Any business that fails to take a regular inventory of its assets and deficiencies is doomed to failure. The same can be said for individuals who are committed to using their innate strengths in choosing a career path and improving their lives. Americans are often stuck in the pursuit of “finding themselves”. As a result, they’re suffering from a paralysis of analysis. Fortunately, there are personal assessment tools developed by psychologists to place you in wide categories of human traits, strengths, and weaknesses. Some of the best of these cost-free assessments are available online.

Before taking any of these online assessments, it’s prudent to consider the results you’ll receive as a best-case snapshot of how you fit pre-established categories. Plus, results are based on your intellectual and emotional reactions to the questions and how honest you are in your responses. You’ll profit most by heeding any results with a grain of salt and using your assessment as broad guidelines in career and skill planning.Clickable Tests that Measure How You Tick

Online tests fall into several broad categories. There are skills assessments that evaluate your capabilities in the workplace, asking such questions as, “are you a finisher or do you procrastinate?”. Some tests measure your tendencies and preferences, with such questions as, “Would you rather work a drill press or be a financial planner?”. Still other tests measure your personality tics asking things like, “Do slow drivers bother you?”.

Here are the top-ten tests you’ll find online and their features:

• Big Five Personality Test

• Career Focus 2000 Interest Inventory

• OneNet school-to-work transition assessment instruments

• The 3 Sides of You Self Perception Profiler

• Career Interest Inventory

• Keirsey Temperament Sorter

• Career Zone Assessment Test

• AdvisorTeam Temperament Sorter

• Monster.com Assessment

• Career Link InventoryBig Five Personality Test

The Big Five Personality Test is based on a 1970 measurement test created by researchers from The National Institutes of Health, the University of Oregon, and the University of Michigan. The test asks you to evaluate your own preferences in categories called Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. There is no cost for taking the test.Career Focus 2000 Interest Inventory

In this cost-free test you’ll take stock of your interests in 18 career fields by responding to 180 questions. This is a measurement of interest, rather than aptitude. Would you like to test blood in a laboratory or create a musical score for an orchestra? The test is well-suited for high school and college students, and for adults looking at new career options.OneNet school-to-work

Easily the most comprehensive assessment tool online, OneNet is free to the user. A bank of tests will measure your skill sets, occupational likes and dislikes, and potential career fields that suit your type. The site is sponsored by The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA).The 3 Sides of You Self Perception Profiler

This cost-free test delivers a three-part profile of how you rank in thinking, working, and emoting. Each of the three category tests contain 56 statements that users rank in order of importance or self-identification. For example: “You often feel when something’s wrong, yet seldom speak up about it.” Or, “For you, there’s one best way of doing everything.” At the end, you’ll receive an overview of your personality style.Career Interest Inventory

This free online inventory reveals to the user the career fields that best match their personal interests. The 45 questions ask, “Would you rather be an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency or a plastic surgeon?” Or, “Would you rather be an eye doctor, a poet, or a firefighter?”Keirsey Temperament Sorter

This free, online assessment tool is popular among counseling professionals, Fortune 500 companies, and major universities for measuring career and personality development. The test follows the standardized 16 Myers-Briggs personality assessment categories in accordance with psychological types first described by C. G. Jung. A more-detailed assessment is available for a fee.Career Zone Assessment Test

This free, online measurement tool evaluates your career by work environments and personal preferences. It uses a model based on life themes in six categories: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. By combining your positive choices, the test delivers a range of professions.AdvisorTeam Temperament Sorter

AdvisorTeam’s free test also uses the Keirsey model, helping you to understand your “strengths, motivations, and temperaments.” You’ll answer questions about your behavior, attitudes, and preferences. Do you chat with strangers while waiting on line at the supermarket or do you pace anxiously? What’s more important, your thoughts or your feelings?Monster.com Assessments

One of the Web’s largest job sites offers a free career test based on your personality type. Four questions detail two sets of personality characteristics. You’re asked to honestly describe which set best fits you. You decide if you’re an extrovert or introvert; a thinker or a feeler; judger or perceiver. Questions: Where is your energy naturally directed? What kind of information do you naturally notice and remember? How do you decide or come to conclusions? What kind of environment makes you the most comfortable?Career Link Inventory

This free, online assessment tool helps you take your own inventory in aptitudes, interests, temperaments, physical capacities, working conditions, and career preparation. Do you prefer to work inside or outdoors? Are you stronger in spatial or verbal skills? Would you rather have on-the-job prestige or prefer producing a visible, tangible product?I See Myself Better, Now What?

