The 4 Personality Types You Should Know & How To Stop Ignoring Your Strengths

We all have the power to choose what we magnify in our lives whether we realize it or not. Are we quick to point out our own weaknesses and shortcomings? Or do we recognize that true progress is made when we focus on developing our strengths instead? In today's episode Jay Shetty dives into the topic of strengths, weaknesses & personality types. Jay will help you to address your weaknesses, capitalize on your strengths, and be more confident in who you are. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:29Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:16Jay Shetty?

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• 3:00Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. We try and improve our weaknesses and we try and avoid our strengths. Because we think that we're being judged on our weaknesses, so we try and improve them. And we think our strengths are just what they are and they don't get better or worse. And so they just sit there as well. And so we just think they stay stagnant. So we're almost trying to improve our weaknesses and stay stagnant on our strengths, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

• 3:38Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone, welcome to On Purpose. If you're a listener of this podcast, it means that you're a conscious change maker, someone who genuinely wants to transform their own lives and make an impact in the lives of others. And I know that you're dedicated to finding your passion and living your purpose and making a difference in the lives of other people. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening week in, week out. Thank you for sharing the podcast. I find it remarkable, the amount of love that we have created in the world since the launch of the podcast, the amount of dedicated audience and community that we have, thanks to each and every single one of you. And I just want to pick out a few of these that have come through.

• 4:21Jay Shetty?

  These are some of the recent reviews that we've got. And this one. One is from Michelle underwater. She said, wow, this show has changed me in so many ways. It's broken me open and helped me to really feel into my authentic self. I love the episode with Glennon Doyle. Wow, just wow with a five star rating. Thank you, Michelle. And here's another one from my puppy one O one. Uh, genuine Jay is truly genuine to his purpose with this podcast. He truly wants each listener to walk away with something after listening. I never miss an episode. Sometimes I look at the title and think it won't interest me, but I'm never disappointed. There's something for all ages in every episode. Thank you so much for sharing that feedback.

• 5:05Jay Shetty?

  Now, today I'm excited about this topic because I've been speaking about it for some time. And I've been speaking about it in seminars and conferences, but this is the first time I'm bringing it on to the podcast. And it's something that I've been fascinated with my whole life, right? Fascinated by personality types, fascinated by strengths, fascinated by introvert and extrovert. Fascinated by these labels, these boxes that we place ourselves in to understand people better. Fascinated by how do we understand someone's behaviors and why they do the things they do? What is it that's wiring them? Why are they driven that way? And when we don't ask these questions, we don't really get the depth and breadth

• 5:47Jay Shetty?

  of what's going on in someone's life. When we don't realize that people are not really their opinions. People are their pain. People are their past. People are so much more than the opinion they have today. The opinion that you see is not who they are. Who they are is the pain and the past that got them to form that opinion. And so I find it fascinating to look at strengths and personality types and how we have become who we are. Now let's get going. In this one, I want you to be super interactive with me. So I want you to have a pad right in front of you, a pen and a pad right now. Or you can use your phone if you want, as long as you're not going to get distracted by anything. I want you to be present with me in this podcast right here, right now.

• 6:28Jay Shetty?

  And I want you to take a screenshot of this because this is the part where I get interactive and you may want to come back to this. So if I asked you to write a list of your weaknesses. Hypothetically, or you can try and do it right now. I'm pretty sure you'd have no trouble writing these down. Go. If you had to write down your weaknesses right now, I'm pretty sure you'd be, find it pretty simple to write a long list. You might write down things you don't like about your appearance. You may write down things you don't like about the way you performed at school. You may not like the way you communicate. And you may start writing a long list. I know I would too. You know, I've got several weaknesses. I make several mistakes.

• 7:10Jay Shetty?

