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Personality

Personality like many things in life is sort of concrete and can be difficult to define at times. The basic definition is the relatively stable characteristics that are enduring and distinctive which means it separates people from the crowd.

Psychologists that study personalities try to analyze why people act differently to different situations such as why one person acts shy when they first meet a stranger or while some people are just natural and funny and be themselves. Some scientists believe that this is genetically engraved and that people don’t have much control over this. Other psychologists believe that it’s the environment has a significant say in the way people act. The truth is that personality is a multi dimensional topic and requires pieces from various theories because everyone is unique – thankfully.

One theory called the psychodynamic perspective was discovered by Sigmund Freud. This theory basically states that personality merely exists on the surface and to find someone true personality you have to dig deep in mind. Psychologists who support this approach believe that personality is an unconscious process, or that the individuals are not aware that they conceited or confident.

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Memory

Memory is the retention of information over a period of time through storage, encoding, and retrieval. For something to be considered memory, you have to take it in, store it, and then retrieve it for use in the future.

Memory is a very complex things and it can let you down sometime especially when our trying to remember something, especially during an important test in your life. Also memory can also cause some confusion, especially when two people experience different events. For example, if two friends went on a trip and one said scenario A happened while the other says that scenario B happened then It could lead to lots of confusion. I think it’s fair to say that most individuals have experienced frustrations when they can’t recall someone’s name or a place that they visit. It’s obvious that memory is not installed like data is in a computer; human memory is a little more concrete.

The initial stage of memory is known as encoding, in which the information is processed for storage. When you are listening to music, or watching television you are encoding information into memory. Some data gets into memory practically effortlessly, while other requires some extensive time to get in there. How information gets stored into data is an interest in psychologist because it tends to vary from individual to individual. When we start encoding we use selective attention which means that we focus on a specific situation while ignoring everything else. It’s like showing undivided attention to a specific factor.

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Personality and Theory

Sociologist Herbert Mead developed a theory known as social behaviorism, which helped explained why past social experiences help form an individuals’ personality. Mead did not believe that personality was developed by drives or biologically, but more on terms socially. He stated that the self only developed when people interact with one another.

Without the interaction of other people an individual can’t develop a personality. An example of this is if a child is left in total isolation for a long period of time then they don’t mature both physically or mentally.

Social experience is crucial, and this includes the exchange of symbols. It is only people who attach meanings to words and symbols. If you tell a dog to sit and it obeys then you may give it a snack. However, this doesn’t mean it knows why to sit down, but it does so to get food. You can tell a dog to sit for numerous of reasons such as wanting to impress your friends, or to calm it down because it is running all over the place.

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“What the Bleep do We Know” and “The Secret”

Have you seen these two movies? And have you watched them one after the other? That was how I saw both of them for the first time, starting quite late in the evening (around 9.30pm at a friend’s house).

Frankly, it was a bit too much to see them like that, especially when I was already tired at the end of the week. What’s more, we viewed “What the Bleep” first of all, so, after we had had a break and some more to eat and drink, “The Secret” was nearly a midnight screening.

Perhaps inevitably, I found that they two movies tended to blur in my mind, and the next day I was unsure as to which ‘teacher’ was in each film.

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The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

I read this book quite a while ago following its elevation to the NY Times Bestseller list and a huge amount of publicity.

My recollection is that there is one main theme: that being wrapped up in memories or worrying about the future denies us full appreciation and enjoyment of what we really have, which is whatever is happening Now.

That seems like a reasonable proposition, but does ‘Now’ really exist at all? When is Now – this minute, this second, this millisecond? We say that time passes, but in fact isn’t it more that we pass through time?

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Frozen By Fear

The Little Engine That Could is a children’s story. It tells of a small train that was faced with a steep climb up a very large hill. Half way up the hill the little engine started to feel as though it was an impossible task. Fear set in.

“Will I make it?” the train wondered. “What if I don’t? What if I run out of steam before I make it? What if I’m not equipped with a strong enough engine to handle this?”

The fear grew inside as his speed slowed with the climb. Soon he crawled to a stop. “I can’t make it,” he thought.

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Motivation and Inspiration from the Animal Kingdom

As I recall, the novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a huge hit when it was first published in the 1970’s. If you haven’t read the book, it’s about a seagull who breaks away from the mundane scavenging life of the flock to learn to really fly so that he can be truly free. He’s rejected by the flock, but follows his calling and finds a form of transcendence. Apparently the book was life-changing for some people.

Another very successful book featuring an animal metaphor was Who Moved My Cheese? This featured two mice, one of whom coped with change a lot better than the other. It’s popular in corporate circles, and I even received a copy as part of the severance pack when I was ‘let go’ from a job some years ago – how wonderful it was to have such a caring employer!

These two books share the common characteristic that they are very, very short – you can read either of them in half an hour or less. They’re also very suitable for children, who can enjoy them on a more superficial level (maybe a bit like The Simpsons? No, on second thoughts…)

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