Alignment of motives and actions
Hello Dr. Peterson, I often find myself doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Underneath my good guy persona, there is a desire to dominate/ take power over others and make them jealous of me. This ends up creating a lot of resistance to achieving goals I consciously want for myself. The payoff of dominating others is so juicy. How would you deal with this and how important is it to have alignment between actions and motives?
Using neuroticism to do good.
I am in the 97 percentile on the neuroticism scale. When I first took the Big Five personality assessment and saw the results, I was extremely anger at the results. My rage over the result is telling of my personality. Thinking that I was in a bad place when I filled out the questionnaire, I decided to retake the big five personality test several months later. The results were the exact same. High levels of neuroticism (97%). Since then, I have accepted that I am a very neurotic person. My question is how do I use this personality trait to do good in the world around me? How can I take an unfavorable trait and use it to better myself and others?
Openness within Religious Leaders
Would is be beneficial for leaders of various religions to score higher on openness as they are the ones tasked with teaching the traditions and knowledge and wisdom of the past. Is the reason that many religions have a messing problem and that the deeper meaning has be lost in its teachings, or is not effectively conveyed to modern people, a result of religious leaders being given their position because of academic ability rather than personality traits, specifically openness. Could it also be the case that the modern religious bureaucracy stifles the open exploration of ideas and that encourages people that are highly open to seek out other avenues to explore their ideas. Would including personality traits in the process selecting religious leaders also improves the messaging problem and what traits do you think would make a good religious leader.