Testing Your Personality

[Please note: This is a repost of a post published in September 2014.

I chose to repost this post because…

I need to take a test, and my personality is getting in the way of me doing that. To be fair to my personality, I’m not really sure if it’s the obstacle or some other aspect of that being known as ‘me’.

I keep trying to study for the test (all I have to do is read one fairly slim book and remember the key points in it) but my mind isn’t cooperating – which isn’t a new experience for me.

I’m getting more and more annoyed with myself about this (which, surprisingly, isn’t solving the problem at all).

The only thing thus far which has helped to alleviate the internal tension is an astrological explanation for it (even though atm I’m going through one of my ‘astrology is made up bs’ phases, to be a bit more precise I’m going through an ‘everything is made up bs’ phase… which is partly why I’m having trouble learning the stuff I need to know for the test, especially as the book I have to read has a few ‘facts’ which have recently come into question based on new studies and finds, which to me now = I have to learn bs key points to pass a test… that doesn’t make sense!?!).

Natally I have Mercury in Aquarius at 5 degrees (Merc in Aqua loves learning, is passionate about gathering information… but what it loves learning and the info it gathers can be very random, although it can connect those random dots into a pattern), and it’s conjunct transiting South Node (thus opp North Node) – which apparently means something along the lines of stop being overly reliant on intellect, logic, in and of itself and don’t forget instinct and intuition (yeah, but instinct and intuition are telling me to procrastinate without explaining why – not truting my instinct and intuition, forcing myself to go against them, is also nothing new and I usually regret it, and the why usually is only available later because having it beforehand… it just wouldn’t make sense), conjunct transiting Mars Rx – which means my mind is prone to fighting with itself (nothing new to me since I have natal Mars square natal Mercury), and squared (I get a bit confused by the whole orb aspect thing, so I’m never sure if the aspect is happening or not, yet) by transiting Uranus in Taurus – which means my mind is going to get randomly zapped with strange ideas (also not new to me since I have natal Uranus trine Mercury)… I’ve probably forgotten something (which is also not a new experience for me. Yesterday I was supposed to put the bin out for collection, I was totally convinced I’d done it… this morning I found out I hadn’t done it. My post-it note system failed even though I used it and thought it had worked. Sigh. The king of the fairies is approaching his domain!).

A random thought which struck me recently while reading up on astrological perspectives of Uranus’ transit of Taurus is – Astrology is one of the systems which has fallen into a comfort zone that needs an Uranian shake-up and wake-up. Shhh! Don’t say that! Why not? Because you’ll upset people. People are always already upset. Yeah, but you don’t want to add to their upset, do you? I kind of want to say no, but I also kind of want to say something else. What is that something else you kind of want to say? It’s not in word form yet.

Another random thought which struck me recently is… that what creates everything is questions. That so much of what happens is due to questions, not always obvious questions which are asked out loud (or even quietly inside) as questions, but those subtle kinds of questions which don’t necessarily look or sound like questions. Maybe everything began when some space dust wondered what it was… and BIG BANG… if the Big Bang is really where and how what is began.

Anyway I’m straying far from the post… which isn’t a new experience for me.

The last online personality test I took was a silly one to see what Kdrama character I would be. The result was second lead, in other words I’m the one whose love is one-sided and who doesn’t get the girl/guy/woman/man/hero/heroine. I know exactly how, when and why I got that result. When asked if I would pursue my love regardless of whether they seemed to love me back or not, or if I would be happy to step aside if they seemed to love someone else – I answered that I’d step aside and wouldn’t pursue my love interest if they loved someone else.To me that seems logical – if someone doesn’t love you, then they don’t love you, why pursue the matter?

My answer comes from experience. I have had quite a bit of experience of one-sided love, of pursuing people who didn’t love me in an effort to win their love, to make them love me back – those people were my parents. It took me ages to figure out that… don’t do that! If you need me to convince you to love me, then I don’t need you or your love – we’re both better off going our separate ways.

ps. I don’t know why but the toilet paper cartoon is blurry – just click on it to get it in focus]

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We test our personality all the time.

Even when we’re asleep…?

