Putting Your Tertiary Personality Trait To Work – Everyday Fulfillment
No Vacation Required
If you have ever looked at your own behavior and thought, "Why do I keep doing that?" – you are not alone. Most of us have a specific part of our personality that feels a little less predictable, a little less mature, and a whole lot harder to manage when life gets stressful.
This week, we are diving into the tertiary trait – the third position in your personality stack (i.e. Myers Briggs Cognitive Function Stack). Without a clear understanding of how this function works, it is easy to mistake it for inconsistency or distraction. But when you actually know what to look for, your tertiary trait is really just a natural part of your development, gently encouraging you to explore new ideas, express your creativity, and find true balance.
Onward and Inward,
COMMON QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
❓What is the tertiary personality trait? Your tertiary trait is the third function in your personality stack. It typically develops later in life – often during midlife – and tends to retain a somewhat "teenage" or less mature quality compared to your dominant and auxiliary traits.
❓What happens to my tertiary trait when I am stressed? Under moderate stress, many people accidentally shut out their auxiliary (balancing) trait and create a closed loop between their dominant and tertiary traits. This can lead to a highly internal or highly external echo chamber that feels productive but is actually quite unhealthy.
❓How can I use my tertiary trait in a healthy way? When you are in a good headspace, your tertiary trait can be a wonderful source of fresh ideas and creativity. It can help break you out of your comfort zone, as long as you run those new ideas by your more mature dominant and auxiliary strengths before acting on them.
❓Can my tertiary trait ever become as strong as my dominant trait? While your tertiary trait can certainly be developed and strengthened over time, it will rarely – if ever – match the natural stamina of your dominant or auxiliary traits. Think of it as a supporting character in your life – it can have brilliant moments, but it isn't built to carry the leading role.
CHAPTERS
(00:00) Mind Share: The Audacity
(03:19) Understanding your tertiary trait
(05:14) Why your tertiary trait feels less mature
(10:03) Your personality stack alternates between introverted and extroverted (or vice versa)
(12:56) What happens when stress shuts out your auxiliary trait
(17:12) Using your tertiary trait for creativity and fun
(20:25) Mailbag: Why do I freeze up making decisions in some parts of my life, but not others?
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TRANSCRIPT
Kent (00:02)
Today we're talking about your tertiary personality strength. Without a clear understanding of your personality, it's easy to mistake your tertiary function for inconsistency or distraction, when in truth it's a natural part of your development, encouraging you to explore new ideas, express creativity, and find balance.
Kent (00:23)
I've read something on my mind, mind share, and that is the show The Audacity.
Kent (00:31)
Yeah, I'm not even sure if I like it. I know I do. I know I like it. I don't know that I love it. I there's some unevenness in there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But ⁓ with this last episode we watched of The Audacity, I really get how they're ham fistedly ⁓ warning the viewer. Well, we watched a behind the scenes thing where everybody in the show basically said, We're ham fistedly warning you – the viewer – ⁓ about the evils of
Kent (00:57)
some of the places we're seeing tech going and ⁓ from that perspective, ⁓ it's just a brilliant exploration ⁓ of ⁓ what's happening in the minds of the of the big brains, predominantly in tech and predominantly in the Silicon Valley. ⁓ And some really interesting explorations about the ⁓ reality of people in touch with that and just ⁓ the reality of ⁓ the greed and lifestyle
Kent (01:26)
Associated with that. Yeah. And a lesson and look to all of us who are living in this world, who are on social media, who are living life, like how you can just become a version of yourself because of tech, because of keeping up with the Joneses, a version of yourself that becomes unrecognizable or very unlikable. Yeah. And how tough it is to
Kent (01:50)
stay focused on who you are and what's best for you. And I think that's probably why this resonated for me and why I wanted to make it a mind share, because we're talking about
Kent (02:01)
one's personality stack and watching the show is a reminder to me of what can happen if you get so outside of yourself
Caanan (02:11)
Yes.
Kent (02:12)
that you're doing all this stuff and you're guided by some bizarre external locus of control that is not grounded in self and
Kent (02:26)
Can get kinda ugly.
Caanan (02:27)
Yeah. ⁓ And I feel like this show ⁓ is really brilliant. And I don't think it got the accolades it deserves or even the attention it deserves. ⁓ Because I think they billed it as a comedy. And when you think about a comedy about Silicon Valley, you think of the show Silicon Valley from HBO, which was hilarious and also concerning. ⁓ But ⁓ this is more like ⁓ Shakespearean comedy, like
Caanan (02:57)
Drama, like not funny ha ha, like funny god. but the acting is brilliant and it is very thought provoking and it is still kinda funny. It's just very dark humor.
