“As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.”  Psalm 17:15

I discovered this verse in high school and it quickly became my life verse.  To me it speaks to that constant pursuit of being Christ-like – refusing to be satisfied until I awake in His likeness.

I think what I connected with in this verse is that idea of a constant pursuit, a striving, a desire to achieve.  Unfortunately I don’t always apply that relentless striving to the right things.  I wrote this in my journal last year:

I have this overwhelming, insatiable need for validation/to be acknowledged/to be right/to be taken seriously/to be valued.  So much so that I never lighten up/relax/let my guard down.  I always feel the need to prove myself.  It doesn’t matter what it is… work… house cleaning… exercise… decorating, etc.  Important or trivial I always have this underlying drive to prove myself.

Marcus Buckingham describes this as the striving talent of “achiever”.  In his book First, Break All The Rules he says this of achievers: “They may not have to win, but they do feel a burning need to achieve something tangible every single day.  And these kind of people mean ‘every single day.’  For them, everday – workday, weekend, vacation – every day starts at zero.  They have to rack up some numbers by the end of the day in order to feel good about themselves.  This burning flame may dwindle as evening comes, but the next morning it rekindles itself, spurring its host to look for new items to cross off his list.  These people are the fabled ‘self-starters.’”

I wish that I applied my “achiever” nature as much to the pursuit of being Christ-like as I do to all the other things in my life.  It’s kind of humbling that I seemed to have more clarity on this back in high school than I do now as an adult. 

How about you?  What about your personality, taken to the extreme, creates imbalance in your life?