a noble pursuit
The BuzzFeed-style quiz is taking over the internet, serving up answers to questions no one is asking. What Star Wars character are you? What restaurant trend describes your personality? Which Hogwarts house suits you best? What city should you actually live in? Which Ryan Gosling character is your soul mate? What’s your superpower? Your work style?
These addictive quizzes make it easy to put ourselves in (very weird) boxes. And if my Facebook feed is any indication, people can’t resist taking these quizzes and sharing their results—no matter how inane the topic or how small the insight offered. Underpinning these quizzes is the core assumption that we won’t have the same answers. We are all different—in matters both serious and silly—and discovering those differences is strangely enjoyable. Cynics argue that we’re drawn to these simple check-the-box quizzes because we’re ill-equipped to deal with the complexity of real life, but I believe this trend points to something more substantial.
We’re not just looking for a way to kill five minutes online. Our methods may be questionable, but our motives are pure: we truly want to know more about ourselves and the people we interact with every day. We suspect our lives would be better if we actually understood ourselves and the people we love. We want to know why we do what we do, think what we think, act how we act—and why they do too.
But what we’re finding is this: actually knowing ourselves isn’t as easy as taking a few check-the-box quizzes on the internet. We’re surprised to discover that it’s difficult to perceive ourselves for who we really are. That information would be infinitely more useful, but it’s also harder to come by. Since we don’t know where to start to find the good stuff—the genuinely helpful information about ourselves and the people we love—we settle for discovering which defunct ’90s soda we are or which Jane Austen leading man we’re meant to marry. But if we instead knew the right questions to ask ourselves—the ones that would give us true insight into our inner selves—and approached those questions with the same playful spirit (and perhaps just a smidge more seriousness and self-reflection), we could emerge with life-changing information. We could learn to read people better—ourselves and others.
What Makes You You
This struggle to define ourselves isn’t some narcissistic fad driven by social media. Our collective fascination with understanding ourselves—and, specifically, understanding our personalities—goes back much further than that, to way before the days of the internet. We’ve known for a long time that we don’t begin our lives as identical blank slates. For thousands of years, writers, philosophers, and even biblical heroes have teased out the differences in human nature. We can find personality references in the writings of Socrates and Shakespeare, as well as in the writings of the desert fathers and America’s founding fathers. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them” (1 Corinthians 12:4), I imagine he was speaking not only of spiritual gifts but also of personality traits. (Paul himself was certainly known for his fiery personality and was under no illusions few were quite like him.)
When we talk about someone’s personality, we’re referring to those characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make that person unique. We’re all inclined to think, feel, and act in particular ways. Our personalities capture what we’re likely to find relaxing or exciting or pleasurable or tough. This core set of qualities is a huge part of what makes you you.
Current research indicates that personality traits are hardwired; they’re largely hereditary and remain relatively constant throughout our lives.1 If we’re outgoing or reserved, energetic or subdued, we deserve neither credit nor blame for those traits. We just came that way, out of the box, and we can’t trade ourselves in for a different model.
While personality is a key part of who you are, it’s just one of many things that make you you. Many important traits don’t fall under the personality umbrella. Kindness, generosity, honesty, patience—these are all examples of character traits that interact with but are distinct from personality. It’s easy to conflate character with personality; it’s a common mistake. We’ve all met someone charming but dastardly, if not in the neighborhood then in a favorite novel.
And we all act “out of character” sometimes. Our behaviors fluctuate with our moods and our circumstances. People behave differently when they can see themselves in a mirror, for instance. But our behavior fluctuates in predictable ways. Everyone does certain things at certain times (such as wanting to be alone), but some people want to be alone a heck of a lot more than others.
Compared to our personality traits, character traits are more malleable. Our personalities can only be managed (or tamed, some might say). Our characters can be shaped, although this isn’t easy and happens slowly, with effort. Much of what we call character arises out of our core beliefs, and it’s surprisingly difficult to change our beliefs.
