ISLE-Iowa State Leadership Experience

MBTI Assignment

This is the third or fourth time I've gone through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and I find each time insightful. It gives me a great excuse to really look at my habits and preferences and reflect. This time I actually did something new. While going through the survey, I took some light notes to compare with what my friends would say about me. This was obviously just for fun but I found it quite interesting where they matched or were off of what I said about myself. It’s always interesting to look to others to see how their perspective is different.

I wished more of my friends, co-workers, and classmates would take this type of test. I think being introspective about yourself and your habits can help greatly when dealing with others in the day-to-day happenings of your life. If more students had access to their types, I think group projects and the like would become a lot easier. One could look at potential partners and easily adjust to conflicting behaviors or avoid the friction altogether and find more compatible partners.

Obviously this isn’t realistic since the whole point of group projects is to learn how to learn and work with others that might not be the easiest to work with. Not everyone in the world has access to these kinds of tests and some that do might not know how to effectively use the insights to benefit themselves and others.

            I look forward to getting my results back in class this week and to see if I’ve changed over the past year since I last took a MBTI test. I feel that I’ve grown as a person so I can’t wait to see if its reflected in my type. 

MBTI Assignment

Fish!

After watching the short film about the Fish! philosophy, a management and atmosphere technique used a Seattle fish market, I thought a lot about how people's attitudes can influence your own. The film introduced some concepts to improving their work atmosphere that can be translated to other situations. They stressed the importance to have fun, make the effort to make peoples’ days, the importance of being personal with others and, the one I found the most interesting, choosing the your outlook on the day and your behavior that stems from that decision.

A lot of behaviors are highly contagious, such as smiling. When you see someone genuinely smiling walking or sitting in class, you can almost feel your mood change from grouchy from the unjustified scheduling of the class at 8 am to a more open minded cheerful disposition. The key to “Choose Your Attitude”, in my opinion, is the word genuine. In order to affect those around you with the flash of your wonderful smile you truly need to feel good and happy which can be hard for people; No one is overly moved by a forced half-smile. You can decide that you are going to be happy but if you don’t truly commit to that decision and the attitude you want to bring to the world, it becomes very tough.

I really enjoyed the activity of literally throwing away the troubles that are bothering you that 311 did earlier this week. I’ve tried to take that idea on when sitting down to work on homework or before walking into my job. It’s symbolic but powerful and I can see a difference in my behavior and also how it has affect those around me.

             The whole video reminded me of a quote by Ralph Waldo Trine. It goes: 

“To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them.”