Are you ready to paint a clear bullseye on reaching your highest potential? If yes, there’s important understanding you’ll need about your inner design. And I have great news for you! Regardless of your inner design, there are some straightforward choices you can make today to clear up your focus, simplify your plans and hit that important target we call “The Real You.” Today, we’ll start with the SP inner design. Are you a unique expression of the SP design? Find out below and learn all you can about the InnerKinetics of being SP.
Action, spontaneity, optimism?
If your need for action, excitement, spontaneity and optimism capture about 90% of how you operate, you just might be an “SP.”
Regardless of your God-given inner design (InnerKinetics®), there are specific strategies you can use to meet challenges head on. So right about now, you‘ll need the knowledge provided in the quick assessment below. Fill it out and come right back.
Your letters and their message
Your InnerKinetics® type is represented by letters (for example: ESTP). In temperament analysis, each of these letters represents a finding in one of four categories:
- The E and I answer the question “How do we replenish our inner energies when we’re drained of inner energy?”
- The S and N indicate how we gather our information from the world.
- The T and F reveal how we make our decisions about the information we gather, and
- The J and P describe the lifestyle we favor.
But when you consider all four of these letters that describe a person’s inner design, it’s important to know that each of these letters represents an internal drive that affects all the other drives. They react on and condition each other to represent the unique expression each of us possesses, regardless of what our four letters reveal. It’s much like a one-of-a-kind crayon, formed by the melting together of several different colored crayons. Just as you can’t un-melt a crayon, you can’t dissect someone’s four letters to know everything there is to accurately describe or understand them.
Your inner design must be verified by you before it can be said that you’re an SP, an SJ, an NT or an NF. Your copy of “Innerkinetics – Your Blueprint to Excellence and Happiness“ will offer you a full description of your core InnerKinetics design, as well as your 4-letter type.
Okay, so write down the 4-letter result you got from your assessment. Did you have an S and a P among your letters? That would mean your core design is “SP.”
Even though you uniquely express this design, you do share some important drives that all SPs need to follow purposefully. Follow them and you’re already well on your way to reaching your highest potential and living in your design-driven strengths. Fail to follow these SP drives with purpose and you’ll be struggling against the natural current that leads to the satisfaction and enjoyment all SPs need.
Does the SP description capture well the ways you tend to think, feel and act?
Being SP
Knowing who we are is important if we want to be the best we can be. We need details and understanding if we’re to see our target accurately. So let’s paint the target.
In his book, “InnerKinetics of Type,” Dr. Ray Lincoln has compiled the last fifty plus years of observation and intense research documented by many like Myers-Briggs, Keirsey, Berens, and a host of others. He has done so to build a strong foundation of understanding of each of the four core inner designs and their associated 16 types. But Dr. Lincoln paints an even more accurate picture of the types by giving guidance in removing the contaminating effects of self-made weaknesses.
The Real You is a person who lives life, solves problems and forms relationships based on innate strengths. To obscure and confuse the target by including the negative effects of self-made weaknesses would be a mistake. After all, we go where we focus. So let’s go only toward our strengths. Let’s understand how they shape the unique expressions of each of the four expressions of the SP inner design: ESTP, ESFP, ISTP and ISFP.
ESTP
ESTPs can engage you and hold your attention like, perhaps, no other type. They are natural, take-charge leaders and optimistic, smooth operators. Because of their tactical and persuasive skills, they like to be negotiators, watching with a sharp eye for any effective advantage. Their drive to win and succeed combined with a charismatic charm inspire confidence in them as well. Being down to earth, the problems they solve aren’t of an abstract nature, but rather, they concentrate on the practical ones.
ESFP
ESFPs are performers and entertainers at heart. For them, all the world is a stage. The joy and excitement of living fills their hearts and guides their lives. This type truly lives optimistically for the moment. Their personal values are deep convictions within them. These warm and affectionate performers love to work with people. They take risks, are high-spirited, expressive and irresistibly charming.
ISTP
ISTPs are the great, practical problem-solvers and they have a keen eye for how things work and the opportunities all things present. Skilled with tools and machines, from the jet-fighter to the jack hammer, they like to master anything that requires their sharp, tactical mind. They demand their independence and follow their hunches, but not without a practical, analytical evaluation of how things are likely to work. To them, routine is boring and freedom is essential.
ISFP
Being sharply attuned to all that goes on around them, ISFPs are amazing composers of any art form. They are skilled at interpreting what their five senses tell them. They live and love according to the drummer in their own hearts. Reserved and quiet, they aren’t self-promoting. Friendly, warm, optimistic and kind, they’re the more subdued playmates and live absorbed in their inspirations.
The obstacle of stress
Now that we’ve briefly described the four SP types, it’s time to think about one of the major obstacles that would keep any design (SP or other) from hitting their target of a healthy, fulfilling life.
Any thoughts on what that could be?
I’ll get to the point. It’s STRESS. As an optimistic SP, stress may feel like a total stranger to you. But it’s a fact of life. Positive stress that motivates you to keep going is good. Negative stress can take your legs out from under you every time.
Stress must be managed. But for SPs the effects of stress and the positive management of it looks quite different than it would for other designs.
Join us next week as we dig into how each of the four SP designs are affected by stress and what they can do to manage it successfully. There’s more to come on the InnerKinetics of being SP!