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Personality Matrix

(audience clapping) Alright, welcome to day 10, the personality matrix. I am so excited to teach you guys about the personality matrix, 'cause it's gonna take us three days. Because we are going to dive into how others see you. We're also gonna talk about the secrets of personality, what really makes someone who they are, and understanding how people work. So always we start with a warm up just to get our juices flowing and get our first learning in for the day. And today I'm asking the question, what TV, movie, or book character is most similar to you? And by similar I mean pick three shared traits or goals. And notice I didn't say what character do you aspire to be. I want you to think about what character best embodies you. So at home I want you to write about that character in your book and list the three traits in your workbook. And I know a couple of people in the audience have been thinking about their answers. Lee, do you have a little answer on who you think is most similar to...

you and why? Yes I do. I think I am very similar to Bridget Jones from Bridget Jones' Diary. Yes, yes. I read her book, read the book first and then watched the movie, and both times I was like, this is me. She is exactly how I am. What about her really resonate with you? Is it a value or a characteristic, or? Her personality. A lot of it, she's very silly, she's very clumsy, there's a lot of awkwardness about her but yet she's still- Lovable and endearing. Interesting, exactly. Yeah, I love it. Also she is awkward but she also has these moments of bravery that she'll do something out of her character to do. So that's also similar. So with this exercise, I just learned a lot about you, right, so this is a great conversation starter. First of all, I do not think you're awkward or clumsy. But I love that you say that she has these moments of bravery where she sort of steps up and tries something out of her comfort zone and I love that, I wanna try to get you to do more of those moments you've already been stepping up so I love it. Micheal, you maybe had a character in mind. Yeah it's a bit corny but Micheal Knight from the original Knight Rider. (laughing) And what about him resonates with you? I always try to help people even when it gets me in trouble sometimes. (laughing) yeah. I try to be brave, which is the same he does. And he's just so sociable which is something I look up to and which I also try to be. Yeah, I love that. And there's no such thing as corny there's no such thing as cheesy, I love it. So the reason why I start with this warmup today is because this is a value solicitation exercise. What I mean by that is if I ask you what's your personality, what are your traits and characteristics, you look at me and you're like what? I don't even know where to begin I don't know how to answer that. But if I ask you to pick someone who's similar to you a character that you relate to, it's a hard question but we can answer it. We can think of who do we resonate with? Who do we relate to, and it helps us start to explore who we are and our own personalities. And that's exactly what we're gonna be talking about today so just getting that creative juices flowing to figure out who you are, and what makes you tick. So we are in bonding. So we have learned our first impression, through intention, triggering dopamine, the power of a captivating story, and confidence. We learned how to make emotional deposits, how to exchange with someone with harnessing our curiosity being, the art of listening, being non verbally tuned and the art of surprise. We also learned how to dig a little bit deeper, how to frack into people's emotional wells with vulnerability and how boong, and how you have to be the highlight. And today we're talking about bonding which is all about personality. So one of the things, the science behind personality is something that we are fighting. We are fighting something that our brain does, called lensing. Now typically in this course, I'm talking about how to use our brain, right, I'm highlighting parts of the brain that we don't think about. This is one of the few areas in the entire course that I'm talking to you about something that our brain does that doesn't always serve us. It's a leftover from the evolutionary caveman days and today's society it doesn't always help us, and it's called lensing. So Daniel Levin and Daniel Simon, from Cornell University coined this term. And let me explain the experiment, before I explain the theory. So here's what they did. They wanted to see if our brain notice everything that's around us. So they hired actors who were dressed like construction workers and they had them go onto campus, onto Cornell, and ask students for directions. Now one construction worker would find a student and he would say hey, do you know where brown hall is? And the student would say, uh, yeah, I think it's down there take the left. While they were talking, two other construction workers carrying a door walked between them, so they momentarily couldn't see each other. And two of the construction workers switched places. So what happened was after the door left, the student was left talking with a totally different person who carried on the conversation as if nothing had happened. Does that make sense? So the construction workers come and the student's like ah I think it's over there and they turn back and it's a completely different person. But, on average when they ran this, only seven out of 15 people noticed it was a completely different person. Imagine what this would be like, right? Someone comes up to you, you look right at them, you turn away for a second and you turn back, do you think that you would notice it was a different person? Most of us, 100% of us in fact, say we would indeed notice that that person was different. But what happens in actuality is we don't. It's 'cause our brain does something called lensing. We put people into categories like stranger, or construction worker. And by the way they did this with more and more brains and actors. First they had two with men. And then they had a white man and a black man. People still did not notice. Then they changed it from a man to a woman and people still did not notice. In fact on my website, at scienceofpeople.com/pq, I have a video of this experiment in action where you can actually see people do not notice that a completely different person, even man to woman, they don't notice that it's a different person. Yeah so our brain does this because there's so many things our brain has to do. It has to keep track of the environment, has to see if we're safe, has to think about what we have to do next, what we had for breakfast, that we actually take these mental snapshots. But we don't truly see the person who's in front of us. And this happens all the time. We're with people and we think that we're seeing them. But actually what we engage in is wishful seeing. So we learned about wishful hearing, how we hear what we wanna hear. We also engage in a wishful seeing. We don't truly see the person who's in front of us, so today is all about stopping lensing and making sure we are genuinely seeing the person who's in front of us. That we're not assuming what we see, that we tap into their real emotional needs. MIT Media Lab has found conclusively we also don't know how we come across. So not only do we have trouble seeing who someone really is, we also don't know how people see us. So I have an exercise that I want us to do to help us figure this out. In your workbook, I have a chart for you and in this chart, I've split it up into three different columns. I have the real column, this is who you really are. Then I have the projected column, this is what you project out into the world. Could be the same, could be different. And then I have how you think you are perceived. So how you think people perceive you. Now the goal of