Okay, maybe not all the time. Then again, maybe sleep is a personality test.

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Sleep is definitely a personality test when we think about it, talk about it, fight it, worry about not getting enough of it or too much of it… compare our sleep with the sleep of others.

And if you sleep with someone else… that’s definitely a test! Sometimes it’s an endurance test.

There was a study – you know those things where people in lab coats use other people as guinea pigs to prove or disprove a theory – which claimed that sleeping with someone else increases our stress levels and has the potential to ruin a good relationship. Why It Might Be Healthier To Sleep Alone. It concluded that our intimate relationships would benefit from separate bedrooms… but then other people would judge us, our relationship, if we did that and that would stress us out, might even cause us sleepless nights.

“Oh… you and your significant other sleep in separate bedrooms…” they say without needing to say anymore than that for it to be a personality test which we’re afraid we may have failed.

If your sleeping partner snores, steals the covers, is a restless sleeper, takes up more than their share of the bed, is surfing the internet or reading or doing anything really which might disturb the quality of your sleep…

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My parents slept in separate beds, in separate bedrooms, sometimes even in separate houses in separate countries. My mother still found my father’s sleeping habits annoying and used her annoyance as a personality gauge. She was superior to him because she woke up at the crack of dawn while he usually slept late. In her personality test, he failed so that she could succeed. Yet he was more productive than she was in many ways, ways from which she benefited more so than the benefits she received from being an early bird.

She was a very angry early bird… perhaps if she’d slept late…?

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Miserable together, miserable alone… which one allows us to live longer, so we can stretch the misery out?

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Our personality is tested all the time, 24/7, by ourselves, by others, by society, the media, relationships, life, your pets… you name it, it’s testing.

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Sometimes we’re aware of the test, we’re on our guard, wanting to put our best face forward and hide our worst face, get the best grade we possibly can because that is what we’re trained to do, to pass tests even if passing them is not in our best interest but is in the best interest of someone else.

Sometimes we’re not aware of the test, but there is still a part of us who is observing, an examiner in a lab coat jotting down notes in a notebook, judging us from within… although we often project our internal judgments onto others and then confront them, test them because we test ourselves but find it hard to confront ourselves.

Evasive tactics ensue… another personality test begins and never really ends.

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The moment we make an identity statement, an ‘I am…’ claim… the test begins.

Are we really who we say we are? Can we prove it? Does our walk match our talk?

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“I am empathic…” we may say… then fail miserably at being empathic by not understanding any other point of view, thought or emotion, but our own yet still we cling to our identity statement and back it up with proof in the form of words…

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And maybe it’s a good thing not to be empathic all the time, being too empathic may be too much of something… but we’re hard taskmasters, perfectionists, idealists, bitchy lab coat wearers pressuring ourselves to prove something empirically because our grant depends upon it… grey areas are black holes… especially when we’re testing ourselves.

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You’d think that with all the personality tests which we put ourselves through, which others, relationships and life puts us through, on a daily basis that we’d avoid things such as online personality tests.

But we flock to them, make them trendy and popular, make classification, labeling, judgment, something to pursue willingly, voluntarily… why?

Most of us will agree that labeling, classification, judgment is more often negative than it is positive – unless it always favours us and tells us how awesome we are, we’re going to dislike it. Yet we still like to label, classify, and judge others… we just don’t like it when others do it to us… unless it is complimentary.

Perhaps we like personality tests because we want to get to know ourselves better, improve our relationship with ourselves.

Let’s assume that’s our reason…

Do we get to know ourselves better by receiving our results from an online personality test. Results which claim to tell us, personally and individually, who we are…?

Or do we get to know ourselves better while taking the test before we find out the results?

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For me personally and individually… it’s the latter, because I rarely manage to last the course of the test. And that in and of itself tells me more about myself than the results ever would or could.

When I do make it to the end of an online personality test, I’m usually not interested anymore in the results… they also tend to disappoint. Such a build up for… such a let down.

I went through all of that… through all of the repetitive questions asking the same thing in different ways with limited options as answers over and over again to find out… what exactly…? That I wasted precious time, life time, on something which told me either what I already knew or something I can’t relate to because it is too generic.

