It’s very nice to hear an idea like ‘the suits you wear’, ‘how you show up’, or ‘who you need to be in order to achieve xyz’.
But does it help, in a concrete, practical sense?
Because if you don’t actually ‘wear the suit’, if you don’t show up to lean into the archetype of those who have created what you want to create, then how much does it help?
Right, so let’s make it tangible, and practical.
In psychology, there is what’s known as the big 5.
These are personality traits we all have, and there’s something interesting about them:
Your score on these five traits, predicts with scary accuracy how well you’ll do, and how easily (or not) success will come to you.
The big five are known as OCEAN:
Openness (to experiences, learning, meeting people – we’re talking curiosity here)
Conscientiousness (Comes in two parts: industriousness, and orderliness (mental as well as in your surroundings)
Extraversion (in a different sense than the extrovert/introvert spectrums)
Agreeableness (easy-going, cooperative, friendly etc)
Neuroticism (or rather: emotional stability and fortitude)
Researchers came up with these big 5 decades ago, and there’s been a ton of study into how people’s score on these five relate to their levels of success, income, and overall well-being.
Turns out, the majority of super-successful people (whatever definition of success you might have) score really high on the first four, and super low on the neuroticism scale. (exceptions do of course exist).
So today I’m suggesting you assess how you yourself score on these 5.
Because the cool thing is that each of the 5 psychological personality traits can be trained, developed, and evolved.
So if you find that you’re low in one particular area, it might be very useful to find a way to quickly improve your score on it.
Here’s a quick test, will only take you a few minutes: http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