  And if I really had to reflect on them, it's very easy for me to write them down. And that's a good thing. It's good to have awareness of our weaknesses. But here's the thing. What if I asked you to write a list of your strengths? How many of you would struggle at first? How many of you would hesitate? And how many of you would even feel uncomfortable? See, we've created this discomfort with acknowledging our strengths. And even if we are more aware of our weaknesses, we're also scared of others noticing them as well. We end up living like this hidden existence. It's almost like we don't know our strengths and we struggle to think if anyone even knows our strengths. And at the same time, we know our weaknesses,

• 7:55Jay Shetty?

  but we don't really want people to know them. And so we live in a lot of unknown unknowns. Right? We live in a lot of unknown unknowns. Where we, our strengths are unknown to us. And sometimes they're a blind spot. We're not even aware that it's something that we need to know. We feel uncomfortable acknowledging our strengths for two reasons. And think about this, how many times have you felt uncomfortable acknowledging a strength? And I'll give you an example that really shows you the best way in which we all do this all the time. And you know, you'll be able to relate to this and understand it in, in, in many ways. It's kind of like when someone says to you, you know what, you're really good at this. And the first thing you're like, no, no, no, I'm not good at it. Or, or you come up with some sort of excuse.

• 8:38Jay Shetty?

  So like, oh, you should have seen how, how, how I was last week, right? We, we try and pass off this modest approach. But really, we're so scared with just saying, thank you. I really appreciate that. That, that means a lot to me. I'm glad you noticed that. Thank you for recognizing that. And we try and come up with some sort of clever quirky, I don't know, some interesting answer that hopefully deflects that recognition that someone's giving us. And it's funny because in some other situations, we're like, You know, for example, you're at a work event and someone's being glorified or someone's saying something good about someone else's performance. And then you're sitting there feeling the opposite, the emptiness of, how did they not notice that I work that hard?

• 9:20Jay Shetty?

  Wait a minute, are all these people not realizing like what I have to do? One second, let me just drink some water. Maybe, make sure you stay hydrated too. Okay, we're back. So, think about that for a moment. When do you deflect positive feedback and when do you expect it, right? We live in these two extremes of whether we deflect positive feedback or we expect positive feedback. And when we deflect it, we're not happy. You know, when we're expecting it, we're not happy. And so both of those options don't lead to a sense of happiness and growth. They, they lead to a sense of discontentment. So we feel uncomfortable acknowledging our strengths for two reasons. Number one, either we're not aware, which sounds strange, but it is true. Because we've never really been asked or learned them.

• 10:05Jay Shetty?

  It's like you don't really know your strengths because no one's really asked you that. Maybe in a job interview where you basically told them the strengths that you thought that that job was testing, right? When someone asks you in a job interview, what are your strengths? Rarely do people actually give their genuine character strengths. You're saying the answer that you think the other person wants to hear, unfortunately. And the second reason why we feel uncomfortable acknowledging our strengths is that we feel there is some ego or arrogance attached to knowing them. Right? We almost feel, especially the good ones, the sincere ones, we feel if we accept that we are good at something, then it shows some sort of ego or arrogance rather than just confidence. And, you know, since we've been young,

• 10:47Jay Shetty?

  there's also been an overwhelming emphasis on our weaknesses, whether that was at school or with our parents. For example, if we did something wrong, there was always a clear punishment. There was always fear of motivation of doing things wrong or some reprimand. And it was always pointed out or displayed or put out front and center if we did something wrong. And maybe if you did something right, it may have been celebrated, but the action was not rewarded, the result was. Right, when you do something right, it's all about the result, not the action. And when you do something wrong, it's totally about the action that you played out. And so that kind of confuses the conversation.

• 11:29Jay Shetty?

  What we end up doing is we try and improve our weaknesses and we try and avoid our strengths. Because we think that we're being judged on our weaknesses, so we try and improve them. And we think our strengths are just what they are and they don't get better or worse. And so they just sit there as well. And so we just think they stay stagnant. So we're almost trying to improve our weaknesses and stay stagnant on our strengths, which doesn't make a lot of sense. And if you think about this very clearly, if I gave you a hundred hours and I said I was gonna invest in your self-development of a hundred hours, and I said, "I'm gonna invest in your self-development for a hundred hours," how would you spend a hundred hours? How would you spend it on things you're good at, things you're average at, and things that you're bad at?