It’s easy to fall into a pit of extreme emotional reactions or set your goals in stone as a result of your test results. Remember that any results are just guidelines and another tool to give you an additional glimpse of yourself. The tests can be useful if, based on your findings, you establish some career options and objectives with flexibility.

You might consider conducting additional research into what it will take to get into fields that excite you. You could make a pluses and minuses list of the jobs you’re considering. If you’re motivated, develop an action plan and timetable for reaching your goals.

What is the Slight Edge and what does it have to do with personal development, self help, success, prosperity, abundance, wealth, business, career, money and freedom? The Slight Edge is a philosophy for living life that was introduced to me by a man named Jeff Olson. Not only are the principles of the Slight Edge intertwined with all of the things mentioned above, but it also is at work in the lives of those who experience depression, poverty, poor health, debt, unemployment, jobs they hate and unfulfilling relationships. The Slight Edge is at work all the time, every day in the life of every single conscious human being on this planet.

You can read Jeff Olson’s book or listen to his audio program about the Slight Edge, but I will do my best to simply summarize its meaning here for you. The Slight Edge is really referring to the very slight difference between making positive choices and negative ones, between choosing things that will enhance and improve our lives versus things that will bring us less than we truly desire. For instance, each day you have an opportunity to make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions! When to wake up, what to wear, what to eat, whether or not to exercise, what to say or not say to family and friends, what to read, what to watch, where to go, what people to see and spend time with, what to listen to, what to think and on and on and on.

Most of these “choices” that we make each day may not even feel like choices because so many of them are made on more of an unconscious level than a conscious one. However, even choices that we make day and day out require our conscious approval in order to take place and we have the power and ability within ourselves to change what choices we make at any given time. Understanding how the Slight Edge works and the difference it can make in your life over time will give you an added sense of discipline and desire to make those positive choices that are in your best interest.

An important element of the Slight Edge philosophy is understanding that most individual choices are easy to do, but they are also easy not to do. It’s easy to choose to eat a healthy salad for lunch instead of a hamburger, but it is also easy not to do that. Therein lies the power of the Slight Edge choice. To understand the influence of the Slight Edge at work in your life it is important to look at a given choice over time, let’s say one year. If you watch one hour of television each day, that doesn’t really seem like a big deal right? It is certainly easy to do and it could also be said that it is easy not do. On average, Americans watch much more than one hour of television a day, but for the sake of this illustration we will assume you watch just one hour. The equates to seven hours a week, approximately 30 hours a month and 365 hours a year, which is equivalent to more than nine 40 hour work weeks! I’m not saying this is good or bad I’m just illustrating the power of the Slight Edge at work. When you think about your daily choices in terms of their impact and influence in your life over one year or one decade, it puts those activities into better perspective.

Now, I’m not saying we should not watch TV, go to movies, relax, or anything like that. I enjoy doing all of those things, in proper balance. My intention in sharing my experience with this philosophy with you is to help you understand that there are little simple things that you can begin doing today, that if done over time, will absolutely transform your life. It is about understanding the potential that each of us have to grow, to progress, to improve, to create, to expand and to be a better, more fulfilled and happy person in one year than we are today! How can we go about making Slight Edge improvements to our daily choices so that we can experience consistent growth and personal development in our lives? There are several ways and I will share a few that have worked phenomenally well for me.

Reading personal development or self help books and listening to similar audio programs has made a huge difference in my life. Do you realize that if you read just 10 pages from a personal development book every day that you will have read 3,650 pages by the end of just one year! Sure, the math is easy and it makes sense, but that translates to easily one or two dozen books. It only takes about 30 minutes a day to do that yet the impact upon the way you think, act and live your life will be tremendously enhanced. Reading 10 pages a day is easy to do. It is also easy not to do. Therein lies the power of the Slight Edge decision. Additionally, if you listen to just 15 minutes of inspiring personal development audio programs, podcasts or audiobooks each day while driving to and from work or while exercising, that equates to 91.25 hours of listening in one year; more than two 40 hour work weeks put together! Do you think putting such content into your mind and applying it in your life would help you to become a better person and be more successful in achieving your personal and professional goals? Absolutely! It is easy to do? Is it easy not to do?

