Personality, Temperament, and Burnout
“The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.”
— JOHN RUSKIN
A company has downsized, and now all the work has to be done by 60 percent of the staff. Some employees thrive, or at least survive; while others become depressed, withdrawn, hostile, or physically ill. What’s the difference between the folks who burn out and the hardier ones who rise to the challenge?
In this chapter, I’ll provide you with an overview of some different ways to examine your personality, needs, and temperament; as well as how those factors affect your work situations. My hope is that by understanding yourself better, you’ll more often gravitate toward situations that fit your style and avoid ones that go against your grain.
Being a square peg in a round hole doesn’t bode well for feeling vital, competent, successful, and at peace with the world. A person who is conflict averse, for example, is much more likely to burn out as a manager than someone who is willing to confront difficult people and situations. Likewise, an individual with an artistic temperament is much more likely to feel alive being a landscape architect than a bookkeeper.
The following pages are packed with fascinating information, so consume them slowly and pay attention to what you learn about yourself. Remember that the journey from the Burnout Inferno through the Purgatorio and ultimately to heaven on Earth is one of self-knowledge and inner reflection. When you know how you respond to challenges and have a clear understanding of your unique needs profile, inborn temperament, and personality, you’ll bring your best to whatever you do.
The Stress-Hardy Personality
In 1979, psychologist Suzanne Kobasa defined stress hardiness based on her study in a corporate setting among Illinois Bell Telephone executives. In a situation of divestiture, when no one knew who would keep their job, who would be transferred, who would be fired, or what the system would look and function like on a daily basis, she discovered an essential difference between the executives who stayed functional and well versus those who stressed out and lost their health.
Kobasa hypothesized that people who were more self-reflective and disciplined in meeting life’s challenges might fare better in stressful circumstances. This kind of person understands that change is a natural part of life, that the status quo can’t be preserved, and that every life has its inevitable share of challenges and difficulties. They have matured beyond the childhood belief that life is always fair. Thus, it’s pointless to blame others and wish that things were different when fairness is nowhere on the horizon and never will be. Authentic control resides in one’s own capacity for staying aware of the situation and making the most adaptive choices available with the most auspicious timing. This capacity can also be called mindfulness.
The mature individual that Kobasa describes as stress hardy has three essential characteristics. They all begin with the letter C, which makes them easy to recall:
1. Control is the inclination to believe and act as if you can influence the events of your life. That kind of personal power creates resilience, since even if things aren’t going your way, you still believe that you can make things better. The opposite inclination, of course, is helplessness.
People high in the element of control have the capacity to dissect situations and determine why things aren’t going well without blaming others or the system. They take responsibility for their own part in whatever is happening without neurotic self-criticism. A penchant for nonjudgmental self-reflection that optimizes adaptive choice is a good working definition of mindfulness and empowerment. This capacity—which is damaged in situations that result in learned helplessness—needs to be developed in people prone to burnout
2. Challenge is based on the understanding that change is the only constant in life. It can, will, and is already and always happening. If you’re hanging on to the way things used to be (or are “supposed” to be), you’ll eventually have to let go no matter how painful it is. The essential question regarding change is: Is it a challenge to evolve or a threat to the status quo?
Individuals who possess this trait are realists who anticipate stressful events and are therefore more prepared for their occurrence. They’re also more likely to instigate change since they’re attuned to their environment and know what resources are available (people, technologies, finances, systems, opportunities, and so forth) to create a more functional situation. People high in challenge are natural change navigators. They ride the current of possibility. People prone to burnout, on the other hand, are more likely to cope through denial and fail to anticipate stressful events
3. Commitment is based on an inner sense of self-respect that shows up as the willingness to participate meaningfully in every aspect of life, adding value to work, personal relationships, and the community at large. If you’re committed to what you do, you stay engaged rather than checking out and becoming alienated, isolated, apathetic, or cynical. This passionate involvement with life supports the deep meaning and solid values at the core of resilience.
In the previous chapter, I mentioned Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in the discussion on learned helplessness and its effects on mental and physical health. Frankl’s ability to survive his imprisonment in various concentration camps also provides a perfect example of a committed individual who stayed engaged with life even in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Inspired by the words of philosopher Fried-rich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger,” Frankl continually looked for deeper meaning in the midst of the Holocaust. He was keenly aware of the mind-body connection, observing that those who became helpless and gave up hope died first.