this course is to make these congruent. Is to make them all the same so that you are warm, really, you project warmth and you're perceived as warm. The problem is sometimes it's not always the case. What we actually are is different than what we project and it's different than what's actually perceived. So I wanna start with our strengths. What we feel is valuable about us. Now, in your column, and at home, I want you to fill out the entire column, here we're only gonna do one, I want you to fill out one of your strengths, something that you feel really proud of. Then I want you to figure out, think about, do you project that strength? Do you think that other people see it? And in the last column I want you to see is that perceived correctly? Here's an example, so I did this with a student recently and she said one of my strength is I'm a problem solver. I love to solve really complex problems at work. Projected she says by I think I project humility. In the workplace when someone comes up with a problem I actually am not the first person to jump in and say I wanna solve that. I might solve it privately but I'm afraid to talk about my solutions. So what she comes across as is meek. They don't see her problem solving ability. So this is where it's not congruent. So I want you to turn to your partner I want you to explore we're gonna have two people come up here. Your real strength, your projected strength and your perceived strength, at home I want you to do three of them. So three of your strengths in all three columns and I want you to highlight, circle or highlight where they're different. 'cause that's what we're gonna be focusing on in this course so I'm going to have, who hasn't been up. Joshua and Ally you guys haven't been up yet today? Oh Ally oh, are you okay for this one? Sure. I know it's hard, we're just gonna do one though, and I'm gonna help. Sorry, sorry. Come up on stage, turn to your partners and start. So if you wanna stand a little bit further back, right here, right here perfect. Okay, so, I'm gonna give you a second to think about it is that alright, and I'm gonna put you on the spot first. Alright so Joshua right is a strength that you think that you have? I think I'm able to either, I think just connect with people or just caring. Connect okay. Do you think that you project that desire to connect? I'm not 100% sure but I think I do yeah. You think you do. Do people perceive that connection? What do you think they perceive when they first meet you. They perceive me as just being, just like genuine, just wanting to listen to them. Okay so desiring the ability to connect, I love it, so for you that is congruent. Okay. Okay, 'cause you want them to be all the same, it's exactly what you want. Give me one other strength, you're thinking about yours. Oh I was listening. You think about yours. He is a great listener. You are a great listener. That is congruent. That is absolutely. So I want you to think about yours, I'm gonna have you do one more. So what's another strength that you have? 'cause that was so perfect I wanna dig deeper. Another one. I guess I love giving advice and I think I give really good advice when people need it. Okay, alright so you're a supporter, I love it. Do you think that you project that to people? Oh definitely yeah, I make sure if they need it and if they want it I give it to them. Love it. Yeah. And how do they perceive that? When someone in your life needs support, do they come to you? Yeah, yeah. I think, I absolutely agree that they do. So I want you to even heighten that up. Okay. You have congruence across them, that means that you show your real safe, is who you project and what you're perceived as, so I want you to encourage your friends when they come and they ask you for support, when they come and they wanna connect. Tell them I'm so happy that you connected with me. Right, use the pigmalian effect and be like, I love doing this with you, this is one of my favorite parts about connecting. Okay. Alright thank you. Alright Ally. Okay. So what's one of your strengths? I'm a great listener. Ah, I agree with you. So you're a great listener, how do you project that? Oh, now see, this is where I'm a little lost because I think I'm perceived as a pleaser. Okay, so let's skip, let's skip that column. So you think that you're perceived, your strength is a good listener, people perceive you as just pleasing. Yes. But actually all you wanna do is listen. Yeah. So what happens in the projection stage that makes that perception a little bit different? What makes them perceive that as people pleasing as opposed to a great listener, what happens in there? I don't know the right answer so we're gonna talk about this together. Yeah I don't know. So when you're people pleasing with someone and they're listening, is it, what happens there. Are you saying yes, are you? I think I'm so anxious to help. Okay, that's projected. Okay. So what's projected is anxiety to help. Ah. And that comes across as being a people pleaser. So what I want you to think about is how you can turn that desire to just listen into not necessarily saying yes all the time, not necessarily anxiety, but showing them that you are truly there for them. Okay. And i think you can do that actually with the art of listening. Okay. So the rock technique, that is not a people pleasing technique, that is an art of listening technique. Okay. I want you to come back to me and I want you to tell me how that goes. I definitely embrace when you're talking about leaning into that silence. I love it yeah. Because that would give a little bit of distance and allowing to just listen-- Without the anxiety. Yeah. The anxiety. So silence, I love it, thank you for sharing. I will follow on silence with you next year. Yeah I love it, thank you guys, alright. Alright. So. That was really cool. I just learned something about Ally that I didn't know that I loved. Can I share, Ally would you mind sharing the three different columns, would you mind, what we just talked about? Sure. That was really powerful. The real strength is that I'm a good listener. The projected is my anxiety to help. And so I think I'm perceived as a people pleaser. And so that are of the pause, of having a little bit more silence, of using the rock technique, by saying I validate you. The rock technique is not a people pleasing technique, that is a listening technique. And that can turn that skill of being a listener, take out the anxiety and show, no I'm just here for you. I love it. Does anyone have any interesting learnings? Yeah. In my case, which is really weird for how old I am. So I found out that I've been perceived very analytical. And apparently I project it as well, otherwise they wouldn't perceive it, right? Yeah. And then that's when I actually realize that it is my real strength as well, which is backwards for me. Yeah I love it so what made you discover that? I realized getting a comment from a guy who crunches number on sheets all day says that you're more analytical than I am. I thought-- Okay that's a reality check. I love it. Okay so. We did strengths and this is the hard part. Now we're gonna talk about limits. So this is a little bit vulnerable, right? Talking about our weaknesses, thinking about how are we, this is what we project for our weaknesses and how they're perceived. We often don't project our weaknesses. In fact we try usually to cover them up. So for me, I tend to be pretty guarded. Like I'm a very private person I keep things close to my heart, a couple things I protect really carefully, the problem is I think I project this as being quite secretive. And I think that this comes off as being standoffish. And that people perceive me as being like, step back. And I try really hard to not do that, but because I'm pretty guarded about things 'cause I'm afraid of being judged, which we talked about in the last segment I like to keep that distance. So I want you to journal about this one on