"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you really are." – Joseph Campbell

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Understanding Yourself, and Trying to Figure Out Other People

Wouldn’t life be more personally satisfying if we were living to our full potential? What if changing habits was as easy as just being who we really are, rather than who we think we should be? What if being successful only required that we work from our strengths, and doing what we like, instead of wasting time our time doing what we don’t like, and what we’re not good at? Ever wonder what it takes to get on the same wavelength with other people? Why some people are harder to like and to get to know than others? Wouldn’t it be easier to get along with people if we just understood why they do the things they do?

It’s questions such as these that have fueled the interest in personality for centuries, and that have driven the desire to understand how and why personality affects behavior.

What’s Personality Got To Do With Your Job, Your Success, Your Health, Your Relationships, and Your Life?

Everything! Why? Because personality is more than what you show to the outer world, and it’s more than the conditioned learned identity you’ve developed because you want to fit in and belong, or because you want to be accepted and to be loved.

You see, personality is the very core of who you really are. It’s in your genes. It’s the driver behind your neurological blueprint that tells your brain how it should gather information, process information, and make decisions. The primary mental functions that determine why you think the way you do, why you believe what you do, why you make the choices you do, and why you act the way you do. In fact, your brain uses this neurological blueprint every moment of every day even without you having to think about it. And, interestingly, this mental blueprint reveals itself very early in life, and it never changes. That’s why understanding your personality is so important.

When you think of personality, think of it as the organizing principle that influences all aspects of your life. It’s your inner navigator that guides the outward direction you’ll take in life, It oversees that you stay on course so you can achieve your goals and desires, and it’s what intervenes when you’re headed on a collision course with disappointment or failure. Your personality is what helps you survive, and it’s what guides you to make decisions that empower, rather than limit who you are.

Personality Traits vs. Characteristics

When it comes to personality there are two aspects: 1) traits and 2) characteristics. Characteristics reflect conditioning and learned behavior. They represent the impact other people have had on you, and how their expectations and opinions have molded you into who they think you should be. Because characteristics are learned, they are changeable with some work.

Traits, on the other hand, represent the real you. They’re what make you unique and different from other people. They’re what influence the people you’re attracted to, define the tasks you’re interested in and good at, and they’re the source of your inner confidence. Traits, because they’re part of your inherent brain wiring, aren’t changeable. And, if you think about it, why would you want to change them, because they make it possible for you to be who you really are.

Personality traits:

• Create consistent, observable and predictable patterns of behavior based on our decision making preferences.
• Develop our inner strengths and shape our natural talents.
• Establish our value systems and form our core beliefs.
• Influence our interactions with other people.
• Determine our communication style and establish the words we use in the communication process.
• Determine if our reactions to situations and experiences will be emotional or rational.
• Create the ethics by which we conduct our lives.
• Drive our motivations and determine what triggers our irritations.
• Determine what stresses us, and drive how that stress affects us.

The Ritberger Personality Method™

The Ritberger Personality Method™ offers a simple, yet comprehensive model, for identifying and understanding personality types. Using the Personality Color Indicator (PCI)™ created by Carol Ritberger, PhD, the different personality types are identified and categorized into four colors; Red, Orange, Yellow and Green. Carol chose to use color to identify the different personality types because it’s a common universal language that people can relate too, and it avoids using words that label people and make them feel limited. She also chose to use color because her 25 years of research found that the psychological affects that each of the four colors has on the brain is aligned with the dominant organizing behavior associated with the psychological functioning based on personality traits.

Here’s a brief description of each of the four personality colors.