Get Better Sleep with the Core Values Index

Can a personality test help you sleep better? By explaining how your innate emotional hardwiring determines your likely thought patterns when your head hits the pillow, the Core Values Index™ psychometric assessment can actually help you get a better night's sleep.

Have you ever tried in vain to fall asleep when you've got a lot on your mind?

Work stress or emotional conflict are common themes. You turn the lights off and crawl into bed and suddenly your brain says, "Let's talk." Your mind races and won't seem to shut up, denying you some much needed shut-eye.

What can you do about it? There are many tricks and life-hacks for getting a better night's sleep. From cutting down on caffeine later in the day to picking a better time to exercise, the methods run the gamut. Some mindfulness practices can help but they are still an uphill battle against your brain that doesn't want to let go of that contentious conversation you had with your boss or that overdue credit card bill that came in the mail.

The CVI can help.

By learning how your brain is hardwired and the way it influences how you see the world, you can understand the way it 'wants to talk' when you are trying to go to sleep.

Here's how.

How Your Brain Works

The CVI™ is the world's most accurate and reliable psychometric assessment. Unlike every other personality test on the market, it accurately lays out the way your mind works and how you are emotionally hardwired. In essence, it reveals your personality's DNA.

When you complete your assessment — which usually takes 10 minutes or less — your personality is analyzed and you see your results. Your CVI profile is represented as a ratio of four different personality types, or core value energies. It is how much of these core value energies within you that makes you unique.

The four core value energies are:

• Builder - this represents power, action, and faith in your ability to handle any circumstance.
• Merchant - how much connectedness, love and truth dwells within you?
• Innovator - as the name implies, your Innovator score reveals how much you love solving problems coupled with a strong sense of compassion.
• Banker - your mission is to gather and share knowledge and data with those you feel justly deserves to receive it.

Although there are four core value energies, you possess different amounts of each of them within you. That is what makes you, you. In the descriptions below, we describe the generalities of those who's top score is represented in each core value.

Builders

Those with primary or highest scores in the Builder core value energy love to take charge and get things done. This makes them feel powerful. They have great faith in themselves that no matter what they face, they will always know what to do and how to act.

What keeps a Builder awake at night? Feeling powerless. This is actually a Builder's greatest fear.

Anxieties or things that addle a Builder's mind are what is most likely going to activate their brain when they'd rather be asleep.

If your primary score is Builder and you are having a hard time falling asleep, take a step back and look at what is troubling you. Odds are the thoughts keeping you awake are about a situation or circumstance that has made you feel powerless in some way. Perhaps it is about something beyond your control, or maybe you had an interaction with someone who seemed immune and impervious to your power and influence.

The key to falling asleep is to name your fear. Identify what is making you feel powerless, and by naming it, that fear moves from the emotional center of your mind to the cognitive. Then, shift into your secondary core value energy. Ask yourself, "What would a Merchant or Innovator or Banker do in this circumstance?" By shifting out of your primary core value energy's stress and fear center (feeling powerless), you disarm that part of your psyche and move into a part of yourself that is less fearful.

And cut back on the caffeine in the latter part of the day. That helps, too.

Merchants

Someone who's primary core value energy is Merchant loves to feel connected with others. They are the motivators in the group, pulling everyone together towards a common goal. They crave having that form of love returned and nothing makes them happier than feeling loved and worthy of love.

A Merchant's greatest fear is to be unloved or unworthy of love. It is this fear that will keep a Merchant awake at night.

The kind of life experiences that stress out a Merchant most often entail interpersonal conflict. Perhaps a conversation that goes wrong or someone close to them is shunning them. Merchants are highly intuitive — the most of all four core value energies — and they pick up on subtle cues and behaviors that a Banker or Builder would never notice.

If you are a Merchant and you are having a hard time shutting your brain off at bed time, it likely has to do with feeling unloved or unworthy of love. Identify the source of that feeling and name it. Move it into the cognitive part of your brain, then reach for the handiest tool in your toolbox, your secondary core value energy. If you can look at the situation through the mindset of a Builder, Innovator or Banker, you will see what's troubling you in a more constructive light.

It also helps to stay off of social media and doom-scrolling the news feeds on your smartphone during the last hour before bedtime. Nobody needs that kind of stress, especially Merchants.

Innovators

For those of you with primary core value profiles of Innovator, you have our sympathy. You're probably more likely to be kept awake by your brain trying to solve the world's problems than any other core value energy. Innovators love to solve problems and the world is filled with juicy challenges waiting for answers.

What makes an Innovator fearful the most is to feel foolish or unwise.

If you are an Innovator and you've got a lot on your mind — and it's making you lie awake at night thinking about all the possible ways to address it — remind yourself that this is what you do. It is who you are. You are a problem solver by nature and it is what you like to do most.

You go to bed and your brain says, "Great, now that I have your undivided attention, let's work on that problem you were facing earlier today." And. It. Won't. Shut. Up.

By realizing this about how you are hardwired, and even stating it in your mind, "I am an Innovator. I love to solve problems, but this problem can wait until tomorrow," you can move that mental activity a little bit to the side, weakening its control over your ability to fall asleep.

Reach for whatever is your secondary core value energy. Tap into your Builder, Merchant or Banker energy and view the situation from that perspective instead. File that away as a new way to tackle your problem and give it permission to rest (pun intended) until tomorrow when you'll hit it with all the wisdom you can muster.

You can solve the problem, you just don't need to do it tonight.

In the meantime, read a book or take a bath before bedtime. Those activities help calm the mind and the body. What a great solution!

Bankers

Of all the four core value energies, those with primary Banker scores probably have the least impact of their hardwiring on their ability to fall asleep. This is in large part because they are the most rational and logical of the four core value personality types.

Bankers love to gather and dispense knowledge and data with those they feel justly deserve to receive it. Those that don't deserve it get the Banker's aloof judgment as a response.

What scares a Banker the most? What gives a Banker sleep-depriving anxiety? Being ignorant. To not know is what will keep them awake.

If your primary core value score is Banker, learning these facts about how you are hardwired will add to your knowledge. You will be better armed the next time you have a hard time falling asleep, because you will have the information you need to understand what is happening.

If something happened during the day that made you feel ignorant, remind yourself that you will have the opportunity tomorrow to do the research you need to gather that important data so you won't be caught flat-footed on that topic again. Also, refer to your knowledge of the other three core value energies (you read the Core Values Handbook, right?). Remind yourself how Builders, Merchants and Innovators would handle that situation you faced earlier in the day. Having that knowledge will help put your mind at ease.

In the future, avoid watching TV or staring at a smartphone or computer screen during the hour before bedtime. The light these devices emit can inhibit or delay sleep.

The Well-rounded

There are many who have fairly well-rounded CVI profiles. They have nearly equal amounts of all four core value energies within them. When it comes to sleep, they have an easier time of shifting into their non-primary core value energy. This helps them find a better, more calming way to address what is keeping them awake.

As with anything, there isn't a single silver bullet solution to the problem of occasional insomnia. Follow the best practices we've outline regarding caffeine, exercise, and pre-bedtime activities, but also learn more about how your primary core value energy influences the way your brain works at bed time.

Sleep tight!

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