(If you are doing this study with your family or a group, make this a time of discussion of each person’s strengths, and encourage one another with sincere compliments.)
As you look at your strengths, thank God for the abilities He has given you and accept them. Those of you who tend to knock yourselves and say, “There’s no good thing in me,” change this attitude immediately. There is good in you. Your so-called false humility is unattractive, and forces others to lift you up constantly. This need is wearing on the others, tends to make them avoid you, and is an unnecessary crutch for a low self-image. You don’t need to feel worthless ever again. You have been given both strengths and weaknesses. God created you just a “little lower than the angels,” and He didn’t intend that you waste any time in self-abnegation.
Look at the three strengths you have chosen. Thank God for them, and never forget you have worth. Are you using these abilities to their very fullest? As I teach at Personality Plus seminars and each person lists his talents, the participants are always amazed at what sources of strengths they are not using. So many have abilities lying dormant and talents untapped.
Some are still limping along because they were told as children: You’ll never make it, you don’t have any talent, you ruin everything you touch. Throw those past hurts away today and begin to function in all of your strengths.
Evaluate Your Weaknesses
As Perfect Melancholies and Peaceful Phlegmatics may have difficulty in relating to their strengths, so Popular Sanguines and Powerful Cholerics can hardly bear to evaluate their weaknesses. One of their greatest faults is their feeling they don’t have any. Whatever your personal temperament pattern, think deeply and honestly about your weaknesses, and put down three that most need improvement.
If you are really anxious to have a more pleasing personality, be willing to ask others for help.
Seek Other Opinions
Dare to ask others, “If I were going to work on one area of my personality, where do you think I should start?” Then do the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do. Listen!
Don’t tell them they are crazy. Don’t be defensive and say, “Well you’re worse.” Whatever the person says, thank him and think it over. I’ve often had people give me unsolicited advice, slip me notes of constructive criticism in Christian love. While I never am excited about such suggestions, I have learned to think them over, pull out whatever truth there is, change what I can, and throw away the rest. There is usually some basic element of truth in the least positive of comments, and we grow when we accept what appears to be criticism with dignity and thankfulness.
Plan Your Steps for Personal Improvement
As you look at the three weaknesses you have chosen to work on, list what you can actually do to change these areas.
Admitting you have them is the first step, but that is not enough.
What can you do to improve your human relationships? Popular Sanguines can bite their tongues until they learn to talk only half as much. Perfect Melancholies can stop each time they hear themselves being negative, and critical Powerful Cholerics can force themselves to listen to other opinions. Peaceful Phlegmatics can feign enthusiasm until it becomes natural. Change hurts, but without it we don’t improve.
Ask Your Family for Help
There is nothing more appealing than a teachable spirit—one that asks for correction and accepts it with thanksgiving. As I have trained Marita to become a speaker, I have been encouraged by her willingness to learn from me, and her lack of defensiveness. I can make suggestions to her, and she will both thank me and put them into practice. A teachable spirit is a rare and beautiful attribute.
If you have this spirit, the step of asking for correction from your family will be easy; if not, you must pray for a right spirit within you before asking for help. Realize your family may not take you seriously at first. If you sense some skepticism from your family, it’s probably because they don’t believe you mean business. In the past, you may have put walls between you and others, and they don’t dare to be honest with you.
If you are primarily Popular Sanguine, your family knows you have little resolve to stay with any correctional action that will take longer than today. You only want to hear the good and run from problems or criticism. Your family knows you don’t really want to deal with your faults, and they may say, “You’re just fine the way you are.” If you’re a typical Popular Sanguine you’ll say, “Oh, good! Then I won’t have to change.” You will have to show real dedication to improvement before they will believe.
If you are Perfect Melancholy, you have manipulated the family with your moods for so long that they don’t dare say a negative thing about you for fear of sending you into a depression. They’d rather live with your faults than risk telling you about them and having your face drop into its hurt and mournful expression. To get their cooperation, you will have to smile through adverse circumstances and sing in the rain.
If you are Powerful Choleric, you have probably controlled the family with an iron hand, and no one dares dispute you for fear of an outburst of anger. You will have to preface your questions with “I promise I won’t get upset if you give me an honest opinion. I do want to change for the better.” (Watch the look of shock and disbelief in their eyes!)
If you are Peaceful Phlegmatic, you have trouble deciding what weaknesses to work on, and may dump the whole list on the group and let them choose your faults. They may not get too serious about this project because your past ones have been postponed—somehow they died on the vine. You will need to show decisive determination to solicit cooperation.
Encourage Honest Opinion
When any of us takes the time to think about our interchanges with other people, we realize how little honest opinion we encourage. We build our boxes around us, people learn how near they dare come to our fence, and they develop a working relationship with us that may be utterly phony. Does your family have to humor you to keep peace? Do your coworkers know how close they can come before you get mad or moody? If people are having to handle you with kid gloves, maybe it’s time you got honest with them and allowed them to be honest with you.
