Tag Archives: Characteristics

What Makes You YOU? Contradictions & The Trouble With Boxes

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large–I contain multitudes.” –Walt Whitman

Hello friend,

I am a combination homebody and adventurer. When I am home–that is, in my house–I don’t want to go anywhere. I cannot stand running errands, don’t like going out to eat, and think that the time driving anywhere local is a waste. I don’t go to social events and wish I could work from home. Basically, my house is where I want to be. Unless, that is, I have the option to explore the world and see something new (especially if it is outdoors). Then I want to get on the plane, train, car, or boat and start the adventure! I love road trips cross-country, hiking trips into the mountains, and bopping around Europe on the train. I dream about Tanzania, Brazil, Iceland, and Belize; about the Ganges, the Amazon, the Danube, and the Nile; about the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas, and the Andes. I want to go! I want to be out there covering every corner of the planet. Everywhere except my town. Because when I am there, I want to be at home. I am one or the other.

Well, I suppose I am, more accurately, one AND the other. I am both ends of the spectrum, but not the middle. A walking contradiction.

And this isn’t the only characteristic on which I seem to compete with myself. The list goes on!

I try to spend just about every waking minute with my children. I want to take in every moment of their beautiful, little lives. I have plunged headfirst into the waters of fatherhood; I am fully immersed. I also love my wife and appreciate all of the richness and meaning that our marriage has brought to my life. I am all about this family thing! I can see how much bigger and better it has made me, despite the reservations I had before I dove in. I encourage it to anyone who asks. I am here with all of my heart and for the long haul! And yet, if you offered me a second, parallel life to run alongside this one–one in which I might double up on the pleasures and fulfillment that I presently derive from my roles as happy husband and father–I would instantly turn you down and go with a life of solitude. I would live alone, work alone, travel alone, everything. Before I met my wife, I expected a long life like that. I looked forward to it. I knew it was far to one side of the spectrum, and that was just fine with me. I now see that the lengths to which I go to be completely immersed in my kids’ lives is very far on the other side of that very same spectrum, and that is also just fine with me. I am fairly sure that there isn’t a middle ground for me in this deal. It is a peace that I have had to make with myself.

I think that most people that I come in contact with–outside of a work situation, where I am supposed to be “on” in my role–would say that I am either shy or unsocial, perhaps even rude in the distance I keep. It is true that I can be very quiet. I told you that I don’t often go to social events; most of that is because I cannot stand small-talk and other superficial interactions. And I definitely fall on the Introvert side of the Introvert/Extrovert spectrum, in that my energy grows when I am alone and tends to drain when I am in a group. That parallel dream life of solitude I mentioned above was no joke. I like my alone time. And yet (there it is again!), I absolutely LOVE talking to people. I want to dive deep into your experience of the world–your passions, your influences, your heartbreaks, your beliefs, and your dreams–and learn about all the nuances and contradictions that make you YOU. I might grill you for hours if you let me. But just you. Not you and a bunch of friends at once. And not if I see you out at the store or the gym or a party. I don’t want to chit-chat with you or trade witticisms about passersby. I want to connect, and for that I need to get below the surface. So, while it is true that I don’t really want to talk to you, it’s also true that I want to really talk to you.

As I uncover these contradictions within my personality, I find it remarkable how accepting I am of them. I shrug my shoulders and think, “Why not? I am a complex guy. OF COURSE I am capable of occupying both ends of the spectrum simultaneously!” And I move on. No big deal.

What concerns me about that realization of my easy acceptance of my complexities is the idea that I might be much less broad-minded and open to something bigger when it comes to other people’s personalities. I definitely see that characteristic displayed by the people I know: an unwillingness to let someone play outside the box we have placed them in.

We like to make cartoons of people. Drama Queen. Dumb Jock. Gentle Giant. Sweetheart. Loudmouth. I know those are oversimplified, but consider other ways you think of people or the way you might describe them to a friend who is asking. “He’s really smart and pretty nice once you get to know him.” “She’s sweet and loves kids.” “He’s gay and super-sarcastic.” “She’s serious and really into her career.” These are boxes and caricatures as much as the other labels are. When we think this way, we miss out on so much of the richness of the people around us. We don’t get a chance to appreciate all of their nuances and complexities. In shortchanging them, we shortchange ourselves.