In addition to our character traits, we all have unique skills, abilities, and passions. We have personal experiences, histories, and hang-ups that shape us. These also interact with our personalities, and the way they impact us may even depend on our personalities, but they are not the same thing as our personalities.
We are complex and fascinating beings. These various aspects of ourselves—our personalities, our characters, our skills, the essence that truly makes us who we are—combine in an infinite variety of ways to make each of us who we are.
Like Holding a Good Map
Changing our core personality traits is difficult, if not impossible. To a large extent, personality is something we must learn to live with—whether that means accepting our own personalities or that of a spouse, parent, child, boss, friend, or neighbor. A big part of learning about personality is learning to make peace with who we are. But if we use personality insights well, we wouldn’t dream of stopping there.
The more I’ve learned about personality, the more I’ve discovered how powerful this knowledge can be. The various personality frameworks presented in this book are incredible tools for understanding why we do the things we do, why some things come easy while others are difficult, why particular things about our dearest friends drive us crazy, or why we absolutely cannot stand to watch network news or listen to rap music or make small talk without sounding like a blubbering idiot. And personality insights allow us to understand why other people do the things they do, even when (especially when) their thoughts, feelings, and actions in a given situation are profoundly different from our own.
Prior to us understanding more about personality, their behavior may have baffled us. We can’t fathom why a loved one hides when the doorbell rings or a coworker must understand the origin of every single Hamilton lyric or a friend genuinely enjoys chatting with the customer service representative on the other end of the phone line. They’re not crazy; they’re just not us. They are hardwired differently than we are, and personality insights explain why and how.
I’ve come to think understanding personality is like holding a good map. That map can’t take you anywhere. It doesn’t change your location; you’re still right where you were before. But the map’s purpose isn’t to move you; it’s to show you the lay of the land. It’s the tool that makes it possible for you to get where you want to go.
Practical and Actionable
In recent years, I’ve learned to accept and adapt my behavior for my personality type—and for the types of those around me—in ways that never would have occurred to me ten, or even two, years ago. I’ve leaned heavily on personality insights to help me
Additionally, I’ve gained meaningful insights into other people from studying personality. These takeaways have changed the way I interact with them and have helped me figure out
These are just a few of the concrete, practical changes I’ve made in my life thanks to understanding the personality frameworks I highlight in this book. This knowledge didn’t require a great deal of study or a huge time investment. To understand the frameworks and what they told me about my personality, as well as the personalities of the people I interact with every day, I needed to ask the right questions of myself and pay attention to some specific moments in life.
The Insight that Changes Everything
Have you ever seen the movie The Sixth Sense? Okay, I’ve actually seen only a few clips, not the whole movie, because I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP) and M. Night Shyamalan freaks me out. (We’ll talk about HSPs in chapter 3.) But the movie has so permeated popular culture that even people who haven’t seen it know about the twist ending.
This supernatural thriller is about the relationship between a little boy named Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment) and Dr. Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis), the psychiatrist enlisted to help him. Cole has a secret ability to communicate with dead people. As Dr. Crowe teaches Cole to release the ghosts that scare him by offering them help, he learns that maybe he wasn’t summoned to help Cole. Perhaps it’s the other way around.
In a surprise ending, we discover that Crowe has been dead from the beginning. It explains why his wife won’t talk to him, why she doesn’t even acknowledge his existence. For two hours, viewers are led to believe that she is ignoring him because their marriage is awful, but it turns out she can’t even see him. With the big reveal, our minds reel as we mentally flip back through the movie to incorporate this key piece of information into our understanding, which casts the film’s events in a whole new light. Once we know Crowe is dead, the narrative shifts and everything makes perfect sense. We think, Oh, of course, even though while we were watching the movie the first time, we never perceived anything was amiss.
Try this for a more relatable example. Have you ever had a really bad day? A day when nothing seemed to be going your way and you were tired and moody and agitated and nobody liked you and you didn’t like them either and you couldn’t put your finger on what was going so terribly wrong? Then you ate a sandwich (or, better yet, took a nap) and felt like a brand-new person, and you realized that nothing was horribly amiss, you were just hangry. Or maybe slangry. (You can figure out what that means, right?)2
That little insight completely reframed the way you felt about the previous few hours.