We have had so many couples tell us that when they sat down and went over the charts together, they had the first meaningful discussion they’d had in years. One woman said, “We’ve always been defensive with each other if we got too close to the problems, so we’ve both lived behind a facade. When we sat down and discussed the charts, it was the first time we’d verbalized our faults. It was as if the page was doing the talking, and so we didn’t get mad at each other. The tool of the temperaments has changed our ability to communicate openly and honestly.”
Some people build their walls so thick no one ever gets to know the real person inside. This is often their reason for doing so. (“If you really knew what I’m like inside, you wouldn’t care for me.”) Let’s come out from behind our masks and dare to change. We don’t need to be fenced in by our failures of the past; we need to step out into the field of future potential.
Anyone who loves knowledge wants to be told when he is wrong. It is stupid to hate being corrected.
Proverbs 12:1 GNB
CHAPTER 14
Opposites Attract
We have all heard that opposites attract. Fred and I are a perfect example of this statement, and in the years we have been working with the temperaments, we have seldom found people of the same personality pattern married to each other. When we look at the strengths of the individuals, it is a great asset to have the opposites united together. Since Popular Sanguines are lighthearted, they lift Perfect Melancholy. Since Perfect Melancholies are organized, they get Popular Sanguine pulled together. When we can look at our marriages and understand that one partner’s strengths fill in the other’s weaknesses, we can be grateful for our differences and stop trying to change the other person.
Popular Sanguine/Perfect Melancholy Relations
Before marriage we tend to see each other’s good poin
ts. The few weaknesses that surface we know will disappear when this individual has the opportunity to live with someone as inspiring as we are. As Fred and I learned, this automatic transformation doesn’t often take place.
When we first met, Fred was attracted to my Popular Sanguine personality. Since he did not like the small talk of social occasions, he felt if he married me I would do all the conversing for him—and I did! I could see in Fred the Perfect Melancholy depth and stability. I knew he could straighten out my life and get me organized—and he did!
We were attracted to the opposite strengths in each other and, although we didn’t know this at the time, we were seeking to fill the missing pieces in our own personalities. Since we were two perfect people heading into what automatically would have to be a perfect marriage, we never considered the possibility of any problems; however, that hopeful thinking proved to be unrealistic.
Let’s examine just one area in which we had an immediate conflict: the scheduling of our time. Before we were married, I managed to teach five different high-school courses each day, and direct all the drama activities without Fred’s being on the scene at all. I felt I was organized, but the minute we got to Bermuda on our honeymoon, Fred began to chart out our time so we wouldn’t waste our vacation on relaxation. He decided visiting old forts would be productive and after reading several brochures on the island’s history, he laid out our procedures.
To cover the route efficiently, he rented us motorbikes. While he read over the instructions that came with the bikes, I started mine up, without knowing how to stop, and crashed into a stone wall that rose up as an instant barricade before me. The owner came screaming over, as he saw me in a heap and the front wheel of his bike overlapping the back one. Fred was humiliated to be seen with someone so dumb as to plunge off without a plan. He gave me a lecture that started with a phrase I later came to hate: “Everyone knows that . . . ” After he made me feel stupid for my impulsive trip into the wall, he paid for the damages, and helped me mount a new bike, on which I had to sit still, while he reviewed the parts of a bike in terms simple enough for a first-grader to understand.
In the one incident I learned:
Fred was smart—I was dumb
Fred was strong—I was weak
Fred was right—I was wrong
I didn’t like any of these conclusions, but I lived with constant reminders of their validity for fifteen years, until we learned about the temperaments. Then each found that just because the other one is different doesn’t make him wrong.
Misery Wants Company
On our way back from Bermuda on the Ocean Monarch, Fred got seasick before we left the harbor. He took to his bed and moaned “I wish I were dead.” I’d always disliked ailing people, and so I fled the whole sick scene. Neither of us knew anything about the personalities then. Fred was crushed because I didn’t stay in the cabin, put cool cloths on his forehead, and commiserate with him. Perfect Melancholies love sympathy, are willing to sit with the sick themselves, and assume any decent person would attend the ailing.
I was disturbed that Fred was ruining my good time on the Love Boat, and after a few cheering words (to ease my conscience), I took off in pursuit of pleasure. Fred didn’t realize that Popular Sanguines hate sickness, avoid anything unpleasant, and aim for action and fun.
Schedule? What Schedule?
A week after we returned from our honeymoon, we went to a movie, and as we came out I suggested, “Why don’t we go to Howard John-son’s for an ice-cream cone?” I thought I had come up with a great idea, but Fred countered, “It’s not on my schedule.”
“What schedule?”
“I make out a schedule every morning at seven o’clock. If you want an ice-cream cone at eleven at night, you have to tell me at seven in the morning, so I can put it on my schedule.”
“I didn’t know at seven this morning that I’d want an ice-cream cone at eleven tonight.”
We went straight home, and I knew this marriage was never going to be much fun.
