EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

How to FascinateHi. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Samantha Leith Show with moi, Samantha Leith. This month, we’re frolicking around that wonderful part of us, known as our identity. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to understand exactly who you are and to love it. There’s no right or wrong answer, no right or wrong identity. Only you. So let’s have a look at what makes us, us.

Personality Profiling Part 1

Welcome to the world of personality profiling. Should probably have done a whole month on this topic, maybe I will. In the download for this month you’ll find links to all the tests I mention and more. And whilst you could fall down the rabbit hole and spend hours and hours completing these tests, they won’t tell us who we are either, but they do give us some amazing and beneficial insights. So a little bit more about me. I’m an A type personality, Enneagram too, creator and wealth dynamics, the talent and how to fascinate. My top three strengths are woo, communication and strategic. ENFP, high I on the disc. My love language is acts of service. I’m a Kolbe Quick Start and a celebrity in Sacred Money Archetype. There’s so many more but I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Let’s go back to the beginning.

In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt, oops, should have checked that, made the clear distinction between what is our human body and the human personality theory. And thus, it started. Since then there’ve been I’m guessing a lot of personality profiling tools developed. From the incredibly in depth workplace models to the more fun quick quizzes that many coaches now even offer for you to take. Thousands of hours of research go into completing the matrix of the powers to summon others well. They can feel a bit like someone’s throwing darts at a wall and seeing what’s stuck. Each test will draw conclusions about part of us based on the answers given for their model. No test is complex enough to look at all parts of us. So, yup, that’s why we take lots of them, well, some of us do. Each test has its strengths and weaknesses, like we do. And they aren’t concrete in their assessment of us because we’re human. And the answers we give one day may be a little different than the next because the coffee we had that morning was a bit bloody blah.

For workplaces, these tests can hold huge importance in the cohesion of teens and the duties given to each member. They can be a guiding light for leaders for understanding who’s with them and how to make it all work like an America’s Cup yacht under perfect sailing conditions. We often take these tests as a distraction because someone sent us a link or some bright, shiny mirabile tweaked our interest and we went down the rabbit hole. But there really are some true benefits including, how to choose or tweak a career path or role, how to work out which area we need to look at further within ourselves, to decide what to study, greater insight into your strengths and your weaknesses. It’s a little bit of a closer understanding of who we are, our identity

The labels we are given

Labels, we get them all our life. From the moment we are born, baby, she’s cute. Then the negative ones might happen, you’re dumb, you talk too much in class. You’re single, you’re stupid, fatty, fatty bomb sticks. 9 times out of 10, they’re negative. And they’re said with the harshness that shouldn’t happen because we take them on. We start wearing them as if they are our identity and they’re not. So anytime you think there’s a label that you’ve got, peel that baby off and try and come up with a more positive way to think of yourself in that aspect of your life. Let’s keep going on these tests, shall we? Firstly, you can’t fail them so don’t panic. It’s not like that mass exam when you were 15 and your mind went blank and all you could think was Pythagoras, wasn’t he an extinct dinosaur?

I’m going to look at five of them here but in the download for the month there’ll be links to loads more.

Personality Profiling Part 2

Enneagram

Enneagram is a pretty 9 point structure that helps to pinpoint our desires, motivations, fears, virtues and temptations. Each of these 9 form part of a triad, gut, heart and head. When you are, insert number here, you also have traits of the other wings but one will be more dominant. Here’s a breakdown of what the Enneagram says. One’s personality does not change from one type to another. And the description of each type is universal and can be applied to all genders. The description of each type cannot be applied to a person forever as human nature fluctuates between healthy and unhealthy levels. Numbers are used to represent each type and they’re considered to be totally neutral. The order 1 to 9 does not represent the goodness or the badness of those types.
And no single type is better or worse than the other, each has its advantages and disadvantages. I first heard about the Enneagram four or five years ago and it was like, whoa baby when I took it, where have you been all my life? Because I’m a helper and it was clear as day.

