Personality Analyse and Career Goals

One of my MM1051 classmates requires my assistance in order to achieve personal progress toward his career aspirations. He is a third-year college psychology student. The five major personality traits are neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. He has a strong feeling of extraversion because he is an outgoing person (Credé, Harms, Niehorster, & Gaye-Valentine, 2012). In this aspect, he is sociable and hence enjoys socializing. He is very outgoing and chatty. He also enjoys working in large groups and making quick decisions. He has high tendency of agreeableness because he constantly seek social harmony and cooperation. He places a lot of value in engaging with others hence he can be described as helpful, generous, friendly and considerate (Cobb-Clark & Schurer, 2012). He likes to appreciate a series of relationships. In terms of conscientiousness, and seems to be impulsive. Meanwhile he acts quickly without considering the repercussions especially when he tends to go for short-lived pleasures (Milfont & Sibley, 2012). In terms of background interests or hobbies, he is normally active hence engages in different kind of exercise and sports such as rugby and tennis.

In terms of neuroticism, he normally portrays emotional instability because of expression of negative feelings such as depression, anger or anxiety. Therefore, he is normally emotionally reactive as he sometimes petty defeats as hopelessly difficult (Karsten et al., 2012). He experiences instances of bad mood. Finally, the character of openness to experience he has demonstrated characters such as creativeness and imaginative. He is intellectually sensitive, appreciative and curious (Milfont & Sibley, 2012). Moreover, he is more aware of his state of mind. He prefers to remain straightforward to the subtle, ambiguous, and complex matters.

His career inspiration/goals

His career inspiration or goals are to attain the management position in his profession. The position involves the management of resources, projects, and people in either government, non-governmental organization or other public sector. Particularly, he wants to be a line manager who is responsible of supervision of many staff members (Credé, Harms, Niehorster & Gaye-Valentine, 2012). He also aspires of job opportunity, which will provide a chance to monitor and evaluate a wide range of key projects to ensure that they remain on track. Furthermore, his career goal is to train members of staff. More importantly, the position will offer a great chance to make crucial decisions in the organization. It will also ensure that the organization implements its strategic goals on budget and time as well as satisfying all the organizational needs (Karsten et al., 2012). Ultimately, attaining the management position will enable him to enhance his self-esteem, assume more roles and become more innovative or creative.

One major obstacle/problem

One of the major weaknesses that the individual exhibits is the inability to manage stress effectively. Stress refers to the sense of being under intense emotional or mental pressure. There are various types of factors, which can lead to stress which includes money worries, relationships, academics and work. Therefore, he is greatly affected by stress, and depression. In addition, he has challenges in coping with the ordinary stressors such as recreation, education and organizing his own time (Milfont & Sibley, 2012). Moreover, he has shown inability to handle stress emanating from major conflicts with different kinds of people in the society. Consequently, he experiences challenges such as poor self-esteem, irritability and anxiety. In addition, his stressful moments are characterized by constant worries and racing thoughts over time (Credé, Harms, Niehorster & Gaye-Valentine, 2012). In addition, when he is stressed up he is likely to experience dizziness, pain, muscle tension or headaches. The symptoms of stress are likely to remain in his body for a long period, which can lead to emotional or mental effects such as restlessness, irrational anger, challenges in concentrating, nervousness or panic, especially in social settings, and sentiment of impending doom (Karsten et al., 2012).

Area that he needs to overcome to achieve the goal

In order to overcome the challenges caused by stress, he needs to pay close attention on strategies of management of anxiety and stress. He is also supposed to know that stress is a normal occurrence from time to time (Flinchbaugh et al., 2012). Therefore, he should focus on how his mind and body react to anxiety-generation and stressful situations. Some of the techniques, which can be applied in stress management, include emotional freedom techniques, constant muscle relaxation, biofeedback and autogenic training as well as yoga (Iglesias et al., 2012). Emotional freedom technique is useful in stress control among individuals as it provides a type of acupressure that function by exciting meridian points. It is also referred to as tapping. It is beneficial in elimination of emotional or psychological stress that affects the performance of individuals in their work. Research has indicated that a single session of this process can reduce stress hormone levels by more than 50 per cent.

Therefore, he will be enrolled in the emotional freedom technique to help in the management of stress in his life. Progressive muscle relaxation will be used in order to relax his muscles (Mackereth et al., 2012). The technique is essential in his life because it will encompass the relaxation and tensing certain category of muscles in a systematic manner to eliminate the malicious cycle of muscle tension and stress. He should also utilize individual biofeedback, which is a strategy that informs him on the process of managing blood flow, heart rate and breathing to avert stress response in the body. It also helps to assess the activities on the body in real time by evaluating operations like muscle tension, skin temperature, brain wave, blood pressure and heart rate (Regehr, Glancy & Pitts, 2013). In so doing, biofeedback can help in solving different functions as a depression and anxiety.

Furthermore, autogenic training can assist the individual in regulating the blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate. It functions by slowing down intense stress response (Flinchbaugh et al., 2012). It places the brain in a relaxed mode, which is comparable to meditation. Furthermore, the individual should be encouraged to exercise yoga constantly. Yoga provides an opportunity to engage in a wide range of physical activities, which play a major part in minimization of stress (Iglesias et al., 2012). For instance, it contributes in reduction of blood pressure, heart and breathing rates, and raises the variability of the heart rate.

Conclusion

One of my colleagues pursing psychology class aspires to attain managerial position in his career profession. Based on the big five assessment, he has an outgoing character. In this respect, he is extrovert, gregarious, talkative and likes to enjoy while involved in large group. In addition, he appears to be impulsive, assertive, optimistic and cheerful (Regehr, Glancy & Pitts, 2013). In addition, he is easily affected by stress hence needs to use stress management strategies such as yoga.

References

Cobb-Clark, D. A., & Schurer, S. (2012). The stability of big-five personality traits. Economics Letters, 115(1), 11-15.

Credé, M., Harms, P., Niehorster, S., & Gaye-Valentine, A. (2012). An evaluation of the consequences of using short measures of the Big Five personality traits. Journal of personality and social psychology, 102(4), 874.

Flinchbaugh, C. L., Moore, E. W. G., Chang, Y. K., & May, D. R. (2012). Student well-being interventions: The effects of stress management techniques and gratitude journaling in the management education classroom. Journal of Management Education, 36(2), 191-219.

Iglesias, S. L., Azzara, S., Argibay, J. C., Arnaiz, M. L., de Valle Carpineta, M., Granchetti, H., & Lagomarsino, E. (2012). Psychological and physiological response of students to different types of stress management programs. American Journal of Health Promotion, 26(6), e149-e158.

Karsten, J., Penninx, B. W., Riese, H., Ormel, J., Nolen, W. A., & Hartman, C. A. (2012). The state effect of depressive and anxiety disorders on big five personality traits. Journal of psychiatric research, 46(5), 644-650.

Mackereth, P., Hackman, E., Tomlinson, L., Manifold, J., & Orrett, L. (2012). ’Needle with ease’: rapid stress management techniques. British journal of nursing.

Milfont, T. L., & Sibley, C. G. (2012). The big five personality traits and environmental engagement: Associations at the individual and societal level. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32(2), 187-195.

Regehr, C., Glancy, D., & Pitts, A. (2013). Interventions to reduce stress in university students: A review and meta-analysis. Journal of affective disorders, 148(1), 1-11.