Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
~ Albert Camus
The quote above is a sorry comment on how we humans have lived our lives. We don’t want only an academic knowledge of ourselves. We want results in our lives if the study of temperament and type is to mean anything and if we are to be motivated to be all we can be. Which challenges in life will the understanding of temperament and type profitably address? What difference will it really make?
The possibilities of applying the knowledge of temperament and type to life seem almost unlimited and the benefits more wonderful than we can expect. Here are a few of the areas in which understanding our temperament and our type will be invaluable. If you are a leader, mentor, therapist or counselor of any sort, each area we discuss briefly will offer help for those you seek to help. (An in-depth discussion of each type is available in my book The InnerKinetics® of Type.)
Temperament and Type Are the Source of Motivation
You know those flat times when you feel useless and worthless, don’t you? How do you get out of them and feel again as though you are alive?
The word motivation comes from the Latin word for “to move.” Movement can be healing, stimulating, and therapeutic. What it does for the body, it does for the human spirit also. We are designed to move and all of us know what happens when we avoid moving and exercising.
Your innate drives and urges are what motivate you to act. When in a depressed state or whenever you need the motivation to take a new direction or the next step, calling upon one’s temperament and type strengths are the prime source of energy to jumpstart your engine.
Temperament and Type Move Us Toward Our Goals
Motivation starts with internal urges that encourage us to do something pleasing and self-satisfying or something that propels us toward our goals. The inbuilt urges of the strengths of our temperament create our strongest motivations. (For a discussion of these strengths see, “Introduce Yourself to Your Strengths” in INNERKINETICS.) Temperament and type provide us with knowledge of our sources of motivation. That’s why we need the most intimate knowledge of our type.
When our goals are consistent with the strengths of our temperament and type, we can achieve the maximum energy toward those goals.
Where Real Self-Understanding and Understanding of Others Begins
Look at the description of your type in The InnerKinetics of Type and find the things that motivate and please you. These are the levers to use when you want to rise out of depression or when you need the motivation to do anything.
Once you understand yourself, look at the description of the temperament and type of anyone you are seeking to understand better: your child, your partner, your boss, your employee, your teammate. Consider that knowing what motivates them becomes a wonderful parenting tool when you need to get children to do something without coercion. Likewise, it can be a necessary leadership tool when you need to motivate employees or team members. And you will most certainly find it helpful in understanding your mate and partnering to help each other reach personal goals as well as shared goals in your relationship. Remember that motivation must be linked with pleasure, not with negative emotions, because moving is not helpful if it is damaging or in a wrong direction.
Knowing your type will help you banish those demotivated, sad times and power yourself and others out of the doldrums. In relationships, this understanding is the “tie that binds.”
Simply follow the urges of your temperament and type to be content, happy, and satiated. Motivation is a natural result of the application of our positive, inbuilt urges. Find those natural urges in your temperament and your type descriptions.
