Personality Plus: How to Understand Others by Understanding Yourself

by Florence Littauer

  Proverbs 2:6, 9 TLB

  PART FOUR

  Personality Principles:

  A Path to Improved Relations with Others

  CHAPTER 12

  Each Person Is a Unique Blend

  As you have scored your own Personality Profile, you have found that you are unique. Probably no one else has ever come up with the exact blend of strengths and weaknesses you have. Most people have high totals in one temperament, with a secondary in another temperament and some scattered traits. Some people are evenly distributed, and these are usually Peaceful Phlegmatics, for they are the all-purpose people and also the ones who have the most difficulty in deciding their traits.

  Let’s look at some of the possible blends.

  Natural Blends

  As you can see by the chart, the Popular Sanguine/Powerful Choleric combination is a Natural Blend. They are both outgoing, optimistic, and outspoken. Popular Sanguine talks for pleasure, Powerful Choleric for business, but they both are verbal people. If you have this blend, you have the greatest potential for leadership. If you combine your two strengths, you have a person who can direct others and make them enjoy the work; a person who is fun loving yet can accomplish goals; a person with drive and determination, but who is not compulsive about achievements. This blend takes the extremes of work and play and produces a person who puts them in proper perspective. In the negative, such a blend could spawn a bossy individual who didn’t know what he was talking about; an impulsive person who was running around in circles; or an impatient soul who was always interrupting and monopolizing conversation.

  The other Natural Blend is the Perfect Melancholy/ Peaceful Phlegmatic. They are both introverted, pessimistic, and soft-spoken. They are more serious, they look into the depths of situations, and they don’t want to be center stage. They follow Teddy Roosevelt’s advice, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Peaceful Phlegmatic lightens the depth of Perfect Melancholy, and the Perfect Melancholy pulls together the looseness of Peaceful Phlegmatic. This combination makes the greatest educators as Perfect Melancholies’ love of study and research is brightened by Peaceful Phlegmatics’ ability to get along with people and present material in a pleasant manner. They may have trouble in decision making because they both are slow in this area, and they both procrastinate. The best combination is one in which the evenness of Peaceful Phlegmatics keep Perfect Melancholy from dropping into depressions, and Perfect Melancholy’s desire for perfection gets Peaceful Phlegmatic motivated to action.

  The Popular Sanguine/Powerful Choleric and Perfect Melancholy/ Peaceful Phlegmatic are Natural Blends. They are blood brothers.

  Complementary Blends

  The Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy temperament is a Complementary Blend, a combination that fits well together and completes the lacks in each other’s natures. The Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy makes the best business person because the combination of Powerful Choleric’s leadership, drive, and goals with Perfect Melancholy’s analytical, detail-conscious, schedule-oriented mind is unbeatable. Nothing is beyond the range of this combination, and they will be successful no matter how long it takes. If they set out to remake a mate, they will keep it up until they have a perfect product.

  A lovely lady named Louise was confused about her own temperament, and as I asked what she was like in college, her whole face changed. She went from reserved to radiant as she told about being a cheerleader and being voted most likely to succeed. She realized she began to change under the direction of her boyfriend, whom she had later married. He, being a Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy, had set out to perfect her. When she wrote him letters while he was in grad school, he would circle the misspelled words in red, and mail the letter back for her to study. When he came home, he would put her through a spelling bee. With good intentions and endless perseverance, he had remade a bouncing cheerleader into a serious, dignified actress who didn’t quite know who she was.

  Because this blend is decisive, organized, and goal oriented, Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy has the most drive and determination and can hold tight onto a cause forever. Headed in a positive direction, the Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholies are the most successful, but carried to extremes, even their strengths become overbearing.

  The other Complementary Blend is the Popular Sanguine/Peaceful Phlegmatic. Where the Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy is work oriented, the Popular Sanguine/Peaceful Phlegmatic is inclined to take it easy and have fun. The combination of double portions of humor with easygoing natures makes the Popular Sanguine/Peaceful Phlegmatics the best friends possible. Their warm, relaxed natures are appealing and people love to be with them. Peaceful Phlegmatic tempers the ups and downs of Popular Sanguine, while Popular Sanguine personality brightens up Peaceful Phlegmatic. This blend is the best of all in dealing with people. They are good in personnel work, in being parents, and in civic leadership, because they have the engaging humor and personality of Popular Sanguine and the stability of Peaceful Phlegmatic. Unfortunately, the other side of the Popular Sanguine/Peaceful Phlegmatic shows them as lazy, without desire or direction to produce anything they can avoid, and very poor in handling money. As with each temperament blend there are exciting strengths and corresponding weaknesses.

  Opposites

  We have seen Natural Blends and Complementary Blends. Now we will look at the Opposites. There are obvious internal conflicts that the Popular Sanguine/Perfect Melancholy and the Powerful Choleric/Peaceful Phlegmatic can put into one person—the introvert and extrovert natures with the optimistic/pessimistic outlooks. The Popular Sanguine /Perfect Melancholy is the most emotional of the two, as one body tries to accommodate the little ups and downs of Popular Sanguine with the deeper, more prolonged traumas of Perfect Melancholy. This split personality can lead to emotional problems. The Popular Sanguine nature says, “Let’s go and have more fun,” and on the way, the Perfect Melancholy nature checks the progress.

