Personality Paradoxes

Personality paradoxes must be one of the most interesting realities of being human.

Being two apparently opposing things at the same time, in a society that loves putting people into boxes, is both crazy-making and incredibly freeing.

Around people, my personality vibrates in warmth. Deep connections. Conversations of the core. Bear hugs as often as possible.

And I need a lot of alone time. I do mean A LOT. Maybe more than social time.

Unless someone knows me, they completely miss this and build a different persona. People get taken aback when I decline social events. When they ask what I did on my weekend and once again I tell them I spent most of it on my own, on long-distance walks.

I know I’m not alone in this.

Intellectual geniuses who never share their ideas.

Financial gurus who budget to the penny in everything but one area, where only extravagance is acceptable.

Innovative, extraordinary performers who would rather stay home than attend the celebratory dinner held in their honor. (True story.)

At work, the paradox usually gets read as a problem. The warm one who disappears must be disengaged. The brilliant one who won’t present must lack confidence. The performer who skipped the dinner must not care. None of that is what’s happening. It is the half of the person you haven’t met yet.

It is one of my favorite things to uncover in someone. The moment they realize both halves are allowed.

I want to celebrate these internal differences as much as we celebrate our differences from each other.

There is no need to reconcile any of it.