Caanan (03:19)
So we're getting to a fun part of personality where we're talking about our third cognitive function in what we call the stack.
Kent (03:30)
I love that you said fun because it's so you and I like
Caanan (03:34)
'Cause we're such
Caanan (03:34)
personality dweebs.
Kent (03:36)
Yeah, like getting into the real minutiae stuff and the stuff that's kind of you, 'cause tertiary and inferior are not comfort zones for people.
Caanan (03:50)
No,
Caanan (03:50)
but tertiary is in fact kind of a fun part of your personality. So just to recap, we talked about your dominant personality type, which is pretty much been with you your entire life. Kind of your out of your out of the womb personality trait strength. And we talked about your auxiliary personality strength. And that
Caanan (04:19)
As we said, develops later in life, maybe late adolescence or early twenties. Right. So those are your most mature, and that secondary, the auxiliary position, is surprisingly less mature, if you will, than your dominant. But then we come to your tertiary. And this shows up for most people.
Caanan (04:46)
Fairly late in life. We're talking midlife. Life, yeah. Yeah. So if we're using the word mature, which is, you know, kind of loaded, so don't get hung up on it. This is a fairly immature personality trait for most people. For sure.
Kent (05:04)
Sure.
Caanan (05:05)
Yeah.
Kent (05:06)
I always say it never really advances beyond it never advances beyond a teenage mindset.
Caanan (05:12)
This is like a p a perpetual teenager in
Kent (05:15)
Yeah, in your life.
Caanan (05:16)
your stack. Yeah. But that's why I think it's kind of fun because
Caanan (05:24)
It has a lot of the potentially negative connotations that we would ascribe to being a teenager. But it also has a lot of the creativity and
Caanan (05:36)
easy expression and it hasn't learned to be too heavy yet. Yeah. If that makes sense. I may be getting a little woo woo with it. Yeah. But it is kind of a fun place to go.
Caanan (05:49)
Wha what do you have to say about the tertiary?
Kent (05:52)
Yeah, I think I always kind of chuckle with this because ⁓ I think this is the epitome ⁓ position of why you want to know your personality. Because you've got this thing that ⁓ if you don't know your personality, if you've never decided to figure out you, ⁓ you're never gonna know. ⁓ You're never gonna know your tertiary thing. Of course not, you're never gonna know your tertiary. But if you do know it, ⁓ it can be really tough
Kent (06:21)
To harness, but there's also some very interesting things that come with that knowledge. Knowing that something ⁓ is not your strongest, it's not your second strongest, it's your third ⁓ strongest. And the reason ⁓ I ⁓ I laugh at this is you and I both have ⁓ thinking in our in our tertiary. And at one point in my life I remember thinking ⁓
Kent (06:45)
I wanna be a lawyer, one of those things like that that came up that was like a great thinking kind of position. And I kind of well, you had talked about this regarding feeling in the last episode. I kind of fashioned myself as like, okay, so to do the kind of jobs I think I wanna do, I have to be a thinker. Yeah. So
Kent (07:07)
Honestly, ⁓ I always felt kind of disadvantaged. Like I was getting great grades and, ⁓ you know, all that stuff. ⁓ All the accolades and awards. ⁓ But I felt like I couldn't ⁓ think like a normal person. Yeah. Lo and behold, I figure out my personality a little bit later in life. And it's because ⁓ thinking is not ⁓
Kent (07:35)
your dominant strength! A dominant strength or even an auxiliary ⁓ strength. ⁓ And as we close out this segment, ⁓ I know you feel the same way. And you can kind of even hear me laughing because ⁓
Kent (07:49)
Because we're both thinking in tertiary, we know if we're having kind of a thinking moment within ourselves or a thinky moment with each other. Yeah. That it's kind of a little chuckly moment because it's it's like, okay, we're do we're engaging in something where we're not really clear.
Caanan (08:11)
Well, I go back to the word fun because ⁓ now that I know my personality type, and to be clear, both Kent and I are internal thinkers in our tertiary But ⁓ th it almost to me feels like ⁓ big thinking is a hobby. Do you know what I mean? So I like to have big thoughts and I like to dwell on things and I like to ponder the universe and try to figure life out.
Caanan (08:40)
And ⁓ I like you Kent ⁓ used to think that, you know, I was supposed to be, I don't know, some kind of big thinker because I had big thoughts, ⁓ but I didn't have the rigor ⁓ or the stamina to really do that in a big way. Do you know what I mean? You need like you thinking you're gonna be a lawyer or whatever, you need that.
