Roger R. Pearman

I HAVE TO SAY WHEN I READ THIS TITTLE I GIGGLED and I just needed to read this book!

This book is purely written to understand yourself, other personalities and how to communicate, if you have a certain personality type, there will be times in your life when you will feel misunderstood AND yes even crazy!

Did you ever wonder why you react the way you do in certain situations, why you feel nobody understands you, or why you feel different about topics million other people find acceptable?

What is “normal” human behavior?



The Real Meaning of the 16 Personality Types




I read a bunch of articles on this specific topic the last couple of years, always wanted to learn more.

I done this 16 personality test as part of a training seminar. Like any other person doing the test that day, I was a bit reluctant, and to be honest I was not interested. But after the test I thought this test is quite accurate and interesting. I done the test - 5 times over the last 3 years but the results stayed the same!

As my job situation changed drastically over the last 3 years I had to know how to treat and to respond to different cultures and people and situations. But this is the first book that I read that made sense why people do things the way they do them.






Background:
In 1921, Swiss psychologist/anthropologist/man of letters Carl Gustav Jung wrote Psychological Types

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves"
Carl Gustav Jung

American Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers done the same type of studies their studies was mostly why different people succeed or fail at different jobs.





So in the span of the following twenty years the Myers- Briggs Personality type was created referred to as the MBTI. Jung’s notion, honored in Myers and Briggs’ work, is that the different styles of perception, judgment, and energy flow are just that—different. One is not inherently better or worse than another.

But I think before you read this book you need to do the personality test, it is free (the link below) and takes - 12 minutes.


FREE PERSONALITY TEST






https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

What I learned in this book is that we all - please note this section I highlights from the book!

About:

I’m Not Crazy, I’m Just Not You


Each individual has a unique personal psychology and behaves in ways that may have other roots. People’s life experiences, the demands of their current situation, their developmental stage in life (the perspective of adulthood is a good deal richer than the one of childhood)

For example, if a natural extrovert who gets energy from interacting with others is raised in an abusive home, he may learn that thinking out loud leads to conflict. As an adult, he may revert to a silent thought process or a detached coping strategy when he feels threatened or stressed.

The real gift of understanding type is the knowledge that there might be different but equally valid views about an issue, and that discussion about these views need not dissolve into an unpleasant personal argument.

(1) When two or more people are together, communication is an ongoing fact, whether we are trying to send messages or not;

(2) Projection is at the root of all communication— we hear or see something and project our meaning onto it;

(3) Most misunderstandings occur because of prejudice, preconception, and emotional reactivity, which are opposite the honesty, candor, and openness we generally want in relationships;

(4) How we express ourselves, what we project, and part of our prejudices, preconceptions, and emotional reactions are related to our psychological type;

(5) Psychological type can help us rationally understand our expressions and projections in constructive ways, and can also help us listen to others more effectively.

PATHWAYS OF COMMUNICATION
Type as a Lantern on the Path to Understanding


Mostly all humans want others in their life to be dependable and to be recognise as a reliable human

What aspects of our communication style trigger another’s reaction that leads to a misunderstanding?

How about our interpretation of others’ messages?

How often do we check them out? How aware are we of our own reactions and how these reactions affect our judgments?


So we have a cycle: We project what we learn, we learn from what we are, we are at least partly the outcome of the preferences we live out in daily life—and the way we live feeds what we learn. And so it goes, on and on.

If, for example, we learn at an early age that people are to be mistrusted and treated with suspicion, we tend to see others’ behaviors as having bad intentions and ulterior motives. Consequently, we withhold information from people and protect ourselves in ways that are likely to elicit responses that support our suppositions. If our preference is for Extroversion, we may express our distrust energetically; if we are Introverted, we may simply become too anxious around others to engage them. In either case, the results are the same: We project certain meaning onto another person’s behavior, behave ourselves in a way that supports our assumptions, and receive confirmation that our projection was correct.

Remembering that type is all about how we usually attend to information, what we attend to, how we decide, and how we act on what we believe to be true, we will explore type’s contribution to:

Extrovert Seeking and initiating in the environment

Introvert Receiving and reflecting on the environment

Communication Effects of Extroversion/Introversion

By habit, Extroverts tend to express themselves freely. They are so comfortable initiating in their environment that they assume everyone else is, too. Further, a lack of immediate reaction from Extroverts usually occurs when they do not trust a situation (or person) or when they feel incapable of making a reasonable response. Aware of this personal discomfort, they often assume that when they see someone else who is not immediately responsive, or who appears cautious, then that person must also be uncomfortable, worried, and possibly slow or only moderately competent in the situation. Notice the ease with which the Extrovert's experience becomes the baseline for judging others’ reactions. This is the nature of projection. It is an unconscious process that colors our understanding. It may well be the Extrovert's first unspoken prejudice; understanding is based on what the Extrovert is comfortable with, rather than what may be true for an Introvert.

