Most of us go through life completely unaware of how our personality defines our behavior. For the past decade I have been spending a lot of time on planes, travelling to new countries and working with varied groups of people. I regard my time on the plane as sacred “me time,” ideal for catching up on my reading, listening to podcasts, journaling, and simply slowing down my mind. With n demands, no phones, no technology, no networking, no interruptions, this is the perfect time for me to just be. My Zen time as I crossed over several time zones.
Sitting beside me is my partner at work and in life, in a hyper-productive mode! He walks into the flight with a long “to do” list. With no phones and no distractions, this is the perfect time for him to get his work done! He is absolutely focused, as he clears up his backlog. The success of his time on the flight is defined by the extent of work he manages to accomplish.
Each time as we walk off the plane, he is ready to charge into his next assignment, while I take my time to re-orient to the land and its people. He walks purposefully, while I have a relaxed stride, as I take in the sights, sounds, smells, and the environment. If you were to see us, we would appear as two totally different energies, yet strangely harmonious, as we navigate through the corridors of the airport.
While my husband and I have the same job of enabling people experience deep personal transformations, we don’t go about this in the same way either. I pride myself on a creating an emotionally safe space that allows people to shed their inhibitions. I hold them gently as they explore and express their emotions.
I allow them to set the pace of our conversations. I help them dismantle layers of limitations as they discover a new way of being. For me, the essential ingredient in any transformative process, is acceptance and compassion. My husband on the other hand, inspires action. He holds the vision for his clients, prods them, pushes them, stirs them, confronts them, and helps them reframe their life stories. He deeply believes in the process of creation and movement forward. He has little tolerance for victimhood and he tells it as it is.
Both of us have completely different styles, ideologies, approaches and outcomes that we seek. And yet both of us are extremely effective in our own ways. One might wonder what explains this difference in needs and behavior? What makes us different from each other and the people around us? We all display a mixture of different characteristics over time, which come to define our personality. It’s the reflection of our characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, that makes us so unique and distinct from others. We all have our quirks and idiosyncrasies – all the qualities that make up our personality, the things that make us so typically us.
When we don’t understand these differences, accept them, appreciate them, or learn to deal with them, we get stuck in a perpetual war with those differences. We fight, blame, change, or attempt to “fix” others, often without any success. The emotional cost of trying to change the world is huge and often unnecessary.
The beginning lies in the awareness of two important facts; we are all designed to be different and we cannot change anyone else to suit our needs.
Many years ago, I thought I hit the jackpot when I found a boyfriend who was very similar to me: introverted, sensitive, thoughtful and gentle. Someone who would rather stay in and watch movies with a glass of wine than go out to wild parties – the list goes on. I believed that we were harmonious, and has least number of potential triggers between us.
In some ways, I did hit the jackpot, but the excitement didn’t last long. A couple months into the relationship, I learned that just because we had very similar personalities, it didn’t mean that we were compatible and it definitely didn’t mean we were going to work out in the long run. 15 months later we were separated. When you get together with your personality twin, it doesn’t mean the relationship will be happy one.
Researchers who studied 2,578 heterosexual couples, tried to determine whether the similarities between two partners’ personalities had a substantial effect on the relationship’s well-being. As it turned out, the similarity factor had very little effect on the overall perceived well-being of the relationship.
What turned out to be lasting predictors of happiness were respect, awareness, patience, and understanding. Ultimately, it boils down to what you value the most in yourself and your partner, how you communicate, and how you work together as a team – not necessarily how similar you are overall.
This is not just limited to our personal lives. At some point in our professional lives, most of us have to deal with people whom we just don’t like or can’t seem to get along with. The differences are stark and the triggers alive.
Some people like to work quickly, completing their tasks as soon as they are assigned, while others like the rush of waiting till the deadline is looming. Some of us are naturally upbeat, optimistic types whereas others may be extremely cautious and prone to pessimism. Some people feel the need to compete, while others might seek to cooperate and work together.
The fact is that personality differences exist everywhere and people are bound to have different perspectives. There is no one “right” way of being or behaving.
The more we fight it, the harder it becomes. The more we resist it, the stickier it gets. Instead, the more we understand, the easier it gets. And the more we learn about the differences, the lesser it overwhelms us.
Excerpted with permission from What Shape Are You? Discover Who You Really Are & How to Handle Everyone Who Isn’t Like You, by Sneha Shah and Dr Susan Dellinger, Westland Books.
