Week 4 - Personality

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This (mid) week, we talked about personality. To start off, Viji asked us to think of a one word metaphor for ourselves, as an introspection exercise. I've tried to define myself extensively before, but boiling it down to one word was surprisingly harder than I thought. In the end, I settled on a Radio: constantly expressing myself, occasionally eccentric, with a touch of melancholy reminiscence of the "good old days" at times.

Viji then put forward the theory by Sigmund Freud: Child is the father of Man. Our childhood is critical in building our personality, especially in four keys areas:

  • Nature: The people and resources around us.
  • Nurture: How are we taken care of and loved for.
  • Experiences: Both good, such as exciting adventures, and bad, such as poverty.
  • Free Will/Agency: Being independent, and holding responsibility for one's actions
Our personality is less about genes and more about our life circumstances. Even identical twins who lived in different households end up developing completely different personalities.

Carl Jung said, "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." In line with this, we did an exercise where we introspected about the type of person we prefer not to work with, and more importantly, why. I narrowed my biggest concerns down to a toxically dominant character. This made me realize that I value autonomy in my work. I appreciate being shown the direction to work towards, but I also demand the ability to figure out my most comfortable path to get there.

Viji then asked us to think about three personality traits we wanted to develop, and what meaningful steps we were going to take for that. Here are mine:
  • Optimism: I am typically a person with high neuroticism. So I've been trying to be proud of myself for small wins, and to be less frustrated with others. I hadn't really thought about it until I am writing this now, but since then my life has been much rosier 😁.
  • Self Sufficiency: I've been pampered all my life. Not complaining, but that has also made me very dependent on others. Over the past week, I've been doing small things outside of my comfort zone. It's tough and some of these tasks might sound silly, but also exhilarating and deeply rewarding!
  • Worry less about others opinions: I have been a very self conscious person so far, trying to portray a perfect image. As a continuation of the previous trait, I have been taking effort to do things I want to do, even if I stumble around and "make a fool of myself". Funnily enough, people didn't even remotely care as much as I feared. In fact, my close acquaintances saw this as growth and cheered me on!

We closed the topic with the usual discussion on the differences between introverts and extroverts. In addition to the typical speaking points on introverts and extroverts, Viji also pointed out that most of us are somewhere in the middle. This was something that resonated well with me; although I typically identify as an extrovert, I am a bit more hesitant to immediately open up than a typical extrovert, and can occasionally require some time alone. To wrap up, Viji suggested reading "The Power of Introverts" by Susan Cain for more on this topic.

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