If I considered you a friend and all you had to say (or think) about me is, “He is a homebody who doesn’t talk much but is always with his kids,” I would laugh at how little you knew about me. I understand that not everyone occupies the same extremes on so many spectrums as I do, but I have no doubt that they have their own extremes and are more complex than I usually make them out to be. I cheat them and me by simplifying them. That’s a disappointing realization. I plan to work to do better with that.

Our job here–yours and mine–at Journal of You is to ask and answer the questions that will reveal our Truths. If we do our job well, we come to know ourselves deeply, including all of the quirks, nuances, and contradictions that make us US. We come to understand that the idea that we might fit neatly into a box is foolish, almost nonsensical. How much of our broad, beautiful mosaic of a personality we reveal to others is up to us, but how much of it that they absorb is up to them. You may put your elaborate beauty on full display, only to have them grab a few snippets to squeeze you into one of their boxes so they know how to treat you. Let that be their issue, not yours. I hope that if you have come to Journal of You often enough, you know you are so much bigger than boxes. You are complex and contradictory and capable of occupying more than one position on any number of spectrums. And you are beautiful just as you are. I am going to get to work on seeing people that way. Not just myself, but everyone else too.

How about you? Which aspects of your personality seem to contradict one another but are still completely YOU? Open up your journal and explore all of your uniqueness. What characteristics seem to be in complete contradiction with each other? Is it more personality traits (e.g. you are super laid-back but have a crazy temper when it fires) or habits (e.g. you almost never cook, but when you do, it’s a gourmet feast)? How do you explain your contradictions? Do the people in your life know about your contradictions, or do you tend to only reveal one side to the public (e.g. people see the laid-back side but have no clue about the wild temper)? How big of an effort do you make to let the people around you know who you really are? What are some things that make you unique? Do you appreciate those unique traits? Do you put them out into the world as often as you put out your “normal” traits? If someone asked your family, “What is (s)he like?”, what would they say? What would your friends say? Your neighbors? Your co-workers? What would people who met you at a social gathering say? How different would all of those responses be? Which would be closest to the “real you”? Taken together, would they form a fairly accurate picture of you? What part of your personality do most people not know? Why don’t they? What do you wish people knew about you? Do you fit into a box? How would you describe your box, your “What is (s)he like?” answer? Are the boxes you make for the people in your life as big and generous as the one you make for yourself? Do you need to do away with boxes altogether? How can you better embrace your complexity? Leave me a reply and let me know: What makes you YOU?

Be unabashed,

William

P.S. If this topic resonated with you today, please share it. Let’s know ourselves and each other better so we can better care for each other.

P.P.S. For a deeper dive into who you really are, check out my book Journal of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth at your favorite online retailer.

What’s the Difference Between You and Everybody Else?

“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it’s hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.” –Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

Hello friend,

I remember when I was in my twenties. I was out in the world doing my thing. I was meeting tons of different people, figuring out how we all fit together. In all of those countless interactions, the thing that always seemed to bother me the most was when someone claimed to understand me, to know what I am all about. I was so sure that they weren’t even close to comprehending my essence and what made me tick. I just knew that I was completely different from everyone else and that no one could imagine my depths.

There are passages in my very first journal that allude to this feeling of being different and how that feeling isolated me.

“I am destined to be a loner, for no one can understand the things that drive me. I feel I am becoming more and more ‘abnormal’ as the days go by.” –July 7, 1994

“And even if I let some pretty close, I’ll always be alone, because no one can see what’s there. Some will claim to, but they won’t know the half of it.” –February 22, 1995

Ironically, at the same time that I was being regularly offended by people claiming to get me, I was arrogantly assuming that I could read everyone else like a book, as this passage reveals:

“I think the main reason for my silence and solitude goes back to the original issue: I feel I have these gifts or abilities in my mind that make me feel unlike the rest of society or members of my species. I truly believe, when I am honest with myself, that I am “different” from the rest, somehow cut from a different cloth than the rest of mankind. Although I am a believer in the thought that we are all truly different, I believe there are things inside of me that are beyond what lies inside the minds and souls of others. I feel I can truly understand every man and his thoughts and feelings, and then go beyond that to a very large place that no one else can know.” –July 25, 1997

Oh, the self-centered thoughts of a young adult! Those entries fascinate me—and embarrass me a little–all these years later. You may not be surprised to learn that my perspective has changed somewhat in the two decades that have passed since then.

