Development of Personality

In order to develop social skills and your personality, first you must learn what type of personality you have. According to some experts, the thinkers, organizers, givers, and adventurers make up the only four personality types. Some people will disagree, yet for the most part the experts have good points. 

Thinkers: 
Thinkers have individual strengths, which allow them to solve problems effectively while enjoying the process of developing systems and models. The abstract thinkers have analytic minds and often enjoy exploring and discovering new ideas. The thinkers often disagree with carelessness and wrongness. This person is naturally a universal person that looks at a broad spectrum to find the facts.

Often these people prefer to work with delegated projects in which they often favor using their analytic thinking cap to solve problems. These types of personalities are prone to gather information that leads them to find future potentials and ideas that lead them to success. One of the strongest traits of this type of individual is that they need plenty of room to rise above governed rules. 

The thinkers often like to be recognized and appreciated for their resourcefulness. Often this type of personality feels frustrated when asks to manage tasks that say the same thing. Thinkers do well when others give them their space and recognize their independency. If you are a thinker you have deep feelings and learn effectively in quiet areas. Discovering new ideas and ways of learning is often something that peeks your interest. 

Organizers:
The organizers often place more emphasis on family traditions and usually support the social arrangement. These people are highly responsible. They have an intense sense of self-respect, culture and history. The organizers place great emphasis on consistency and order as well. The non-conforming and the noncompliant often will irritate this type of person. This means that if you are an organizer, you likely need to work on judgmental traits and patterns, or broaden your mind to determine what is actually real as far as some human behaviors. This action will advance your social skills. 

Likely, if you are an organizer, you are obligated to complete what you start and loyal. The organizers prefer to plan in detail and follow pursuit with their plans to finish the task. Concrete and clear teams are often preferred by the organizer while managing tasks. The personality type often does well in simple, but settled atmosphere. Often these people are not spontaneous and are interrupted when sudden changes occur. These people like to receive compliments for their effectiveness, organizational skills, neat and tidiness, etc. 

Givers:
Givers place great emphasis on sincerity and genuineness. The givers prefer to be in secure relationships. They prefer organic, spiritually natured souls. These personality types strive to set an example and often develop potential friendship with others and self. The giver is peaceful natured and has a romantic side. They despise dishonesty and double standards. 

This type of personality does well in harmonized climates. They often interact with others in an honest, open manner. The personality type will avoid hostile waters and conflicting situations. If you are a giver, you would be wise to work on this trait, since us all experience conflicts in society. 

Adventurers:
The adventurers tend to have many skills. They pride themselves for their highly developed skills that allow them to multi-task. Adventurers prefer hands-on tasks when solving problems. They often enjoy many things, yet they lack patience. The adventurer is wise to work on his patient skills. This person stays in touch with reality and has an impulsive drive. They feel threatened by authority and inflexibility. 

This personality type works best by using approaches that allows them to put their hands to work. They also enjoy thrilling tasks. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, an adventurer will take off running when they must use their skills in audacious situations. They are natural-born negotiators. Moreover, these personality types prefer to manage work using their own methods and styles. 

The adventurer has a great sense or humor. They strive to keep going rather than allow boredom take control of their life. 

We all have facets of each of these four personality types within us, but we typically feel more comfortable within one type. So what is your dominant personality type? 

Focus on your strenghts

Put aside all your moaning, winging, and complaints.  Albert Einstein said "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Ever wondered why Einstein would ever say that? I mean, he had every right to say that he was the only "fish" to be able to climb a tree and everyone would agree with him!


You see, Einstein in his early years as a student wasn't that brilliant as we thought he would be. He struggled badly under the Prussian Education. He also experienced a speech difficulty, making him the least charismatic speaker. He also failed the all important Swiss Federal Polytechnic entrance exams...

Yet despite all that "flaws", Einstein knew and understood his strengths. And he pursue them relentlessly, honing his gifts to perfection. And the rest is history - he became the founding father of Quantum Physics

SIMPLY because he identified his strengths and play them to the fullest.

Your first step is the same.  You need to discover your strength, you need to redirect that wasted energy of complaining  into something more productive and positive. Think about the situation that is making you feel so and look at it as an opportunity. Einstein did, he understood that there is always a lesson to be learned and a solution to the problem. If you think about the positives you have in your life rather than protesting and thinking negatively, you will focus on the positives that may come out of any situation.  The more positive your thoughts are, the more positive your life will be.

So focus on the positive things in life and start by recognizing your strengths.

Step One: Wake Up

Buddha's essential teaching? - it all comes down to just being fully, totally present, right here, right now. So in the now the question that can be asked is

Who's reading this story?   

