Personality Plus: How to Understand Others by Understanding Yourself Read online

  The Perfect Melancholy wife of a doctor developed a double file system for her social entertaining. One file box had the cards under the occasion, such as CHRISTMAS 1975, EASTER 1980, and listed all who attended, plus the menu. The other box held cards, alphabetized by names of every guest. Each card gave the date of each time the person had come, the guest’s reaction to the menu (if any comments were made), and a column to check off if the guest had sent a thank-you note. On the back was a record of when she had been invited to that person’s house. She knew every detail of every dinner party for fourteen years.

  For those of us who are not of this temperament, it is necessary for us to realize how important organization and order are to Perfect Melancholy, and how much it would help each one of us to at least head in this direction.

  Neat and Tidy

  Perfect Melancholy is usually well dressed and meticulously groomed. The male looks efficient, and the female has every hair in place. They want their surroundings to be neat and tidy, and they go around picking up after others. When Fred and I went to Europe fifteen years ago, we had in our group two loud Popular Sanguine ladies whose sole interest in museums and cathedrals was getting their pictures taken in front of them. They had a suitcase full of Polaroid film, and while the rest of us were listening to the tour guide prepare us for the Parthenon, they were posing by the pillars on the portico. As they pulled out the black innards of their Polaroid, they would drop them wherever they were and go off to a new location. Fred’s sense of neatness would not allow the ugly Americans to leave a trail of sticky black paper through Europe, so he followed behind them for two weeks and cleaned up the castles. Once he tried to show them their folly by quietly handing one lady her debris.

  “Pardon me, but you dropped this.”

  She replied, “Oh, that’s all right. It’s not worth anything.”

  Young Fred has exhibited Perfect Melancholy traits from the time he was a baby and analyzed us through the bars of his crib. As a toddler, he played neatly with his toys and lined his trucks all up before he took his nap. As soon as he could make his bed, he made sure the big awning stripes on his spread were in perfect lines, even with the edge. He placed each stuffed toy in the same spot against the pillow each day, and if anyone moved one item, he knew it.

  One Perfect Melancholy young man told me he had a date with a Popular Sanguine girl. He went to her office to pick her up on time. He was appalled at the condition of her desk and also at the fact she had gone on an errand and didn’t seem to remember their engagement. As he sat, waiting, he noticed the desk next to hers was meticulous. The desk calendar had neat entries; the pencils were lying with their sharpened points in one direction; and the IN and OUT baskets were empty. The girl with the prize desk came in, and he began to talk with her. She was dressed attractively and seemed to know what she was doing.

  “Suddenly,” he said, “I could see I was after the wrong girl. The first one never showed up anyway, so I took the second to lunch, and we’ve been dating—in an orderly fashion—ever since.”

  Perfectionist—High Standards

  Perfect Melancholy’s motto in life is If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. It’s never a matter of how fast he can do it, but how well. The quality is always more important than the quantity, and when a Perfect Melancholy is in charge, you know the job will be done correctly and on time.

  Cindy told me her Perfect Melancholy husband, Phil, wanted their house painted, but he knew only he could do it right. He started by sanding down every shingle by hand. This job took him one full year, during which time the house looked extremely shabby. At the end of the year, he had painted it meticulously, but he was transferred and they sold the house. She did admit they got a higher price because of the perfect paint job.

  Our Perfect Melancholy paperboy showed me a handful of crumpled dollar bills he had and told me he always ironed them all flat before he turned them in because he hated wrinkled money. Only a Perfect Melancholy would steam press his money.

  While I feel I am a neat housekeeper, my Perfect Melancholy son, Fred, does not think I am up to his standards. One time when Marita and I went off on a trip, Fred sighed with relief. He looked up at his father and said, “Now that the girls are gone, I’ll be able to get this house into shape and keep it that way.” During the first evening he vacuumed the floors, polished the living-room furniture, and rearranged the figurines in straight Perfect Melancholy rows on the shelves.

  In a day and age where mediocrity is accepted as above average, Perfect Melancholy shines as a beacon of high standards for the rest of us to follow.