Myers-Briggs

Now, Myers–Briggs measures how introverted or extroverted you are based on the functions of sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking. And it impacts work, strengths, weaknesses and so much more. It’s a very common workplace test and the questions will determine how you process information, how you make decisions and if you have a judging or perceiving preference about how you do things. Your answers will place you within one of 16, don’t have that many fingers, personalities. You may find this hard to believe, but yup, I’m E for extroverted, an impassioned catalyst.

How to Fascinate

Now, How to Fascinate is a personal favorite of mine after meeting Sally Hogshead in New York many moons ago. When I heard her speak, lights went off. This test is about how others see you, not how you see yourself. As they state on their website, you’re 28 questions away from discovering how you most likely are to impress and influence. This test enables you to see how the world sees you, which makes your work and personal life a whole lot simpler. Take a bit of the guesswork I’ve had up, show up when you want to implement massive change in a boardroom. Or if you want to inspire your family just that little bit more. This test is more branding than psychology but the reality is, we are all our own brand. Regardless of if you’re standing in front of a camera like me or you work for a teabag manufacturer or you spend your life in the service of others needing rehab. We all need to influence and communicate better and this gives us the tools.

Sacred Money Archetypes

Now, then there’s Sacred Money Archetypes. It was developed by Kendall SummerHawk and as she says, it’s the key to unlocking you making greater income and ultimately enjoying the lifestyle and freedom you want in life. And you do it by discovering these archetypes. You see, money’s a tool in life and yes, that’s a whole month or more of episodes so we’re not going to get into money here. But understanding why you do what you do with money can impact every area of your life. It’s your money DNA. You’ll learn why you struggle with money, maybe you have a love, a hate relationship with it. Why you spend where you do, oops. And aspects of why money means what it does to you. Did you even know you had a money personality? Being a ruler for example will mean you run financial aspects of your life a whole lot differently to a celebrity or a maverick.

Strengths Finder

The last one I’ll touch on is StrengthsFinder. Invented by Don Clifton, it works out your order of 34 strength themes. Again, not enough hands. Some of which will be so obvious to you you think, why on earth am I doing this test? Others may be uncovered for you by doing it. Again, great for you as an individual and really powerful for use within organizations. These themes represent what you do best. It flips the world around where we no longer want to work on fixing our weaknesses. We instead are encouraged to sharpen our strengths. It’s not about being a Jack or Jill of all trades, but about honing in on what you are at your core better at.

You’ll come away with your top strength 10 themes, instructions for using all the info you get and how to turn that into helping your future. And how your themes contribute to your success or get in the way of your success. You’ll also, if you do the test, get some things you can implement immediately and a really practical outline for helping you achieve your goals based on those strengths.

There you have it. Some details and some of the more popular personalities or my favorites. When choosing any of them to do, remember, take your time and answer how you first want to answer. And remember, it’s not set in stone. They do not define you, they are not your identity. They are a tool to help you with your own self understanding.

Sexual and Gender Identities

One of the biggest identities that is talked about these days, or two of them actually, are gender identity and sexual identity. They’re no longer binary. It’s not male or female, there’s intersex, trans, nonconforming. It’s a kaleidoscope. It is a spectrum. And I’m guessing over the next years, these genders will get larger and larger. The scope will grow as more and more people allow themselves to say and be who they think they should really have been born to be. Likewise, sexual identity is a spectrum, there’s a fluidity to it. It’s no longer just gay, straight or bisexual. There’s pansexual, demisexual, asexual, there’s a whole plethora of things. We want to welcome them because we’re allowing people to again, stand up and say who they believe at their core to be. And that is the greatest freaking example of being true to your identity, to knowing it, to knowing who you are when you are asked that question.

Thank you so very much for watching this week’s episode of the Samantha Leith show. I hope you’ve loved it. Please head on over to Samanthaleith.com/freebies to get the worksheet for this month. And don’t forget to spread the love, by subscribing, pointing, liking, sharing, and everything else you do with the video. And remember, however you define your identity, you are worthy, you are enough, and you are extraordinary.

? Produced by Rebecca Saunders and Pyrmont Studios

? I Am What I Am Songwriters: Mark Owen

© BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group

?️ Produced by Samantha Leith / Michael Allen Vocals by Samantha Leith

? Special thanks to Stonewall Hotel Sydney for the stage!

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