Does Your Personality Type Help Your Success?

Our personality has an important influence on the way we respond to particular situations and events in our life and how we cope and manage stress.

Personality can be defined as, “The totality of emotional and behavioral traits that characterize the person in day-to-day living; it is relatively stable and predictable.” No body has a “perfect” personality (and who knows what perfect is?) we all have personality traits that create stress to some degree in our lives.

Although there are many basic personality types, there are two main ones, which are particularly relevant for identifying tendencies towards suffering from stress related conditions.

These two broad personality types are known as Type A and Type B, the former being more prone to stress than the latter.

In fact, we rarely have all the characteristics of one type but tend to be made up of a predominance of one behaviour pattern or another.

TYPE A Personality Type

 These people tend to be aggressive and competitive. They are in a constant state of struggle, setting themselves too many deadlines.

They can be recognized by the following:

• They eat, talk and walk quickly
• They are easily bored
• They can be self-centred, preferring to talk about themselves
• They cannot relax and feel guilty if they are not doing something
• They lose things easily as they are not very observant
• They appear tense physically and sit on the edge the chair
• They are competitive and want to win, rather than enjoy the experience.

Studies have shown that Type A Personalities are 3 times as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease. This is very much due to the fact that the stress response for a Type A person is likely to be triggered much more frequently.

Type A Behaviour has steadily increased since the Industrial Revolution when the stresses one came up against went from being fairly simple to extremely complex. Type A personality was rarely present in rural life of years ago, as life was so much simpler and was lived at a much slower pace.

Type B Personality Type

These types tend to be relaxed and calm and easygoing. They adapt easily to changes. They are less at risk from heart disease and stress.

These people can be recognised by the following:

• Play games for fun and not just to win
• They relax easily without feeling guilty
• They are often more efficient as they do not rush at things and become physically exhausted
• They tend to be friendly, adaptable and easy-going

Does Your Personality Type help or hindrance your business success?