Creative
Artistic or very interested in the arts
Imaginative
Curious and interested in new and diverse subjects or people
Highly attuned to and valuing emotions and gut feelings
Willing to experiment and try new and exotic things
Intrigued by and open to different points of view
OR
I tend to be:
Low Very Low Extremely Low
Down-to-earth
Practical
More interested in logic than gut feelings and emotions
Focused on a narrower or more predictable range of interests
Traditional
Conservative in my perspectives
Clear with what I believe is right and wrong
Agreeableness
I tend to be:
Extremely High Very High High
Quite trusting
Open and revealing with my thoughts and feelings
Highly concerned with helping others
More interested in cooperation over competition
Lenient towards others’ shortcomings
Deferring to others
Modest
Highly sympathetic and easily moved by others’ pleas
OR
I tend to be:
Low Very Low Extremely Low
More skeptical and not easily duped
Guarded with what I share with others
Focused on my problems and goals
Self-protective
Competitive
Vocal about what I disagree with
Proud and not afraid to let others know
Tough-minded and objective
Motivation/Self-Control
I tend to be:
Extremely High Very High High
Self-controlled
Disciplined
Competent
Goal-oriented
Ambitious and driven
Detail oriented
Organized and planful
Efficient
Deliberate (take a lot of time to make decisions)
OR
I tend to be:
Low Very Low Extremely Low
Unsure of my abilities
Inefficient
Turned off by schedules
Disorganized
Undisciplined
Low in ambition and drive
Avoidant of big and ambitious goals
Very spontaneous (make decisions without too much thought)
**These descriptions are primarily based on the work of Costa & McCrae5 .
Take note of how you or close others rated you on each of the 5 Basic Personality Tendencies because your knowledge of this is key to your success. These traits are your strengths and weaknesses.
A current fad in self-help books, stemming from a misunderstanding of the work in the field of positive psychology, emphasizes that we should focus on our strengths and essentially ignore our weaknesses. This is a reaction to psychiatry and clinical psychology’s strong focus on what’s wrong with people. I agree that we should be focusing on our strengths, but we need to know our weaknesses and either work around them, with them, or on them, depending on our goals, values, and purpose.
Each Tendency is a Potential Tool
Each of the 5 Basic Personality Tendencies can be a strength or a weakness depending on the circumstance. Each is evenly distributed throughout the population with most of us falling near the middle of the extremes. This even distribution makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Having members high and low on all 5 tendencies played an important role in our survival as a species when we lived in close-knit communities or tribes.
For example, having a subset of the population that is highly motivated, efficient, and ambitious is essential to a tribe’s ability to do the work that needs to be done to survive and thrive.
Perhaps less obvious is the value of having a certain segment of the tribe that is highly susceptible to negative emotions, thoughts, and stress. The reality is that these individuals were highly valuable for their ability to perceive and respond to environmental warnings associated with some form of threat, such as changes in weather patterns or threats from other tribes and animals. So having members who were high or low on each of the tendencies was adaptive for the tribe’s survival and ability to flourish.
This is important as we continue our discussion of understanding yourself. It will also help you understand which areas outlined in this series of books you will likely need to work hardest on to make sure you are performing to your potential.
Now that you know where you stand on each of the 5 Basic Personality Tendencies, it’s time to figure out what that means in terms of finding out who you are, what you really want, and how to make it happen.
BONUS MATERIAL
Visit FriesenPerformance.com/Achieve-Bonus-Materials additional Basic Personality Tendencies rating sheets.
Chapter 4
Susceptibility to Negative Emotions & Stress
Susceptibility to Negative Emotions & Stress:
I tend to be:
Extremely High Very High High
Worried, anxious, nervous, or tense a lot
Easily stressed
Annoyed and irritable often
Discontent or moody
Pessimistic
Easily panicked when stressed
Often motivated by fear and the threat of losing something (e.g., money, health, relationships)
OR
I tend to be:
Low Very Low Extremely Low
Rarely worried
Calm almost all the time
Patient and even-tempered
Content
Rarely stressed by difficult situations
On one side of the scale for this Basic Personality Tendency are those of us who are more prone to worry, self-doubt, pessimistic thoughts, and feeling tense, stressed, anxious, moody, or discontent.
On the other end – the “low” end — are people who are calm, patient, content, and rarely affected by stress.
Those in the middle ground on Negative Emotions will likely feel most comfortable with either a balance between stressful and relaxing experiences in life, or with a lifestyle that is at most moderately stressful.
The Neuroscience of Negative Emotions
Where you fall in terms of Negative Emotions may be at least partially related to the neurotransmitter serotonin in your brain. Serotonin functions to improve and balance our moods, among other things. You’ve probably heard of the antidepressant fluoxetine, better known as Prozac. It is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor — or SSRI — which is a fancy way of saying it increases the amount of usable serotonin in the brain. SSRIs have been found to improve mood and reduce most types of negative emotions such as anxiety and anger. Altering the amount of usable serotonin in the brain has been shown to also alter levels of the Basic Personality Tendency of Negative Emotions6 .
Your level of Negative Emotions is not only related to your neurotransmitters; it’s also related to how active your limbic and sympathetic nervous systems are. These systems control your fight-or-flight response. This response is activated in all of us when stressed. You know what it feels like when this system is activated. You feel your heart rate increase, muscle tension grow, hands become sweaty and cold, and your breathing quicken. This comes on when you are feeling negative emotions like anxiety or anger.
Those of us who are higher on Negative Emotions have a lower point at which our stress response kicks in when faced with stressors. Consistent with this, newer MRI research has found that your standing on Negative Emotions is related to differences in activity in brain areas that control how sensitive you are to threat and punishment.7
If you also are high on the next dimension — Extraversion — then you are probably very emotional. You’re apt to experience high levels of both negative and positive emotions which, like all traits, can be helpful in some circumstances and unhelp
ful in others. You probably live with passion and excitement that others will easily pick up on. As long as you can keep your negative emotions reasonably controlled, your passion will likely be contagious and you may gravitate toward leadership positions, especially of groups with meaningful causes. But if you let your negative emotions reign, you’ll be prone to experience life as an emotional roller-coaster. This can wreak havoc on your interpersonal relationships and your ability to achieve your goals.
You may be a bit confused by the fact that your tendency to experience positive emotions is related to Extraversion rather than Negative Emotions. Most people believe that positive and negative emotions are at opposite ends of a continuum. It turns out research has repeatedly shown that positive emotions and negative emotions have little relationship when it comes to our personalities or our usual way of feeling, thinking, and behaving.8 Of course, if you are in the throes of a major depressive episode or anxiety disorder, you are going to have a hard time experiencing positive emotions regardless of where you fall on Extraversion.
Neuroscience research suggests that positive and negative emotions are controlled by different areas and networks within the brain. For example, research has found that having high negative emotions is correlated with over-activity in the brain’s right frontal lobe, which is located behind the right side of your forehead. On the other hand, having low levels of positive emotion has been found to be associated with under-activity in the left frontal lobe.9
Research has also found that a deep brain structure called the nucleus accumbens is involved in the experience of positive emotions. Negative emotions tend to originate in two almond shaped structures in an area deep within the limbic system of the brain known as the amygdala, which is more reactive in those with higher levels of Negative Emotions.10
How long or how intensely negative emotions affect you depends on differences within the left front part of your brain known as the left prefrontal cortex. A “stronger” left prefrontal cortex can inhibit or calm down the amygdala.
Work by neuroscientist Richard Davidson, and others has found that this is related to the amount of connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.11 The good news is that the number of connections between these areas appears to be changeable with training such as mindfulness meditation and possibly through a burgeoning area of training known as neurofeedback. I will be providing more information on these in the upcoming books in this series
High Negative Emotions
If you are high in this tendency, you will tend to have trouble controlling your negative emotions and thoughts, and become easily stressed and overwhelmed. Negative emotions can include anxiety, self-consciousness, anger, and sadness.
In addition, the higher you are on this dimension, the more likely you are to experience other difficulties, such as inhibiting your impulses to do things that you know you shouldn’t do, like overeating, drinking too much alcohol, overspending, and saying things in the heat of the moment that you later regret. You are also more likely to have unrealistic expectations of yourself or others, be pessimistic, feel self-conscious, worry too much, and avoid risks and other things that make you uncomfortable.
The Basic Personality Tendency of Negative Emotions is so powerful that, when not controlled, it is the underlying cause of most anxiety and depressive disorders. It can also underlie many addictions. It’s easy to think of the many famous artists and athletes who turned to drugs and alcohol because they could not tolerate or control their negative thoughts and feelings. I’ve worked with many athletes who finally made it to the top only to crumble under internal and external pressures due to their inability to tolerate, control, and harness their negative emotions, whether it is anxiety or anger. It’s unfortunate that it required a massive failure for them to realize that they should work on their mental game and call me.
On the other hand, if you are high on this cluster of traits and learn to tolerate, control, and harness your negative emotions, you can use this tendency to your advantage. Many high achievers I’ve worked with have learned to harness the power of their negative emotions to improve their performance. For example, the simple act of relabeling anxiety before major competitions or performances as feeling “ready to go”, “amped”, or “pumped” often significantly improves performance. Those high achievers who tolerate, control, and harness their negative emotions and thoughts are often those who become the most successful, because they have a passion that others don’t.
Similarly, having high Negative Emotions is a hallmark of successful artists. For example, when creating works of art such as paintings, sculptures, novels, and screenplays, tapping into negative feelings is essential to spark creativity. Most successful novelists and screenwriters capitalize on this ability to help them feel empathy and develop and understand characters. Their passion comes out in their art.
If you fall on the high end of this spectrum, the strategies throughout these books will be of most benefit to you. I will explore ways to manage your susceptibility to negative emotions and stress in much more depth in the upcoming books. For example, if you change your perception of what it means to experience negative emotions so you can view these emotions as a powerful source of energy, you can use it to your advantage. Think of these negative emotions like a wild horse. You can either let it trample and destroy you, or you can learn to tolerate, control, and harness its power.
What it Means for Your Achievement
There are significant obstacles facing those of you who are high on Negative Emotions and high on the dimension of Motivation/Self-Control. You are at risk for failure when it comes to achieving big and ambitious goals. You’ll likely be very intense and focused, but you’ll have a hard time controlling your stress response and mood, as well as feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. If so, you’ll likely undermine your ability to reach your big goals, unless you harness these tendencies. You will be prone to crumble under the stress and pressure you will face when trying to achieve big things. You’ll also be prone to burnout.
The good news is that the tools and strategies laid out in this series of books are tailored for those of you with this profile. The current book helps you learn about who you are, what you value, and where and how to focus your drive. With your natural drive and motivation, the tools and strategies outlined in the last chapter of this book, and especially the information in the upcoming books in this series will provide you with the best chances of reaching your true potential.
For those of you who have high Negative Emotions and low Motivation, the odds of becoming a high achiever or reaching big and ambitious goals are much lower. You at least need motivation and drive. It must be there, whether it comes from a long-standing Basic Personality Tendency, or from developing your mission or purpose through clearly identifying your values, strengths, passions, and goals.
However, if you are high on Negative Emotions and low on Motivation, being a high achiever is not impossible. You’ll have to develop a very clear and strong passion, mission, and purpose, and then work very hard implementing the strategies in this series of books to learn to tolerate, control, and harness your negative emotions.
Will it Be a Strength or a Weakness?
High levels of Negative Emotions can be a strength and a weakness, depending on how you handle it. If you can tap into the energy, drive, and passion it provides, it can serve as a strength. If you let it get in the way of living the life you want, it’s a weakness.
The key is to know where you stand on this personality dimension, determine what your values, strengths, passions, purpose, and goals are, and then decide where in your life it is helping and where it is hurting. Then learn to accept it, change it, or harness it. Your Negative Emotions threshold can be altered with the strategies covered in the upcoming books in this series, but you must believe it can be changed by having a growth mindset as noted earlier.
Low Negative Emotions
Those of you on the opposite extreme, who have lit
tle susceptibility to negative emotions and stress, have a lot more leeway under stress before your emotional brain or limbic and sympathetic flight-or-fight systems are activated. In other words, you are naturally calm under pressure. For the most part, being unshakable is a strength for obvious reasons.
Those with low Negative Emotions tend to do well in professions where keeping emotions in check is really important, even a matter of life or death. For example, it’s essential for pilots and surgeons to have few difficulties with negative emotions, since high levels of negative emotions often lead to irrational thinking and poor decisions.
Low Negative Emotions Isn’t Always a Good Thing
As with all of the Basic Personality Tendencies, low levels of Negative Emotions can be a potential strength or a liability, depending on the situation.
Having very low levels of Negative Emotions can lead to problems with empathy and indifference to the feelings of others. If you experience few negative emotions, it may be hard for you to understand what it feels like for others to have these feelings, or to predict how your actions may cause negative emotions in others.
Much of our learning, especially as children, comes from our experience of negative emotions when we do things wrong or engage in inappropriate behaviors. If we don’t experience much negative emotion, we often don’t learn socially appropriate behaviors.
If we have very low levels of Negative Emotions, we can also fail to appreciate our own limitations and vulnerabilities, and fail to perceive the dangers, risks, or consequences of our behavior.
Many elite athletes and other high achievers seek me out in an attempt to eliminate high negative emotions. But having low levels of negative emotions and stress is not necessarily a good thing.
I’ve worked with numerous athletes in combat sports who say they want to be more like this guy or that gal who appear to have no fears or worries before and during competition. Once I educate them further, they realize it’s impossible for them to have no fears or anxieties, and that it’s also not in their best interests. The reality is we need a certain level of anxiety or emotional activation to perform at our best.
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