Different folks

How many blogs have I started off with the words ‘I’m reading a book’? I’m not sure either but here’s another. The book I’m reading is one of those different types of people books. There are a few of them about, in which they attempt to categorise people into personality types. This book has four, it allocates them a colour, though it does recognise that people can be a mix of colours.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book, very well written with some useful pointers and anecdotes. I am enjoying reading it.

Once again though I have fallen into the trap that I always do with these books. I read into the characters who I would like to be. By the end of the introduction I had already decided who the best kind of person is and identified with all of its better traits, while discounting its not so attractive ones. Having colours has made it worse. Yellow is a joyful colour, sunshine and spring flowers, those sorts of things and that is what I would like to be. I have definitely tipped my hat at being a yellow person.

Yet, the more I have read of the book I have come to recognise traits of my character (that I believe I have) in all of the colours. I think I have the desire to just get on with things of the red, the low level of listening ability of the yellow, the happiness with my own self of the green and the methodological approach of the blue. Of course, those who know me may think differently. 

As I am in a chapter about a specific colour, I find myself relating more to that character only to change my mind when it comes to the next type. Perhaps I am an amalgam of all the colours, a rainbow personality, or it could be just a reflection of my Gemini fickleness. 

I suspect the former in that I have never met two people who are exactly the same. Everyone I have ever met has had character traits that remind me of someone else yet each individual has been unique and their character can often change depending upon the circumstance in which you find them.

I enjoy reading these books but take them with a heavy pinch of salt. One should be careful in reading too much into classifying different people yet they act as a useful guide to the way that people think, behave and how they may have problems interacting with each other.

The book, ‘Surrounded by Idiots’ by Thomas Erikson (it was the title that attracted me) is a runaway international bestseller and so is clearly onto something.