• 12:14Jay Shetty?

  How would you write it down as a ratio? So some people may say thirty-three percent, thirty-three percent, thirty-three percent. Some people may say forty, forty, twenty, but you've got a hundred percent. How would you spend it? And the most healthy, wealthy, and wise people would say eighty, ten, ten, or a hundred, zero, zero. So when you invest in something you're already good at, you excel at it. That's how you become world-class at it. If you look at someone like Michael Jordan, if you look at someone that you admire, they went all-in on what they were naturally good at, and that strength became their superpower. But for all of us, we're so busy trying to work on our weaknesses, that those weaknesses create a sense of averageness in everything.

• 12:58Jay Shetty?

  And trust me, all of us have weaknesses, all of us have average points, and all of us also have strengths. And it's funny, we all agree that we have weaknesses, but sometimes we don't see our own strengths. I remember in my school, they did something which was very unnerving for all the students. No matter what you performed as, or how smart you are, whatever, we used to be ranked in order of one to one-hundred-and-eighty in every subject. So there were a hundred-and-eighty students in my year group, and each year, on each and every subject in school, math, English, science, art, geography, history, design, economics, whatever it was, we were ranked one to one-hundred-and-eighty.

• 13:43Jay Shetty?

  And a printout was given to our parents every single year, where they would be able to see how we compared to the rest of our year group. Now, as you can already hear in my voice, this was a very, very difficult, uncomfortable time. And what I found in parents and just how they respond to these sorts of things, parents would rarely care what their kids were excelling in, and generally focused on the lower performing areas. So if you got like three As and a D, it was like, why are you getting a D? Rather than, oh, that three As is amazing. And subjects also held preferences in different cultures. So I know that a lot of the Asian cultures and the Indian culture that I'm from, a lot of the emphasis was on maths and sciences. In other cultures, it was on English and history.

• 14:29Jay Shetty?

  And in other cultures, it was on engineering and economics. And so you start to see the cultural divide. But again, a lot of cultures missed out on the one top thing. What did we as children naturally excel at? What were we naturally passionate about? And what were we naturally good at? And so now we're almost schooling ourselves on this. We're almost reconnecting with all of these things as adults to reconnect with what it is that are our strengths and how we can invest in them more and more and more. So we have a weakness oriented culture. We have a culture where we highlight people's weaknesses. We zoom into people's weaknesses. We amplify our weaknesses.

• 15:14Jay Shetty?

  We try to improve our weaknesses. So we have a weakness oriented culture. And it's no surprise that because of that, we have low self-esteem. We have low self-worth, low self-confidence, because we don't know our own strengths. We don't know our own skills. We don't know our own talents. Now, I got fascinated by strengths when I studied Dharma in the books that I studied as a monk, like the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas. And in the Dharma model, it talks about, which I talk about in my upcoming book, Think Like a Monk, which actually helps you figure out your Dharma type and your personality from a Dharma point of view.

• 15:53Jay Shetty?

  I looked at that and noticed how everyone has a different psychophysical nature, right? Psychological and physical nature. And I'm reading this from a book called The Psychology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. And in there, it talks about the four temperaments of personality. So I'm reading from the book, it says, "The Roman philosopher and physician Claudius Gallin formulated a concept of personality types based on the ancient Greek theory of humorism. All things are combinations of four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The qualities of these elements can be found in four corresponding fluids in the body. These humors or fluids also affect our emotions and our temperaments."

• 16:36Jay Shetty?

