Hey friend! How's it hanging?
I am really excited to tell you all about how I learned that Brenton is a controlling personality type and how I've learned to love him for it. Okay, sometimes I just aim to live with him in spite of it too. We all have ups and downs, that's life.
So about five years ago, we were still going to our old church, and we had a get-together with the other young couples. Our pastor and his wife showed us a video of Mark Gungor's famous "Mens brains vs. Womens brains" speech. Click here to watch it.
We laughed, we cried (because we laughed so hard) and it triggered a huge change in our marriage. From that video we learned so much about how each other thinks but it also led us into a really cool personality test that really revolutionized our lives and marriage.
Mark Gungor was so hilarious and helpful that I got curious and I wondered if he ever toured his seminar in Canada. I looked up his website and his schedule and NO FRIGGIN' WAY!!!
He was coming to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan!!
Now that's still a four-ish hour drive for us but it was a city we loved to visit because of a fantastic hotel there that has a mineral hot springs pool. The perfect romantic weekend!
So I asked Brenton if he would go, miraculously he said yes, and I bought the tickets. It was awesome. Mark Gungor was even staying at the same hotel as us and we met him at the restaurant at breakfast! It was so fun and we bought his meal.
I honestly can't remember any show where I laughed that hard. Like for real, my cheeks hurt so bad the whole time. It was non-stop hilarious but it was crazy amazing too because we learned so much about marriage and each other. I'm happy to say that we never fought ever again! What you don't believe me? Yeah, okay nothing will give you a perfect marriage but still we learned so much.
One of the things you're encouraged to do before you see Mark Gungor is that you take this personality test. He teaches about how to understand different people based on this test where they divide people into four different personality "countries" and you are usually a combination of at least two of them.
They call them countries because each one talks and communicates in a certain way and it's easy for us to misunderstand each other if we don't understand each other's languages.
So there's Control, Perfect, Fun and Peace.
Guess which country is my main country?
FUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!! I loooooove to have fun. I'm optimistic, I have a great sense of humour and above all I'm a cheerful person. Fun country people are outgoing and friendly, they are symbolized as a person in a plane. We love to hear and use the words, "really, happy, good time, funny and great."
If you want me to do something with you. Tell me how we are going to be really happy, have a good time and it's going to be so great. I'll be there.
We love to test limits and boundaries, to find out how high and how fast can we go. We don't like to slow down. Slow is boring. Our deepest desire is for people to approve of us, which often backfires because people think we are clamoring for attention and they sometimes turn away from us because of it.
Then there's Brenton.
Brenton scored off the charts control country but also with a little bit of perfect country. His language is, "Git 'er done! Accomplish. Achieve." And what he desires most is to be appreciated by all of the people closest to him. He is task and goal oriented. Control country sees the world in black and white. They see right and wrong and often come across as very judgmental because of that. Their favorite vehicle is a bulldozer, and if they are allowed, they will sometimes drive over anybody in their path, while they push towards their goals.
But I'm not just fun, I'm almost half peace country too. I also love to relax and do things the easy way. If control country is symbolized by a person on a bulldozer, getting things done, then peace country is a person in a gondola because we don't like to rock the boat. We tend to be pushovers, which sucks, because our deepest desire is to be respected but we often fail to ask for it, or ever demand it. It has taken me a long time to learn how to properly ask for and sometimes demand the respect I need.
As pushy as control country people tend to be - control is always allowed. I just learned that a couple weeks ago. No matter how strong the control country person is, if they are bulldozing you - it's because you are letting them.
Sometimes Brenton still gets mad at me for not allowing him to control me and I've learned not to give in to his temper tantrums. This is where I used to do anything to avoid a fight, but now I've learned how to just simply hold my ground. Sometimes I just have to stand up to him and say, "No. This is my decision and not yours. You don't like my decision and that's fine, I'll still love you but I won't give you that much control."
Honestly, if I hadn't learned this I might not have stayed married to my husband.
For example: Lately Brenton hates that I use swear words. He got mad at me this morning because I had told him a while ago that I would try to stop but honestly, I only want to stop swearing in anger. I think swearing is fine sometimes in normal conversation and can even be hilarious. But he wanted to control me and make me stop entirely. I said no. He had a little fit and left the house to go to work.