You see, a large majority of people read trashy magazines, watch tv and listen to worthless radio instead of reading personal development books, listening to inspiring audio and taking a little time out to improve their lives. We should not be surprised if our lives our not what we wish them to be if we are not taking the simple daily actions to improve ourselves and to be better. Our lives right now, in this present moment, are nothing more than a cumulative result of everything that we have thought and done previously in life! If you do not like your situation, your relationships, your job, your build, your income (or lack thereof), then look in the mirror and make a firm resolve to yourself that you will begin TODAY to make changes in the Slight Edge choices you make each day. Don’t beat yourself and drop deeper into depression. Celebrate and get excited that you now know what you can do to change your life for the better. Will you transform into the life of your dreams overnight? Of course not. However, by making slight changes each day in the seemingly insignificant choices of what you do, your life will absolutely be transformed in a years time, probably much sooner. I have experienced this first hand and I absolutely know that it works.

When I was a teenager I was hanging out with the wrong crowd and got involved in drinking, drugs, smoking, theft and all variety of unhealthy behavior. My life was falling apart quickly and the future did not look to bright for me. After having a very scary experience with drugs I made a firm decision that I was going to change my life. I made some drastic decisions at that point to dis-associate from my friends, to get rid of all my depressing music, to stop abusing substances and to begin working heavily on improving myself, my mind, my body, my life. What I’ve found for myself and for others is that immediate change can be noticed and experienced, especially when you are making these changes at a very low point in your life. If you are in the depths of despair and the whole world seems to be crashing in upon you then shifting your mind, body and spirit can make a visual transformational difference upon you in a matter of hours. A lot of that depends upon the intensity of your determination to change and to improve your life and your willingness to disassociate yourself, as much as possible, from those things or people that have had such a powerful negative influence over you. This isn’t about running from your problems, but rather about taking back control of your life and not giving that control to anyone but yourself.

I read book after book about personal development. About thoughts, behavior, attitude, goals, success, achievement, etc. Just get your hands on any personal development books that really jump out at you, dive in and absorb as much as you can as quickly as you can. What I loved about these books is that there were always numerous ideas and suggestions that I could immediately begin applying in my mind and in my life to see how they would make a difference. I would do the exercises, follow the guidance and see what happened. I also did a lot of spiritual exploration during this time, praying, meditation, reading scripture and just cleansing myself as well as I knew how. This will be a different process for everyone depending upon your religious persuasions, where you live and what spiritual books and teachers are a part of your life. I also began eating more healthy foods, exercising and getting more adequate rest every night. This was invigorating to build my body, to develop and to see that it was ready to take on new challenges and to be pushed to new limits. That felt good and seemed to help accelerate the growth I was experiencing mentally, emotionally and spiritually as well.

I was 18 years of age when I made that decision to change my life for the better. I am now 31 and have by no means reached the pinnacle of personal growth and achievement. However, I have been fortunate to have enjoyed many remarkable experiences and blessings in my life, due in large part to the fact that I have been continually working on improving myself and the lives of those around me. I’ve traveled throughout the United States and Canada. I received scholarships to college and graduated with honors. I married a beautiful woman when I was 24 and we now have two incredible children with our third to arrive this summer. I have started businesses, invested in real estate, managed multi-million dollar companies and consulted entrepreneurs. I currently own a multi-million dollar business within the Health and Wellness industry and am able to help people from all walks of life all over the world. My future is bright and I know that there are no limits to what I can achieve as long as I continue to follow the Slight Edge path of personal development and striving to improve the lives of others.

It is my desire that you will join with me in this phenomenal journey of life. If you are looking to make some changes in your life, do it now! Take the time for some personal exploration, set your goals, decide what small things you can begin doing each day that will have a powerful cumulative effect upon you and your family in your life. If you are looking to make a professional change or to work within a business that is perfectly aligned with these principles, then let me know. I’d love to explore the possibility of working together with you in my business and helping you to accomplish all of the goals that you set for yourself.

If you would like to learn more about the business that has provided me with an unlimited opportunity for developing true time freedom and financial freedom, simply visit my site at http://www.rockthechoc.com!

Until then, enjoy the journey,

Munro Murdock