Caanan (09:07)
To be in your dominant position if you're gonna have the stamina and rigor to see that through, beyond sort of a fun hobby.
Kent (09:17)
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Kent (09:46)
To show that a relationship doesn't have to be a compromise or a counterproductive union. When two people are each doing their own work, the heightened connection becomes a shortcut to building a no vacation required life.
Kent (10:01)
Okay, some tertiary ⁓ personality trait ⁓ stats and facts. ⁓ I think Caanan you already said ⁓ typically matures later in life, often during midlife or full adulthood. So yeah, even for those of us ⁓ who are into personality and know this stuff, like ⁓ at best ⁓ you've got a teenager mentality ⁓ that you're harnessing.
Kent (10:27)
One thing that's ⁓ really kind of geeky but important to point out here ⁓ is many professional practitioners believe that one's dominant personality trait ⁓ is their preferred ⁓ extroverted ⁓ or introverted pairing. Meaning ⁓ if you're introverted or you're labeled as introverted, your dominant personality trait is going to be introverted, and then every other personality trait
Kent (10:58)
Is going to be the opposite. It's going to be extroverted because your dominant is so strong, that's all the oxygen ⁓ that your introversion needs. ⁓ So they think ⁓ if you're introverted, your dominant is introverted, and everything else, the other three, are extroverted. If you're extroverted, your dominant is extroverted, and your other three are all introverted. ⁓ we used to subscribe to that school of thought, but now I think
Kent (11:25)
We're probably more in the other ⁓ school of thought, which believes that your dominant is ⁓ your preferred introversion or extroversion, and then they ⁓ bounce back and forth. So you have ⁓ a I E ⁓ I ⁓ E pattern, which is introverted dominant, ⁓ extroverted auxiliary, yeah, introverted ⁓
Kent (11:53)
Tertiary. Tertiary and extroverted sensing, or the opposite, which would be EI. EI. So what's interesting about tertiary and the way you and I choose to believe this on a professional capacity is that it matches your preferred extroversion or introversion. So I want to point out that the reason we believe this through our
Kent (12:21)
Decades, God, I hate saying that. Decades of experiences. Your tertiary can oftentimes kind of meld with your
Kent (12:39)
dominant ⁓ because we believe that for the most part they share ⁓ either introversion ⁓ or extroversion. And Caann I love what you what you say about ⁓
Kent (12:55)
Being in stress.
Kent (12:56)
as we talked about when we talked about your dominant personality trait in week one.
Kent (13:03)
A lot of people will just in stress be maniacally their dominant personality trait. Right. ⁓ But when you get to what we see as what we call moderate ⁓ or heavy mild or moderate ⁓ stress, ⁓ you can do something a little trickier, often unbeknownst to you. Yep. And you can lean into a melding ⁓ of your dominant ⁓ and your tertiary ⁓ and ⁓
Caanan (13:36)
Well, we talked about how your secondary, your auxiliary, is a really important sort of check and balance to your dominant personality strength. What happens like you said, unbeknownst to most people, when they get into a moderate level of stress, is they shut out their auxiliary. Yeah. And they create this little loop.
Kent (14:04)
Mm-hmm.
Caanan (14:05)
This little closed loop between their dominant and their tertiary. And that loop might be completely introverted or it might be completely extroverted. Yeah. Based on the explanation you just gave. And it's super unhealthy because you have essentially cut out the checks and balance in your life. What do you have to say? Kent's raising his hand.
Kent (14:32)
Yes, this is another reason why I have the chuckles because knowing personality, ⁓ and this is something we get into a lot with our clients and talk about with our YouFinder product, ⁓ you can recognize when this is happening. And ⁓ I can so recognize when this is happening ⁓ when I'm early in some kind of process or ⁓ something a little high stakes, ⁓ and I can feel myself ⁓ thinking. Yeah. So I feel my ⁓ quiet internal intuition.
Kent (15:02)
Melding with a clumsy tertiary internal thinking and it makes a bad feeling worse. Because remember what I just told you when I thought I was gonna be something thinky in life and how that hurt. imagine going to thinky and it hurts. Imagine going there when you're under stress. Makes me so sad for myself.
Caanan (15:30)
Yeah.
Caanan (15:30)
Yeah. I think about that same process because we share a type. So I have the same process when I'm in moderate stress. But for me, it feels like things are coming to me through my internal intuition. And instead of ever extroverting those thoughts, I'm skipping the whole external part. And I'm going to this self confirming or self doubting part of my brain.
