Casuistry of a positive personality.

Photo by: Tim Bindner Photography

I believe there are three main types of personalities.  There are positive personalities, negative personalities, and realists.  I fall into the latter category but am often mislabeled as a negative personality.

I know people who go through life with blinders on only looking at things positively.  I also know those that do the opposite and focus on all the negative aspects of the world.  Then there are people like me who look for the positive aspects but know and prepare for those negative things in life that are inevitable.

I think those that are driven by a negative personality and those driven by a positive personality are living their life, not only in a false reality but setting themselves up for failure.  As mentioned I am often seen as a negative person.  My wife often accuses me of this.  What she fails to realize as I am a natural planner, I prepare for those stresses or negative things that I know will occur.  The difference for me is I do not let those thoughts or potential outcomes consume my every thought, thus paralyzing me.  Positive people are the same.  The thing everything is going to be great all the time and when things do happen that offset their positivity, it tends to derail them.

I have noticed that the positive personalities I know do not think or even understand that stress and opposing forces help us as humans.  When we work out or lift weights, we are stressing our muscles and tearing them down to build them back up.  As work, projects are created, worked and completed, focusing on waste, problems or holes in a way a process is done.  Students in school are taught that if an ‘A’ grade is achieved that is great but anything lower must be worked on to better it.  Even Yin has the opposite Yang.  So why when someone like myself chooses to look out for and prepare for potential negative occurrences that might happen, are we deemed as negative, when all the things I listed above are acceptable?

When we have stress/negativity or are upset, it sets forth the necessity for change.  That is true in business and life.  That is how I try and prepare myself to get through this life, but again it is deemed as being negative.

This week I had an unusually high amount of stress working in my world, both personal and work-related.  I confide in my wife about my concerns and a few friends as well.  One such conversation happened with a nameless person that helped me learn a bit more about how a positive person things.  I was conveying the particulars of the stressful situations that have not only happened this week but also in the nearly recent past.  After I laid it all out the response I received was “everything has an equal and opposite reaction”.  No signs of empathy, relatedness or support.  I was not looking for answers or solutions in this conversation just providing some background as to why I was stressed and received the answer above.  I know now where I stand with this person and learned the boundaries of that relationship. Ignorance is only bliss for a short time, then sooner or later reality catches up.

I will continue to be a misdiagnosed realist.  I will look at the world not as positive or negative but a level of both and prepare myself to handle both aspects that I know will impact me.  For me, realistic pessimism beats deluded optimism any day.

Until next time,

Tim