These days, I am simply less sure. I don’t assume I know as much as I used to assume. I think I read people well, empathize with their experiences, and take them into my heart so I can feel their joy and pain. But I am quite sure there are hidden depths and dark corners inside them that I haven’t the tools to navigate. That certainty about my uncertainty has humbled me over the years.

I am not sure I have changed as much on the other side of the coin, though. I still tend to think that people don’t understand me very well. Maybe it is because exercises like last week’s 50 Words Challenge reveal that I have a number of complexities to my personality, a lot of conflicting traits that take time to expose.

Understanding the labyrinthine nature of my heart and mind has helped me in my humility, as I figure that most other people are more complex than I ever imagined. At least they might be, and that grain of doubt should keep me as free from certainty and judgment as possible. That uncertainty should keep me always in the moment, receiving them anew as our interactions evolve. It is a good lesson for me.

But how about it: AM I different??? Am I something extraordinary? Is there something totally unique about me? Obviously, the broad range of things that make up our personality and history makes each of us unique. But you know what I mean: Is there something that makes me so unlike most people?

I think that claiming characteristics outright seems a bit presumptuous—arrogant, even—so maybe it is wiser just to list a few potential candidates, ways that I usually feel isolated or unique (again, fully aware that each trait has an infinite number of variations and ways it intersects with our other traits).

One that comes to my mind is my hypersensitivity to oppression and unfairness. I have always been extremely averse to examples of historical, systematic oppression and mistreatment, such as that which our country and its citizens acted out on the American Indians and the African people ripped from their homelands and brought here as slaves (and, of course, everything that followed both of those things). I get the dual reaction of my blood boiling in outrage and my heart being torn to shreds when I think about such injustice. Even with modern examples, when I see a politician or pundit spew hatred or see a friend or family member support that hate-spewer, I become deeply offended by that. My sensitive heart gets broken often by such things.

I have always been that way about perceived unfairness. I think back on all the times I played with cheaters on the tennis court. I would get so appalled by the unfairness that I could hardly function. It is also why I get so worked up about the issue of privilege, such as when I see a highly privileged friend—born into wealth and whiteness and more—look down upon people who were born with fewer advantages and cannot fathom why the privileged should share either money or opportunities with the unprivileged. That ignorance enrages me. The people around me seem to be much less affected by such things. Or maybe they just hide it better.

Besides my sensitivity, the other characteristic that might separate me is my intense attachment to the concept of identifying and following one’s Bliss, dream-chasingk. I was bitten by this obsession before I ever wrote my first journal entry, when I decided to leave school and become an actor. I have sometimes remembered and sometimes forgotten to keep chasing my biggest dreams, but it is so obvious to me how that concept is such an enormous and identifying part of Who I Really Am. It is why you are reading these words in front of you: they are part of my dream.

I seem to be obsessed both with chasing my own dreams and helping others do the same. I see it as so important, even essential, to true happiness and fulfillment in this lifetime. I want it as much for you as I do for me.

The other day I was tooling around on Facebook and happened upon a meme that a friend had shared. It said, “It’s messing people up, this social pressure to ‘find your passion’ and ‘know what it is you want to do’. It’s perfectly fine to just live your moments fully, and marvel as many small and large passions, many small and large purposes enter and leave your life. For many people there is no realization, no bliss to follow, no discovery of your life’s purpose. This isn’t sad, it’s just the way things are. Stop trying to find the forest and just enjoy the trees.”

My first reaction was, “No! That meme was written and shared by people who just haven’t found their passion yet. They will change their tune when they find it.”

But the argument has stuck with me, even haunted me a bit. It made me think about the people in my life and how I am the only one who seems so obsessed by this concept of following my Bliss and living my purpose. I am the only one who thinks it is a great idea to set practical realities aside and just chase my dreams single-mindedly. I am the only one who keeps cheering others to do the same. I guess I think it should be common, should be normal to do that. It just isn’t.

There are probably a handful of other ways I feel myself sticking out from—or retreating from—the crowd. And like I said, I know we are all complex. We are the products of ever-changing intersections of different shades of countless distinct and indistinct qualities that blend with circumstances. But we are all humans. We share the same Earth and the same company. How different can we be?

Still, even though there are 7 billion of us inhabiting this third rock from the sun, I can’t help feeling that I am one of a kind.