  One lady of this type told me of the anniversary party she planned for her parents. The Popular Sanguine part of her thought up great ideas including fancy invitations, a catered dinner, and an orchestra. Two days before the affair, her Perfect Melancholy part took over and said, “What in the world are you doing trying to put on this big party? Back out of this right this minute.” She canceled the party and then was depressed for weeks over how she’d disappointed her parents.

  To Work or Not to Work?

  As we have done intensive case history studies of people who function in these extremes we have found that usually one of these is a learned response to the hurts of the past. We call these “Masks of Survival.” Either the Perfect Melancholy child in order to seek parental attention put on a Popular Sanguine mask of popularity or the Popular Sanguine child, because of abuse or rejection, became depressed and put on the Perfect Melancholy mask of pain. Many children who are brought up in dysfunctional homes put on the Perfect Melancholy mask of perfection. “If only I could be perfect Daddy wouldn’t hurt me, Mommy wouldn’t yell at me.” Whether it is from alcohol, drugs, rejection, sexual or emotional abuse, or extreme religious legalism, these dysfunctional homes breed masking of personality for the children. They don’t know how to fight the system, so they tend to become whatever will help them survive.

  As adults they appear to be split personalities and don’t understand the extreme mood swings they suffer, to work or not to work . . . whether or not they are motivated to work. While the Powerful Choleric /Peaceful Phlegmatic opposite natures do not have the same emotional strains, they do have the major conflict of “to work or not to work.” Peaceful Phlegmatic wants to take it easy, and Powerful Choleric feels guilty when not producing. This question usually resolves itself by dividing life into two segments—working hard at the job and tuning out at home.

  Many times a Powerful Choleric will give his all at work, and then either be too exhausted to lift a finger at home, or not feel the home front is important enough to deserve his efforts. A Peac
eful Phlegmatic may labor diligently on the job, where he may even seem Powerful Choleric because he is so motivated, and then relax completely at the end of the day.

  If you seem to be in this blend, ask yourself whether you are a Powerful Choleric, playing low key at home, or a Peaceful Phlegmatic really motivated to work.

  If these questions don’t seem to bring satisfactory answers, perhaps you are wearing a mask of survival and don’t realize that some of your childhood pain is still affecting your adult life. The Powerful Choleric child who is brought up in a home where his parents argue and fight sees quickly that the best thing for him to do is cover up his desire for control and keep quiet. The Powerful Choleric child who is allowed no part of the family decision making as it regards his clothes, his room, his pet, his school subjects, his career, and/or his choice of mate learns that he either has to fight for some control and be considered the “bad child” or he has to give up and accept authority until he can get out of the house. The Powerful Choleric child who is abused says to himself, “I’ll keep quiet about it now; but when I get out of here, no one will ever control me again.” Any one of these situations, or a combination, causes the Powerful Choleric child to put on the Peaceful Phlegmatic mask. As an adult he swings in and out of control and submission and doesn’t understand why.

  The Peaceful Phlegmatic child does not seek control and is usually the best behaved. Why would this child put on the mask of power and take charge? Only if he looks around his family situation, sees it spinning out of control, and says to himself “Somebody’s got to do something to pull this place together.” In a one-parent home, the responsibility of the missing person is often put upon one of the children. If this child is Peaceful Phlegmatic and he suddenly finds himself “the man of the house” he puts on the Powerful Choleric mask, strains his low-key nature, and takes control. As an adult he takes charge when he has to and drops into rest whenever he can. He feels perpetually exhausted and doesn’t know why he feels torn up inside.

  If you come out relatively even in either of these opposites, think about your feelings as a child and see if these explanations make sense to you. For further study read Your Personality Tree, especially the chapter on masking, and Freeing Your Mind from Memories That Bind.

  If you come out “a little bit of everything” there are several possibilities. You took the test wrong; you didn’t understand the words (see definitions on page 195); you are Peaceful Phlegmatic and have trouble making decisions; you are perfect and about to ascend; or you were so controlled, directed, or oppressed as a child that you can’t get a true grasp on who you really are.

  Whatever way you come out on the Personality Profile, remember it is not the label but the understanding of your own personality strengths and weaknesses that is important.

  ... I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . . .

  Psalm 139:14

  CHAPTER 13

  We Don’t Like to Be Fenced In

  As I teach the concept of the temperaments in Personality Plus seminars, people sometimes ask me, “Are you trying to put us into little boxes?” As I have given this question much thought, I have come to the realization that we are already in our own little boxes. As we come to any experience in life, we bring our own structure along; we go only as far as we are comfortable. We don’t climb over our portable walls and peek through the cracks before opening the gate.