In keeping with his personality, Frankl set his sights on surviving the horrific conditions so that he could teach others how to find meaning even in suffering. Those of us prone to burnout are more likely to withdraw during challenging situations than stay engaged, and to be deficient in the vital skill of creating meaning
Thirty years of research on stress hardiness has confirmed its efficacy in preventing stress, burnout, and illness in groups as diverse as nurses and executives, and radiology technicians and students. Furthermore, the stress-hardy personality is more than a gift of nature or nurture It can be learned at any stage of life
Kobasa’s colleague, psychologist Salvatore Maddi, is a professor at the University of California at Irvine and the founder of the Hardiness Institute, where he created courses to develop an individual’s hardiness.1
Examining Your Needs and Motivation
If we can learn to be helpless or hardy and make meaning of our experiences, what other types of learning might impact whether or not we’re prone to burnout? The work of Dr. David McClelland, the late psychologist and onetime chairman of the Harvard University Department of Social Relations, is central to this question.
McClelland was my mentor for a Medical Foundation Fellowship that I was awarded in 1981 in what was then the nascent field of psychoneuroimmunology. He was in his 60s when I first met him—a strikingly tall and affable man with a white goatee and mustache reminiscent of Colonel Sanders. Always dressed in a jacket and signature bow tie, he had a ready smile and an extremely bright, open, inquiring mind. I think he loved crunching data more than any other human being I’ve ever known. Learning and research were his passion, which made students like me extremely fortunate to work with him.
Co-founder of McBer (an organizational consulting group)—which is now the McClelland Center within the international consulting firm known as the Hay Group—Dr. McClelland was particularly interested in assessing competency in the workplace. It was a pleasure for him to witness a person with the appropriate abilities performing a job that utilized his or her intrinsic strengths—a win-win situation for all concerned. On the other hand, it was distressing when there was a poor job fit, which resulted not only in an individual’s poor work performance, but also in psychological and physiological responses that we would now recognize as burnout.
Father of the field of job-competency assessment and training, McClelland discovered that hiring people based on their academic strengths simply didn’t work. Intelligence turns out to matter far less than specific competency in doing a good job. For example, even though I have a high IQ and did well in academic course work, I’m a complete bust at sales. When I’m giving a workshop or lecture, I seem constitutionally unable to mention relevant resources: that I have a Website where future events and training programs are listed, in addition to helpful books and CDs. Were that different, I would have sold enough products by now to be independently wealthy. More sales-savvy colleagues such as Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame have an innate competency in this regard.
McClelland’s approach to figuring out what is required to do a job well is pretty simple. If you want to know what makes a good shoe salesperson, he explained on our first day together, study the best and worst ones and compare what they do. Maybe the best salesperson is extroverted and friendly, for instance, with a natural tendency to schmooze; while the washout is reserved and quiet. Or perhaps the really great salespeople are the ones who are motivated to excel at whatever they do and pursue their goals relentlessly, while the ineffective salespeople tend to be dreamers.
McClelland believed that our basic motivations stem from needs that are learned because they are rewarded by our family, culture, or social setting. For example, as a child I was rewarded for academic achievement by my family and the larger Jewish immigrant culture of the 1950s. Becoming a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or accountant translated into success in the New World. As a young assistant professor at Tufts Medical School, I was lauded for teaching, attaining funding for research grants, and mentoring medical and dental students. Over time I got better at inspiring my audiences, mastering skills that I’d need later for public speaking. In order to feel at home in my own skin, I still need to achieve, inspire, and care for people. These needs are what motivate the way I live and work.
McClelland relied on a psychological instrument called the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) to determine what a person’s “need structure” was like. What types of needs are strongest in comparison to others (this is called a needs profile), and what kinds of careers are a good fit with that profile? Successful leaders, for example, have a high need for socialized power (they are inspiring visionaries) compared to their needs for affiliation (close personal relationships).
The TAT consists of a set of pictures (like a couple on a park bench or a scientist in a laboratory) that you write a story about. McClelland was particularly impressed by the TAT because it’s free from the kind of bias that can skew the results of other psychological tests— for example, wanting to please (or mislead) the experimenter, hoping to be socially acceptable, or conforming to your own beliefs about yourself. You can’t fool the TAT because you have no idea what the “right” answer is. McClelland compared it to taking a blood sample where different thought types are counted rather than different cell types. These thought types fall into three main categories that translate into the motivations that power behavior:
1. The Need for Achievement (nAch). If you have a high nAch, you’re motivated to set challenging goals and will work hard to achieve them. I wanted to obtain a doctorate in biomedical sciences from Harvard, for example, and it took considerable focus and will to pull that off. People with a high nAch are problem solvers who like to excel and take moderate risks because they have the best chance of succeeding. Minimal-risk enterprises aren’t very interesting because the payoff is too low; and high-risk goals aren’t appealing either, since even if the desired outcome is achieved, the result can feel more like luck than skill.
