10 Ways People Waste Their Personal Energy

Nature and Nurture

Every one of us has a combination of innate emotional hardwiring (nature) and experiences (nurture) that make us unique. We can measure that nature part — our psychometric profile, or our personality's DNA as we like to call it — through the use of psychometric assessments like the world-class Core Values Index™.

Your experiences are unique to you, and that is a story only you can tell.

This combination of nature and nurture, psychometric profile and experiences, defines the way you see the world and unconsciously prefer to operate within it. They define how you see things and the activities that make you happiest.

Can your psychometric profile and experiences also help identify your particular ways of wasting time?

Your Personality DNA

Although your experiences make up a large part of what makes you unique, it is the innate emotional hardwiring of your psychometric profile that determines your default behaviors as well as the type of activities that make you happiest.

Undertaking activities that are contrary to your hardwiring is the quickest way to waste your emotional energy and time.

If you are a highly creative person engaged in something that is repetitive and tedious, you'll probably be unhappy and itching to do something else. It will be a waste of your natural talent and preferred mode of operation.

Conversely, if you are happiest when working independently on tasks and objectives that are well defined and proscribed, being asked to meet and greet a group of people and schmooze your way through an off-the-cuff sales presentation might be a very uncomfortable activity, completely out of your wheelhouse.

Is there a way to quantify your preferences?

The Numbers of Who You Are

After you take the Core Values Index psychometric assessment, your CVI™ profile is presented as a ratio of how much of four different core value energies exist within you.

The four core value energies are:

• Builder: power and faith in self
• Merchant: love and truth
• Innovator: wisdom and compassion
• Banker: knowledge and justice

Your CVI profile is presented as four scores, each between 0 and 36, that represent how much of these four core value energies exist within you. Whichever core value energy is your highest score is your Primary core value.

Based on what your primary core value is, we can predict the top ten ways your emotional energy is wasted. By recognizing these energy-wasting activities, you can adjust your approach to be more effective — and happy.

Builders

Here are the top ten ways Builders waste their emotional energy. A key indicator Builders are wasting their core value energy is when they find themselves in their conflict resolution mode of intimidation.

1. You try to do everything yourself.
2. Performing gut level fixes in chaotic combustible actions creating a new batch of fires for tomorrow.
3. Building and destroying systems and processes.
4. You overpower others causing them to be unwilling to wholeheartedly work with you tomorrow.
5. You get lost in doing and fail to prioritize.
6. You blow up teams.
7. Taking on too many tasks leaves lots of important projects started but not finished.
8. Failing to communicate, you choose to believe that just showing a person once how to do something should be sufficient.
9. You never stop working. (Sometimes doing nothing is the most powerful tactic.)
10. You dishonor the core values in others. This is the unavoidable consequence for a power-based person who has shifted into intimidation.

Merchants

These are the top ten ways Merchants waste their emotional energy. One way to tell when this is happening is they have dropped into their conflict resolution strategy of manipulation.

1. You instinctively control the way people interact with you.
2. You disown today's circumstances and results, continuing to talk and listen while Rome burns.
3. You pretend to be a perfectly loving person.
4. You dismiss the inspirations and contributions of others.
5. By getting lost in talking things out, you fail to make decisions and get to work.
6. You can inspire teams but fail to manage and follow-through.
7. You make everything be about relationships.
8. You over-communicate and explain and commiserate with others.
9. You constantly expect people to be better than they are.
10. You dishonor the core values in others.

Innovators

For those with a primary core value energy of Innovator, their conflict resolution strategy of interrogation might indicate they are wasting their emotional energy. Here are the top ten ways that happens:

1. You keep trying to figure out everything yourself.
2. Ignoring today's real issues, you delay making decisions and taking actions.
3. You design systems and processes that are perfect but completed too late.
4. Dismissing the insights and understanding of others, you argue to prove your own wisdom.
5. By getting lost in reasoning things out, you fail to finish and decide.
6. You slow your teams down.
7. You needlessly expand the complexity of circumstances and problems.
8. You keep using impersonal communication instead of face to face debate.
9. You can't seem to stop improving everything.
10. You dishonor the core values in others.

Bankers

Finally, people who's primary core value energy of Banker will exhibit aloof judgment when feeling conflicted. Wasting their core value energy in these top ten ways are a likely result.

1. You withhold your information to control situations.
2. You dispassionately judge and expose the performance of others.
3. You avoid risks at all costs.
4. You use data and facts to prove others wrong.
5. You use information to create fear in others.
6. You provide information but avoid making decisions.
7. You take a right or wrong, black or white position.
8. You report facts with no sense of prioritization, explanations, or application guidance.
9. You hold up past failures of others in their faces and in front of others.
10. You dishonor the core values in others.

Stop and Assess

If you find yourself experiencing one or more of these top ten ways of wasting your emotional core value energy, stop and assess the situation. Recognize what is happening, which is often indicated by the activation of your particular conflict resolution strategy (intimidation, manipulation, interrogation, or aloof judgment). Think about how you can approach the situation in a way that plays to your core value strengths rather than against them.

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.