Solution 4: Stop Exaggerating
When I began to give my testimony in public, my husband said, “Now that you’re a Christian speaker, don’t you think it’s time you stopped lying?” I knew I didn’t lie, and I asked him what he meant. As a Perfect Melancholy, he felt when I didn’t tell the exact truth, I was lying. I felt I was just being colorful, so we settled on the term exaggerating . Later I heard Lauren tell a young friend, “When you listen to my mother you have to cut everything in half.”
One day I went to Popular Sanguine Patti’s new home, and when I walked in she greeted me with “Every dog and cat on this street is dying of mange.” My Popular Sanguine mind instantly pictured dozens of dying dogs and cats, gasping their last breaths in the gutter. As I was captured by this mental scene, I noticed her Perfect Melancholy daughter shaking her head in despair.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her, and she replied, “The lady next door has a sick cat.”
No one could get too excited over some unknown woman’s sick cat, but “Every dog and cat on the street is dying of mange” is really an opener!
Fred and I were once at a party where a delightful Popular Sanguine girl named Bonnie enthralled the group with her detailed description of a boat trip from Los Angeles to Catalina Island. She relived the entertainment for us all, recited the menu, told who got seasick, and held our attention for twenty minutes. As soon as she concluded her hilarious story about their boat trip to Catalina, her Perfect Melancholy husband took a deep breath and said, quietly but firmly, two words: We flew.
We all stood stunned as Bonnie reflected for a moment and then agreed, “That’s right, we flew.”
Only a Popular Sanguine could spend twenty minutes describing in detail a trip she’d never taken on a boat she’d never boarded.
Although Popular Sanguines’ stories are funny and I’ll never forget this incident, Bonnie had gone so far in her exaggerations that she was lying. A friend told me a similar situation this morning and concluded with “Of course she’s a Popular Sanguine, so you can’t believe a word she says.” Isn’t that a shame? Isn’t it too bad Popular Sanguines can’t be trusted to deal anywhere near the truth? Think it over and check yourself.
REMEMBER
Colorful carried to extremes becomes lying.
PROBLEM: Popular Sanguines Are Self-Centered
Solution 1: Be Sensitive to Other People’s Interests
Popular Sanguines are the least sensitive to others because they are so wrapped up in themselves. They are so happy with their own stories, they don’t notice the attention span of others and may talk way beyond the interest of the group. They seldom notice the needs of others because they innately avoid problems or negative situations. Popular Sanguines don’t make good counselors because they’d rather talk than listen, and they tend to give quick simplistic answers that may not be appropriate.
Learning to be sensitive to others starts with listening and looking. I have trained myself to enter groups quietly and listen until I get the grasp of the conversation rather than blurting right out my newest story. Many times I’ve been grateful I hesitated first, before putting my foot in my open mouth. I have worked at looking at people as individuals and not just as audience material.
As I have tuned in to others, I have discovered so many hurting people I’d overlooked before; so many lonely ladies that Popular Sanguines tend to avoid; so many broken hearts that need mending; so many heavy-laden bodies that need the light touch of a Popular Sanguine.
From here on, Popular Sanguines, listen to and look at each person as someone special, and you will become sensitive to others’ needs.
Solution 2: Learn to Listen
The reason Popular Sanguines don’t listen is not that they have a genetic problem, but because they care only about themselves. Listening is a gracious gesture, and Popular Sanguines aren’t concerned enough to force themselves to become interested in others. They feel life is a theater, where they are on stage, and everyone else is in the audience. The very best of Popular Sanguines can get away with the entertainer image, but most of us come across as egotists when we keep everyone’s eyes focused on us.
REMEMBER
Be sensitive to others’ needs
and listen to what they have to say.
PROBLEM: Popular Sanguines Have Uncultivated Memories
Solution 1: Pay Attention to Names
The reason Popular Sanguines don’t remember names is as I stated earlier: They don’t listen, and they don’t care. Both of these problems stem from their self-centered natures and their insensitivity to others. They may be fun to be with but people sense they don’t care when they can’t remember minutes later who the others are.
Dale Carnegie said, “The sweetest sound in the world is a person’s name.” In his How to Win Friends book he gives many examples of people whose success was related to how well they concentrated on learning the names of others.
Popular Sanguines aren’t any less intelligent than other temperaments, and they can remember names once they decide it’s important. Powerful Cholerics know how crucial it is to call people by name. Perfect Melancholies have good minds for holding on to detail, and Peaceful Phlegmatics love to watch and listen, but Popular Sanguines are deficient in all these areas. They don’t think anything is crucial enough to work at; they aren’t tuned in to details; and they would much rather talk than listen. Is there any hope?
