Bruce Stanley

A practical, research-grounded alternative to personality typing If you work one-to-one with others sooner or later you might reach for a map. Spiritual directors, counsellors, and coaches often find themselves wondering – who is this person? What is shaping their choices? What are they avoiding? What gives them life? What might help them grow? For years, personality typing systems such as MBTI, the Enneagram and similar tools have been used to open up those questions. MBTI was a core element...

The Fractal Dimension of Stress Reduction Imagine you have an hour to recover after a stressful week. Which of these four places would you choose? Vote below. Please choose before reading on. There is no correct answer, although there are some interesting reasons why one landscape might appeal more than another. Nature is not one kind of place I doubt we think of nature as if it were a single type of environment – of course it's not. It might mean sitting beside a river, walking through a...

We might assume that character strengths are a result of our spiritual practice but I think the loop runs both ways. In this post, I want to introduce (probably) the most scientifically rigorous personality test, useful in the world of spiritual direction: the VIA Character Strengths Survey and get you started with some ideas about how you might find it useful. Spiritual practice can become strangely vague. We may know we want more depth, more steadiness, more connection, more honesty, more...