Individuals high in nAch also require feedback on their performance in order to feel successful. So if your boss (or spouse or lover) doesn’t comment on what an outstanding job you’ve done, you’re likely to feel stress, disappointment, or resentment, which contributes to burnout. You do your best work alone or with other high achievers. Can you appreciate how working or living with people who are less interested in achievement than you are might increase your potential for burnout?
2. The Need for Affiliation (nAff). If you’re high in the need for affiliation, you might have written a relationship story when presented with the TAT picture of the couple on the park bench. You’re motivated to seek out and build loving relationships because fitting in well with other people makes you happy. Those of us high in the need for affiliation are likely to excel in customer-service positions or other venues where direct contact with people is important and valued. My own high nAff explains why I’m so fascinated and involved with giving workshops, running training programs, and building community through social networking.
But high nAff has some spectacular pitfalls, too. If you’re overly concerned with maintaining good relations with everyone, you’re more likely to conform rather than to question, innovate, or create waves at work or at home. That, of course, can and will come back to haunt you—especially if you know that a certain action is required, but you don’t voice it for fear of upsetting or angering people. For a person high in nAff, the need to ensure good relations takes precedence over achievement needs.
The tendency is to make choices that increase popularity rather than doing what’s necessary to make a business more productive. That trait has always been true of me: for instance, I schedule clients far apart in case they might need more time than I have allotted; I have difficulty being clear with people who are troublesome in my programs; and, as you’ve already read, I once had to close a business because two people I loved and respected (who were also principals in the enterprise) didn’t get along. When people asked, “How’s the business going?” my knee-jerk response was, “It’s killing me.” And it really was. There was no way to maintain a good relationship among the three of us. The chronic stress of the triangulation fried me to a crisp, and I had to make the difficult choice to close the business.
What I ultimately learned from that burnout episode is that running a business involving other partners is a poor fit for my personality and needs profile.
3. The Need for Power (nPow). Power motivation cuts two ways. Some people have an exaggerated need for personal power over others. These individuals tend to be rude, consume a lot of alcohol, engage in sexual harassment, and collect symbols of power (such as expensive cars, boats, homes, offices, and dependent trophy wives if they are men). Dependent is the operative word, since people high in nPow dislike any encroachment upon their authority.
When I first met Dr. McClelland, he was fascinated with what he called the “inhibited power motive syndrome” and its effect on health. When people high in the need for personal power rein themselves in to appear more socially acceptable, their bodies respond negatively to the restraint. Their sympathetic nervous system becomes activated (a stress response), and high blood pressure and heart disease can result.
Situations that require restraint are most likely to lead to burnout for this personality type. They aren’t team players; however, as leaders, they are potentially damaging to organizations because they demand personal loyalty rather than creating allegiance to the corporate vision.
The socialized need for power, on the other hand, is the competency most often associated with effective leadership. Rather than being motivated by personal prestige and gain, social power is not an end in itself. It is a means to ensure a socially desirable result that benefits others. People high in social power seek advice from others and are team players who recognize that effective human beings need to have a sense of empowerment and influence over their own jobs, as well as input into the larger system. The socialized-power motive is inspirational and influential, enlisting others in the mission and vision of the organization and empowering them to offer their best.
Dr. McClelland believed that these three major needs are learned through experience and the process of coping with one’s environment. Since behavior that gets rewarded increases, needs and motivations develop over time. Managers who are rewarded for achieving company goals, for instance, can learn to take the kind of moderate risks that people who are high in nAch prefer (and which are more likely to pan out). Similarly, a high need for affiliation or social power can be increased when an individual is rewarded for the appropriate behaviors. For this reason, training programs have been designed to create needs profiles that correlate best with entrepreneurial, managerial, technical, or CEO success.
It turns out, however, that a person’s intrinsic motives can’t be decreased; they can only be increased over time For me, this means that I’ll always have a high need for affiliation, but I can learn how that impacts my work and peace of mind. I know that I have to be particularly mindful of the tendency to put the needs of others above the needs of my organization. Furthermore, someone else negotiates my speaking fees (or I’d probably starve). When a potential client says to my assistant Luzie, “Gee, Joan’s fee is a bit high,” Luzie has no problem at all explaining why I’m worth every cent.