How about you? What makes you different from all the rest? Open up your journal and think about the times you have felt unique, special, or misunderstood. Which of your characteristics seem to bring about these moments of feeling extraordinary? Are they qualities that you deem positive, negative, or somewhere in between? Do they seem to reveal themselves more now than in previous eras of your life, or were they more prominent before? What makes your version of that quality so unique? Have you had different characteristics that took turns setting you apart along your journey, or has it been just one or two core traits that have sustained? Do you appreciate your unique traits, or do you wish for others? Would you rather blend in more? Generally speaking, do you feel pretty well understood by the people in your life? Do you wish to be more understood? How much work would that take on your end? More than you want to do? Is it nice to have a little something just for yourself? How clearly and deeply do you think you understand the people in your life? Better than they understand you? What makes you think so? Would you guess that most people feel ordinary or extraordinary? If it is the latter, how many are willing to claim it out loud and celebrate their uniqueness? Should we do better at encouraging that? Do you celebrate your unique traits? Leave me a reply and let me know: What’s the difference between you and everybody else?

Shine on,

William

P.S. If today’s letter made you look differently at yourself, please pass it on. Tell your loved ones that you appreciate their unique magic. Blessed be.

The 50 Words That Describe You Best

“The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote: Stink, Stank, Stunk!” –Dr. Seuss

Hello friend,

I told you recently that the way I want to feel this year is BRAVE. After saying goodbye to my trusty old job at the end of the year, I knew that, in order for this year to turn out alright, it would have to be defined by my courage. So far, I would say it has been.

There are many passages in my journal that show me propping myself up, reminding me of both what is at stake and how I have stepped up before. Those journaling sessions have been invaluable, as I have used them to propel myself toward finishing a book and submitting it for lots of potential rejection. I have risen to the challenge. I have been brave.

I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel to describe myself as brave! That adjective is hard won, and I am savoring it now. I have realized something else, though, in these days of summoning my courage: I wouldn’t need to be brave if I wasn’t so darn scared!

That’s the thing about courage: it doesn’t show up unless you are afraid.

So, while I am still proud of myself for being brave lately, I would be lying if I said I haven’t spent even more time racked in fear. Fear of going broke. Fear of failing as a writer. Fear of a future in a soul-crushing job. Fear of not being enough. Sure, I have stepped up and worked through it most days, but it has felt crippling anyway.

It was nice to use “brave” to describe what I am all about, but if I am being honest, the adjective “afraid” fits me at least as well. That seems weird, right? I have been wrestling with this seeming paradox this week, trying to understand who I really am. Am I brave, or am I afraid? If one of those words defines me, does it mean the other one shouldn’t? Am I a walking contradiction?

I decided that the best way to work this out is to come up with a bigger list of adjectives to describe who I am. That way I would know if I am being pulled apart on other issues, too (and if I am a good candidate for the loony bin!).

The list, I decided, should be long enough so I am not just a cartoon figure, but not so long as to cover every single thought or emotion I have ever experienced, making me a mere blur of every adjective in the English language. I went with 50.

So, without further ado, this is how I would describe myself, in no particular order:

Brave
Afraid
Curious
Sentimental
Self-confident
Impatient
Sincere
Optimistic
Driven
Altruistic
Mindful
Insecure
Open-minded
Spiritual
Competitive
Pacifistic
Principled
Kind
Stubborn
Unsocial
Grounded
Progressive
Opinionated
Passionate
Compassionate
Silly
Independent
Spoiled
Intuitive
Positive
Non-confrontational
Generous
Grateful
Introverted
Selfish
Happy
Playful
Unforgiving
Wise
Adventurous
Inclusive
Cerebral
Demanding
Nostalgic
Sensitive
Authentic
Caring
Self-isolating
Wonder-filled
Serene

Okay, that is enough! There are plenty more I can think of to cover all of my moods and my worldview, but this is good. It is a fairly clear picture, at least from my eyes. I know we don’t always see ourselves the way others see us, but I will not worry about the others for now. It is challenge enough to clarify my own view.

In looking at it now, I can see that the brave-afraid duo is not the only seeming contradiction in my personality description. I am definitely both selfish and altruistic. I am both cerebral and intuitive, passionate and serene, open-minded and opinionated. And I am certainly, depending on the moment, very often self-confident and very often insecure.