  Economical

  Perfect Melancholies by nature cannot be wasteful, and they love to get a bargain. Fred cuts the money-saving coupons out of the paper neatly with scissors and saves them for the right moment. If I do it at all, I rip them out and arrive in the store with these odd, shaggy papers. Fred’s big moment in life is when he has a coupon worth a dollar off on a pound of coffee, and the supermarket has Double Coupon Days. Once there was also a double coupon in the can, and he was euphoric at actually being paid thirty-seven cents to drink the coffee. Popular Sanguines never send those rebate coupons in, but Perfect Melancholies make sure they get everything they deserve.

  Fred not only shops for bargains, but he checks the trash to make sure I don’t throw away anything of value. He will decide a mayonnaise jar could be useful if I’d wash it; that the bananas I’ve tossed would be just fine in banana bread; and that there are still a few good sweeps in the old broom. If I want to make sure he doesn’t scrounge something up, I have to take it next door and hide it in the neighbor’s trash.

  My grandmother used to save string, and she had one jar of ends labeled STRING TOO SHORT TO USE. One Perfect Melancholy lady I know puts every little leftover in a plastic container in the refrigerator. She writes on the top the name of the item and the date she put it away. She puts today’s entry in the back, pushing the other jars to the front. This way she eats the leftovers in order, and nothing ever goes to waste.

  Deep Concern and Compassion

  Perfect Melancholy has true concerns for other people and is sensitive to their needs. While Popular Sanguine is trying to be the center of attention, Perfect Melancholy is observing others and is compassionate over their problems. A sweet Perfect Melancholy friend told me she had been moved to tears as she watched a whole plane load of Vietnam orphans on TV. As her heart went out to them, her Powerful Choleric husband asked, “What in the world are you crying for? You don’t know one of them!”

  When we go to a parade, Fred is touched by the sight of Old Glory as it passes by and is stirred by the thoughts of all our American men who have died for their country. At the same time, I’m scanning the crowd for a familiar face and hoping to pull a party together for after the parade.

  Perfect Melancholies make excellent counselors because they have a deep ability to see into the hearts of others. They are willing to listen to people’s problems, analyze them, and come up with viable solutions. Popular Sanguines can’t keep still long enough to hear someone’s troubles, and they don’t like to get involved in anything negative, but Perfect Melancholy has sincere compassion for others and really cares.

  Seeks Ideal Mate

  Because Perfect Melancholies are perfectionists, they want perfect mates. They make friends cautiously, to see if people measure up, and they would rather have a few faithful, devoted friends than an abundance of acquaintances as do Popular Sanguines.

  Before deciding to propose to me, Fred made a chart of all the attributes he wanted in a wife. He checked me off on all these points and found I came out to be about 90 percent of what he wanted. He figured he had the rest of his life to shape up the other 10 percent. But what happened after we got married? The little faults became magnified, and the things that were missing became necessities.

  After a while Fred became depressed at how poorly I was doing and, when he told me about the chart, I was stunned that he had
plotted me out on a graph—and even more upset that he felt I had failed. If we had only known the temperaments at that point, I could have understood his charts and desire for perfection, and he could have realized his standards were too high for a Popular Sanguine. We both could have been spared these and many other problems.

  As we shared this story at a seminar in Whittier, a strikingly beautiful young girl came up to talk with us. She had, years before, made a list of twelve characteristics for a perfect husband and had used this to measure her dates. The best young man had nine, and she had been engaged to him for seven years, waiting for him to improve. We suggested she either learn to accept him as he was or set him free, so he could find a girl with a list of nine or less. She let us know later she had broken her engagement. Seeking ideals in life is a positive goal, but we have to realize we will never find perfect people.

  Perfect Melancholy is idealistic, organized, and purposeful.

  A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them. The simpleton never looks, and suffers the consequences.

