Personality
👉 When our needs aren’t met, we experience stress
Everyone, therefore, experiences stress - but some experience more stress than others based on their life circumstances.
We previously analogized personality to skin. Skin similarly experiences stress – cuts, bruises, scrapes. Stress is a natural consequence of engaging with the world. Skin also has a self healing process — a chef’s hands are calloused from many burns, a boxer’s body is covered in scars.
Sometimes the trauma to the skin is too much to heal properly, however. A bad burn, if not properly treated, makes skin rigid and inflexible, or dry and more sensitive, limiting the body’s functionality.
Similarly, we all have some capacity to take stress – and like skin, we often heal from stress stronger and tougher than before 💪. Able to take on more.
But with enough stress or trauma, any personality can become restrictively rigid or highly sensitive, limiting a person’s flexibility to adapt and change with the world around them.
🤔 Reflection of the Day: What are the most stressful areas of your life right now? Think about that stress as an indicator of a need that’s not being met. What need is it?