You are your best friend and your worst enemy!

You are your best friend and your worst enemy!
By Tami Eggleston (c)2006

Did you know that your personality helps you in many ways to be a successful racer and successful person? But these same personality traits may also make you prone to doing things that get in the way of your success and being all that you can be. Of course we can try to change our personality, but this is very difficult. Instead it is usually better to figure out what strengths we have and what things we may have to work on to improve. One of the most well known, easy to administer, and fairly reliable and valid personality tests is the Myers Briggs. There are many of these forms online, but here is a quick and easy one below that will score your personality type. There are four main dichotomies on this scale (Extrovert or Introvert, Intuitive or Sensor, Thinker or Feeler, Judger or Perceiver).
You can take the quick scale below and find out your basic personality type. Answer the questions with your true first instinct.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/mb-simpl.htm

For this post, I want to focus on the Judger versus Perceiver and how that influences you as a person and a racer. The judger (not to be confused with someone who is judgemental!) is someone who likes their life to be planned, stable, and organized. These people like to have to do lists and calendars. This time of year Mike and I have a million to do lists to get ready for racing around the house. We also are getting our schedules together for the race season. This is because we are both judgers. While this is good for many things, you have all heard the saying, "the best laid plans..." A perceiver tends to be better able to roll with the punches, deal with the unexpected, and doesn't get as frantic if things don't go just so. In sum, both of these personality types have advantages and disadvantages when it comes to racing. At the beginning of the year, however, it is probably good to try and organize your time and your race season and start getting everything done to go racing. The judgers probably have a bit of advantage getting things ready for the race season. However, when a transmission breaks on Saturday night and it starts raining and the tow rig gets a flat tire, the perceiver will be much better at dealing with the unexpected. It probably isn't suprising that two high scoring judgers really enjoy the Tuff Paw Aluminum products to organize our trailer! We won't like it if we break a tranny or get a flat, but we know we will be prepared if it happens!

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