For all of my married life I have found it was easier to ask Fred people’s names than learn them myself—and it was. When I first studied temperaments, I realized this dependence on Fred’s mind showed I couldn’t depend on mine. I asked myself, “Are you so stupid you have to hire a brain? Can’t you learn yourself?” That question made me realize I’d never seriously tried to remember names, and I decided to get to work on a new hobby. Popular Sanguines have to make it a game. First, I began to listen to people’s names, a step so simple anyone can do it, and without which there is little hope for improvement. We can hardly hold on to what we never hear. As I forced my mind to concentrate as people spoke, I learned everyone has a name and likes to be called by it.
How amazed and impressed I am when someone can handle Littauer instead of making it Littenouer, Littoner, Littaver, Littenhauser, or Latouer. How happy others will be with me if I can handle their handle. There’s a great motivation for a Popular Sanguine: Others will like us better. Isn’t that what we really want? A key to popularity is knowing who others are.
Second, I began to care about others. I began to look at them when they said their names, and question them about their lives, until I felt I knew them. How much more interesting people have become since I’ve learned to take my eyes off myself and turn them toward others.
Solution 2: Write Things Down
While the Popular Sanguine memory for color and trivia is even beyond the facts, their memory for names, dates, and places is almost nonexistent. This division of the mind is understandable, when we realize the Popular Sanguine temperament is far more interested in people than in statistics, and in colorful fiction than cold facts. Perfect Melancholy loves details and remembers the essentials of life, so if we looked on the positives, we would always team the two together: Perfect Melancholy to get it right and Popular Sanguine to make it interesting.
Fred has a fantastic ability to remember names, helped by his plan of writing everyone’s name down on a little card, with some pertinent fact about them. When we lived in Connecticut, we had a Popular Sanguine pastor who couldn’t remember one parishioner from another. Fred helped him out by standing next to him at the door on Sunday morning and giving him instant biographies under his breath as each unfamiliar person approached.
“This lady in the pink dress is Walda Worry. She has six children and her husband’s in the hospital with back trouble.”
“Walda, dear, you look lovely in pink! How are those adorable little children? And how’s your poor husband’s back coming along?”
Fred fe
d the facts; Don did the decorating.
After we left Connecticut, Don’s memory had an instant retreat, and people wondered why his charming concern had turned into a desperate grasping for names. One day he asked a lady how her husband was feeling when, in fact, he had just conducted the poor man’s funeral two days before.
We have a Popular Sanguine friend Tommy who ironically teaches a memory course. He does an exciting job at communicating the principles, and people do learn, but it hasn’t helped him in everyday life. One day I stopped by and found him searching wildly through his garage. He had lost two cases of memory books he needed for a course that night, and he couldn’t remember where he’d put them.
Since Popular Sanguines have such poor memories, they must write down lists of what they have to do, and keep the lists where they won’t lose them. They must take notes on people’s names and review them before going to the same group again. They must make sure, before they make business calls, that they have all their facts before them. A good mind can appear stupid when it’s groping for information it should know.
Solution 3: Don’t Forget the Children
I’ve met many Popular Sanguine women who had lost at least a child or two at some time in their motherhood. One drove an hour into the desert, chatting happily with her Popular Sanguine friend, before noticing her four-year-old was not in the back seat. She drove back to the gas station where she’d started, and there was her little boy helping the man pump gas. The attendant was grateful she’d returned because he was about to go home, and didn’t know what to do with his new assistant.
One lady told me she had forgotten to pick up her child from the third grade and didn’t realize it until the family sat down for dinner and his seat was empty.
In a Popular Sanguine group report from one of our seminars the chairman stated, “We took a survey and among us we had lost four hundred and thirty-seven things this week, including seven children and one grandmother, tragically abandoned in a department store.”
My Popular Sanguine friend Carol and I carpooled when our two Perfect Melancholy sons were in their early grades. We were both frequently late, and while we understood each other, the boys were constantly depressed. When I would go to pick up James, Jr., he would come out mournfully, carrying a bowl of cereal.
“My mother was on the phone again, and I had to take care of myself.”
Fred, Jr., would arrive home whenever Carol happened to get him there, and he would always have tales of how she forgot him, or how she almost drove into the back of a truck. Carol and I met recently in Dallas and laughed over our forgetful years of carpooling. We decided our inconsistency was good for the boys because it taught them flexibility.
Popular Sanguines have the creative ability to take their obvious weaknesses and find ways to turn them into strengths.
REMEMBER
Even though you can rationalize why you have a bad memory,
no one wants to hear about it. Pay attention to people’s names,
write things down, and try to take note
of where you left your car and your child.
PROBLEM: Popular Sanguines Are Fickle and Forgetful Friends
Solution 1: Read The Friendship Factor
While Popular Sanguines have many friends because they keep life exciting, they are not usually “good friends.” They’re happy to be around, but they fade off into the wings when there are needs or troubles. They might be called “fair-weather friends.” I had one Popular Sanguine buddy who was a “wet-weather friend.” She only called me when it was pouring rain and she couldn’t play golf.
Popular Sanguines tend to have fans or groupies more than real friends. They collect people who admire them, love them, and (hopefully) worship them. They like those who are giving but look the other way when needs arise. They are too busy with the excitement and glamour to take time for the troubles.