  Right? Now, these ones, and you may have seen this before, are melancholic, phlegmatic, caloric, sanguine, and all of these have different personality traits related to them. So melancholic gives sad, fearful, depressed, poetic and artistic. Phlegmatic, you have slow, quiet, shy, rational, consistent. Caloric, you have fiery, energetic and passionate. And sanguine, you have warm-hearted, cheerful, optimistic and confidence. And we can all find these, but you know, since that time, more research has been done into personality types and understanding how we function. And to me today, I'm going to share with you one that's fairly popular,

• 17:18Jay Shetty?

  and it's called the DISC Personality Profile. So it's a fairly well-known profiling type that you can find out your DISC personality type online. And I want to use this one for the benefit of our podcast today, because it's going to be a simple one where I can ask you a couple of questions, and you can find your personality type simply by listening. So this is how strengths changed my life and why I'm sharing it with you. And when I did some of these activities, some of these tests, and a lot of this reflection, I realized that I was spending a lot of time Out of alignment with my strengths. And I noticed that the day I started shifting towards my genuine strengths, my life changed.

• 18:00Jay Shetty?

  Everything that I am seeing in my life work today is because I've gone all in on my strengths. And I will talk about weaknesses towards the end of the podcast, so hang around for that. I definitely want to explain that to you and what I mean by that and where it plays its role. But when you invest in what you're naturally good at and you improve it and you better it and you practice it and you experiment with it, that's when you can rise to truly make a difference and an impact in your own life. And I know that if I'd focused on my weaknesses up until this point, then we probably wouldn't be in touch. I wouldn't be communicating with you right now. There's a beautiful Albert Einstein quote, or what's usually attributed to him,

• 18:45Jay Shetty?

  that everyone's a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it's stupid. Now, I don't know how many of you have heard that before, but it's a really powerful statement. And that's kind of what we're like. We're birds trying to be lions. We're lions trying to be giraffes. We're giraffes trying to be zebras, zebras. We're trying to be tigers. We're, you know, imagine a bird sat there the whole day going, oh, you know what? I wish, I wish I was that lion. And the lion sitting there all day going, I wish I was that bird. And now if the lion tries to fly like a bird, I mean, it's going to hurt itself.

• 19:30Jay Shetty?

  And if a bird tries to hunt like a lion, it's probably going to get eaten. So you start to realize that that's how deeply connected we are to our nature and our psychophysical nature and our strengths, that we have set in strengths for a reason. And we can't just copy other strengths and build other strengths that that aren't our natural thing. Now, this doesn't mean that we can't learn new skills. This doesn't mean that what we have that we're born with is what we're stuck with. No, because for most of us, we've just never experimented. For most of us, we've never tried, we've never engaged, we've never given any sort of experience a shot. So we don't actually know. And this is why experimenting is the key thing that we need to focus on, because

• 20:14Jay Shetty?

  that's what gives us a taste and an experience of what our potential really truly is.

• 20:23Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are. But it can be challenging to balance

• 21:05Jay Shetty?

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• 21:49Jay Shetty?

  saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair. Every style, every home.

• 22:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

• 22:37Jay Shetty?

  So now I'm going to ask you two questions, and I want you to answer these questions for yourself, not what your job has made you, not what you think you are in your family or what your friends think of you. I want you to answer this for how you think you are before you may have changed for your job or whatever it is, whatever your natural instinct is. So the first question I'm going to ask you, and I'll explain it too. The first question I'm going to ask you is, are you more outgoing or are you more reserved? Now, when I give you these choices, there's a few things you have to recognize. The first thing you have to recognize is there's no advantage or disadvantage, or there's no better or worse option. We're just different. And so it's not that someone who's outgoing

• 23:21Jay Shetty?

  is more confident than someone who's more reserved. It's not like one's better or worse. But some of us are naturally more outgoing and some of us are naturally more reserved. Now, if you're an outgoing person, well, first of all, you're saying, Jay, I'm in the middle. I'm both. Well, you're not, because you would choose to act in a certain way as a default in certain circumstances. So let me give you an example. When you go to a party, a party where you're new to it and you may not know a lot of people, are you someone who introduces yourself to someone? Are you the life of the party? Are you the first person on the dance floor? Are you the person who's engaging and starting conversations? Are people listening to you? Are you kind of guiding what's happening? Or are you someone who's more likely to sit on the sidelines? Try and find a one-to-one with someone, have a meaningful exchange,