Right from the start we had trouble with the toothpaste. Fred felt it essential to roll up the tube neatly from the bottom. I just grabbed it and squeezed. He kept straightening out my bumps and cleaning off the cap, and I didn’t even notice what he was doing. One of the basic conflicts of Popular Sanguine and Perfect Melancholy married to each other is that Popular Sanguine doesn’t know she is doing something wrong, and the quiet Perfect Melancholy doesn’t want to state the problem clearly. He just quietly repairs the damages, assuming Popular Sanguine will sooner or later learn from observation. But Popular Sanguine doesn’t get the hint, and so surely doesn’t pick up the solution. By the time Perfect Melancholy feels he must make an issue of it, his emotions are so tense it turns into a major altercation. By understanding the personalities these problems can be avoided. Perfect Melancholy decides whether it’s an important issue or not, and then speaks up before he gets upset. Popular Sanguine tries to do what’s right and Perfect Melancholy learns to overlook the mistakes.
Fred solved our toothpaste problem by buying me my own tube and letting me squeeze it any old way.
Opposites do attract, and when we focus on the strengths, we fit fine, but when we don’t understand our personalities, we tend to focus on the weaknesses and feel “someone different from me” must be wrong.
One couple I counseled had the typical Popular Sanguine/Perfect Melancholy problem. Chuck was a life-of-the-party type salesman, who always had something funny to say. Miriam, a Perfect Melancholy, told me how she was attracted to Chuck instantly because he had such confidence in himself, while she was insecure, socially ill at ease, and often withdrew from crowds. She described Chuck as outgoing, handsome, charming, talkative, and witty; these were all qualities she lacked and felt he would supply.
By the time Miriam came to me she was deeply depressed. She had wanted a perfect marriage, but Chuck didn’t do things right. He was often late for dinner, which she always had ready on time, and she took this as a personal insult. What was worse, when he did arrive, he didn’t even sense he was late. She wouldn’t believe he was not a clock-watcher, as she was, so she felt he was late on purpose. She did not discuss the problem with him because she did not want to cause friction.
She noticed how disorganized he was, and how often he lost his keys. She bought a keyboard with hooks on it, and put it by the front door. She waited for him to notice it, and when he didn’t, she sulked and he didn’t know why. When she finally told him she was upset because he didn’t see the key hooks she’d bought for him, he told her she was ridiculous. She sulked again.
After attending a few parties with Chuck, she realized how repetitious he was with his jokes. She had never liked levity, and she surely didn’t like to hear the same corny tale over and over. One night he told a story that wasn’t completely true, and she was shocked to realize her husband was a liar. She mentioned to him that he hadn’t exactly told the truth, and he replied, “What difference does it make? They laughed, didn’t they?”
When I talked to Chuck, he told his side. He was a delightful, charming man, and I could see why she fell for him. They were as mismatched as most couples, but he felt everything would be all right if she’d just loosen up.
“Miriam is a sweet, soft, shy girl, and I love that part of her—but she’s been depressed half the time since we got married. She used to think I was funny—as everyone does—but now she calls me a liar and wants all my stories to be the plain facts.
“She’s a great housekeeper; in fact she’s close to fanatical. If I set my cup down, she whisks it off to the kitchen. We’ve got new living room furniture, and she has it all covered with sheets so it won’t fade. I feel like I’m sitting around in a morgue. It’s spooky.
“If I come home ten minutes late, she’s depressed. She can’t seem to understand I’m a salesman, and I have to hang in there until they sign. It’s like I’ve married a mother, and I’m the bad little boy.”
What are we going to do
with Chuck and Miriam? Many problems are self-healing, once the participants can back up and look somewhat objectively at themselves. I gave these two a set of Personality Plus tapes and told them I wouldn’t see them again until they had listened to them together. Miriam called a week later, and she sounded like a new person. “May I come over? We’ve been listening to the tapes.”
This is what she told me:
I feel so stupid that I couldn’t figure out our problems by myself. Listening to the tapes together was eye opening, as we both heard about ourselves. Chuck began to realize I wasn’t trying to be his mother; I’m just a Perfect Melancholy who wants everything perfect. We began to talk openly for the first time, and I realized I had never told him how I felt. I’d just wanted him to read my mind, and when he didn’t, I got depressed. We began to go over our differences. I had previously planned dinner for six o’clock, which I felt was the normal hour. He never got home before six-thirty—and I’d be upset. I’ve moved the time to seven o’clock, and we even have a few minutes to relax before dinner. I’ve learned there’s no big prize for sitting down on schedule.
Chuck uses the key hooks now that he knows they’re up. I regret the time I spent waiting for him to notice my good deed. As I listened to the tapes on Popular Sanguines telling stories, and I realized they all are more interested in response than accuracy, I realized he wasn’t lying, and no one but me seemed to care. What I liked about him was how he could entertain everyone, and I’ve concluded he can tell it any way he wants. I won’t correct him short of his making an inflammatory statement that would start World War III.