When I read The Friendship Factor by Alan L. McGinnis (Augsburg Press), I realized for the first time I had not been much of a friend, although I had many acquaintances. Dr. McGinnis challenged me to examine my life in the areas of lasting relationships, and I saw that I was letting some dear friends drift away because it wasn’t easy to get together.
In 1980 I invited forty women from all over the country to come to Redlands, California, for a Speakers’ Training Seminar. Thirty-six came, and in one week together we became friends. We shared our hearts with each other and didn’t want to separate. To keep these friendships going, I sent out a letter reviewing what each had written me and keeping them posted on each other. I also started a Wednesday-morning group at my home for the women in my area. We all agreed we would have drifted apart if we hadn’t disciplined ourselves to come together in fellowship once a week.
Solution 2: Put Others’ Needs First
Popular Sanguines rarely make the effort to be true friends, to care for the needy, and visit the sick. When I was president of the Women’s Club of San Bernardino, it was expected I should go to the hospital when members were ill. This was so foreign to my nature that I found it difficult to do. I would find excuses, and once I arrived to visit one member’s husband, only to find he’d died the day before. I had to convince myself that others’ needs were important and then discipline myself to act accordingly. Many times when I had to force myself to go somewhere, the Lord blessed me with a rich experience.
REMEMBER
Popular Sanguines, it’s not easy to be a “good friend”
but it’s more than worth the effort. Don’t settle for
an audience; become a friend.
PROBLEM: Popular Sanguines Interrupt and Answer for Others.
Solution: Don’t Think You Must Fill All the Gaps
I used to feel God had appointed me the Official Gap Filler of Life. Since I always had something to say and I couldn’t stand silence, I would jump in with a story as soon as someone drew a quick breath. I never felt I was interrupting, but rather that I was saving the audience from a dull experience. I took on the role of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, keeping the whole city from being washed away with water. I looked at conversation as a big protective wall that could not afford holes, and as one emerged, I would dash to fill the void lest the group be engulfed by boredom.
Fred found this frenzied gap-filling Florence to be too effusive, and he tried to tell me Silence Is Golden, and there is nothing wrong with calm dead air once in a while. I ignored his request for serenity until I understood my temperament and realized that Popular Sanguines do have this compulsion for plugging all conversation holes. As I began to bite my tongue and forcibly keep my lips from moving, I noticed Fred began to talk. Attention shifted from me to him, and I found he had something intelligent to say.
One engaging Popular Sanguine girl, Sharon, told me how she had been sick at the time of her church Christmas party and had been unable to go. Later friends mentioned to Sharon how charming her husband had been at the party, and how they had never known he had much personality. She thought this over and realized she had never given him much of a chance to shine. From then on she worked at leaving a few gaps open for him to fill and was amazed to see he was able to do it.
Non-Phlegmatic Phil
One day I flipped on the TV and caught “The Phil Donahue Show.” Phil was interviewing Economist Adam Smith, and I was amazed at the perfect temperament study they both were: Phil, the extrovert Popular Sanguine /Powerful Choleric, focusing all attention on himself; Adam, deep Perfect Melancholy (with a genius mind) and Peaceful Phlegmatic (very low key, witty) and unruffled by questions.
Phil’s comments showed a lack of knowledge of temperaments and an assumption that because Adam’s personality was not volatile like his, he was a little dull.
PHIL: I can see you are not too excited about this subject.
ADAM: I’m very excited. I just don’t have your energy.
PHIL: I can tell you’re bored.
ADAM: I’m not bored. This is just the face I was b
orn with.
When the audience asked questions of Adam, Phil jumped in with the answers. At one point, Phil turned to Adam, after giving a full response for him, and said, “That is how you feel about this, isn’t it, Adam?” And Adam replied, “Why ask me?”
There was no need to ask him, for Phil was having a great time telling everyone what he assumed Adam would say. Popular Sanguine always feels he should answer for everyone else, because he can say it so much better.
In our home both Marita and I give quick answers to everyone’s questions. One evening at dinner, Fred asked Freddie how things went at school. Marita immediately answered, “He had to sit outside by the principal’s office, so he must have been bad.”
She didn’t even go to the same school, but she had driven by and spotted him seated at the office door. Freddie was not pleased with her report and Father Fred instituted a new rule that Marita and I have never liked: Only the one being asked the question is allowed to respond.
This discipline slows down the conversation and sometimes results in utter silence, while one quiet member musters up his thoughts for a simple presentation.
As you become more familiar with the temperaments you will notice how quickly Popular Sanguines answer for others, and how they do not even notice they are doing it.
REMEMBER
One who interrupts and answers for others is rude
and inconsiderate, and after a while, unwelcome.
PROBLEM: Popular Sanguine Is Disorganized and Immature
Personality Plus: How to Understand Others by Understanding Yourself Page 9