For example

A consultant we know had been working with a group of managers on a regular basis over several months.

On a break during one session, the supervisor of the group approached with a smug grin and said, “You know, John, I’ve finally figured out why I don’t trust people like you!”

Somewhat taken aback, John nonetheless remembered his own lessons well enough to ask, “What do you mean by that?”

The supervisor said, “I’ve been watching you for all these months now, and I’ve finally figured it out.
Whenever one of my managers asks you a question, you always pause before you respond. I can see the gears turning in your head, and you’re not responding immediately tells me you’re withholding information from my people. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t tell me all they know.”

This was all John needed to understand what was going on. He said, “George, if I ask you a question and you pause before responding, could I trust your response as being the whole truth?”

George replied quickly, “Absolutely not. If I can’t answer immediately, that means I have a hidden agenda to sort through before I can formulate a verbal response.”

“Aha!” John said. “Just because that’s true for you doesn’t mean it is for me. Remember our sessions on type a few months ago? As I recall, your preference is for Extroversion. Mine is for Introversion. All I can tell you is that when someone asks me a question, it’s like a marble being dropped into one of those multilevel puzzles with holes in each layer. It starts rolling around, finds the hole and drops to the next layer, finds the hole there and drops through to the next layer, and so forth until it falls out the bottom. When it falls out, I have a response. I am not consciously withholding anything. Nor am I stupid or slow. I simply prefer to process internally before I respond. In fact, if I respond too quickly it may mean I have a prefabricated answer that has been designed to cover something up!”

As the truth of this explanation dawned on him, George began to turn very pale. John touched him on the arm and asked what was wrong. George whispered, ashamed, “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve fired because I thought I couldn’t trust them.”

Consider the converse situation, in which a person with Introverted preference observes an Extrovert initiating and moving around in many interactions in a short period of time. The Introvert may view such behavior as shallow and superficial. Keep in mind that an Introvert engaged in this behavior may indeed feel shallow and superficial, and therefore assumes others would feel the same.

The Introvert’s baseline is all wrong for making sense of the Extrovert's behavior. It is safe to assume that people engaged in the environment and interacting with others are expressing Extroversion. In that mode, their comments may simply be the beginning or middle of thought, not the end. They may be probing for reactions, and if so their comments may have no more significance than to simply spur the conversation. They are constantly misunderstood as meddling, opinionated, and forceful, but if you listen carefully and hold your judgments in tow, you may hear information that reveals the richness of thought and the intent of the message.

When individuals are observant, somewhat disengaged, and seem careful about word choice, it is reasonable to assume they are expressing Introversion. In this mode, their comments are usually the end parts of their thoughts. What comes out verbally is their most complete thought on the topic for the time being. Receptive and appearing cautious, they are simply trying to create space in their environment to let their heads work.

But they generally share what is important to them, and if you listen carefully you will get a very good idea of their mind-set and perspective. They are not holding back, necessarily; they are simply sorting through all the internal static to become clear on what to finally say. Often misunderstood as aloof, condescending, and anxious, they are actually creating the time and space needed to respond to the experience they are having.

“Stepping Out” for Clarity
Trying to step out of the situation in which they find themselves in order to gain clarity, individuals with a Thinking preference seek to find criteria that can frame information and experience in such a way that there is a sense of objective analysis. It seems objective because of the logical, orderly manner in which situations are reviewed. Folks with a Thinking preference put enormous effort into looking at the pros and cons of a situation, analyzing how things are related, and proposing principles to guide their thoughts.







If you want to reevaluate how you behave or interact with other humans, or just have the desire to grow and improve yourself or why others and yourself act the way a certain way → I will recommend this book. If you are some kind of manager, or just have people reporting to you or just to understand your family, read this book I will recommend it.



… (mere)

A bit heavy - it's taken me a year to read this, off and on! - but pretty sound as far as type and Jungian/Myers-Briggs personality theory go, with some cognitive function theory as well. The authors stress that all types are valuable and good, and also that type is a 'subtext' to the real individual.

Plenty of explanations about what people expect, trust and appreciate, and how easy it is to get caught up in our own preconceived ideas. Lots of charts summarising how each of the sixteen Myers-Briggs types is most likely to react or behave under certain circumstances.

Of course, people are far more than their type, and these are not hard-and-fast rules for communication. But when there are personality clashes, it could well be worth referring to this book.… (mere)