your own because it's pretty vulnerable to talk about. If someone has a weakness that they're willing to talk about maybe how they're perceived or something that they've worked through, at home I want you to think about what are three different limits, I like limits better than weaknesses 'cause a weakness implies you can't change it. A limit is something that we can leverage, that we can break through, that we can change. What are three limits that you have. What are they really? How do you project them or try to cover them up, and then how are they perceived. I want you to try to work on that exercise on your own. The reason we do this is because it brings us into skill number 15, which is the personality matrix. It's one of the most important skills, it's exactly halfway mark. The personality matrix, learn how to leverage, learn how to, learn how to use the personality matrix to leverage strengths and limits. So this is tapping into personality science. To make sure that we are seeing people for who they are and that we're taking advantage of their best selves as well as our own best self. This is all about the matrix. So as we learned, every human has five parts. At our core we have our intelligence, our talent. Then we also have our values, our motivation. What gets us going? And the next layer we have our love languages or our appreciation languages. This is how we show our talents and our values. How we feel appreciated and loved for our talents and values. And on the very outer ring we have the five aspects of our personality which we're about to learn. Now, I like to call this, unraveling this matrix, the onion mindset, because like an onion, this is why I asked to have some onions on set today. Like an onion, I think they were like, you want a what on set? You want a basket of onions? Okay Vanessa we'll do it. So the reason for this, and whenever I see an onion I think about it, is that every human has many many layers. But as we peel back those layers, every single interaction is an opportunity to discover who they are. And that every person brings us flavor, unique perspectives and learning. That as we unwrap each layer as we get deeper and deeper, there's a wonderfulness that comes out. I don't know if you love onions, but I love onions, there's a great complexity and flavor that we discover as we peel back those layers. So I'm gonna be keeping them on set so we can remember that we're just peeling back those layers and getting deeper and deeper. So, let's talk about the five factor model. So the five factor model is a very, oh yeah go ahead. Sorry I'm kind of a little backtracking. Sure of course. You were talking about strengths and limits and so, my question is what happens if a strength is also your weakness, for example, in my case I'm extremely analytical and critical in terms of improving stuff around me and because of that I'm really good at my job but I suck in personal relationships, because I have to work really hard. Sure. So that is your intelligence, right. Part of your intelligence is being analytical and logical, do you know, is that, do you confirm that, yes that is your intelligence, which I love. But interpersonal skills, the interpersonal intelligence doesn't always work. So the way to optimize that is actually by learning how to read personality because you are so analytical, today I'm giving you a formula to use for people. So I actually want you to take that analytical part of your brain and apply it to people, which is not, people don't usually think that they're together but I actually wanna show that they're actually together. I want you to use that analytical part, yeah, I love it. In fact I'm interpersonal intelligence, I'm not analytical, so the two of us should just work together. (laughing) right, I like it, we'll conquer the world, okay. So, thank you for asking that clarification we're gonna talk a lot more about strengths and limits as well in the next few days, especially in segment 13, when we're talking about necessarily your fears, so we're gonna really dive deep into that. So the five factor model is a way that researchers have found to reliably analyze personality. So this has taken decades of research, it is now confirmed as one of the best ways to analyze personality and it's called the five factor model another word for it is the big five. Our big five personality traits. And here are the five, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and neuroticism. So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna explore our own personalities because tomorrow we're gonna talk about other people's personalities, yeah. So let me give you a couple nerdy science a little bit of nerdy science for a little bit for my geeks. The five factor model has a coefficient alpha statistic of .90, which is crazy reliable. Like if I had to translate that, I mean, it is so rare to get science that is that reliable and that is because they have honed this research over decades and they can repeat it, make it valid across career types, preference and performance, meaning, they can look at your career type, your performance and your preferences and accurately guess your personality types. That's how reliable personality types are. It also has global applicability. Global applicability the big five works across cultures works across genders, works across races, works across religious, cultural and linguistic barriers. It doesn't matter what language you're speaking or what country you're in, the five personality traits are the same. Let me explain where this comes from. A lot of people ask me is personality nature or nurture, right, like where does personality come from? So research estimates that 35 to 50% of our personality is from DNA. And let me show you a really cool way, or at least cool in my nerdy mind, when I read the study I was like mind blown, amazing. Because they found they can actually measure different parts of the brain and guess your personality type that means if we had someone's brain, from even decades ago, we could measure different areas and predict how neurotic they were. How extroverted they were, how agreeable they were. So just a couple of examples, I do not, please do not write this down, this is like crazy, but people who are highly extroverted tend to have more activity in the prefrontal cortex. People who are conscientiousness have a higher volume in their frontal gyrus so, volume and activity actually changes based on our personality types so just looking at someone's brain we can predict what kind of personalities they have. Let's talk about the nurture side. So twin studies suggest that both genetics and environmental forcer influence all five factors. And they did this at the university of Edinburgh they analyzed 800 sets of twins, some who had been raised together, some who had been raised apart. And they found that there's about 50% of our DNA that's environment, uh, 50% of our personality that's environmental, that's changed by our parents, where we grew up, our friends, how wealthy or affluent we are, that all affects our personality types. Now, before we get into the five, the big five. I wanna talk about categories and how they are not stereotypes. Categories in fact do the opposite. By looking at people's individual personality traits, we don't put them into categories, because we stop doing wishful seeing. We see them for who they actually are, by saying wow, this person requires this. The categories help us understand ourselves they help us respect other people's boundaries, like if we meet someone who's more of an introvert, I'm able to say, you know what, okay. I wanna respect their boundaries I wanna communicate on their level. And it helps us encourage authenticity because we're getting down to what we really are. We're not sitting in the iceberg illusions, where the very top of the iceberg, we're going below the surface. We're taking in all of their iceberg and not just the top one