  Proverbs 27:12 TLB

  CHAPTER 5

  Let’s Look at Our Emotions

  Time out! (for a few minutes of reflection)

  By now I’m sure you all have an understanding of the bubbly, cheerful Popular Sanguine and the deep, analytical Perfect Melancholy. Both of these temperaments, while extremely opposite in purpose and reactions, have one major trait in common. They are both emotional and circumstantial. Popular Sanguine lives by feelings and life is a series of quick ups and downs. A typical Popular Sanguine may have had six emotional crises before noon. Everything is either great or terrible—no middle ground. The Popular Sanguine mother can be talking joyfully on the phone when her child falls off a chair. She screams, “He’s killed himself!” and drops the phone. She grabs the child up and runs through the house, screaming along with him, looking for Band-Aids. The doorbell rings, and it’s the pastor who’s come to call. She lets him in, rushes the child to his crib, throws him a towel to mop up the blood and says, “Don’t you dare cry; that’s the pastor.” She sweeps into the living room with a smile and says sweetly, “Isn’t it a beautiful day!”

  Can you sense the emotional toll this kind of life takes on a Popular Sanguine? If you were to chart out a Popular Sanguine’s emotions on a graph, they would go up and down, up and down. . . .

  Perfect Melancholy stands back and observes this frenzied life with critical judgment. “If only she’d calm down.” “If only he’d get himself pulled together.”

  Prolonged Pattern

  What Perfect Melancholies don’t realize is that they are also emotional, except their highs are higher, their lows lower, and the whole pattern is prolonged. Let’s say Perfect Melancholy is at a normal middle-of-the-mood point. Nothing has bothered him yet. He reaches for his lunch bag, and his Popular Sanguine wife has forgotten to make him a sandwich. He calls to her and watches while she tears around, throwing it together. She licks her fingers off as she’s poking the lettuce in, and he thinks, How unsanitary! but of course he’s not emotional like her, so he keeps quiet. She picks the sandwich up and pulls out the drawer where she keeps the Baggies. It sticks, and she yanks at it. This throws her backward across the kitchen, and she drops the sandwich. He watches as she picks the parts up from the floor and piles them back together saying, “A little dirt never hurt anyone.” By this time Perfect Melancholy’s stomach is in a knot, and he wishes he’d thought of going to McDonald’s.

  He leaves home smoldering, but calm. The next day she forgets again, and he calls her, but starts to make a sandwich himself. The liverwurst is moldy and the bread is dry, because she didn’t wrap it properly. He points this out clearly to her, and she bursts into tears. She’s so emotional and unstable.

  The third day he makes the sandwich himself. He has brought home the right ingredients, and he fumes, as he hears her laughing on the phone, while she should be thinking of him. He leaves without saying good-bye—and he slams the door. She needs to be jarred a little. When he comes home that night he hardly speaks, and she asks what’s wrong. He says nothing, and the game goes on.

  After he’s been convincingly depressed for a week, she gets out of him that it’s because she can’t remember to make him a sandwich. She yells, “You don’t speak to me for over a week over a piece of salami?”

  He sinks lower into his depression and wonders why she has to be so emotional. It takes weeks of her making dutiful sandwiches before he gets back up to zero again. Do you see the pattern? They’re both emotional and circumstantial. Popular Sanguine is up and down by the minute, and Perfect Melancholy is up and down by the month.

  A Lot in Common

  Each one sees the other one as emotional. Perfect Melancholy can prove Popular Sanguine’s a nervous wreck. Popular Sanguine can’t believe anyone can get so depressed over nothing. As these two begin to understand their emotional patterns, they find they have a lot in common. They are both emotional—but at a different pace. When they can begin to lay their problems in the open, they can release the tension. Perfect Melancholy can help alleviate some of the daily crises of Popular Sanguine, and Popular Sanguine, by better planning and sensitivity, can prevent the plunges of Perfect Melancholy.

  Dealing with Powerful Choleric and Peaceful Phlegmatic

  Where Popular Sanguine and Perfect Melancholy are emotional and circumstantial, these two are not so complex. Powerful Choleric is a direct, clear, active person with one single goal: to get it done my way—NOW!

