I can see 3 takeaways for you in this writing.

#1 The awareness of asking good questions.

I often hear in my mind a quote from one of my virtual mentors: “Your Progress / your Success is highly correlated with your ability to ask good questions. ”

“Virtual Mentor” or “VM” is a term I often use to describe someone I describe as a mentor for me but he or she doesn’t know me. As opposed to a “Real Mentor” (“RM”) – or just: “Mentor” – with whom we directly interact and add value to each other.

An example of a virtual mentor would be: the author of a book, a valuable content creator.

So ask good question man!

What’s your current situation? And how can you change if you don’t already know who you are? And what is it to be changed then??

#2: Know thyself and the MBTI will give you a good base. 

We go for “internal" changes.

What I mean by “internal” is: your personality.

If you haven’t heard of it, I am sure that you’ll find it extremely valuable. Have you heard about the Meyers Briggs test?

The first line of Wikipedia mentions:

Katharine Cook Briggs began her research more than 100 years ago. And if something – like what we have here: a personality test: is still valuable and largely used today. Well, it probably means that there is quite some truth to it.

And look, today, some companies are relying on the result of this personality test to hire their new employees!

Briefly – and I encourage you to do the test yourself - there are 4 dichotomies:

I - introvert, quiet and reserved                  E - Extrovert, loud and outgoing

N- Intuitive, random and no rules              S - Structured, predictability and rules

F - Feeling and Emotional                            T- Thinking, Logical and rational

P - Perceiving and indecisive                       J- Judging and decisive

Which means that there are 16 combinations hence 16 personality types. And your result is represented by a sequence of 4 letters: INFP or ESTJ or ISTJ etc…

And this is coming from one of my real mentors. It’s basically playing with your own “cursor”. The result of the MBTI shows you a certain affinity. You might be leaning towards the Introvert part of the spectrum. In that case, to generate change (and personal growth) push your cursor towards the opposite direction. The Extrovert.

Do you get the point?

Good. 

Now, that’s not enough! 

Well, let me tell you that high performers sometimes apply this strategy: "Forget about small increments! Go straight to the other end of the spectrum! And as far away you can! "

The reason being: It’s WAY easier to go backwards to a sweet spot rather than slowly progressing towards it forward.

You can also call it a “stress test”. 

Banks do that! Athletes do that! Actors do that! This is valuable point of data: knowing at what point the system can break down.

Play with your own cursor and if you want, if you think there's an ROI to it: experience other extreme of the spectrum!

Cliff Celi