Dumb question?  Let's see.

Rinzai's is a Zen master (pdf link) and one of his ideas is that  questions must stop, answers must stop, thinking must stop.

This and questions like it were the bread and butter of Rinzai's teachings.

One of the classic spiritual questions you can ask repeatedly in meditation is:

Who am I?

The Greeks urged - Know thy self.

The Bible has many verses on this topic. One verse is from Proverbs 26:12

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

The Qur'an also talks about if a man knows himself he knows his Lord

Rinzai invites you to go behind your current ego identity and see the  immutable being behind your present role, behind your name, behind your gender and age, behind your nationality or political party, behind your racial identity.
He asks the question countless ways.  I invite you to invent them to fit your own life.  Use them all the time as a way to wake up the deeper reality that is here now all the time.

·         Who is reading this blog?

·         Who is sitting in your chair?

·         Who is driving this car

·         Who is eating dinner?

·         Who is washing her face?

·         Who is going to the bathroom?

·         Who is watching TV?

·         - Who is sitting on this meditation cushion?

·          

Have fun with these.  They will faithfully puncture the delusions of  the moment and remind you of the depths.

Lions and tigers and bears

Challenges and issues and problems.

Lions and tigers and bears.

Showing up when you've somehow forgotten how unbelievably, fantastically powerful you really are.

Because, of course, you will prevail, and then look behind the curtain to see the reality of the situation, not the fantasy presented to you.

Oh my!

A word on miracles...

Every day we see and experience the miracles of life, but some of us lose our perspective and miss out because we are looking for the big miracle that will change their life. 

My advice is don't let those miracles  that have not yet transpired, blind you to those everyday miracles that you have and continue to experience. 

Miracles occur every day. Miracles such as the birth of a baby, the sunset, the wind blowing clouds away, the feeling of joy while walking in a garden, the laughter of a child, the beauty of the rain against the window, a rainbow....  (You get my meaning)

Hippies

A lot of baby boomers would like to forget that one of the watershed movements that defined the personality of this generation was the time frame dominated by, for lack of a better word, hippies.  That term that seems somewhat quaint and antiquated now had a tremendous power in the mid to late sixties when it carried with it the impact of tremendous social change as well as a massive shift in public morality and consciousness.  So while this is often a time of a bit of embarrassment for the baby boomer generation, it is also a formative part of their history and it deserves respect for that reason.

To be fair, not all baby boomers were hippies.  I was not one, nor were many of my friends. As is often the case, the hippie movement was something that got tremendous media coverage but it represented only a small portion of the baby boomer population at the time.  By percentage, very few of that age group actually joined the “tune in, drop out, turn on” society of the hippies.  But because hippies were a colorful, eccentric, flamboyant and sinful crowd, they titillated the public interest any time there was a public spectacle brought on by hippie gathering.

But despite being few in number, the hippie culture did send waves of change into the society at the time.  Part of that was because there was a general discontent with the Vietnam War.  So when the hippie movement became linked with the antiwar movement, they blended to where there was virtually no distinction.  Add to that big changes in youth culture brought on by the explosion of new musical styles and changes in lifestyle and worldview that the new cultural leaders in the rock music world promoted and you have a formula for the hippie movement becoming a watershed shift of social values in a generation.

Rather than just look back on the hippies with mild amusement, it may be best to review this important part of our past and notice the good this part of our history left for the boomer generation to carry forward.  While on the surface we associate hippies with drug use and free love (e.g. sex), the actual movement itself was grounded in tremendous sense of value, morality and social responsibility. 

The youth movement at the time held a mirror up to society and demanded we look. Moreover, for the first time ever, it held public figures accountable for actions that were taken that harmed the public good.  This was revolutionary to be sure and it has made the public more demanding and scrutinizing of the government ever since.  And that is a good thing.

There was a strong thread of ethics and philosophy in the hippie social system that, while different from what America and the world was used to, was grounded in a fierce devotion to right and wrong in the hippie or counterculture movements.  Along with a strong commitment to the values of that society, hippies and associated societies were fearless and uncompromising in their willingness to put themselves on the line to see their values translate into public policy.  This was an element of the hippie subculture that made it so explosive.  Because the youth movement was so willing to demonstrate and make grand and flamboyant public statements to emphasize their political, ethical or moral outrage, things changed in a way that the country had never seen before. 

The counter culture of the sixties literally put the power for change back into the hands of the people.  And that is in step with what the founding fathers wanted for America and something we can be thankful to the hippie movement for giving back to our society.