  Peaceful Phlegmatic is an easygoing, adaptable, all-purpose person who wants above all to avoid controversy and conflict.

  Powerful Choleric may have a momentary explosion when someone doesn’t do things right, but after he’s put everyone in their place, he feels it’s all over and he goes back to his steady drive. Peaceful Phlegmatic may have a momentary dip in his low-level line when he somehow fails to stay out of trouble, even with his firm resolve to do so, but you may not even notice it. Peaceful Phlegmatic prides himself on his stability and says, “I never let anyone know how I’m feeling about anything.”

  You can tell how Popular Sanguine feels as his emotions turn on and off, as if by a light switch.

  You can tell the mood of Perfect Melancholy by whether or not he brought his black cloud into the room with him.

  But Powerful Choleric is always on a high, dynamic course, and Peaceful Phlegmatic is hanging in there, steady and low key.

  As flighty Popular Sanguine is attracted to the deep Perfect Melancholy, and withdrawn Perfect Melancholy is attracted to outgoing Popular Sanguine, so the Powerful Choleric leader loves the Peaceful Phlegmatic follower, and the Peaceful Phlegmatic indecisive nature looks for a person of decision.

  As Popular Sanguine and Perfect Melancholy can fill in what’s missing in each other, so will Powerful Choleric and Peaceful Phlegmatic be complementary when they begin to understand and accept each other’s temperaments. As we continue to study the Powerful Choleric and Peaceful Phlegmatic temperaments, you will see what I mean.

  To learn, you must want to be taught. . . .

  Proverbs 12:1 TLB

  CHAPTER 6

  Let’s Get Moving with Powerful Choleric

  Oh, how this world needs Powerful Choleric!

  The firm control when others are losing theirs.

  The cut of decision for foggy minds.

  The grip of leadership to head us to the good.

  The willingness to take a chance in a doubtful situation.

  The confidence to hold true in the face of ridicule.

  The independence to stand alone and be counted.

  The road map to life when we’ve gone astray.

  The urge to “take arms against a sea of troubles and,

  by opposing, end them.”

  Powerful Choleric is the dynamic person who dreams the impossible dream and aims to reach the unreachable star. He feels, like Robert Browning, “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp or w
hat’s a heaven for?” Powerful Choleric is always aiming, reaching, succeeding. While Popular Sanguine is talking and Perfect Melancholy is thinking, Powerful Choleric is achieving. He is the easiest temperament to understand and get along with, as long as you live by his golden rule: “Do it my way NOW!”

  Powerful Cholerics are similar to Popular Sanguines in that they are both outgoing and optimistic. Powerful Choleric can communicate openly with people, and he knows everything will turn out all right—as long as he’s in charge. He gets more done than other temperaments, and he lets you know clearly where he stands. Because Powerful Choleric is goal oriented and has innate leadership qualities, he usually rises to the top in whatever career he chooses. The majority of our political leaders are primarily Powerful Choleric. In the early eighties, we saw two excellent examples, a man and a woman: Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In a Time magazine cover story (March 16, 1981), entitled “The ‘Vicar’ Takes Charge,” George J. Church wrote:

  . . . Rarely has a new Secretary of State moved so swiftly to take control of foreign policy as Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr., 56—former White House Chief of Staff in the darkest days of Watergate, former NATO commander, soldier-bureaucrat-diplomat whose self-assurance is matched only by his iron will. Said liberal Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, toward the close of Haig’s confirmation hearings in January: “He will use this talent to dominate this Administration.”

  If not, it will hardly be for lack of trying. Shortly after Reagan announced his nomination in December, Haig signaled his take-charge determination by dismissing members of the transition team that had been studying foreign policy; he consigned its uninspired reports to a shredder. Only hours after Reagan took the Inaugural oath, Haig handed Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese a memo proposing a reorganization of foreign policy decision-making machinery that would make the Secretary of State supreme; two weeks ago, Reagan approved a directive giving Haig most, though not quite all, of the power he wanted. Faster than any other Cabinet member, Haig picked a nearly complete team of subordinates. . . .