This is a guest post by Johnnie Donley. Johnnie read my post about The Strong Life Test for Women and volunteered to review the book it was based on.
If you’d like to submit a guest post to Blogging Bistro, check out the guidelines.
Am I a Motivator? A Weaver? Both or neither?
The online Strong Life test tells me that these are the roles I was born to play. But I’m not convinced.
The explanatory blurbs kinda sorta fit. I’m naturally optimistic and love to delegate (Motivator). I’m genuinely curious and trust my friends (Weaver). But the blurbs, so gregarious and outgoing, conflict with my introspective introvertism. (Or should that be my introverted introspectivism?)
I must also confess to an out-of-joint nose. Why didn’t I get Creator. After all, I’m a writer. Writers create. So where did I go wrong in answering the quiz questions?
There was only one thing to do – read the book. Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham, presents nine Life Roles: Advisor, Caretaker, Creator, Equalizer, Influencer, Motivator, Pioneer, Teacher, and Weaver. The author, an expert on leveraging strengths, identified these roles from his analysis of two decades’ worth of personality test results. After describing each role, he lists suggestions for using it to create a meaningful, purposeful life.
Before getting to the roles, Buckingham writes about such topics as the female paradox (women, in general, become less satisfied with life as we get older) and the myth of multi-tasking. Using real-life examples, he demonstrates what a strong life looks like – and what it doesn’t.
After the chapter on the Life Roles, Buckingham advises women to “honor what is true about you” and to strive for imbalance, two keys for creating a strong life. His final chapters provide “Strong Life Tactics” for specific areas, such as career, relationships, and kids.
When I took the quiz, I answered the questions honestly – at least I thought I did. But after reading the Life Role descriptions, I can tell you, honestly and boldly, this gal ain’t no Weaver, someone described as “always planning whom you are going to introduce to whom” and “you often cold-call people you’ve heard or read about in order to connect them with someone you know.”
Nope. Not gonna happen.
Neither am I a Creator, though I do “read a lot of nonfiction” and love time by myself to read and write.
But enough about my roles.
Take the test. Read the book. Discover your God-given strengths and how best to use them. “Your strongest life lies so close to you,” reads the very last line, “familiar and startling, waiting to be found.”
Johnnie Alexander Donley shares her Novice Novelist Novel Notes at www.johnniedonley.com.