In those combinations, I can see how foolish we are when we try to put others in a box based on one thing we know about them. After all, if I am any indication, the opposite characteristic might be just as true for that person we have tried to trap in the box. So, making them into a cartoon character so that they can quickly fit into a box in my mind simply doesn’t tell the truth and shortchanges both of us.

Much like the contradicting combinations, there are some of these qualities that have both positive and negative aspects, and I can see myself covering the full spectrum. Sensitivity is one. It can be wonderful when appreciating art and being compassionate toward my fellow human beings, but it can also make everything sting more than it should and make me resistant to hearing criticism of all sorts. I can see this range of positive and negative outcomes with my fierce independence, too. As with the combinations, this broad-spectrum view reminds me to be more open-minded when observing someone else’s personality.

That, I can see now, points to the difficulty in gleaning any meaningful conclusions from the list taken all by itself. If I just looked at this list of 50 adjectives and didn’t know who it represented, I couldn’t be sure if I liked this person or not, precisely because each characteristic can show itself in a number of different ways. Sure, some characteristics are almost certainly more favorable than others—kind is better than unforgiving, right?—so we can get hints from the list. But, without the context of the actual person, it is a challenge.

So, though I wouldn’t necessarily use this process as the answer to finding your soul-mate, I found it immensely helpful for examining myself (and that is exactly what our journaling is all about). I learned a lot from those very first words I wrote in my notebook after I said, “GO!” And then later I learned a lot from the end of the process, when I had written around 80 words and had to narrow it down to 50. That is when I started digging harder: “Who am I REALLY?” My answers were revealing, more so than I would have guessed before I started the list.

In the end, I think my biggest takeaway is that I am complex, that I don’t fit very well in any neat box, not even one of my own making. That is an important lesson for me, not just for my own self-awareness, but in how it affects the way I need to walk the world. I have been journaling every day for 20 years, so I know myself extremely well and know that I have well-defined views and attitudes on just about everything. If I am still revealing contradictions and wildly divergent personality traits about myself–and if I am feeling more certain than ever that I don’t belong in a box–then I ought not be so quick to put anyone else in a box, either.

This process, then, has been a necessary reminder to make better use of some of the adjectives I listed in my 50: open-minded, curious, kind, compassionate, altruistic, generous, caring, and inclusive. Yes, I think I will work on those. If I walked out of the world tomorrow and could leave the people in my life with any words to describe me, I would be satisfied with those.

How about you? Which words describe you best? Open up your journal and your vocabulary. What are the very first words that come to mind about you? What is it about those characteristics that make them so prominent in your description? Are they things that you have always thought about yourself? Are they things that other people usually mention about you? How close are they to the core of you? Which of your words are ones that maybe only you think about yourself, words that would surprise other people to read? How much of your personality do most people see? How much of that is because you intentionally protect certain sides of yourself? If I gave a list of 200 words—including the 50 you wrote about yourself—to your three closest loved ones and asked them to pick out your 50, how many would they guess correctly? What if I asked your co-workers? Do you feel like you are honest and authentic about who you really are in most situations—e.g. at work, with friends, with acquaintances, with family, etc.—or do you mostly wear a bland mask until you are with your closest loved ones? How much has your list changed in the last 10 or 20 years? How different, if at all, will it look 20 years from now? How many contradictions are on your list, like my self-confident/insecure combination? Are you more or less complicated than most people, or about the same? How much do you cling to the boxes you put people in? Did this exercise change the way you think about that? Do you like who you are and what is on your list? Which words do you hope to get rid of? Which are your favorite characteristics? Which ones are not on there now but hopefully will be soon? Can you add a new one today? Leave me a reply and let me know: Which words describe you best?

Live free,

William

P.S. If today’s challenge made you look at yourself differently, please pass it on. Let’s all be our beautiful selves!

Who Rubs You The Wrong Way?

Hello friend,

Passive-aggressive. Bossy. Non-stop talker. Pessimistic. Needy. Smarmy. Stingy. Vulgar. Nosy. Selfish. Complainer. Worrier. Arrogant. Lazy. Hyper. Greedy. Unintelligent. Rude. Temperamental. Liar. Bragger. Competitive. Unreliable.