My reaction to the results… that is far more informative than the results themselves. But only if I’m paying attention to that aspect of test taking.

Your reactions… are very informative, that’s how you get to know yourself!

Those reactions are also how you get to know others, because others sometimes test you… for your reactions.

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I used to be an online personality test taker… until my curiosity was satisfied. My enthusiasm waned and I moved on… to asking myself (yet again… am I listening to myself now or do I need to test myself some more…?) – Why am I expecting someone else to tell me who I am? Shouldn’t that be something I know already… or at least something that only I can figure out for myself by getting to know myself, by asking myself questions?

After all… no one else is as interested in us as we are in ourselves… this often pisses us off… other people tend to fail our – please be as focused on me as I am on myself test. But do we pass that test or fail it?

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The last online personality test which I took – Personal Intelligence –  stirred my curiosity for such things again. But the test crashed when I pressed the ‘give me my results’ button. I guess it didn’t like my results, didn’t have any results for me, or was afraid of how I would react as it may have been aware of my increasingly argumentative stance about the questions… not so much the questions as the optional answers which were limiting, didn’t include what I would have actually answered if it gave me an option to give my actual input…

Or perhaps it was just a software problem… nothing to do with me at all…?

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Tests… are always a work in progress (just as we are)… and rely on the test creator (a person just like us) to… really know their shit and want to know the shit of others (ruh roh!). If all they are is a lad coat examiner out to prove their theory (for personal reasons… maybe inner child still fighting outer parent who has now been internalised reasons), certain things are going to get left out (what they don’t want) as those things may disprove their theory (bad thing!) and cost them the grant which they worked their bollocks off to get.

Or something like that…

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My enthusiasm for personality tests waned most quickly when I found that the test makers usually didn’t share their own results (you want to judge me… but keep yourself hidden – why?)… but surely the test makers results are pertinent to the test and to my results…?!

Don’t we all make assumptions, judgments, etc, about others based on ourselves, on our version of… how things need to be for us to come out on top and not be buried under someone else’s ‘coming out on top’ ?

Or something like that…

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I’m exhausted and buried just by reading this… that exhaustion makes me want to embrace the negative.

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Or something like that. Why is ‘or something like that’ never an option in the answer section on personality tests? The closest I can get to that is ‘Sometimes’ on those tests which allow you to answer between ‘Always’ and ‘Never’.

Something like that… That’s my most overused answer for pretty much everything, yet I can always never give that answer on tests.

Things are always never black or white, they just sometimes seem like they are, or could be, but they rarely are because… humans are complex and so much more complex than the word ‘complex’.

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When taking an online personality test… if you’re doing it to get to know yourself better, find out who you are… pay attention to the conversation inside of you as you read the questions and peruse the optional answers, especially if you have to compromise your personal and individual answer to fit the test and its generalised and impersonal answers.

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Remember… you’re the best test creator for your own personality and the results you come up with… that’s you, that is!

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We can also ‘cheat’ on an online personality test, once we recognise its pattern, where it is leading us with its questions and limited optional answers, once we know the limits of its results and how to get them, the one we want rather than the one which we don’t want.

We can also ‘cheat’ on the tests which other people give us offline (or online) once we know them and what they want and don’t want from us. We may fail once or twice, but the third time is the charm. Next time this particular person asks us how we are… we’ll know not to tell them how we actually are. “I’m fine,” we’ll say, “how are you?” and we’ll listen with feigned interest, feigned enough for them to believe because they need to believe it… We’re all fakers in our personality test results… a bit, if we need to be to pass a test which we think we need to pass for some reason… a reason which may relate to passing one of our own personal and individual tests.

If we think we’re empathic… faking it may prove that to us.

Or something like that…

We can also cheat on the personality tests which we give ourselves… but we know we’re cheating… and why… we just sometimes don’t want to know shit about ourselves.

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Being human… or something like that.

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Or something like that… what is that something for you?

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my result on the Which Mythical Creature is Hidden Inside You? test… result is subject to me just clicking on an answer.