If you’re a parent, you’re acquainted with the phenomenon when your two-year-old is having a really terrible afternoon and won’t eat their snack and won’t keep their clothes on and won’t say anything but no and screams for no reason and you fear that you’re a terrible parent who has ruined everything, until your child finally wears themselves out and collapses on the sofa, snoring, three hours before bedtime, and you realize, My child isn’t possessed; they were just exhausted.
Personality insights can be like this. One key piece of information shifts our whole paradigm—and the world suddenly makes a lot more sense.
The frameworks in this book can highlight what upsets you (and why) and what makes you hum. They can help you understand what’s causing friction in your relationships, and what to do about it. They can open your eyes to what’s really going on in situations that currently make you batty.
Unfortunately, finding this information about our own personalities isn’t a straightforward process. It’s not exactly complicated; it’s just that it’s difficult to look directly at our own natures. That’s why I rely on the tool of personality frameworks. These frameworks give us the eyes we need to see ourselves in a new way.
Seeing the World through Someone Else’s Eyes
I’m a big reader. In fact, I have a blog called Modern Mrs. Darcy (modernmrsdarcy.com), where I share what I’m reading, recommend books to others, or—my favorite—connect what I read in a book to the real, off-the-page life I’m living.
I read a wide variety of books, across many genres, but what I really love is to crack open a good novel and step into another world for three hundred pages. When I read a great story, I get to experience the world through someone else’s eyes for a little while. I’ll never be a boy wizard, but J. K. Rowling helps me imagine what it might be like to be a kid shouldering a fearsome responsibility (while wielding my wand and chugging butter beer). I live in the twenty-first century, but Jane Austen helps me feel the pleasures and perils of life in the English countryside two hundred years ago. I had a wonderful childhood, and my parents are still alive and well, living just a few miles down the road, but L. M. Montgomery invites me to experience the sting of being told I’m unwanted, the loneliness of having no one to love or care for me.
I love the personality frameworks in this book because they let me do the same thing.
We all live in the first person. I experience the world through my eyes; we all do. But each of these personality frameworks, when used thoughtfully, gives me eyes to see the world from someone else’s point of view for a little while. It’s a simple way to try out a new perspective, a different worldview. And once we’ve caught a glimpse of the world through someone else’s eyes, we won’t soon forget that point of view. It changes us, and it changes the way we read others.
About This Book
I’ve shared some of my personality-related stories on my blog over the years, and as I’ve interacted with readers, I’ve gotten to hear just how helpful learning about personality has been for many of them. But a big obstacle for many people who would like to learn more about these frameworks is the sheer amount of information out there. It’s overwhelming. People don’t know where to begin or which framework will help them most or where to find the best resources or why to even bother.
My goal in this book is threefold. In these pages, I hope to
Keep in mind that I’m not a scholar. I’m a fellow traveler, someone who has benefited from the same information and has learned to pay attention to the right moments, ask the right questions of myself, and tweak accordingly. I’ll hold your hand and show you how I’ve been able to put what I’ve learned to use in my own life in an effort to inspire and guide you to do the same.
You don’t have to read this book straight through from front to back. In fact, I’d suggest you don’t. After reading about my aha! moment in chapter 1, feel free to jump to the framework that interests you most. I haven’t shared every existing personality framework in this book but instead have chosen the ones that have helped me most. Now, you get to choose the ones that look helpful to you. Read a few chapters, take an assessment or two, talk it all over with a friend, and come back to the book when you’re ready. Some frameworks are easier to grasp than others. Some make intuitive sense after your first read, while others may require a reread for them to really sink in. (I’m looking at you, chapter 7.) This book will wait for you.
You don’t have to be an expert about personality to enjoy the benefits of this book, but you do need to cultivate an expertise about yourself. I promise, it’s nobler than it sounds. I’ll be right here, asking the questions right along with you.