There is a well-known saying that character determines destiny. But what is this character? Some people have a difficult one, others an easy-going one. It can also be stubborn, or soft, or the kind that everyone acknowledges with involuntary admiration: now that is character! And it is generally held to be almost impossible to change.
But all that is just lyricism. Can you fit some “physics” to character as well? About a year ago I discovered a psychological theory that laid this physics out on the shelves so beautifully that it took my breath away. That is the sort of character I have: I love finding the answers, the system, the way something works, the structure... And, oddly enough, this quirk of mine is described by that very theory too. It turned out that the theory handed me a kind of user's manual for myself. It is like buying a new and complicated appliance: at first you master it by trial and error, however it goes, but sooner or later you accept that you cannot know everything and you dig out the manual. And in there... you can do it this way as well, and that way, and this thing here is not a glitch after all — look what you can use it for! It is the same with our character. It turns out that it, too, can be laid out on the shelves, written up in a manual and... you can even describe how each person will behave under stress. Character can be “taken apart” into its components, its regularities can be identified and... so can the very way character shapes our appearance and even our build. With a manual like that you can find the controls, tighten the screws, upgrade the bulges and generally use the functions we were never quite aware of before. And that is devilishly tempting! There is, by the way, a view that character imposes its own limits. That view once even impressed me. Knowing the rough edges of your character, you can then step beyond those limits... But... Honestly, now that I know what my character is capable of, I would not trade it for anything in the world, because after months of playing at being an extravert, at the passive position and all the rest of what my basic build once decided in childhood was useless, I have not only learned to accept and value all those add-ons and to respect them as the basic features of other people — I have fallen in love with my own build.
Knowing the basic builds, the capacities and the potentials of different characters, you can say in advance not only which characters will hit it off, but how.
And that is still not all of it. You know the phrase “their characters just did not match”? Well, knowing the basic builds, the capacities and the potentials of different characters, you can say in advance not only which characters will hit it off, but how. And personally, those possibilities blow my mind. For example, once and only once in my life I was part of a dream team. Our extravert boss put together a hugely driven team of cholerics, balanced them out with a couple of phlegmatics and melancholics, and the department's figures were the best in the company. Another example: an extravert father simply could not understand why his daughter did not care about his business and why she could not see the wood for the trees. In the end the daughter found the job that was perfect for her character — but not with her father. And yet that conflict could have been avoided. And finally, the best part of all: the search for “your person”. It has long been known that a couple has to consist of an introvert and an extravert, otherwise the two have nothing to give each other. But if there is a formula for character, then a formula for relationships is easy to derive: which characters are most likely to hit it off, what those relationships will be like, how smoothly they will develop and what the two can give each other and how they can help. Of course, a formula for relationships is not a formula for love, and character, like the engine of a sports car, is easily ruined by dirty fuel such as complexes, fears, scripts, beliefs and the like — but cleaning the fuel is each person's own responsibility, not their partner's. Sometimes I dream of our character — which within this approach is called the personality type — being worked out by teachers at school. It would probably make choosing a profession, and choosing a partner, a great deal easier. Although even here my character came to my rescue, pointing out quite reasonably: first work yourself out, and only then work out what sort of partner you need. I picked mine “by scent”, before I knew anything about this approach, but after running my husband and me through this theory I realised that there could not have been a better option. Once we have worked ourselves out, we really do choose what is best for us. Only one small thing remains: to work yourself out. Luckily, the manual exists!
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