Speaking of swearing and how it can be funny. Have you seen the movie Instant Family? That part where the mom calls the adoption lady an asshole! We both laughed so hard we had to rewind it and laugh again!
Now, to balance this out.
I need and love Brenton's control country. Each personality type is a gift with massive strengths. My life has been transformed by being married to him. Control country people are very naturally self-confident and strong leaders. I was horribly lacking confidence when we got married and over the years he's taught me how to become confident in myself.
He took me from a scared little girl and he has loved me and led me in many ways so that I feel like I've become like a butterfly, transformed into a beautiful person who is not afraid of life like I used to be. He's the only one who's ever told me that I'm beautiful and he still tells me that all the time. Isn't that awesome!
Control country people are so motivated, that when you are around them you can't help but want to pitch in and help accomplish the goal. Brenton has motivated me to do so much more with my life than I was doing before I married him. I'll admit, I was in my hammock too much and doing very little with my life before Brenton.
The thing with all of these countries is that their strengths can be abused. Control country can push too hard and hurt people, Fun country can go too fast and cause damage by rushing, Peace country can be dead-weights who are unproductive and unmotivated, and Perfect country can be too picky, miss deadlines and make you feel like you're never good enough.
Perfect country is represented by a conductor on a train. They have the brake lever in their hand and they are constantly pulling on it because unless the tracks are going perfectly straight, they have to stop the train to fix it.
This constant stopping really annoys the other countries - especially control who just wants to GET IT DONE. But this is perfect country's superpower. They can make something so perfect that it takes your breath away.
As Mark Gungor puts it, when you're on a plane you really hope it was a bunch of perfect country people who made it. And like the guy who did my tattoo, he's totally a perfect country person and I was so happy because my tattoo turned out - perfect. They bring details to life.
It can be hard to live with perfect people because they are constantly telling you what is wrong, like throwing little darts at the people around them. They do it because they care and they want to help you be perfect, but be careful about throwing the darts back because they are very sensitive people. They can dish out criticism but they CANNOT take it.
Brenton's perfect country comes into play once in a while. He details my car every Christmas when we go visit my family and my parents let us park in their garage. This year, when we got back home, one person asked me if I got a new car. I'm not even joking.
Control and perfect people are often confused because perfect people always seem to be trying to take control of things but here's how to tell them apart. If you tell a control person they are being controlling they will laugh and love it. "Controlling? Why yes! Yes I am! Thank you for noticing!" They love it when people notice their ability to take charge because it feels like appreciation. If you tell a perfect person that they are being controlling, they will be hurt and possibly offended. They can't take the darts.
You know how people say, Ready, Aim, Fire? I've heard it described like this:
Control country says: Fire! Ready! Aim!
Perfect country says: Aim! Aim! Aim!
Fun Country says: Ready! Fire!
Peace country says: Ready! Ready! Ready!
And did you know - you can change your personality if you want to?
The first time I took this country test, I was actually more peace than fun. And I loved knowing myself better. But I didn't totally like my results. They were 100 per cent bang on for who I was but the more I looked at me, I realized that I was not who I wanted to be.
So you know what? I took the test again but this time I focused more on who I wanted to be and it turned out much more fun country and still a strong peace country. You saw it above, closer to the top.
Guess what happened last year in 2018 when God helped me to radically change my life. I became the person who I wanted to be on my new personality test. On my old test, I had been afraid of conflict and someone who would do almost anything except fight. Low key, easy going. But on my new test, I wanted to be a person who didn't avoid conflict and is waaaaaay more fun.
I totally became that person. God taught me how to stop avoiding conflict and I'm still getting better at it. And he taught me how to give myself the freedom to be who he made me to be. I go after having fun in my life. I chase it, passionately.
And some people in my life don't like it and they think I'm being selfish but the truth is that I've stopped living my life to please everyone else and I'm living my life to be the person God wants me to be instead. If they don't like it? Too bad.
So to wrap up: four countries. Control, Perfect, Peace and Fun. Do you wonder which one you are and which one might be your adopted country? Here is a link to the website where you can buy a test and find out. As of right now, I'm not getting paid a cent for this but I think it's so life-changing I'm doing it anyway.
Here's the link: Flag Page - Personality Testing
The test are $25 USD and in my opinion they are worth every penny.
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