I am delighted to announce the New! Improved! Personality Profile Results Report on my website at Touchstones. Even if you’ve done it before, I encourage you to take a few moments and do the 5 Element Personality Profile, again, just for the fun of seeing your bar graph and pie chart.
If it is new to you, it’s easy. There are fifty descriptive words in each category: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. All you do is mark the words that you feel apply to you. When you are finished, you click on “Show me my Personality Type.” This will give you your current balance of the five elements.What do you do with this information? Lots of stuff. Some or all of which many of you may already know. On the other hand, perhaps it is the perfect time to be reminded!
First, you notice what your ‘lead’ element is — the element with the highest number.
You may have a tie between two or three elements. If that’s the case, one element at a time, read the words you marked. Out loud. Pause. Then read the words marked in the other element. Which feels more like you more of the time?
You make decisions based on your lead element. If you’re Water, your desire for deeper meaning will color all your choices. If you’re Wood, usefulness is your compass. If you’re Fire, fun rules. If you’re Earth, other people’s feelings hold sway on your decisions. If you’re Metal, your choices must be appropriate.
Since each element is ‘housed’ in a particular part of your overall home and each room, it is useful to know which elements are your strengths because those are the safest locations to place ‘necessary evils.’
Such things as your knife drawer in the Kitchen, or your shredder in your office, or the drains (Kitchen, bath sinks, bathtubs, and toilets) are ideally placed where you are strong. This reduces their potential harm.
If necessary evils are located in a area associated with your weak elements, they weaken you further.
Most of the time, how you are in the world reflects your unique combination of elements. A person strong in Water, Wood, and Fire will go with the flow, having fun, yet be extremely efficient with their time, for example.
When you are stressed or tired or hungry or feel vulnerable in any way you will revert to your ‘default mode,’ which is your lead element. When stressed, if your lead element is Water, you will go inward. If Wood leads the way, you will become more focused and less tolerant. If Fire is your lead element, when stressed you will seek fun elsewhere. If you’re Earth, you will be accommodating, even to your own detriment. If you’re Metal, you will become even more reserved and distant.
Choices made solely from the lead element’s viewpoint have only a one in five chance of being the most successful approach to any given situation. The more balanced you are in all five elements, the more you will respond with the combination that is most successful in every situation. Being balanced also has the perk of becoming stressed less frequently by life’s surprises.
How do you increase an element? You can use color, pattern, shape, scent, wall art, sculpture, music, or activities. Stay tuned to learn how to increase each element individually.
If there is a wide gap between your strongest (40, for example) and your weakest element (12), it is best to make adjustments gently and gradually. If the gap is significant but not dramatic (strongest 18, weakest 10), you can make bigger changes more quickly.
And if all five elements are basically the same, (28,28,32,30,26) consider yourself … lucky … and balanced.
When you know what your lead element is and you begin to recognize when it is operating without leavening from the other elements, it can serve as an early warning signal that stress is building.
For myself, as my lead element is Wood, when little stuff irritates me like a slow check-out clerk, it is a warning signal. After all, how much time is even the slowest clerk wasting? Am I hungry? Fatigued? Disappointed? Whatever it is, my irritation helps me by triggering those questions. It is then possible to take steps to alleviate whatever the cause is — and the grocery clerk receives kind attention.
What is your early warning signal? Inquiring minds want to know!
© Copyright Kathleen Tumpane, 2008. All rights reserved.
Tags: Feng Shui Basics, Five Elements, Kathleen Tumpane, Personality Profile