• 24:06Jay Shetty?

  and be more observant and maybe, you know, as confident, but be more observant and be more reserved. So I want you to pick, are you more outgoing or are you more reserved? And of course, we're all on the spectrum. It's not black and white. It's not as clear as that. But for the basis of this exercise, it will help you gain a little more self-awareness. Are you the person who's organizing those nights out with your friends? Or are you the person who's following along? Which one do you naturally fit into? Ask yourself, are you more outgoing or are you more reserved? And if you really want to do this, test it with a friend. That's when you can ask a friend for your perspective, because your friend will call you out and they'll say, "You are definitely not reserved." And that's a great way of knowing. So are you outgoing or reserved? Write it down. And the second question, this is from the DISC personality type

• 24:51Jay Shetty?

  that I want you to answer for yourself, is are you more people-oriented or are you more task-oriented? So what I'll explain by this, again, remember neither is an advantage or a disadvantage. If you're people-oriented, you always think about people's experience. Are people having a good time? Is everyone happy? Is everyone joyful? How can I make people feel happier? If you're task-oriented, you're more about like, "Well, is everything going to schedule? Are we meeting deadlines? Do we have a plan? Are we more organized?" Now, you again may say, "Jay, I'm both. I'm both." And I'm like, "Yes, I know you're both, but we think about one before the other." Do you think about people first or do you think about the task first? We have a priority order in our minds for these things. Of course, we think about both. Any good, normal human being will think about both.

• 25:36Jay Shetty?

  But it's so important that we know which one do we think about first. So are you more people-oriented or are you more task-oriented? Now that you've answered the questions, here are the results. And of course, if you do this online, you'll find much more details. And there's a few that I'll recommend towards the end of the podcast that you can take online for free as well. I'm not affiliated with them, but they're all very, very useful and they benefited me, so I want them to benefit you. So now, how many of you were outgoing and task? You can raise your hands. You can clap your hands. You are known as the D-type in the DISC personality profile. How many of you, and I'll tell you about you in a second, how many of you were outgoing but people? Raise your hands, clap your hands.

• 26:21Jay Shetty?

  You are known as the I personality type. How many of you are reserved and task?

• 26:30Jay Shetty?

  You are known as the C personality type. And how many of you are reserved and people? You are known as the S personality type. So this is the DISC personality model that I'm sharing this information from. Now, the DISC personality model talks about how these are the four primary personality types. And personality type models go as far as to have 16 personalities and even 64 personalities. But for the benefit of not having to explain 64 different personality types, I think we'll do the four in this one. So if you are outgoing and you are task, you are the D type, which means you're dominant, direct, demanding, decisive, determined, and a doer.

• 27:14Jay Shetty?

  Right? Those are your character traits. Now, these people are extremely good at getting stuff done. They're good at keeping to deadlines. They're good at planning. They're good at scheduling. They're good at making sure things happen. And often their mode is ready, fire, aim. They want to get action going before they even figure it all out. And so you may find someone like, for example, like Gary Vee. Like, you know, he's a doer. He wants to get stuff done. He wants to get stuff moving. He's gonna test. He's gonna break stuff as he moves forward to figure out the answer. And that person can be very driven and very decisive, right? So that's, that's an example. And that's my interpretation of it, of course. So you have that. Now, if you're outgoing and people, these are the traits you have.

• 27:58Jay Shetty?

  Inspiring, influential, impressionable, interactive, impressive, and interesting. These people are ideators. They're influencers. They're inspirers. They're great, they're great understanding people. They're great communicators, right? And these people are ready, talk, talk, talk, talk. And sometimes they do stuff. No, I'm joking. And, and this is the thing that there, there are the lower traits in all of these and then the higher traits. So. Someone who's a D-type can also be emotionally intelligent if they invest in that, right? But they're good at getting stuff done. Someone who's an I-type, they can just be talkers at a lower level, but at a higher level, they know that they need to actually be proactive. So these people are ready to really make an impact and influence.

