Who are you?

Have you noticed there are people who seem to know everything, they strongly believe that they are always right, when you start telling them something they cut your sentence start telling you in detail and once they start speaking they don’t allow anyone else to come in between and if anyone dares to barge into the discussion and tries to cut them short, depending on that person’s profile or their own, these guys can become real nasty. On the other hand, there could be some people who would never participate in any discussion, would just sit there quietly without interfering and even if they are asked about their opinion, chances are they would still prefer to remain silent or would speak minimum. There are another kind of people who tend to play dus ka dum always, they would talk in terms of data figure, if you say Salman Khan, they would know every detail about him. They are any salesperson’s nightmare because they would know more about his company then him. Then there is a contrast variety of people then this gentleman, these guys would not at all bother about anything they are fun loving, talking life in its stride, not at all interested in detail kind of people.

If someone asks you, why these gentlemen behave the way they do, you’d likely say, it’s their personality. What is a personality? As per American Psychology Association - Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Generally, it is defined as Extrovert and Introvert, or Ambivert, which most of us are, we behave differently in different situations and in front of different individuals.

Everyone wants a better personality. We all picture ourselves in our aspirational roles and positions, doing things in our imagination which we always wanted to do, but could not do for various reasons. Someone would see himself speaking in front of an audience, which he always wanted but could not do due to stage fright, someone else would imagine himself responding strictly to his bullies, someone might see himself proposing to a girl he loves so much but doesn’t have courage to speak to her.

We were all born with our own set of strengths and weaknesses, and no magic formula works wonders for all of us. Until we recognize our uniqueness, we can’t understand how people can sit in the same seminar with the same speaker for the same amount of time and all achieve different degrees of success.

When Michelangelo was ready to carve the statue of David, he spent a long time in selecting the marble, for he knew the quality of the raw material would determine the beauty of the finished product. He knew he could change the shape of the stone, but he couldn’t transform the basic ingredient.  

We were all born with our own temperament traits, our raw material, our own kind of rock. Some of us are granite, some marble, some alabaster, some sandstone. Our type of rock doesn’t change, but our shapes can be altered. So, it is with our personalities. We start with our own set of inborn traits. Some of our qualities are beautiful with strains of gold. Some are blemished with fault lines of grey. Our circumstances, IQ, nationality, economics, environment, and parental influence can mould our personalities, but the rock underneath remains the same.

My temperament is the real me. I can look in the mirror in the morning and see a plain face, see stubble and unkempt hair. That’s the real me.   My personality is the dress I put on over me. I can grow my beard, get my hair colored, wear stone washed jeans, or I can clean shave, wear business suite and tie. I have taken the real me and dressed it up, but I haven’t permanently changed what is underneath. If only we could understand ourselves:

Know what we’re made of

Know who we really are

Know why we react as we do

Know our strengths and how to amplify them

Know our weaknesses and how to overcome them.

We can, if we know how to examine ourselves, how to polish up our strengths, and how to chop away our weaknesses. When we know who we are and why we act the way we do, we can begin to understand our inner selves, improve our personalities, and learn to get along with others. We are not going to try to imitate someone else, put on a brighter dress or anew tie, or cry over the kid of stone we’re made from. We’re going to do the very best we can with the raw material available.

Though now a day we can easily get imitation statues, in plastic, plaster of Paris, silicon of classic statues and even of wax in Madam Tussaud's, but there is only one you.  

What am I? What kind of personality do I belong to? Florence Littauer in her book Personality Plus classified personalities based on the elaborate personality tests and analysis she did for over 25 years. And came up with 4 basic personality types. She classified, the extrovert, talker, and the optimist as POPULAR Sanguine personality, the introvert, the thinker, the pessimist as PERFECT Melancholy Personality, the extrovert, the doer, the optimist as POWERFUL Choleric Personality, and the introvert, the watcher, the pessimist as PEACEFUL Phlegmatic Personality.

These four personality types describe almost everyone, but as I said, we behave differently in different situation with different individuals, though we do have some permanent traits always in picture, but there are certain hidden traits get exposed or remain hidden in different situations, so we all are combination of these personality types, with one or two of these types dominating our personality.

It’s a good idea to know about each of these personality types as it will help you identify the trait of the person you are interacting with, which will help you communicate better with him. If the person you are speaking to is Choleric, you need to give the person ample space, and ensure that you do not hurt his ego, if you happen to interact with a person whose traits you identify as Melancholy, then you should really be ready with your data and facts and have them double checked before presenting it to him. Every personality traits have their strengths and weakness. I shall write in detail about these personality traits in my next post.