true entities leave behind. Many philosophers, currently in vogue, have focused their attention on the importance of human experiences to lead us to an understanding of how we are made. The search is rewarding if conducted from all the evidence as humans display of their makeup. We all are adding to that evidence. But we are more than just our experiences. We are individually designed creatures, personal and intricate.  And as a result, we can be mystifying. The place to begin understanding yourself and others is to learn your unique design. We share commonalities without becoming clones.