What is your personality? Where did it come from? How do you define it?
Everybody has a personality and each personality seems to be unique. But have you ever asked yourself: “How did I get my particular personality?”
Were you born with your personality? Did you inherit it from your family? Or did you acquire it in childhood? Is your personality the real you or a mask you wear?
What makes up a personality? Is it based on your thoughts or something else?
Have you ever wondered about any of these questions? If so, keep reading to discover a unique way of viewing your personality.
Personality defined
There are many ways to define personality. If we focus on the emotional aspect of personality, here is a simple definition: your personality is your relationship with the world.
Your personality is the basis for many qualities that are present all the time. For example, are you an extrovert or an introvert?
How you experience the world has a lot to do with your personality. If you feel that the world is a dangerous place, you will be on alert and worry about everything. If you feel that the world is basically safe, you will be less worried about possible dangers.
What creates a personality?
There are a number of personality theories. Many people believe that personality is based on thoughts or cognitions.
I would like to explore a non-cognitive view of personality – an emotional basis for personality.
Your emotional personality
All of us have a set of emotions we experience on a regular basis. If you think about any typical day, you will discover that you experience the same emotions over and over again. These are the emotions you are most comfortable with.
Your emotions seem to define who you are. For example, you might be easy going or energetic or quick to anger.
Patterns of emotion
If you take your most common emotions you can begin to see a pattern. From this pattern you can begin to predict behaviors and reactions.
Let’s look at an example. My friend “Bob” is so predictable. He always gets angry when he runs into problems at work. He gets frustrated when his children have issues and he doesn’t know how to help them. He doesn’t like problems. When Bob knows what to do he is happy and productive.
Emotional patterns can be described with a question or a short phrase. In our example, Bob’s personality pattern can be described by the question: “Do I know what I need to do?”
If Bob knows what to do, he is happy. When he runs into problems – he doesn’t know what to do – he experiences frustration and anger.
We can think of this question as an easy way to describe Bob’s personality.
Where do we get our personality?
Personality is based on our history and is learned. Most of us acquire our emotional personality around the age of four when we are learning how we relate to the world.
I am wondering if you are seeing a problem, yet? Do you want a four year old in charge of creating your relationship to the world? Four year old children have a limited view of the world.
Am I stuck with my personality?
If you are not living the life you dream about, one important step you can take is to examine your personality. Is your personality helping you or is it holding you back?
I will be writing more posts on emotional personality. You can release your false personality and reclaim your true self using the poetry of emotion process.
To read more…
(Image: Jeremy Burgin @ FLickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/jburgin/4654327542/
