Understanding The Four Types of Personality

Hola, guys, how are you doing? Good, huh? I bet you are! When reading my greeting, each of you must have different expressions indicating how your feeling respond to it. It tells us that we are unique creatures. You might realize that you always get different treats from people around you, sometimes they are good, fun and enjoyable, but sometimes really annoying. Why do people act in different manner? You already know the answer! Each of us was uniquely created by God for His glory with distinct appearance, characteristics, spiritual gifts, intelligence, abilities, talents, and personality. The key to getting along with others is being able to recognize their way of doing things has validity and a reason behind it, even if it seems the complete opposite of what we would do. Then how could we identify others’ personality and deal with it?

Florence Littauer, a personality development book author, wrote a book which amazingly exposes the way we could spot people’s personality and should react to it. Although people are unique, Littauer suggests they fall under one of four personality types. These are choleric, sanguine, melancholy and phlegmatic.

Popular Sanguine – emotional and demonstrative, the Sanguine is the life of the party and is all about having fun. They make work into fun, and they love to be with people. They see excitement in each experience and are outgoing (adj : ramah) and optimistic. They love colors, are dramatic and prone to (adv : rentan terhadap) exaggeration (n : pernyataan berlebihan), and are great on stage, thriving with an audience. They love touching and hugging (v : memeluk) people. You will laugh and laugh with a Sanguine. After all, they are happy, bouncy, often loud, talkative, great storyteller, lots of fun.

Powerful Choleric – dynamic born leader, dreamer of the impossible dream, always aiming, reaching, succeeding. The Choleric is ever achieving and everything will be fine as long as you obey his rule: “Do it my way NOW!” He is outgoing and optimistic, but has little need for friends (socializing wastes time and doesn’t get things done, btw do you know who he is?). He believes everything will be fine as long as you do it with him in charge. He gets more done than the other temperaments. He rises to the top, is goal - oriented, and has innate (adj : bawaan) leadership abilities.

Perfect Melancholy – deep, sensitive, organized, detailed, lover of lists. The Melancholy is quiet, undemanding (adj : tak banyak menuntut), and likes to be alone. He follows schedules right from the beginning and will not adapt well to having his routine upset. They are neat, tidy, and perfectionistic. They are frugal (adj : hemat) and have deep compassion (n : kasih sayang) for others. The fact that I always love and serve people around well is a point that I might be under this category, well, more or less. The Melancholy is creative, introspective, and analytical. That’s why personally, I always ask the people whom I always interact with not to prevaricate (v : bohong) because it’s always easy for me to unveil (v : menyingkap) what is behind their stories. Without Melancholies we’d have few artists, writers, philosophers, and composers of music. Btw, I am neither an artist, writer, philosopher nor composer. LOL

Peaceful Phlegmatic – buffers (n : penolong) for all the other personalities to bring stability and balance. The Phlegmatic is peaceful and the great leveler (n : orang yang suka menyamaratakan sesuatu atau seseorang) in life. He says, “It really doesn’t matter that much” – and it usually doesn’t matter! The Phlegmatic is content (adj : memuas - muaskan), easy-going (adj : santai), not pushy (adj : ambisius), balanced, on an even keel, doesn’t easily offend, and quietly does what is expected of him. “Whatever” seems to be the Phlegmatic’s life motto. He is a “learned (adj : terpelajar)” leader and with proper motivation, he will rise to the top, because of his outstanding ability to get with everyone and avoid conflict.

Despite its diversity, it is common for individuals to have many traits (n : sifat) from one or two of the personality types and smaller amounts in the others. There are four possible combinations can be found in someone’s personality. 1) Natural Combination i.e Sanguine Choleric, 2) Complementing Combination i.e for relationship – oriented : Sanguine Phlegmatic and for goal – oriented : Choleric Melancholy, 3) Opposite Combination i.e Sanguine Melancholic and Choleric Phlegmatic, 4) Small amounts from all 4 types can be generally considered either Phlegmatic, perfect man, or the person whose past was over – directed, strictly controlled or severely oppressed (v : ditindas). I considered myself under Complementing Combination for goal – oriented, but I – even it is negligible – also have some Sanguin features. Littauer encourages people to take the profile test to determine in which categories their personality lies. But in this occasion, we would not do that. If you wish to know more about yourself and others through Littauer’s personality test, you may join us in our Mobile English Discussion in STKIP YPUP (contact us for further info).

We need to learn what our strengths are and amplify (v : memperkuat) them, and what our weaknesses are and overcome them with God’s transforming power. We need to understand the personalities of the people around us as well to have the best relationship possible with them. Otherwise, they can drive us crazy! Trust me, they can and they will!

Reference : The Personaity Plus Book by France Littauers

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by Naskar Hansam | Nobody