Month: August 2019

Note: Originally posted in the early days, moved as part of site cleanup.

Two-thirds of women, according to the personality distribution charts, use personal values, feelings and subjective criteria when making decisions. They are primarily motivated by appreciation. This should come as no surprise to anyone who is observing.

Combine this trait with outgoing enthusiasm, and you end up with someone who loves with her whole heart, observes intently, and makes social connections easily and almost effortlessly. As a result, they are excited about their new findings and share them with anyone who will listen. This natural ability to explore fails to maintain interest as tasks drift toward routine, administrative matters.

Because they care deeply, they are often stressed and easily overwhelmed. When stressed, their sensitivity bounces back as emotional outbursts that are often counter-productive at best. Especially when they view others attempting to help them as micro-managing. Checks and balances is a pill they’d rather not swallow.

Everyone has multiple projects left undone. We all feel the pressure of returning to them and finishing them. Because we don’t, we often feel a sense of shame. If allowed to simmer, that shame becomes toxic–to ourselves and others.

Consider this when writing the next conflict involving a female character.

While some men see systemic machinations, others look through all the inter-connections through a prism of emotion and mysticism. These men look for deeper meanings in complexity. There are no irrelevant actions, and every shift in sentiment is a clue to hidden meanings.

When they’ve discovered new insights, they won’t hold their tongue. They share, excitedly with anyone who will listen. In their enthusiasm, they create new connections and steer conversations toward things they’re interested in so naturally that others often fail to notice.

For all their enthusiasm, at the start, their ability to maintain drains away when tasks shift to routine administrative matters. They’d rather think high in the sky and philosophize where the project could go rather than take temporary steps to get them there.

Because expressing emotion is at their core, when under stress, criticism, or conflict it usually comes out backed by their enthusiasm. These emotional outbursts are often counter-productive. Checks and balances, which keeps everyone accountable, are hard pills to swallow.

Here, relationships are joyous encounters of mutual exploration and imagination. And while they take these relationships seriously with uninhibited and unshaken devotion, their fantasizing about future possibilities while ignoring the present often leads them to feel misunderstood. When troubles hit the relationship, as they always will, worrying over what went wrong plague them crushing their self-esteem as they sink into depression.

Their drive to express ideas about a mystical, all-encompassing energy in a physical world bound by space and time comes across as flightiness, erratic, and inconsistent with reality.

These make for wonderful characters in our stories. How have you used this personality type?