• 28:41Jay Shetty?

  Now, the C-type, which I want to go to next, is the reserved and task. These people are cautious, they're calculative, they're competent, they're conscientious, they're careful. These are the people that are detail-oriented, quality assurance. These are the people that send you emails telling you you have spelling mistakes in your emails. You know who you are, right? And so that's known as the C-type. And these people are ready, aim, aim, aim, aim. They're always trying to perfect everything, but they're really impactful when it comes to quality assurance. And finally, we have the S-type, which are reserved and people. These people are supportive, steady, stable, sensitive,

• 29:23Jay Shetty?

  and they have really high emotional intelligence. They're good at reading in between the lines. They really understand people. And these people are ready, hug, hug, hug, right? If you can do an "ah" out loud, you can. But these are, these people are the people that really understand people. Now, notice something about this. When you look at all four of these personality types, you realize that every one of them is needed. Without the D-types, nothing would get done. Without the I-types, people wouldn't be inspired. Without the S-type, people wouldn't feel cared for. And without the C-types, things wouldn't actually work. If we only had D's, they would just make each other cry. If we only had I's, they may just be ideators and not find that groundedness.

• 30:06Jay Shetty?

  If we only had S's, then we'd care about people but maybe not make much progress. And if we only had C's, then we'd just be trying to perfect everything and may not push forward. Now, notice why there is so much power and strength in recognizing that an ideal team...

• 30:24Jay Shetty?

  Has people in each of these quadrants. An ideal team is not one where there is only one type of person. An ideal planet, an ideal country, an ideal city, an ideal government, an ideal business, an ideal team, an ideal family is one where you're going to see all of these different personality types. And this should give you the strength to realize that you are needed as much as the people you compare yourself to, but it is your difference. It is your strength that is needed. The weakness that you're focusing on is someone else's strength. And the strengths that someone else has may be your weakness. But when you play to your strengths and they play to theirs, we start creating a really

• 31:07Jay Shetty?

  productive world, whereas when you try to play to their strengths and they try to play to yours, that's when it all starts to go downhill and gets really, really confusing. Now, there's a beautiful story of a conversation between Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Now, Steve Wozniak is the tech brain behind Apple. Steve Jobs, of course, we all know who he is. So Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started Apple together. And there's one conversation that I love quoting where Steve Wozniak went up to Steve Jobs and he said, what do you even do? Right, what do you even do? You're not a coder, you're not a designer, you're not a marketer. What do you even do? And Steve Jobs and Steve Fashion replied, musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra. What he was sharing, even though it was a very bold statement, what he was trying to

• 31:52Jay Shetty?

  make the point of is that there are people who do these individual parts. His role is to bring them together. He knew how to bring people together to get to the result and that was his skill set. He didn't know how to do maybe the engineering part or the design part or the coding part. And this is where we see the people that we really respect and look up to, who really grow in their area of skill set. Now, you may say, Jay, I'm in a, in a career right now where I'm not really playing to my strengths. What do I do in that scenario? Well, this is the key. Whatever career you're in, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your skills. You have an opportunity to demonstrate your strengths. And I remember doing this in the corporate world where I was Being asked to develop a lot of skills that I wasn't very confident about.

• 32:37Jay Shetty?

  And I made it a conscious and intentional choice to demonstrate my skills. Here's the thing, no one is going to come and spot your talent. No one's going to come and discover it or find it and nurture it. You're going to have to demonstrate it and display it. Don't defend your talent, demonstrate it and display it and people will take note. So whichever part you fall into, I want you to start focusing more and reflecting and asking more questions on the natural skills and talents that you have in this area. And you may notice that, you know, for example, uh, where are the places where you get the best feedback? You know, where are the places where you get the most recognition? It's usually the areas that you naturally excel at.

• 33:20Jay Shetty?