“So why don’t you just go to therapy or take a course in negotiation?” a pragmatic friend once suggested. “You’re just too conflict averse, so you let people take advantage of you.” That’s true. I am conflict averse, and I’ve tried almost every form of therapy known to correct this problem—all to no avail. The zebra cannot change her stripes because they are part and parcel of who she is. Accepting this and honoring my strengths, as well as the limitations inherent in them, has definitely decreased my burnout potential. I’m simply not CEO or managerial material. I am, however, exquisitely attuned to people’s inner lives, which makes me particularly competent to write books, such as the one you’re reading.
With this short introduction to the theory of needs, even without being tested for your motive profile, you can probably get a sense of whether or not a particular need predisposes you to burnout as it does for me. For more information, go to www.haygroup.com. If you type “McClelland Center” into the search window, you can watch videos of David McClelland, as well as Dr. Daniel Goleman, one of his most famous students, who popularized the understanding of Emotional Intelligence (which addresses the ways in which you handle yourself and your relationships).
Inborn Temperament
If you enter www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp into your Internet browser, you will land on a page called HumanMetrics, where you can take a Jung Typology Test designed by psychologist David Keirsey, the best-selling co-author of Please Understand Me and an expert on the assessment of temperament. The test consists of 72 brief questions, which takes approximately ten minutes to complete. When you press the SCORE IT! button, your Myers-Briggs typology, which indicates how you perceive the world and make decisions, will come up in just a few seconds.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was adapted from the theories of psychiatrist Carl Jung as outlined in his book Psychological Types, published in the early 1920s. Years later, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, created the inventory hoping that it would help women entering the workforce during World War II find the positions best suited to their temperaments.
Today, the Myers-Briggs inventory is probably the most widely used and well-respected personality test available worldwide. It is based on four dichotomous traits that Jung believed were stable over time, which is the definition of temperament. It’s an inborn, immutable way of being in relation to the world around you. Research on twins suggests that these temperamental traits are, to a significant extent, genetically determined. I’ll define them as simply as possible:
1. Extroversion versus Introversion (E-I). Extroverts get their juice from interacting with the outside world; introverts, on the other hand, prefer living in their own inner world. Too much external stimulation is exhausting for introverts, but extroverts are happiest when connecting with others.
2. Intuition versus Sensation (N-S). Intuitives (N) tend to see the big picture and get their information in a more right-brained way that recognizes patterns and intuits the flow of events. In past years, they might have been thought of as flaky, but today, intuition is a trait sought out by many corporations since “gut knowing” is central to success. Sensing persons, in contrast, use their five senses to appraise the world and gather information from what they see, hear, feel, touch, and taste. They are more concrete, black-and-white thinkers who perceive events and people as individual data points rather than interconnected energies.
3. Thinking versus Feeling (T-F). Thinking people make decisions based on data and observable facts. It’s not very romantic, but it works quite well for engineers and scientists. There is definitely a gender sorting that takes place in this dimension. More men are thinking types, while more women are feeling types who make decisions based on those feelings.
4. Perception versus Judgment (P-J). This dichotomy wasn’t originally posited by Jung, but was added later by Meyers and Briggs. Perceiving people tend to be spontaneous and go with the flow. They’re a lot of fun, but they don’t always get things done in an orderly manner. On the other hand, judging people are more likely to be neat, timely, organized, responsible, practical, and good at meeting deadlines.
Those eight possible temperaments combine to form 16 personality profiles: ISTJ, ISFJ, INFJ, INTJ, ISTP, ISFP, INFP, INTP, ESTP, ESFP, ENFP, ENTP, ESTJ, ESFJ, ENFJ, and ENTJ. In my experience, these profiles are dead-on descriptors of how a person perceives reality and navigates the world. I, for example, am an ENFJ—the archetypal Teacher, which is a subset of the idealist temperament (we’ll discuss those subsets next).
David Keirsey distills these 16 personality types into four basic temperament groupings—idealists, rationals, artisans, and guardians—that vary in patterns of communication, actions, values, talents, and attitudes. More than 40 million people have used his temperament assessment, which is employed by the U.S. Army, IBM, Yale University, the Fuller Theological Seminary, Pfizer, Shell, Motorola, Charles Schwab, and many other Fortune 500 companies. Here are brief descriptions of the four temperament groupings:2
1. Idealists (NFs), which make up 15 to 20 percent of the population, share the following core characteristics:
Idealists are enthusiastic, they trust their intuition, yearn for romance, seek their true self, prize meaningful relationships, and dream of attaining wisdom.
