Saturday 3 September 2011

Welcome to the Personality Shop

We don’t sell off the rack – all garments are tailor-made.  We also do repairs and alterations!

Personality is what makes us different from one another – we have gathered different habits, we have developed different skills, we have learned particular behaviours and various forms of self-expression.  That makes us unique, but there are always some parts of any personality that don’t work so well, so we usually have to find ways to compensate.

In our Personality Shop you can upgrade various parts of your personality!  Perhaps some parts are worn out and don't work so well anymore?  Perhaps you're just tired of wearing the same old suit year after year?  For me it was ‘impulse’ – my personality was given ‘impulse bypass surgery’ at three years old – so I always found taking initiative difficult (my suit) – or more specifically, asking someone else for what I wanted (my shirt) – or even more specifically, identifying something I actually wanted for myself (my underwear).
 
In the Personality Shop I discovered how badly I needed a change of underwear!  Turned out that my suit was okay – just somewhat out-dated.  I’d been hanging on to it – kind of hoping it would come back into fashion – but it was just getting more and more uncomfortable!

So are there parts of your personality that may be out-dated?  Or even perhaps from a different era?

I just read a brilliant book called 'The Fourth Turning'.  The authors have discovered that whole generations have particular personalities.  That will come as no surprise to you if you have children or grandchildren, but these historians found that generational personalities are identifiable, predictable, and get recycled only once every 80 years!

Within that 80 year cycle there are four generational personality types that determine societal and national attitudes and consequently create particular kinds of historical events.  Of course within any one generation the full range of personality types can be found, but the whole generation becomes biased to a limited range of acceptable views and behaviours. 

This means that if you live to be 80 years old there will be one 20 year period in your life that best matches your personality.  At that time you will embody the culture, you will be a natural leader and there is every likelihood that life will be good for you.  Now, which 20 year period of your life that is, depends on when you were born, your own personality type, and the turning of the generational personality cycle.  So every dog does have his day! 

But what about the other 60 years when there is less alignment or no match at all?  Well, life can be pretty average and quite unsatisfying when you don't fit in.  You could become a rebellious youth – or a grumpy old person – or perhaps you just need to change your underwear?

At this very time we are experiencing a seasonal turning of the generations, and a new generational personality type will soon come to power.  According to the ‘The Fourth Turning’ that season is winter, the worst part of the 80 year cycle and that inevitably brings bad, bad times for almost everyone.  How well will your ‘suit’ stand up to the next twenty years of winter?  Perhaps some woollen underwear would help?  Perhaps a good overcoat is in order?


We’ll post more on specific repairs and alterations in later blogs…

Would you like to know more about the generational personality of the winter season?

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