I talked about my number 5 strength the other day, and as I think more about my strengths, I realize how I see them on a day-to-day basis.. Today, my adaptability strength definitely showed up.
Adaptablility

You live in the moment. You don’t see the future as a fixed destination. Instead, you see it as a place that you create out of the choices that you make right now. And so you discover your future one choice at a time. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have plans. You probably do. But this theme of Adaptability does enable you to respond willingly to the demands of the moment even if they pull you away from your plans. Unlike some, you don’t resent sudden requests or unforeseen detours. You expect them. They are inevitable. Indeed, on some level you actually look forward to them. You are, at heart, a very flexible person who can stay productive when the demands of work are pulling you in many different directions at once.

This speaks for me 100%. I’ll make an end goal, but the way I get there… is not always planned out, and even if it is… I’ll change them to handle the current situation. My schedule continually shifts as events come and go. I’ll have specific things that I MUST to in a day, but what fills the empty space is absolutely tentative. On a normal day in Oregon during break, I’ll plan on one thing, maybe two if you even count the second. Number 1, I’ll go to Peet’s coffee and work on.. something. “Number 2,” hang out with friends. So I’ll wake up and do random home activities til I head to Peet’s around noon or 1, and after Peet’s, I’ll plan on hanging out somehow with friends… I don’t know who, what, or where, but I’ll take it as it comes. Basically I choose the option that’ll give me the most satisfaction, like any other normal person.

I’ve noticed this strength is outstanding for the changing waves of life. Moving from Oregon to San Diego was rough. I can tell you that for sure. Leaving friends behind, leaving everything I knew behind, and moving to a place that was seemingly completely foreign.. so difficult. Being able to adapt and trust God with the times transformed my thoughts from, “I hate this place” to “I don’t wanna go back to Oregon.” Coming back for summer after my first year of college was hard for me. I developed good friendships in San Diego that I didn’t want to leave, just like the ones that I had when I left for San Diego, and my friends back home started feeling like people I didn’t really wanna surround myself with. Once again though, being able to adapt and trust God transformed my mindset again, and I didn’t want to leave Oregon. Now, I’m stuck in that mode, but that’s beyond the point. Trusting God with your life and being able to adapt and accept change is VITAL. God’s faithful, and it’s just a matter of allowing Him to be.

So I bet you’re still wondering where “abstractability” came from. Well, with these whole life-changing and meeting people situations. I realized that I adapt to meeting these new people… which you know, seems like everyone does. But today, I took the time to think about it all. When I’m in San Diego, I’m a different Sean than when I’m back in Oregon. The activities I do are different. The types of people I’m around are different. The environmental dynamic is different. There are all these different conditions which contribute to how I act, and I abstract various parts of myself to these conditions. There is the whole of me, but in certain places, I abstract a part of myself that fits the suiting condition. Sometimes it may come off as a people-pleaser, like when you talk about things someone likes and do things someone does, but not entirely.. it’s finding that commonplace where you can connect with someone.

Where I’m trying to go with this (and it sounded MUCH better in my head) is that by doing this, I’m hiding all of who I am from the people I know. People only know the part of me that I show them, a part which may be a large portion of who I am or a miniscule one. To understand me, to understand anyone, who must get to know all of them, not just the part that they abstract for you to know… where my “relator” strength comes in once again. haha.