Idealists pride themselves on being loving, kind-hearted, and authentic.
Idealists tend to be giving, trusting, spiritual, and they are focused on personal journeys and human potentials.
Idealists make intense mates, nurturing parents, and inspirational leaders.3
These descriptions fit me to a T. Keirsey delineates four categories of idealists: the Teacher, Champion, Healer, and Counselor. As I mentioned, I’m a Teacher. This type excels in bringing forth the potential of their students, is warm and outgoing, and is, according to Keirsey—this specificity amazed me—“remarkably good with language, especially when communicating in speech, face to face.” Teachers, Keirsey concludes, can become charismatic public speakers, which is probably my greatest talent and competency.
Being nailed with surgical precision is a fascinating experience. As you read about the other three temperament groups, which one do you resonate with? (Be sure to go to Keirsey’s Website [www.keirsey.com] and take the test. When you know your type, read about how it affects everything from your love life to your career.)
2. Artisans (SPs), 30 to 35 percent of the population, are just what you might imagine. They enjoy working with their hands and creating things you can see and touch. Artisans are upbeat, fun loving, spontaneous, and often charming. Impulsive, unconventional, and freewheeling, they are extroverted and enthusiastic. They live for the joys of the day. Artisans fall into four categories: Crafter, Performer, Promoter, and Composer. A career behind a desk crunching numbers would most likely create burnout in artisans—that is, if they stayed at such a job too long.
3. Guardians (SJs), 40 to 45 percent of the population, are the pillars of society. They’re kind, loyal, dependable, practical, and hardworking. Highly responsible, concerned citizens, they abide by the rules, uphold traditions, support authority, and build community. They fall into four archetypal categories: Protector, Supervisor, Provider, and Inspector.
4. Rationals (NTs), 5 to 10 percent of the population, are autonomous, scientifically minded, pragmatic skeptics oriented toward problem solving. According to Keirsey, they pride themselves on being “ingenious, independent, and strong willed.” Keirsey further characterizes Rationals as even-tempered people who “trust logic, yearn for achievement, seek knowledge, prize technology, and dream of understanding how the world works.” Once they put their mind to a problem, they’ll work tirelessly to achieve a solution. Rationals are made up of four categories: Architect, Field Marshal, Inventor, and Mastermind.
The “Big Five” Personality Factors
Just as Jung, Myers, and Briggs defined temperament in terms of dichotomous traits, so did several personality theorists who came after them. American psychologist Gordon Allport combed the dictionary for adjectives used to describe personality and then factored them into clusters that were subsequently whittled down to extroversion versus introversion, emotional stability versus neuroticism, openness versus closed-mindedness, agreeableness versus hostility, and conscientiousness versus unreliability. These are known as the “Big Five” personality factors, and several of them have been linked either positively or negatively to burnout.
When I posted an inquiry on Facebook asking why people burn out, one woman cited enthusiasm as a prime contender. Burnout is a particular affliction of the enthusiastic, she reasoned. If there’s no fire to begin with, then there’s nothing to burn out.
Her hypothesis sounds reasonable, but research proves otherwise. Enthusiasm is negatively related to emotional exhaustion, a statistic that makes sense since extroverts are constitutionally self-confident, active, optimistic, and prone to seeking excitement. More emotionally positive than introverts, they tend to look for the benefits in problems and have a lot of enthusiasm, defined as a kind of innate “dispositional energy.”
Enthusiastic individuals are more resilient in the face of stress and even disaster. I asked Bob Stilger, a friend of mine who does community-building work in Africa, what enables so many African women—who have been raped, have witnessed family members die, or have lost everything—to pick themselves up and go on. Bob described a kind of energy and vigor that kept the women focused on creating a better future. Rather than folding up inside their misery, they reached out to one another and kept fanning the fires of the possible.
Although enthusiasm is a genetic endowment, researchers in resilience and mind-body medicine are interested in whether it can also be acquired through learning. Hopefully so, as it has been linked to improved physical and mental health. Benjamin Chapman, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, was the lead author of a 2009 study that linked the “dispositional energy” component of extroversion to dramatically lower levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a stress-related immune factor that causes the kind of “bad” inflammation that predisposes individuals to illness. Low levels of extroversion in aging women, the researchers discovered, may lead to an increase in IL-6, which has been linked to a doubling of the risk of death within five years. That data will encourage me to go to more parties and collaborate on new projects!