The list could go on and on, I suppose. I am talking about the qualities or personality traits that are the most unattractive in people. I might even go so far as to say repulsive. There are those individuals in your corner of the world—relatives, co-workers, acquaintances, store clerks, salespeople, neighbors, teammates, classmates—whom you really, REALLY want to avoid. You do your best to be courteous and keep your interactions brief, but you know deep down that if the two of you were locked in a room or on a long car ride, one of you just might not make it out alive. Any bells ringing yet?

I am a pretty unsocial guy, so I avoid most conversations outside of my home and my workplace. Thankfully, at least for the sake of this discussion, my job provides more than enough characters and situations to expose these not-so-lovely traits. I teach tennis, mostly to adults. I work with some people privately, some in groups, and I am involved in their competitions with others, often needing to speak with both sides simultaneously after a tough match. All of these situations provide ample opportunity for me get to know various sides of people’s personalities: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And believe me, it gets ugly! If you have a mental picture of someone for each of the different characteristics I listed at the top, I get to meet all of them at work tomorrow. Lucky me!!

So, of all these special folks, who rubs me the most wrong? Who can get under my skin just walking in the door? That’s easy: ARROGANT. Definitely arrogant. I am no fan of the complainer or the lazy, sure, but arrogance brings out something different in me. It makes my blood boil a bit. I can think of a player on one of my teams who makes me work REALLY HARD to be pleasant to her for 90 minutes. Her teammates can barely stand her, and after every match she plays—even if there is no big blow-up during the match—her opponent is ready to tear her head off. The woman oozes arrogance. It drips off of her.

That is the interesting thing about arrogance compared to most of the other unappealing traits: you can see it. It is embedded in every mannerism. Nonverbals never screamed so loud before. They say, in no uncertain terms, “You are beneath me. I am better than you. I dismiss you!” Other personality traits often require some lengthy and intimate experiences with a person to come out. Arrogance announces itself at the outset. It comes right out of the pores. I picture the Billy Zane character in “Titanic”. That guy had arrogant down. Last night I was watching “Sofia the First”, a Disney cartoon, with my five-year-old, and she told me she didn’t like Princess Amber “because she thinks she is better than everyone else.” She got to learn a new vocabulary word: arrogant. It turns out that it even oozes from cartoon characters!

What I want to know more than anything is this: what does it say about me that arrogance is the one that pushes my buttons most? What does it reveal? I believe that our “enemies” are really our greatest teachers, and that what annoys or angers us in others often points to an issue we need to resolve in ourselves. So, why me and arrogance?

I have a couple different theories on my issue with arrogance and its unhealthy power to make my blood boil. First, there was a time in my life—high school—when people certainly believed I was arrogant (“stuck-up” is the high school word for arrogant, or at least it was at my school). And, while most of what anyone thinks or finds important in high school is utter nonsense—oh, how insecure we are at that age!—through the lens of 20-plus years later, I don’t know that it was all wrong about me. While I think I have eradicated most of that in all this time and found some humility to replace it, I still have to catch myself in moments when I find my intellectual snobbery creeping in. So, perhaps what boils my blood is seeing in the arrogant person the worst part of myself. It’s an ugly reflection.

My other theory on my strong reaction to arrogance centers around a shot at my ego. Like most people, I like to think of myself in positive terms. I try to embrace the good things about me and am probably in denial about the bad stuff. In any case, I have a pretty strong self-esteem. As I mentioned above, everything about the arrogant person screams, “You are beneath me.” My ego simply does not want to hear that. It feels like an assault on me every time I encounter arrogance. My defense mechanisms go up and I feel the urge to cut that person down to size just so they are clear that I am NOT beneath them. My ego really wants to teach them that lesson. (I am honestly just uncovering this about myself as I write this to you, and it is a pretty tough realization. What a waste of my energy! I need to get over it. Now.)

So, how about you? What’s your trigger? Open up your journal and your mind; it is time to write it out. Which personality trait gets deepest under your skin? Think about all the people you know? Is it your passive-aggressive sister-in-law, your unreliable co-worker, or your nosy neighbor? There are many unattractive traits, but which one really pushes your buttons. Then, what do you think that says about you? Is there some of that repulsive trait in you—like my arrogance–that you feel ashamed of? Are you able to see these people as teachers, or is it just too hard to get past the repulsion or anger? Maybe writing it out in your journal can build that bridge for you. Give it a shot, and then leave me a reply. I want to know: who rubs you the wrong way?

The answer is within,

William

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