Caanan (15:58)
That's either saying, Caanan you're so right. You're so right. Just think about how right you are. Yeah. Or it's saying in its very immature way, like, ⁓ Okay, Boomer, you were so wrong here. And ⁓ no matter what happens, it's either confirming or disconfirming my intuition. But my thoughts are never making it out to the real world to have somebody check me.
Kent (16:25)
You're just in this warm private place of severe discomfort but also self-certainty and just to confirm you are not a boomer literally.
Caanan (16:35)
No, no, no. I'm
Caanan (16:36)
just saying this is the teenager part of me who would think you know, somebody in their late forties is a boomer. But I just I wanna say that in that process, and this is why it's so interesting in moderate stress, that process, be it completely internal or completely external, can feel so effective. It can feel like you're doing the work. And in fact, it's completely
Caanan (17:04)
ineffective and actually quite harmful.
Caanan (17:11)
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Kent (17:18)
Okay, so what does this look like in balance? In balance
Kent (17:23)
I get a warm, fuzzy feeling like you know what your tertiary personality position is. So for me, I try to stay out of that mode in early and even mid stages. And then only when I'm feeling good about something in whatever, you know, is going on, could be a new idea, could be
Kent (17:52)
Anything, really anything, a task, a thought. If I'm at my best and if I'm using my tertiary in balance I'm ⁓ only then only then ⁓
Kent (18:07)
thinking about or applying thinking to what I'm doing. Now I want to say there's some interesting cases where you need to be putting thinking first in in how you approach something because life dictates certain
Caanan (18:28)
Yeah.
Kent (18:28)
situations where thinking
Kent (18:31)
is important to be able to do on the fly and we get into a lot of that with with our clients. But in matters of everyday practical life, I know I'm not doing so great
Kent (18:45)
If my thinking mind opens up too early, yeah, and I know I'm doing pretty great and acting in balance, ⁓ if this tertiary thing, this teenager, ⁓ only comes in as a supporting character. And then if it's only as a supporting character, ⁓ it is incredible the exponential help ⁓ it can place ⁓ on ⁓ ⁓ whatever you're doing that's grounded in your top
Kent (19:13)
two personality strengths.
Caanan (19:17)
And I said fun earlier. I'm gonna wrap back to that. I think tertiary can be really fun because it can also break your schema, break through your comfort zone and offer up some fresh ways of taking in the world or perceiving the world or approaching something that can feel really creative, like I said, fresh. And so you should be prepared when you know
Caanan (19:41)
your tertiary to pay attention to that every once in a while and touch a base with your tertiary and say, what's coming up there? Because that less mature part of me is also less burdened by time and the realities of the world and the realities of my personality. And it might have something interesting to say that I can then apply my dominant.
Caanan (20:11)
strength and my auxiliary strength too to make sure it makes sense. But it can be really fun too.
Caanan (20:24)
It's mailbag time, Kent, and I have a question I'm gonna read here and I'm gonna have you answer it. Okay.
Kent (20:32)
Sounds good.
Caanan (20:33)
why do I have zero trouble making decisions in one part of my life but completely freeze up ⁓ in another?
Kent (20:43)
gor for it. Yeah, not uncommon, but ⁓ that's a tough question to answer because it could be so ⁓ many things. But I'm going to give a pretty likely answer and one that relates so directly to these ⁓ issues of personality that we're talking about, particularly in this series, the stack. ⁓ If something requires you ⁓ to just ⁓ thinking about ⁓ what we're talking about, tertiary function and thinking, if something ⁓
Kent (21:12)
requires you to get really thinky really quickly and that's not high in your stack, that's going to
Kent (21:21)
be a very uncomfortable thing. Or even more likely, extroversion versus introversion. So if you're an introvert and you feel like you're literally on a stage having to make a decision, it's gonna make you freeze up. But if you've if you're an introvert and you feel comfortable making the decision and you feel like you have time to do your little process, that's gonna make you feel
Kent (21:48)
much more comfortable. So I would say the answer is knowing yourself. And the whole reason why you'd even want to know your personality, why we work with people and why we've practiced this on ourselves is because then you can know how to toggle. Like you can see something coming. Like wait, okay, I'm gonna be out of my ideal personality aligned situation. I need to be ready to use my less preferred functions maybe on the fly or
Kent (22:18)
in a uncomfortable situation. That's the beauty of knowing your personality because then you learn, well, where might decision making be easier in parts of my life and where's it going to be more difficult in parts of my life?