  And it's so important for you to spend more time on those. And to get a bit more insight, I recommend doing the sixteen personalities test, which is sixteenpersonalities.com. And if you really want to go further, there's the Gallup Strengths Finder, which is known as the thirty-four strengths test, which ranks your top thirty-four strengths in order. And when I did this test, it truly changed the way I worked. I started focusing on my top five strengths and so much in my life changed because I naturally propelled and excelled at those things and, and I was able to move forward. And so the strengths are important because not only do you recognize your value, you also recognize the value of others. And even more importantly, you learn how to communicate with others based on their strength.

• 34:06Jay Shetty?

  So for example, if you have to communicate with a D-type, often what we do is we communicate in our language, not theirs. How many times have you ever done that? How many times do you talk to someone how you want to be spoken to rather than speaking to them in their language? It's like, it's like being ignorant and going to a country where majority of people speak Spanish and trying to speak to them in English, when actually you need to speak to them in their language to really communicate and really be effective. And so when you're speaking to a D-type, they want to speak about deadlines, they want to speak about plans, and they want to speak about schedules and getting stuff done. So when you're communicating with them, you want to be very precise. And focused on those topics. When you're talking to an I type, you want to talk to them in an inspired way. You want to talk to them about ideas.

• 34:51Jay Shetty?

  You want to give them that free space to be creative. When you're talking to a S type, you want to talk to them, making sure that you're speaking about humans, emotional intelligence and care and empathy. And when you're speaking to someone who's a C type, you want to know you're speaking on quality. They want to know the details. They want to know the ins and outs. And so it's so important that we communicate with people effectively. And this shows real care. This is not a technique. It's not a tool. It's not a tactic. This is care, empathy and compassion at its highest, where you talk to people in a way that they will be able to resonate. For example, if you have a deadline coming up and you tell a D type, you have a deadline, they're going to be inspired. You tell an I type that they have creativity, they'll get you the deadline even quicker.

• 35:37Jay Shetty?

  And so it's important to communicate with people effectively. And don't walk around now for the rest of the week at work or on Zoom calls and expect everyone to treat you according to your personality type. Start understanding other people and simply by answering those two questions, you can start to understand people better and you can start to understand yourself better as well. So those are some of the great ideas as to why personality strengths are so important. I really hope that you can focus more on going all in on your natural strengths and skills and abilities. And I'm really excited for you to demonstrate them in your life and in the workplace. And you will start to see things change. A great example is someone like Steven Spielberg, behind the scenes, not an actor,

• 36:22Jay Shetty?

  but so great at being a director, so great at being a movie creator, not thinking he needs to be an actor, not thinking he needs to be front of the show, but knowing how to work with incredible people like Leonardo DiCaprio. People who know their role, know their position, know the value they play. It's like you don't see defenders on sports teams trying to become attackers. You don't see attackers trying to become goalkeepers. They each value the role the other one plays and what they bring to the team. And that's how we have to think about life. We all need each other and we all need each other to play to our strengths. Now I said I was going to talk about weaknesses and I'm glad you remembered. So when it comes to your hard skills, focus on your strengths.

• 37:07Jay Shetty?

  When it comes to your soft skills, focus on your weaknesses. When it comes to communication, listening, empathy, emotional intelligence, those are skills that we all need to grow if they're currently weaknesses. But when it comes to hard skills that we have, like whether we're logical thinkers or creative, whether we're rational thinkers or lateral thinkers, those are things where you want to focus on your natural strengths and abilities. Thank you so much for listening to On Purpose today. It makes my day when you leave a review. It makes my day when you share this on Instagram and share your greatest insight from today's episode. I am so deeply grateful to you for listening all the way to the end. Thank you so much for being a part of this community.

• 37:51Jay Shetty?

  I am so excited for you and the year ahead. And I want to give you the tools that are going to help you move forward once this all has passed, because it will. Thank you so much for listening to On Purpose. Make sure you share this episode, make sure you tag me on Instagram. And I can't wait for you to hear next week's episode with our new guest. Thank you for listening, everyone. Have a great, great week.