Hoàng-Ân
PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY (1)
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A helpful story in the process of searching for yourself, especially psychologically:
A litle girl told her parents that she wanted to know more about the whales.
Her parents gave her a book about whales. She read it and then said:
"The book tells me more than I want to know!"
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We can say that almost all of us are interested in the psychology of personality, because it is a science that study us as individual human beings. The field of psychology attempts to look for answers to such questions as: What makes us the way we are; and what causes us to change?
To enjoy proactively this piece of prose, first, should you are interested in doing so: Please do the following exercise:
----Take time to write down everything you can think of that would describe your personality.
Please take all of your time and write as much as you need and want to.
When you finish, you will have an intriguing document that you may want to keep all your life.
If you decide to keep the document for a long time: in years to come you can reread it and know
what you thought about yourself, and also how have your ideas about yourself changed? or not?
----Please reread your document and answer two questions:
(1). What did you think the word "personality" meant in the instruction?
(2). What kinds of things you look for in yourself that you understood as "your personality" when
you answered the question in the instruction?
Personality Psychology studies generally the aspects of human beings that are relatively enduring
or unchanging. In describing your personality, you probably was trying to:
(1) Get at the relatively enduring/unchanging parts of yourself;
(2) Qualities of your character that seem to be stable and more lasting: because if we were
constantly changing, we cannot speak of a personality, which is the traits that is uniquely
us to people in our life.
Personality Psychology, then, studies the differences in individuals. The questions it asks now are:
(1) Psychologically, in which ways are people differ?
(2) The causes of their differences?
Personality Psychology lastly focuses on the issues of HOW and WHY people differ in their motives; emotional response; perceptions; thinking; behavior. All through our life, we have been able only to observe ours and other people's behavior: how they act and what they can tell from their behavior. We can only INFER (gather) and not KNOW what it is in the mind of other human beings. When we are psychologically theorizing, we often make an error in thinking that the observer sees "the whole person."
Evidences in psychology researches show that only when a person is determine to change and actively pursue this end, can changes enter a person's personality. If you want a change, you will be more single-minded in attending to every resources that has to do with a change; you would suddenly notice more clearly potential opportunities for bringing change; and your enthusiasm will drive you to protect yourself and to strengthen yourself for even the slightest alteration in the circumstances, situations toward the right direction when you are looking to define yourself.
Lao Tzu's book TAO TE CHING* and the I-CHING**, or also known as "The Book Of Change" speaks of change as the most certain thing in life! People are imperfect beings, we should welcome changes because with our aspiration to always improving ourselves, we can be better creatures. And it is sweeter to love as a loving and caring fellow human being once we have gained self-knowledge: no more unnecessary pains from the confusions of an unexamine life, and from the outer world populated by other complicate fellow human beings and complex natural phenomenon.
May Happiness and Peace find You: along the progressing of Your Search for Self-Knowledge and A-Better-Way-Of-Living-And-Loving.
*Lao¬ Tử: Đạo-Đức-Kinh
**Kinh Dịch
