People you meet sometimes fit into sort of Yin and Yang personality pairs. There are sometimes two people you meet who have one prominent trait in common, yet you feel differently about each of them based on this trait.
What you may love in one person you may hate in another, and often without realising it.
Here are some examples of this happening. Though I’ve made up the names, and occasionally switched the sexes, most of these pairs of people are either friends of mine or people who were once friends but whom I grew away from. See how many of them remind you of people you know.
Confidence
Pam’s abundant confidence means she always cuts through the bullshit, takes charge when no-one else will and gets the job done with resolute certainty. She’s respected, usually liked and sometimes admired.
Desmond’s abundant confidence means he says what neither you nor anyone else cares to hear. He’s tactless, bossy, stubborn and just plain irksome.
Here, confidence doesn’t refer to self-esteem but to confidence purely in one’s convictions and abilities. You can meet people who believe they are always right and who really believe in their abilities but who also don’t like themselves.
Pam is confident and Desmond is arrogant. In my experience and from what I’ve read there are two possible causes for Pam’s socially positive confidence and Desmond’s arrogance. The first is self-centeredness, or lack of awareness of others, and the second is conditional self-love.
People such as Des tend to make much of what they can do because it’s the only way they perceive value in themselves and/or it’s because they lack understanding and appreciation of others. Arrogant people either think they’re great because they have to or because they’re not aware of how competent other people are.
So, even if Pam and Des both have low self-esteem the difference would be that Pam is more in touch with the value of others.
Lack of individuality
George has little personality so he repeats jokes he’s heard on TV as if they’re his own and is interested, and talks about, pretty much only one subject. Everyone finds him very irritating.
Caroline has little personality so she’s quiet, humble, open-minded and tends to go along with the group. She’s well-liked by all and adored by some.
Some people just don’t have very distinct personalities and that isn’t a bad thing. One of my friends is a confident ‘Pam’ and the other is a ‘Caroline’ – and both of them get on like a house on fire. The ‘Carolines’ of the world are pretty much predisposed to get along better with others, be more popular and lead easier happier lives than the ‘Pamelas’. In terms of social skills what matters with these people is that they don’t try to be someone they’re not in order to be liked. We all tend to see through the acts after a while, and no-one is happy when we do.
Intelligence
Edgar is really clever. People like him for this as he’s very competent at work, makes interesting conversation and he’s a great problem solver.
Jonathan is really clever. People can’t stand him for this as he shows people up at work, insists on difficult conversation all the time and has contempt for those not as bright for him.
Intelligence is similar to the confidence trait mentioned first in this article. If you rub people the wrong way for being clever then it’s probably because you lack connectedness to others or because you depend on the trait to feel good about yourself.
I used to be a bit of a Jonathan (and probably still am a bit :P) so I can attest to this first-hand. When I was something of a Jonathan I was in regular contact with an Edgar who’s a friend of mine. The Edgar friend was a fair bit clever than me but was much more sociable and was more well-known and well-liked. I had plenty of friends at high school, but he was Head Boy – it was that kind of difference.
Learning to like myself without comparing myself to others is an on-going process that I’m getting better and better at doing. Most people, if they really think about it, are in the same boat.
Sex
Emily sleeps with lots of guys. She’s emotionally mature, enviably hedonistic and her friends see her as something of a dating and sex guru and like to go to her for advice.
Kelly sleeps with lots of guys. She’s insecure and needs to know she’s desirable for validation. People think she’s a slut.
Ever watch much Sex and the City? One of the four women, Samantha, is a total nymphomaniac but the audience respects her, finds her antics amusing and she’s even someone for women to be a bit jealous of as she gets with a new handsome man almost every episode.
This is the post-feminist era: women get to do whatever they want to and both sexes aren’t sure what to make of each other anymore. Sexuality is still a personality trait that’s murky water for sex discrimination, but with the invention of the term ‘man-whore’ and girls wearing the Playboy bunny as a fashion label it’s safe to say that your gender plays a smaller role than it has in centuries over whether people see you as sexually empowered or slutty.
What puts you in which camp these days is dignity (or lack of) and respect for others (or lack of). Inevitably people will be divided on whether you’re a prude or too easy or a player, but as long as you have a healthy attitude to sex people will respect you – and the ones who don’t just have hang-ups of their own and really aren’t worth worrying about.
Can’t say I’m a first-hand expert on this area, but like the rest of us I do know how different people get perceived for their sex lives – and the distinguishing details tends to be dignity for girls and respect for women by guys.
Summary
These are just a few traits that sprung to mind, I know there are more, and what each of the pairs of people have in common are differences between perceptions of themselves and differences between perceptions of others.
This article was partly inspired by the books The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
Thinking in terms of what both books teach I noticed the good and bad versions of traits in people and ran with it, writing up this article as I went.
Paul McKenna wrote that the secret of charisma is being totally okay with yourself, because by extension you’ll unconsciously give others permission to be okay with you too. If you’re not quite okay with yourself you put up a bit of an act at times (maybe even all the time) to get people to like you, and people pick up on that falseness.
To this day I don’t completely buy this as the way to be charismatic. You can, for example, be unhappy and totally okay with yourself and people won’t want to come near you. That’s what I reckon: I believe there are other factors. But writing this article did show me how much self-esteem affects whether our traits are socially positive or negative.
We really do unconsciously tell people how to feel about us.
Last Thought
Another thing that makes unconditional self-love so important is that ultimately you will never please everyone. Martin Luther King, Lincoln and Ghandi were all assassinated. Even modern day winners of the Nobel Peace Prize have their shares of people who hate them. The more you shine the more you unsettle the darkness around you. The strong, just by being strong, can upset and anger the weak.
This blog is on personal development and not on social skills or anything of that sort per se, which is why this article focuses on self-improvement rather than tips and tricks for getting people to like you. Ultimately I think the best policy really is to not try to get others to like you. The best policy is to love yourself unconditionally and then to grow for growth’s sake. People will like you more as you become more likable – but becoming more likable is not something you should be aiming for. It’s like a Catch-22.
With so much misconception and prejudices and biases and all sorts of interference that goes on with how people judge us, it’s a fight not worth fighting. As the saying goes: the relationship you have with yourself is more important than the relationships you have with others. And if you take care of the former the latter will take care of itself.
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[...] The Two Sides of a Personality People you meet sometimes fit into sort of Yin and Yang personality pairs. There are sometimes two people you meet who have one prominent trait in common, yet you feel differently about each of them based on this trait. What you may love in one person you may hate in another, and often without realising it. Here are some examples of this happening. Though I’ve made up the names, and occasionally switched the sexes, most of these pairs of people are either friends of mine or people who were on [...]
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