If extroversion and enthusiasm are good for you, the personality factor known as neuroticism is a disaster. Jenny Kim, associate professor at Washington State University School of Hospitality Business Management, linked neuroticism and burnout in people who worked in a fast-food chain. The neurotics among us are chronically and enduringly negative and easily overwhelmed by stress. They tend to have low self-esteem and be fearful, helpless, angry, guilty, and depressed. Neurotics (and I come from a long line of them) set unrealistically high goals, underestimate their performance, and then engage in merciless self-flagellation. Can this personality factor be changed? I’m sure of it, since I’m living proof. The key is to recognize it in yourself, identify it when it’s happening, and ask yourself if there is some other way to respond to the situation.
Here’s an example: Roger is the kind of person who gets elated over positive feedback and despondent over negative feedback or—and this is key—no feedback. No feedback creates a vacuum in which his neurotic mind can spin imaginative scenarios of rejection, failure, and incompetence. Roger compares himself to others, beats himself up for being inferior, and then searches his past for the source of his failure: His school was lousy. His father was abusive. His mother worked. His younger sister got all the glory. What can a guy do when he’s dealt such a lousy hand?
So what is Roger supposed to do?
— Recognize his neurotic thinking pattern. A neurotic thinking pattern is negative, self-critical, hopeless, helpless, and blaming. Getting stuck in it leads to the same stale place over and over again: depression and burnout. Since the recognition of this pattern is a step toward freedom, Roger can feel relief, hope, and a certain sense of heroism when he catches himself floating down the same old mental river: Whew, I just caught my neurotic thinking … amazing how clear it is. Now I can work on changing it That’s awesome!
— Release tension. Thinking patterns are also physical patterns, and if physical patterns aren’t changed, they will hook you right back into the familiar thinking patterns with which they’re associated. Try this experiment: Close your eyes and remember a time when you were trapped in negative thinking (like Roger’s experience). Perhaps you were thinking about why you failed at love or work and what that might mean to your future.
Now notice how your body responded to those thoughts. Where is the tension? Are you holding your breath, or is your breathing shallow and ragged? Next, blow out your breath with a big sigh, and relax your shoulders. On the next in-breath, imagine that you can take the air into your belly. When you exhale, let your belly flatten and feel your whole body relax, from head to toe. Take ten belly breaths, continuing to relax a little bit more on each exhalation. Physical release changes the brain and sets up the conditions for thinking differently.
— Consider an alternative. What kind of thoughts would support the spacious, relaxed feeling you got from belly breathing? The stress-hardy thinking of an emotionally mature person should do the trick. So Roger recalls the three C’s: control, challenge, and commitment He is specific and thinks about how he can feel some control over the situation that he’s obsessing about, what life challenge he’s meeting, and how meaningful the process is that he’s engaged with.
— Engage in self-recognition. Roger gives himself a thumbs-up, the kind of positive feedback he needs to change his thinking patterns.
Thinking patterns take time to change, but they are malleable. The brain and nervous system continue to make new connections throughout life, a process known as neuroplasticity We can actually develop new neural pathways that modify our perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors.
Thoughts are like drops of water that coalesce into streams that deepen over time as more water carves the course. But even when the water starts to flow in a different direction and a new stream forms, the old channel still remains. It may be months or years before thoughts start to flow automatically in the new channel. I still catch my own neurotic thinking from time to time.
Knowledge Is Power
There are an infinite number of ways to appreciate the differences that make us human. Some of us are enthusiastic optimists, and others are congenitally neurotic pessimists. There are people who need people and Svengalis who need power. There are high-achieving go-getters and laid-back philosophers.
You can study personality with a variety of systems that are fascinating windows on what shapes your unique personality, temperament, and worldview. But the bottom line is this: If you know who you are and accept it, then you’re less likely to waste energy trying to be something you’re not It’s the struggle that will burn you out. And it’s the acceptance of who you are that lets you relax and soften your edges. The result is the natural joy of living comfortably in your own skin.
Once you get comfortable with who you are, the next challenge is to maintain your autonomy by being selective about the people you allow into your life (or keep out) and how you utilize your energy. In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to cultivate the fine art of energy management by paying attention to your boundaries.
