Does My Blog Reveal My Personality?

I just finished reading an article from the magazine, The Atlantic. The article was by Andrew Sullivan who was commenting on blogging. He said that blogging reveals a lot about a person. Because blogging tends to be written on the fly without much organization to it, people tend to allow more viewers to get to know them. Blogging tends to be more conversational, allbeit, a little lobsided. Like right now I'm hogging the airwaves while you're sitting there reading. So, I do hope you'll leave a comment so this becomes a dialogue rather than a monologue.

For anyone who is familiar with personality typing (if you're not, be sure to visit my website at http://www.advantagediets.com/ and click on the right side "About personality typing"), two of the eight preferences that make up type are Extravert (the spelling is that of Carl Jung, the psychologist who developed psychological type) and Introvert. While personality typing includes more than the dictionary definition of these terms, Extraverts do tend to share more of themselves than Introverts. As you read various people's blogs, think about whether you think the person is an Extravert or an Introvert.

Extroverts are more willing to share facts about themselves. Introverts are often harder to get to know. Yet, it's possible that through a blog you'll get to know an Introvert better than you might if you were to have face-to-face contact. Blogging provides some with a safer environment to express themselves.

I'm an ENFJ. People who know me will say that I allow them to get to know me very well because I tend to share a lot about myself. They say I have integrity, that they can trust me. I'd like to think they feel this way just because that's who I am. They know I would never hurt them. But maybe it's my being an Extravert with a greater willingness to open up. I wonder if Introverts with their difficulty in opening up leave questions in people's minds about who they really are.

The challenge I have with blogging is the willingness to post it without checking it over and over again. As a writer of many books, I know how important it is to organize my thoughts before even starting to put anything down. With a blog, I can experience free thinking, allowing thoughts to come in and get recorded without figuring too deeply on how it fits into the whole scheme of the written piece. Another part of my personality is the _NF_, the idealist. Idealists are perfectionists squared. Not only do we want everything perfect, but will always believe something can be better. With blogging, I'm hoping to experience a sense of free flow without too much rewriting. Although, I have to admit that I did reread this piece before I push the "post" button. Maybe one day I'll trust that it's good enough on the first writing.

Visit www.advantagediets.com for more information on
personality typing.

Copyright 2008 - Advantage Diets (all rights reserved)

Getting to Know You

Hi,
Let me introduce myself. My name is Roberta Schwartz Wennik and I'm a registered dietitian. I've been a consulting nutritionist for almost 17 years. During these past 17 years, I've counseled people like yourself, have written numerous books, have been a newspaper columnist, appeared on television, been a speaker, a brand spokesperson and a specialist in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

The MBTI is an approach to personality typing that a mother-daughter team (Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs) created based on the work of the psychologist, Carl Jung. I was reading a book about the MBTI and personality typing just for the fun of it. I think it was one of Otto Kroeger's books. He was sharing in his book that the MBTI is most often used in industry for career development, team building and improving communications. As I continued to read the book, a lightbulb went off in my head. I could see a perfect marriage between the MBTI and nutrition counseling. What better way to help people than to understand why they do what they do based on their personality type? And, in turn, what better way to instruct them on making changes than in ways comfortable to their type.

Too often nutritionists use a cookie-cutter approach to helping people make changes. That means everyone is dealt with in the same way. Yet, how can that work when we're all not the same? The MBTI encompasses 16 different personality types. If I were to ask you to make changes that weren't comfortable with your type, you'd have to use willpower to succeed. And while willpower will work for awhile, it doesn't work indefinitely. And guess what? Whatever changes you might have made using willpower will probably be quickly erased when your old, established habits come roaring back.

Yet, when I use the MBTI and truly understand the people I'm working with, as they learn to truly understand themselves, success is actually inevitable. Finding the right approach is basically finding what works for you. Of course, you do need to find out what your personality type is, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and then go after making changes based on what is comfortable for you to do.

In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing different aspects of the MBTI to help you identify your type. After that, it's time to make some healthy changes and we'll be getting into that, as well. If you're really curious about the MBTI and want to learn more about it right now, visit my website at http://www.advantagediets.com/ and click on the link (on the right handside of the page) "About Personality Typing." That link will lead you to a slideshow that does a good job of introducing you to the MBTI and getting you to think what type you might be. Please just appreciate that it takes a more in-depth questionnaire to feel secure in your identification of your type. But, the slideshow will certainly get you started.

Visit http://www.advantagediets.com/ for more information on personality typing, nutrition, health and wellness.

Copyright 2008 Advantage Diets