tenth. On these personality traits there's a spectrum. So for each personality trait you're going to fall somewhere on the spectrum you can either fall low, high, or neutral, which means you have kind of a balance of both. So what I'm gonna do throughout this is I'm gonna explain a personality type and as I'm talking I'm sure you're gonna think, ah that sounds like me, or that is not me. And what I want you to do is I'm gonna ask you if anyone think that they're high on this personality type, high is thumbs up. If you're not sure or you think that you're neutral you can give me just a fist, and if you think you're low on the personality trait you can give me a thumbs down. The only thing I don't like about this is that thumbs down or thumbs up, there is no good or bad okay. There is no right or wrong on the personality trait but it's the easiest way that I can see, kinda where we fall. At home you are lucky, you get to fill out, in your workbook a complete chart of your personality traits now we're gonna start with guessing, just what feels right to us. At the end of today I'm gonna have you confirm your personality with an official test. It's called the 44 factor test, you're gonna take it, and you're gonna know exactly how right or wrong you were on your guesses, which is also kind of a fun activity to see how quel you know yourself. You guys ready? Alright. Extraversion is the first one. So people who are high in extraversion they tend do be outgoing, assertive, sociable and talkative, they always seek out the company of people they love being around people. And what they appreciate most is enthusiasm. They tend to be very optimistic and they love to celebrate to have that camaraderie with people. People who are lower in extraversion tend to be more shy, more reserved, they are private, they hold things close, they are more inhibited. What they seek what they love is space and quiet. What they appreciate is solitude. So who feels like they're high on the sky, who feels like they're low, I see some lows. Anyone not sure or feel like they fall in the middle. Alright at home I want you to write down your answers in your chart, so who's high again?& so tell me about that, Arianna, yeah. Oh yeah mic, I'm sorry. So I switch between high and low and I haven't been able to figure out any pattern whatsoever So it could be situational but we're not sure of the pattern. Yeah. What are the area, when do you tend to be high extrovert? I'm not sure. Because sometimes, like there are certain events, like parties for example where, if I'm high extraversion I have a blast, and if I'm low extraversion I hate it and it's like a survive place. Oh, okay. So we're gonna talk about that in optimizing tomorrow. So I want you to think about that 'cause I wanna dive into that of why certain times it works for you and sometimes it doesn't work and it flips you. How about some low, I had some low hands, so tell me about what that was. Terry, did you have low? Tell me about that. That's me I mean everything listed there. Shy, reserved, private, inhibited, space, quiet and solitude this is you. Yeah, totally. 100% you. Yeah. Alright so at home I want you to fill out your chart. What we're gonna do if you wanna get ahead you can also fill out a matrix for your intimate. So the person that you're closest with I want you to not only fill out your chart, but I want you to fill out their chart as well. Yeah Maggy. I have a question about this one because I find that I'm not always the most outgoing, assertive, sociable, talkative but I love people, even if I'm like the quiet one in the group, like that energizes me, would that make-- Yeah so you fall in the middle which is very similar to me. In certain groups I'm super extrovert, other times I totally shut down, that is the perfect example of right in the middle, right. But you seek people, but you're not always here, sometimes you're more here. That's perfectly balanced, yeah. Why is this helpful to know about yourself? Why is it good to know what you seek and what you appreciate, what your personality types are? Van, how about you? I think it makes you feel like you do kinda belong to a certain, I don't know, group of people, that other people out there that are like you and are not so isolated from the world. Cool, okay, that was an answer I hadn't actually heard before, I love that. That you're not alone, if you're inhibited or reserved, or you're like oh God I just wanna be around people, they are other people like you and that is totally a normal part of the personality spectrum, I love it. I wanna give some interesting science on high extraversion. I read this study and I was like, this gave me an insight into myself and other extroverts in my life so I wanted to share it. Forgive me it's a little bit science but I'm gonna try to make it really applicable. Here's what they found. They found that people who are high extroverts carry a special form of a certain gene. They carry a long form of the gene DRD4. What does this mean? Why do they have different genetics? This gene makes it so that we have higher risk for reward. So people who are high extrovert, one of the reasons they might be high extroverts is because they carry a gene that when they seek something new, when they go into a new group of people, when they skydive, they actually feel a greater boost of dopamine in the brain. So they feel, they experience and feel positive emotions more strongly. That could be, they think, one of the reasons, why they're extroverts. It's 'cause they actually, they seek people, they seek new experiences, because they feel it more pleasurably. Where people who don't carry longer version of the gene, it's not worth it. They're like why would I go to a party it's not gonna give me that much pleasure, where as an extrovert is like, whoo I could get a dopamine burst. I could get my crack, I could get it, right? That could be the explanation that'd really help me understand some of the very high extroverts in my life when they're like, let's go to another party, let's nightclub all night, let's go to a rave. And I'm like a rave? It's my bedtime like are you crazy? It's because they want that positivity where I'm like could be bad. Right I might not get that reward where they're like the reward is worth it, the risk for the reward is worth it. Interestingly nomadic tribes tend to carry long forms of DRD4. And that's one of the reasons why they are constantly seeking. They're seeking other groups, they're seeking new places that they like, to experience new things, the risk is worth it for them. Alright number two, a thing to know about conscientiousness is it's very hard to spell so. (audience laughing) If I misspell it on any slides, please forgive me, it's a really hard word to spell. Anyway, conscientiousness, so people who are high in conscientiousness they tend to be efficient, organized, dutiful and industrious, they get it done. They seek achievement they love completing things and getting them off their list, and they appreciate self discipline and focus. I see people laughing, is this something resonating over here? Yeah um, we were just speaking about that, Lee here is I think on a very high conscientiousness. Is this all you, are you like, done, done, done, done, done, yes. I hear you. I'm also high conscientiousness a little too much. Low consciousnesses so this is spontaneous, easy going, laid back, flexible. People who are low conscientiousness they seek, go with the flow. We don't need a todo list, wedon't need a schedule, let's just hangout and talk about it. They appreciate ease, they want everything to be easy. So who thinks they're high? Who thinks they're low? Who thinks they're medium? Alright so my high people, so Lee, we talked about high, just like, that's all you. Are you to do list maiden? I make spreadsheets about vacations so. (laughing) Whoa, I like it, that kind of turns me on a little bit, like I like that. (laughing) I'm not