Random thoughts on Personality/Temperament Profiles

So lately (in my circles) there has been a lot of personality/temperament profiling going on.  I find it all extremely fascinating & useful.  A few weeks ago my parents went to a thing at their church and took two different tests which they then brought home and had my siblings & me take.  The first of which was the Four Temperaments test.  This week, Ramee over at Raising Redheads has been talking about a personality test she took at her church that categorizes into four personality types named for colors. I took this test, too, and can see how closely these personalities types parallel each other.  From my perspective Yellow=Sanguine; Blue=Melancholic; Red=Choleric; & Green=Phlegmatic.  This week Ramee has gone through what each of these types are like in gereral terms and I wanted to link you up in case any of you were interested in such things.  Just click on the colors to go to her blog post on that type.

I am a Blue-Green (and/or) a Melancholic-Phlegmatic. (When I took the 4 temperaments test, my scores were dead even...on the color test blue was my dominate).   My Mom is a Red/Choleric.  My Dad & Sister are both Green/Phlegmatic.   Russ is a little harder to pin down...he is a fairly well balanced person, apparently, because in nearly all the tests I've had him take, (Temperaments, Love languages, etc) his scores are usually pretty evenly distributed amongst the categories.  It fascinates me.  When he took Ramee's test the other night he came out as a Green-Blue but there was only a 2pt difference between the two with Yellow coming in third, only 14pts behind blue.  He's clearly not a Red, however.

I have also within the last year re-read Kevin Lehman's Birth Order Book.  In one of her posts Ramee said that Blue is the most common type with Green coming in at a close second and I wondered if this has something to do with birth order.   It would seem as if firstborns/onlys are more likely to be Reds & Blues; Middle born children would be made up of more Greens & Blues; Last borns with more Yellows & Greens.  Thus--a higher percentage of Blues & Greens.  That is totally based on my own speculations though. I have no evidence for it.

I think that becoming more aware of your temperament/personality/giftings is a great way to be able to appreciate the differences in people and to make allowances for each other.  We tend to view other people's behavior through the lens of our own personalities/temperaments but other people do not see the world just like we do and so what works for us isn't necessarily going to work for someone else;  what offends us may not offend someone else; what pleases us may not please someone else; what God leads us to do may not be what he leads someone else to do...Understanding this is a freeing thing.  God designed us all differently and for varying purposes and we need to learn to embrace this as we work side by side for His Kingdom.

What temperament/personality type are you?  First born? Middle? Last? Only?  I'd love to hear and get to know you better through this.