What does your personality have to do with your life? Does it matter if you understand yourself? Will understanding your Personality help your work, relationships with family, friends and parenting?

Of these few questions the only one I frequently asked myself is “Will understanding my personality help me with my work as an artist? When meeting someone new or a distant friend they would ask me what I do. “I’m an artist.” Oh really, that’s interesting. What medium to you use? Yikes! Here’s that darn question again to which I would always give a dumb answer, “It depends on what day or month it is.”

You can see I had worked on a perky answer to give just in case. When they would repeat the question or begin to walk away I would hang on to them and say “You see, I like acrylics, oils, watercolor, pen/ink, pencil, charcoal, art markers, even computer art.” I would continue “After using one medium for a day, or week, or month, I inevitably yearn to get back to one of the others.” If my questioner was also an artist, they would just shake their head and look for the exit. If they were not a fellow artist, they would look like they were sorry they had asked. No one ever stopped to give me counsel on my particular and strange problem, so it continued.

Little did I know that I would soon get an answer. One day more than a decade ago while going through my mail I came across a brochure advertising a seminar coming to Houston. It was about learning how to be a public speaker and a published author. Wow! How did they know I’ve always wanted to be a public speaker?

(This is how my dream looked. Out of humility, I won’t show the huge crowd laughing out loud, or clinging to my every word.)

I studied and worked very hard using all their advice and techniques. Meanwhile, they advertised yet another seminar teaching about our personalities…how to understand yourself as well as others. So, I registered for that seminar, also. Again, I attended, studied, wrote papers, read books, and worked hard, and gradually my questions began to be answered.

It wasn’t easy to determine my own personality, but I became “expert” in recognizing the personality of others……. or so I hoped! I finally learned that I had a Sanguine Personality. At first, I was happy about that, but as I learned about the weaknesses of that personality, I decided to call myself a “Recovering Sanguine.” To stick with the main question I posed in the opening paragraph of this blog, I learned that I am impulsive and very easily bored and find it difficult to stay with one thing until it is finished. There you have it. I was relieved. At least it explained my switching from one medium to the next. But I still do not have a coherent answer to the question that keeps coming up.

Since becoming a Certified Personality Trainer (CPT), I have spoken on The Personalities and other subjects to women’s groups such as weekend retreats, luncheons, Personality parties, 12-week courses covering all aspects, banquets, to professional groups and others. The more I study about the Personalities and teach others, the more I learn.

One Sanguine strength is loving to talk, but we were taught that a strength used to extreme becomes a weakness. Darn! I still work on that particular strength/weakness. Also, the Sanguine wants to be the center of attention at all times. Yeah! Not good. My favorite Sanguine strength is that I think everyone loves me; or is that a weakness? The Sanguine loves color, friends, showing-off, talking, all that sort of thing. Their worse nightmare is that they will only “blend in”.

Even now, years later I still cannot give a final answer, but I really enjoy my art…….oils, watercolors, charcoal, acrylics, pen/ink, etc. I’m sticking with them all.

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