  Boxes from the Beginning

  When we are first born, we are instantly put in our own little box. We are walled into our tiny space and wheeled over to a window, where fond relatives can look down into our box and view our helpless forms. We’re wrapped into a tight bundle to be brought home and placed into our new box, a crib with bars around for our protection. For outings we are placed in a basket or strapped in an infant seat—even in the supermarket we’re put inside a shopping cart for security. As we move up to bigger boxes, we’re installed in a playpen, which keeps us in our place, and later, we’re allowed to roam our room with a gate across the doorway. As we get daring, we’re given the freedom of a fenced-in backyard. Each school grade has its room, and we settle in for a year, nestled in a protected space with a teacher.

  We grow up in boxes, and even as we get out into the big world, we bring our walls along. When I had my first college roommate, we were both put into one box, but within days we had put up an invisible wall between us. We couldn’t agree on bedspreads, wall posters, or housekeeping, so we put a strip of masking tape across the tile floor, and we each took our half of the room, turned our backs on the other, and created our own boxes where we felt secure.

  The concept of the temperaments doesn’t fence us in and put our feet in cement, but it does help us to see what kind of a box we’re in, and how to move out of it. As we realize how imprisoned we are by our basic weaknesses, we can work to open the gate and dare to stray over to the yard next door. The comment we get the most frequently about the personalities is “This has set me free to be who I really am!” As we understand ourselves and become true to our own natures, we automatically develop a new acceptance for those people who don’t see things our way and who wish to live in a style contrary to our perceptions.

  When We Marry

  When we think of how many years each of us spends in building his or her own box, and in decorating it with his or her own trophies, is it any wonder that when we marry someone with a different box, we don’t automatically fit together?

  We come into marriage from different spaces, and even on the honeymoon we wonder how soon the other will adjust to our structure. We may sleep in the same bed, but we keep fences around us.

  One girl I counseled told me this story. Sylvia was an elegant Perfect Melancholy. Everything about her was perfect: her hair, her makeup, her nails. She was an airline flight attendant and had met her charming husband, Bud, on a cross-country flight. He had literally swept her off her feet with his Popular Sanguine personality and persuasive powers; within months they were married. Since she already had furnished and decorated a condominium on the West Coast, she felt it only natural to keep her home. Bud agreed, since he lived in an apartment with three other men and didn’t have much furniture. On Sylvia’s first day back to work after the honeymoon, Bud explained he was going back to his apartment to pick up a few things. When Sylvia walked in that night she couldn’t believe what she saw. Bud had moved in “a few things.” There were ski posters nailed next to her Picasso prints; an ugly beanbag chair that looked like a dead elephant was slumped next to a Queen Anne sofa; and over the kitchen counter was a neon sign blinking the benefits of Budweiser Beer.

  Sylvia loved the macho man in Bud, but she didn’t know he would bring his box with him.

  Understanding Our Basic Temperament Doesn’t Fence Us In

  It opens up a gate in our protective wall; it causes us to accept ourselves and others realistically, and it shows us how to anticipate problems and handle them before they happen. Think of the heartache we could have been saved if we’d dealt with collected trivia before it mounted up into a crisis! Understanding our own and others’ temperaments gives us the ability to deal with situations in the future as we do now in retrospect. As we learn an individual’s temperament, we can anticipate his reactions to different situations and have the available tools on hand to repair the damage before it starts.

  Admit Your Weaknesses

  The first step in any type of self-improvement is to find your areas of weakness and admit you have them. The refusal to examine our faults keeps us from doing anything positive about them. It is humbling to admit we’ve been doing something wrong for years, but it’s the first step in growing up. Immature people blame their parents, their mates, their children, their friends, their circumstances, for why they have not become what they had hoped to be. A mature person examines himself, finds his faults, and gets to work on them.

  It is important to look at our childhood pain and rejection in order to find out why we behave the way we do, but this search is not
to place blame but to bring a measure of understanding and cause us to begin a healing process.

  In Alcoholics Anonymous, each person has to stand up, give his first name, and say, “I am an alcoholic.” Until a person can verbalize this admission, there can be no cure. We can’t get over something we don’t accept as a problem. If there were a Personality Anonymous, we would have to stand up and say:

  I’m a charming Popular Sanguine, but

  I’m a compulsive talker.

  I’m a sensitive Perfect Melancholy, but

  I get depressed easily.

  I’m a dynamic Powerful Choleric, but

  I’m bossy and impatient.

  I’m an easygoing Peaceful Phlegmatic, but

  I’m unenthusiastic.

  From the point of admission we are headed in the right direction.

  Let’s Make a Personal Plan

  Now that you understand the four basic temperaments and have scored yourself to find your custom blend of traits, you are ready to take steps to accentuate your positives and eliminate your negatives. Look over your Personality Profile.

  Assess Your Strengths

  Both Popular Sanguines and Powerful Cholerics see their strengths quickly and identify with them immediately, but often Perfect Melancholies and Peaceful Phlegmatics, because of their pessimistic natures, have to think awhile before accepting their positive qualities. Whichever your temperament, look over your Personality Profile realistically and decide which three strengths you feel are the most important in your relationships with others. List them here.