Personal reflection assisted by pundits

Due to some coaxing by someone close to me, I went out and bought the book, "Now, Discover Your Strengths" today. The purpose of this book is to discover strengths in yourself and others and thus be able to have more valuable and meaningful professional relationships. It is part management and part self-help (Barnes & Noble had it on the management shelf). You take a little online quiz (only available if you buy the book) and they spit out the top 5 strengths that you have. All 34 strengths are listed in this pdf.

The interesting thing is that it's based on polls done by Gallup, the same name that brings you political and election polling. I'm not exactly sure how that works (haven't read the book all the way through yet) but I find it fascinating that no matter how complex and unique we all think we are, we're really not. We're made up of four DNA base pairs and apparently have 34 possible professional strengths.

Well, in case you're interested. Here are my strengths:

Ideation: People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

Strategic: People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Competition: People strong in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.

Activator: People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.

Communication: People strong in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.

How does this relate to this blog? Well other than being about me, (I'm so vain, I think this blog is about me) I could not help but look at the results of my quiz and feel like I'm looking at a character sheet. It's as if my Creator selected these five strengths for me in some character creation screen and decided, yes, I will make this one a brand manager with these five skills. And hmm, college and this job will give him +1 on strategy. Perhaps I should make him better looking... nah.

Ok ok... maybe I've been playing games too long.