Monday Morning Musings: Are you a Powerful Choleric, Popular Sanguine, Perfect Melancholy or Peaceful Phlegmatic?

Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholy, Phlegmatic ... do you know what I'm talking about? These are the four personality types that are used to categorise our basic nature.  Everyone's personality is a combination of all four qualities - usually with one or two types being stronger than the others.  That's why we're all unique, and why some people are alike and some are completely different.  It's why there are some people that just drive you up the wall, and why some people are easy to get along with.  It's all about your personalty type and the other person's personality type.  And whilst we might not like it, the truth is some personality types are just easier to get along with than others.

Ok, so how did this end up as our MMM topic today?  Jess and I have been reading two books, both by Christian author, Florence Littauer, which talk about our personality types and how understanding our own type, and other people's types, can help improve our relationships.  The first book is "Personality Plus: How to Understand Others by Understanding Yourself".  The second is "Personality Plus for Couples: Understanding Yourself and the One You Love".

It's been a fascinating exercise going through these books with Jess (and her husband).  Yes, you may be realising right now that this is what we were doing on my "holiday" to visit them.  But you have to understand, that it wasn't just fascinating, at times it was downright hilarious.  It's always fun to read about your personality strengths and weaknesses.  It's even more fun to read about other people's strengths and weaknesses! (Like your sister's, or your spousse's or your parents...) There were many "ah-ha!" moments as we discovered there are reasons why we react differently to the same situation.  The books are also full of amusing and relatable examples of communications gone wrong between people because of their different personality type.

First up, there's a quiz (the same one in both books) that you take in order to determine what your personality make up is.  Here's a brief run down on the different types.  You may be able to spot your own from this summary alone.  This is taken from the Wikipedia article based on the "Personality Plus" book I'm talking about:

The 'Personality Plus' personality profiles

Choleric: This is the commander-type. Cholerics are dominant, strong, decisive, stubborn and even arrogant.

Melancholy: This is the mental-type. Their typical behaviour involves thinking, assessing, making lists, evaluating the positives and negatives, and general analysis of facts.

Sanguine: This is the social-type. They enjoy fun, socialising, chatting, telling stories - and are fond of promising the world, because that's the friendly thing to do.

Phlegmatic: This is the flat-type. They are easy going, laid back, nonchalant, unexcitable and relaxed. Desiring a peaceful environment above all else. 

Can you see which personality type you are? Maybe it's hard for you to tell because you don't have a clear dominant type.  In that case you'd need to take the quiz to really find out.

Below are pie charts of the personality breakdown of the Book Review Sisters.  We're not going to tell you today which chart belongs to which sister.  Go ahead and guess if you like :) (Our individual "About" pages, our book reviews and MMM posts might be enough to serve as clues!)  We'll reveal more next MMM.

Sister 1

Sister 2

If you're interested in reading more about these four temperaments, here's a few links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_Plus
http://funpersonalityteststotake.blogspot.com/
http://www.ptypes.com/temperaments.html


Florence Littauer's Personality Plus Books: