59. The good thing about having a terrible personality

As you know, I sometimes get these slightly strange ideas.

And rather than try to explain them to people only to get met with a blank look, in true keyboard warrior style, I go off and write a blog post about them instead…

And this one is about how I believe our good characteristics can also be our bad characteristics. 

A classic oxymoron.

(Promise that showing off that I know what that word means isn’t the only reason I’m writing this).

This idea, the thin line between a good trait becoming a bad one, is something that I think we see pretty often. 

For example, as a person, I’m fairly conscientious. I like to try (try!) and do things properly. 

Whether or not this stems from a deep feeling of inadequacy and a need to be accepted is a conversation for another day (though spoiler alert, I imagine it probably does).

Intuitively, this always struck me as a positive trait. 

However, I’ve realised that that’s not necessarily the case.  

By definition, doing things “properly” takes longer than if we were to just rattle it out.

There’s a significant time cost. 

Also the more conscientious we are, the more emotionally invested we tend to be in said thing. That’s good as we probably take more pride in it. Though it’s also not good as it can be more mentally (and therefore physically) taxing.

There’s a significant energy cost. 

The quality of the thing may be higher than if we weren’t as conscientious, but it takes us longer to do and leaves us more tired. 

On the flip side, if we weren’t as “do it properly” focused, then the quality of the output may not be as good, but we’re left with more time and more energy.  

I think there’s a trade-off there, and imagine there’s probably some sort of optimal sweet spot between the two extremes. 

It’s a similar idea if we happen to be on the more analytical side of things.

If we’re wired to think about stuff, as opposed to just jumping in and doing them, this can be a good thing. We think about the risk, the possible scenarios and outcomes, and it can generally help us plan and mitigate something going wrong. 

However, there’s a fine line between that, and overthinking the fuck out of it… which stops us actually getting anything done.

Being analytical good, spending 35 minutes in Tesco deciding on what to have for dinner, not good. 

As I say, I think this is a principle that can be applied to a lot of personality traits. 

Let’s take a good listener. 

We like good listeners. 

Few things make us feel more important than people who show a genuine interest in whatever it is we have to say. 

However, if everyone valued us for our listening skills, we could easily spend our entire lives listening to the issues of other people, and never getting round to sorting our own shit out. 

Done in excess, and it’s almost the ultimate form of people pleasing. Though constantly putting everyone else’s needs above ours, and it can leave us feeling miserable. 

Another trait that intuitively seems like a good thing, though one where there’s possibly a thin line between it then becoming toxic. 

It’s similar with kindness and empathy. 

To state the obvious, these are a couple more traits that we tend to like in people. 

However, there’s downsides to these as well. If we’re too kind and empathetic, we may care too much about other people’s feelings, and value those above actually being honest.  

I’m sure we can all think of numerous examples where this has happened in our lives. We feel like we should tell someone something that they probably need to hear, but don’t because we don’t want to upset them (or at least that’s the excuse we give ourselves).

As such, it’s a false empathy. Although we’re convincing ourselves that we’re being noble and kind, we’re likely making the other person’s life worse in the longer term. 

I don’t think this applies to all personality traits, but a lot of them. We have four examples above, but could go on and on (don’t worry, I won’t).

Of course, an added layer to this is that how we come across is often more down to the person that we’re interacting with, as opposed to ourselves.

We can say/do the exact same thing, in the exact same way, at the exact same time to two different people - and one thinks we’re sound, and the other thinks we’re a dickhead. 

For example:

Someone’s funny is another person’s annoying.

Someone’s confident is another person’s arrogant.

Someone’s shy is another person’s endearing.

Someone’s brave is another person’s reckless.

Someone’s articulate is another person’s condescending.

And so on. 

Side note, this is probably a key reason why caring too much about what other people think isn’t a great idea. Take a big enough sample size (I only tend to need about two people), and someone’s going to think we’re a bellend. 

I suppose this ‘downside of good personality traits’ viewpoint ties into that wider idea (one that I love) that “There are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs”. 

There will of course be exceptions to this, but it feels like we could feasibly adapt the quote in this context to “there are no perfect personality traits, only trade-offs”.

Often, there seems to be a reflective negative characteristic on the opposing side of a good one.

Of course, whether this has any truth to it at all, what do I know. However, it is something I’ve been mulling over a bit recently, and have found it a beneficial idea to be conscious of.  

I think it can allow for a little less disappointment when other people’s inevitable negative traits come to the fore, and a bit more empathy with ourselves when ours do. 

And if your inner voice is anywhere near as self-critical as mine, this can be a good thing.