gonna lie. Alphabetizing gives me a rush. So I totally feel you. Someone who is low, tell me why. I like to not commit to things so there's room for the spontaneity, and to figure it out as I go and to be flexible in the moment. Easy yes exactly. And I get it, I intellectually get you, but that terrified me. Right I think about it and I'm like Oh my God, that's so frightening, I totally get it, yeah? I have a question. I feel like in some of these characteristics there's a lot of judgment between-- Yeah which ones. In conscientiousness is feel like between the high conscientious people and the low conscientious people like there's friction. Because you know there's a perception that one is better than the other, as opposed to just two ways of being. So I actually think that you might just be perceiving that, that you might be perceiving that one is better than the other. Because I think both are pretty great. Well I do too but I sometimes feel judged from my like need to be. Okay I love it. So now we got to the heart of it. That you feel judged for your personality traits. So it's not necessarily that these are judging but that you have felt judged for who you are. So where do you fall on here7? I'm gonna say I tend toward high, where I'm a situational low consientious. So more middle. So where have you felt judged about that? I have, I see nothing wrong with a spreadsheet about vacation I have a library catalog at home and I keep all my extra supplies alphabetized and I feel judged people think, as opposed to it being easy, you can always find the extra tape. So I hope that in this course I can encourage us to do exactly what you're talking about which is accept people for who they are. And if you're easy going and laid back, I love it, even though that terrifies me, I love that about you. Now having a spreadsheet about vacations, I love it, but for someone else who would be like oh my God that's terrifying at least we can say I appreciate that about that person. If I need to get something done, I'm going to them. Right so this is about optimizing it's not about feeling ashamed it's about saying, I want to honor someone for who they are naturally. But I think it's very interesting that you brought up the judgment because I think a lot of us have felt judged about our personality, about our personality traits, for example. My husband drives me nuts with how efficient that I am and he's like, I call it efficient, he would call it anal. (laughing) diference in words. And so I often feel judged but we now speak the same language. Where I can say, it's my high conscinentiousness that's kicking into gear, I'm high C, and he'll laugh and he'll be like I'm a low C, I'm a low C, I gotta take it easy. So it lets us speak in a different language so we can respect people, and I wanna talk more about that as we keep going. Yeah, yeah. I also, though I might not, I'm high most of the time as well though not a crazy spreadsheet person, but I would wanna travel with that person. Totally. Oh yeah that'd be the best, I'm like fantastic and a low can like enjoy the vacation. And I love traveling with easy laid back people because they calm me down, right. They're the ones who are like, you're exhausted and it's your vacation, let's like cancel the tour today, and let's just take it easy on the beach. They calm me, they settle me down. So it's balancing out those traits. So why is it hepful to know this about ourselves we just talked about it right. We're able to honor people for what they naturally do and we're not gonna ask someone who's high conscientious oh just calm down, take a chill pill. Right, you're literally telling them don't be yourself don't be who you are, when you tell them like and that is the most disrespectful thing you can do, yeah? So in so many areas of your life, relationships, friendships, business, it's so helpful to know this about yourself and what you need. Because you can hire people or get in relationships with people that compliment it. I love it, and be able to set boundaries, I love it. Alright, agreeableness. So people who are high in agreeableness tend to be very accepting, they're compassionate, they're cooperative they trust very easily, they're compliant. They seek being nurtured and nurturing. They love team work and they love working with team players. They appreciate politeness, they appreciate working together low agreeableness, they tend to be much more analytical they're more detached, they don't wanna get into the emotions they wanna look at it logically. They're a little bit suspicious at times, they're a little bit, they're more prudent with their decisions, they take more time and care before they make a decision and they're very direct with their ideas. They seek caution. They wanna make sure they have enough time to analyze everything before they have to make a decision and they appreciate straightforwardness. Now one struggle that I have, which is speaking to what you were saying Ally, is that I had a really hard time finding adjectives that weren't negative or positive. I had a really hard time, because there is no right or wrong on either side. But people tend to think that maybe suspicious could be negative, I don't mean it in a negative way, it's just the way they make decisions. So I hope we'll forgive me on the adjectives that I had to use. That these are, there's no positive or negative, it's either one, I'm just trying to get us into the personality type of that mentality. If that makes sense, I hope you'll forgive me on that, yeah I'm already finding that I'm in the middle on a lot of these, and I don't know if that's just because I'm flipflopping or if it makes me feel very vanilla right now. There is no such thing as vanilla. I can't wait for you to take the actual test. Okay. So if this is something to learn about yourself, right? One of these might be actually that description itself, is that when you are doing these, if you can't decide, if you're having trouble deciding that could be an interesting thing where I need more time to figure it out, I need someone, a third party to verify for me, I need to make sure. So the 44 inventory that we're gonna take at the end is part of our challenge, I can't wait to see if you are actually in the middle. Yeah we're gonna confirm that. Check back with me on that too, I wanna hear it. Who feels they're high agreeable. Who feels like they're low agreeable? And who feels like they're maybe right in the middle, yeah. So high agreeable people, I saw a bunch of hands go up, who was that. Yeah tell me about it. That's just completely me. This is the same as you, accepting, compassionate, cooperative, trusting I love it. And I think sometimes it can get into the people pleasing mode so when I'm aware that it's getting into the people pleasing mode I try to rein back and understand why it's getting into people pleasing, and I'm not keeping my boundaries. But that's been a tricky thing for me. So tomorrow I'm so glad you brought that up. Tomorrow in optimizing we're gonna talk about exactly that. The pros and cons of high and low. So when you are high agreeable, you have amazing friendships you are great on teams, but you can also dive into people pleasing mode, and what we need to do to optimize that so you stay in the positive parts of your personality traits, you leverage the positive sides of who you are. Who is low? I saw a couple, yeah Maggie. Yeah I mean I relate to this one a lot, it's surprising but I'm very direct, I'm very suspicious when I have to make decisions it takes me so much research and time and space to figure things out and I feel like sometimes it works to my benefit to be able to dettach from things quickly too. to take a step back and look at it. Yeah. But now you know, and this gets into our next slide, the next slide is how this helps us. Of like when you're working on projects, you know that you need a little bit more time before you agree to something. You're always