Check out The 7-day Doubt Diet

Check out The 7-day Doubt Diet

Seasons

Seasons....Looking at my life lately, all I can see is Seasons. Seasons of happiness, seasons of loneliness, seasons of friendships, and seasons of being alone, seasons of depression, seasons of healing, seasons of trouble, and seasons of learning, seasons of calm, seasons of growth.

The seasons come and seasons go....but it all really stays the same. A different time and different things, but one thing doesn't change. God is there through the seasons, whether they be of trouble or of good. Life is far from perfect and some seasons seem to last longer than others, but the growth comes from the seasons of trials, that teach you and make you stronger than before.

I've faced some seasons more than once in my life, and yet every one is different, for as much as it is the same. I've battled my seasons of depression and still I struggle on, but each has been different and has taught me different things. The problems always seem to come when I began to finally think I am coming back out of it and things feel good again. Then I run into more emotions that make little sense and another something to dampen my spirit, so that it seems that I am not making progress....yet I know that I am. But sometimes the new season seems to come so quickly that it seems there is more cloudy and dark than there is of the light. Sometimes triggered by the most fun and innocent of things....then the tiredness and burden seems to come back, unbidden, and you wonder if progress will ever be made. But I know that this too is a season to be gone through.

Things I have learned from the various career tests and personality tests

This is a post on the things that I have learned from the various career tests and personality tests that I have taken lately to try and gain perspective on what I would like to do with my future and, hopefully finding a position that I can enjoy and keep for awhile. I've found some things that should have been common sense but were not and other things that I didn't really give a lot of thought to before. I am an ISFJ, on the myer briggs personalities.

I like/am/have:

• Working and being alone
• Very specific and detailed in communications (written and Verbal)
• Want to know what I am getting into before I commit
• A communicator with a need to make a difference in the lives of others
• Strong sense of right and wrong
• Good at organization, dependability, detail
• Interested in ideas, concepts
• Work under supervision (should avoid work of an independant nature)
• Helping people with problems
• Thinking deeply
• To understand why and How
• Want to know the significance and details
• diagnosing and analyzing
• Concerned with innovation and documentation
• Manage by planning and controlling
• Managing style is self-directed and systematic
• Want to be self-reliant and accountable
• Value questioning and compliance
• Follow personal reasoning and policy
• Focus is input and procedures
• Want to have time to assess and boundaries
• Dominant abilities are Caring and Serving
• Quiet and reflective
• Prefer reading & reflection to action.

I also learned that:

• Motivational traits
• Dedicated Motivation
  
• Helping/Kindness
• Need for Harmony
• Attachment to the familiar


• Moderate Motivation
  
  • Attention to Detail
  • non~social
  • theoretical
  • Visual/artistic
  • Literary/communicative
• Vocational Traits
• Dedicated Motivation
  • Personal Services
• Strong Motivation
  • Elemental Work
• Moderate Motivation
• Clerical
• Medicine/Health
• Counseling/Guidance
• Art/Fine Arts
• Writing/Journalism

Desire to serve others

• Methodical & Accurate worker often with very good memories and unexpected analytical abilities
• Also good with people in small groups or one to one situations
  

Socially Anxious pretending normal

So taking a slightly different spin on things, today I want to discuss the struggles of a person with social anxiety to feel comfortable in bible study group when there is underlying tension running rampant. Everyone knows that the socially anxious are never at their best in group situations. I was at bible study the other day and our group is getting larger and in the process of a splitting into smaller groups. Well that has most everyone uncomfortable and uneasy with the process and no one is really comfortable. I went there the other night and ate dinner talking to a few friends, but then when we got into a circle to do the bible study I was so miserable because I could feel the tension so badly that I couldn't get comfortable, I couldn't focus on the teaching. I ended up having to get up and leave in the middle of things.

Then got in the car and was sooooo worried about what everyone would think that I had to fight myself to see if I was going to be offending anyone by leaving and what would be said, then I finally was able to take off and drive home, concerned all the way about what I had done and wishing I would have stayed even though I was miserable because I know that people sometimes judge others based on the behaviors that they don't understand. Sometimes its really hard to be socially anxious and trying to pretend to be normal.