gonna build in a 24 hour window or a week long window of I'll get back to the proposal I need to think about it, alright, that's something that you know that you have to do because you have to get a little bit of time on it and analyze it. So a little bit of science on high agreeableness that I found dascinating. So this is that people who are high in agreeableness people who raised their hands as a thumbs up. You are more accurate at predicting the mental states of others, there is something about the way that your brain works that you can accurately typically guess what someone else in the room or after an activity, what their mental state is. You spend more time, way more time, processing feelings. So you think through feelings as opposed to just the logic and that's very important for us to know. Give yourself space to process feelings, that's not a bad or a good thing, but if you know that you need that about yourself and you can say you know what, before I make a decision I don't need to do a pro and con list, that's not the way I think. I need to spend some time and process the feelings. That could be out loud with a friend, that could be journaling, but it's not a pro and con list for you necessarily. They also are much quicker to forgive, and they're slower to anger, even when people are worthy of blame. So they found that in competitions when someone has been wronged, people with high agreeableness didn't hold the anger they didn't hold the grudge, they were like, it's okay. Even if the other person was wrong. Just a couple of interesting things to know about yourself. If you're high agreeable. So why is it helpful? We already heard an example from Maggie, anyone have anything else where they feel like it resonated with them and they are gonna make a change based on that notion who was high again? So Lacy what are you gonna do with this information? I'll interact differently with colleagues. Any time that the things on the high aren't acknowledge it drives me crazy like nothing will make me more mad than when something on there doesn't happen, especially with relationships and team player, like that's it that's a big deal. Right and you value that. Right, but, that's not everybody. So in interacting instead of jumping to the conclusion well they,re just not this, they just don't care, I'll actually think this time, oh maybe they're, it's just they're a low. Right they're low agreeable, it's not that they don't care they just think in different way. They process relationships a different way, yeah, absolutely. Neuroticism. Neuroticism, so neuroticism, if you're high in neuroticism think like Woody Allen, he's a neurotic extreme character okay. So you're very sensitive, you tend to be much more nervous, you're more reactive to situations, you also constantly feel vulnerable. So you often feel like your vulnerabilities are out for the world to see. Because of this, you seek emotional stability you want to calm yourself and so you always wanna find things that are gonna bring down your anxiety and your nerves you appreciate reliability. That helps take down your nerves because if people are reliable you know what to expect. People who are low neurotic, they're very secure, they typically have high confidence, high stability, and they typically are very balanced with their emotions. This is the only one by the way where there is more of a positive or negative, only because it's very hard to live with a lot of nerves. Now I am high neurotic, so I know that, it is very very hard to be worrying all the time to be sensitive and reactive. So on the secure, confidtent, stable, balanced, they seek camaraderie, they love to be around other people and make sure that they're celebrating together because they have a very secure sense of self, and they appreciate rationality. Right 'cause since they're not emotionally reactiv,e they like to stay in rationality. Little bit about high neuroticism, this study changed a lot for me, about how I view my own neuroticism. I did a lot of self judging, where I,d be like, I'm neurotic shame on you, you should not be neurotic you should calm down, don't be so reactive, don't be so sensitive. I did a lot of self judging on that, speaking Ally of judgment. I was self judging myself. When I read this study, it helped me give a little bit more understanding into my own personality. So they found that people who are high neurotics carry long forms of the seratonin transport gene. Let me just go into what that is. So seratonin is what often relaxes us. It's what helps us calm down. It's a happy chemical but it mostly just keeps us calm. So people who are high neurotic actually carry a long form of the transporter gene so they don't carry seratonin as well, which means that we have a greater response to negative events. When something happens, we get much more anxious and negative 'cause we think of all the possible horrible what if scenarios that can happen, and this is because we don't have as many transporters to carry that calming relaxing seratonin. So we tend to experience negative emotions and experiences more strongly. We also have much higher rates of depression because we experience negative things more severely, we have trouble seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Another thing about high neuroticism is they are much more unsure about what makes them happy. When you talk to high neurotics about their passions and what makes them happy, that question freaks them out. Because they're like, I don't know what makes me happy and they feel freaked out and they don't know what makes them happy, and they get even more upset. And this is across the board you are not alone. The reason why I share these is 'cause I don't want you to self judge like I did. When I read this I was like ah, there's some science here I am not the only one who feels this way, this is okay to feel that way. They also have a much more unstable sense of self so occasionally and I'd be curious to find what happens is that sometimes high neurotics are afraid to fit into one thing and so they tend to flipflop and try on things and see what feels better, so we'll see if that's the case. So this is a quote from Paul Costa which is one of the leaders in this experiment which I had to put on here and he said, they keep trying on new self-definitions like an insomniac who can't find a comfortable position in bed. So it's an interesting way to think about who we are. Mount everest climbers rank really low in neuroticism by the way, they polled, it was the first time they ever did the big five personality test for all the climbers who were on mount Everest base camp and they found that people who climb it typically are low neurotics 'cause they worry less. They don't think about the negative outcomes as much. They're not worried they're like it'll all work out, it'll be fine, I have confidence in myself that I can climb it. So who is high neurotic? Who is low neurotic, who is not really sure, it feels like they might be riht in the middle. Okay so low neurotics, what about that resonated with you. Where you confused by the high neurotic side? For me it is that sense that it's all gonna work out. You know I always get that feeling when there's some big event or something that happens and there's a lot of sort of panic, it's like, you know we survived up to this point, we're gonna survive again we'll be okay. Yeah, so I feel really bad for my content producer Bryan because as a high neurotic I think of every possible horrible scenario that could happen while we're filming. Right so every morning I'm like, what if this happens, what if this happens, and he'll be like, he's like it'll be fine, it'll be so fine, because he is low neurotic. And so now I can finally speak to him with the same language and say I'm so sorry, it's my high neuroticism that's going off, I cannot help it, right? So at least we have the same language, so he knows where I'm coming from. Who was a high neurotic, yeah, so tell me about that Joshua. Yeah so before I was a lot of very sensitive and I was very unsure about myself a lot of self judgment and self criticism but after a lot of work on myself I got to find out why I was like that and able to change the way I thought about myself. So it's a lot easier, but I'm like in the between high and neutral, so I'm like going up the scale. So here's the good news, I was gonna save the really good news for tomorrow but I'm gonna say it now, is that we can optimize and design our personality types. We can move towards an area that we want. Remember some of it is genetic, but we can work on by being self aware where we want our personality to go. One thing that I work on is being less neurotic. Right and i have ways that I do that. And so tomorrow we're talking about optimizing personality how f there's something about you that you think you want to work on, you wanna maybe live with less neuroticism or you wanna be, you know, low conscious, whatever it is that you wanna be there's way to optimize and change that it's called the free trait theory so we're gonna talk about that tomorrow. So why is it helpful to know this about yourself or your intimate on neuroticism? How can this help you in your relationships, how you interact? Yeah. It seems to me, I mean I have a few folks that I would define as neurotic in my family, and they seek that sort of calm out, and so it's not, there's nothing wrong with that you can just say well you know this is what they need so I'm gonna give them a little bit of that. Yes, your reliability is exactly what they seek and appreciate. The greatest you can give them is that calming mentality that yes, I'm your rock, I can be reliable to you 'cause that helps calm them down. I love that, that's a wonderful way to be supportive, yeah. I think another interesting thing that I found out is because I am really on the other side, like completely low, I also attract people who are extremely on the other end. And because of that I used to think it was just me, I'm doing something like totally wrong but I understand now why that is the case. Yeah you're not doing something wrong at all it's actually fitting an emotional need of your personality. Alright let's go to the last one. So there's been a lot of argument over the title of this personality trait. So I gave it a really long title, which is openness to experience and intellect. It's also called curiosity. For the duration of the course, we're gonna just call it openness but I know that some researchers will get really upset with me so here's the long title I'm just using a short name. People who are high in openness are very inventive, they're curious, they're adventurous, they're dreamers and they're creative they have high creativity. They seek fun and novelty. Anything to get their creative juices stimulated. They appreciate independence. 'cause they love to be able to explore. On the low side, people who are low in openness, are very consistent, practical, they're cautious, they're careful. They tend to be a little bit more conventional 'cause they're not so sure how much they like the new things they seek predictability. They wanna predict what's going to happen, and they appreciate routine and habit. So who thinks they are high openness. Alright so tell me about that, who wants to tell me about their high openness, yeah? Yes all of those things are definitely me even to the extend of like, when I had a birthday, instead of getting a big cake, my friends got a bunch of little cupcakes so I wouldn't have to just have one kind of cake I could try different kinds. I love it, yeah your friends know what you love, I love it. And Jake you raised your hand too. Yeah but I think all of these are findin struggling in fact I'm seeing some of them are online where it's saying the same they're finding everything is coming in the middle and I'm finding everything coming in the middle for me. That is why-- Which makes me anxious. Oh it's making you anxious I'm sorry. So actually, that's a very important learning to know about yourself, if you fall in the middle, wow. What is it about these things that are making you flipflop you can actually highlight in your workbook, write the words that are making you conflicted on both sides and then when you take the test, I wanna see if you actually fall in the middle. Most likely, people rarely every one is in the middle. So I wanna see how different that acts. I'm feeling the same way but until this one, I know what I am on this side. What are ya? I'm high. You're high. But I just had a realization a few moments ago and that was that my mother tends to fall on one side and my father falls on the other side, so somehow I'm probably that's the reason why. So your genetics and your environment played to push you in the middle. Right. oh that's super interesting. Who's low? Who's low openness. I would say it's situational. Like even depending on the day of the week. So when are you high when are you low. Like weekdays when I'm working I'm like habits, practical, routine. But then when it's the weekend it's like whatever happens. So you play high and you work low. Yeah. Yeah I love it, and that's a great thing to know about yourself. So this talks about a lot of our work habits. Thank you so much for that comment. This one is a lot about how we like to work who we like to work with, what stimulates us in our job it helps us point to our passions, do we like, things that are more predictable or do we like to be challenged and creative and inventive? So the easy way to remember this is ocean, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism that's we're gonna keep talking about, ocean, that's how you rememebr it on the fiv. And what I want you to do is I want you to fill out who your intimates are. And we are going to practice with a video, we're gonna watch a video and I want us to guess what his matrix looks like. We're gonna slowly start applying these principles to see what we can point out in someone else. Ready to watch the video? Alright let's try it. Serious. (chuckling) I am, I'm gonna hyphonate to myself, I like my solitary time, I don't know the third word one single word, I like being multifaceted though, yeah. I had my ideal Sunday yesterday. So I hung out with my girlfriend for a bit in the morning and then the rest of the day I had it to myself 100% I worked on some photos, I caught up with a couple of friends, not in person. Did some housework and had plenty of time at the end of the day to wind down before getting ready for the week mentally. Alright so one of the things we're gonna do in this course is you'll learn that after only a couple seconds of answering you can actually start to see epople's personality traits in fact. The conversation starters, the killer conversation starters that I gave you are unlocking personality questions. They are the questions that are going to help us figure out what someone's personality is so we can help them and communicate on their level. So I made of Dean after I got this video and I was like you listed housework on your ideal Sunday do you wanna come over to my house anytime on Sunday to do housework right, 'cause that is on his ideal Sunday so, here are some of the clues we heard serious, to myself, housework, balance, he actually used the word balance and mental space, oh, mental space and girlfriend so he actually had a couple things. So what do we think, high or low neurotic, high, yup. What do we think high or low extrovert? Low, conscientiousness what do we think? High, low, we have a high, high low or medium. So it's medium and that's because I think, and we actually verified this with his personality test that when he talks about the balance about doing housework that is a very detail oriented thing that he wanted to prepare for the week mentally, it's a very high conscientiousness trait. Can anyone guess his intelligence type, just from this little answer, yeah. Openness? Oh I'm sorry so openness is not an intelligence type, an intelligence type is the inner core, so the nine different intelligence types, so from those little answers could you guess, is he interpesronal intrapersonal, creative, visual, any, just gut answers, what do you think his intelligence is from that answer 'cause. Intrapersonal. Absolutely. Just from that one little segment those are two really quick questions, we can read three different parts of his personality and we can guess accurately his intelligence type and these are all what he actually tested on. We gave him an intelligence test, we gave him a personality test and this is where he falls. So I wanted to start introducing to you that when we're talking to people we can actually decode their personality type, yeah. How do you prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed? Because when I'm talking to someone I'm looking at body language I'm thinking how much eye contact should I have, now thinking about the personality type I'm exploding. I know I'm gonna explode your brain. Here's the good news, and we're gonna learn this in a few segments but our brain is a muscle, right. So at first, picking up five pounds is like okay. Then you pick up 20 pounds you're like Oh my god, this is heavy, you pick up 60 pounds and you're like, I can't even lift it, I can't even do it. But after a bunch of reps of shorter weights, by the end you can pick up 60 pounds 'cause you've built a bigger muscle. We are building your brain muscles to be able to handle all of it. Now, of course you don't have to handle all of it at once in fact we're gonna talk about how you can do them one at a time, but you actually can build those muscles that's what we're doing by watching all these videos. To make it easier and easier and easier so your brain can handle all of it at once, yeah. Alright let's try one more. So this is Bryan and let's try to gauge his matrix at home I want you to fill out what you think his matrix looks like then we're gonna do it together. I am positive, impatient but getting better and thoughtful. If I had to pick someone, a character that's most similar to me a well known character, oh, I guess it would be Jeff Probst from Survivor. I don't know what about that guy but like i see myself in him he's really into the adventure stuff, he can tend to overdo things to make it a little bit dramatic just to sensationalize the entertainment value and when I see him in interviews too he's really thoughful about the people he's talking to. Alright so, what do we think, openness, high low. High or low. High, absolutely he talked about adventure, Jeff Probst right that's something he really admires. And so positive, thoughtful, improved impatient, Jeff Probst are our clues. So high openness absolutely. What do you think about neuroticism, low? Neutral, very very good. What were the clues there, how did you know that, I heard medium, what about that did you know. The impatience I think. Impatience but getting better, right so he recognized that about himself and he's trying to fix it, I love it you guys caught that. Oh I gave it away. (laughing) he's a high extrovert and why do we know that, help me out. He seeks people. He seeks people he loves the drama, right he talks about oh yeah he does it just for the drama. Intelligence type, I think we can get his intelligence type from this little interview it's hard but anyone wanna take a stab at what they think it is? Intelligence type? I'll give you the clue that tipped you off positive and thoughtful, guess, yes. Interpersonal. It's intrapersonal. Interpersonal is his second, very very close. Intrapersonal talking about thoughtful. Now we're gonna explore that one a little bit more in a session coming up. But intrapersonal that he's very thoughtful and we're gonna learn in a later answer how much he likes self develeopment which also hints us to his intelligence type. So some inspiration here is that Fortune 500 Companies also use the big five factors, many of them use the five factor model to predict job performance, job satisfaction, how happy someone will be in a job and performance. So we talked about how the big five can help you in romance, business and social situations. This can help you find the right partner and support your partner. This can help you work with your colleagues and make sure you're supporting them and that you're working at your best level in business. It can also help you socially to make sure that you're supporting and speaking on the same level as your friends. So here's what's coming up. We are learning how to optimize interaction, we're gonna learn what makes people tick, how to design your personality and how to be your best self, and then we're gonna talk about speed reading people, how to do this very very quickly, how to trust your first impression when you first meet someone, how to bond quickly and of course, the art and science of speed reading. Our challenge for today is I want you to take your big five test, I want you to confirm your thoughts, so before you take the test, at home, make sure that you write what you think you are, so you can confirm to see how accurate you were. I also want you to guess your intimates what do you think they are hwere do you think they fall, you can even have them take the test and you can talk about their answers together. Lastly you can confirm your big five, in your workbook I have a couple of ideas about how you can confirm it and here's what I mean. We someoitmes have a little bit of self deception where we hope that we're a low neurotic but maybe we're not so low neurotic. So one way if you feel brave enough you can confirm your personality is you can have someone else take the test as you. So I had my husband, my best friend and my employee take the test as me to verify my asnwers, and it was a very interesting learning experience. If that seems like a little scary, I also have an email that you can send drafted in your workbook a script you can send out of strength and weaknesse that you can ask your friends to pick out for you, it's a much shorter version of the test to confirm your personality types. So let's talk about what the most important thing you learned today was real quick, I wanna hear your answers on Twitter @VVanedwards using the hashtag peopleskills, 'cause I wanna give a prize those of you who do it for all 30 days I will be gifting out dating entrepreneur courses to the best answers. So let's hear it from you guys. Yeah Lacy. I tend to judge myself a lot and feel like I have to be a certain way to people and it's nice to know that it just is, like I'm high low, in between and it just is. Yes we love you the way you are and you love yourself the way you are. Right, yeah and then I judge less as well. Yesh. Building off what Lacy said, in the idea you suggested leaning into that and just saying oh it's just my high neuroticism it's okay do this I'll be calm everyrone will be happy. I love it so we're gonna talk about that exact attitude harness it bring it back when we're talking about reframing your fears in segment 13, yeah. I saw one otgher hand up here yeah. The personality worksheet was really powerful for me with the real the projected and perceived because I think that I've gone through a place of where I'm ore scarcity than abundant and so I used to be perceived as something that I liked, I've been protecting myslef and now I've realiozed that I'M being perceived as something different so that is really gonna change the way I interact with people. So I hope that ican challenge you to revisit this exercise every few months, check in on your personality and see am I projecting who I really am how am I being perceived keep refilling that chart out and look at your previous answers it's a great way to do self reflection exercise you can pull out this workbook anytime you want its your people encyclopedi you can reference it whenever.