Reading People Quotes

“Understanding our personalities makes it significantly easier to change the things within our grasp. This is whole point of studying various frameworks! Some people resist personality frameworks because they say such frameworks put them in a box. I’ve found that understanding my personality helps me step out of the box I’m trapped in. When I understand myself, I can get out of my own way.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“I’m a sociable introvert. I enjoy coffee dates and Christmas parties and weddings and neighborhood picnics. I love noisy family dinners and hosting playdates and chatting with other parents on the baseball sidelines. I get a little restless when I don’t get regular doses of social interaction. But when I get out of balance—when I spend too much time extraverting, according to my personal definition of “too much”—I am useless. When I ignore the warning signs and keep extraverting until I enter the Overtalked Introvert Danger Zone, I get totally overwhelmed and borderline rude and can barely string sentences together. I wish I were exaggerating.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Once you understand yourself, you can stop fighting your natural tendencies and plan for them instead.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“For Introverts, the inner world--the world of ideas--is what they think of as the real world. It's where the real action is and where they naturally prefer to spend their time. Interacting with ideas in their own heads is natural and effortless.

For Extroverts the real world is external. The real action happens outside themselves, with other people and input. It's where they naturally spend their time and feel most at home.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“My personality traits don’t determine my destiny, they inform it.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Understanding our personalities doesn’t eliminate the tension that results when people with different needs, motivations, and preferences come together or, especially, live together. But understanding things beneath the surface–why people act the way they act and prefer the things they prefer–helps us at least make sense of what’s going on. These people are not out to get us or trying to ruffle our feathers; they’re just different–a different kind of normal.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Understanding your MBTI type can help you understand how to care for yourself and how to better relate to the people around you. It’s similar to being given the owner’s manual for a certain model of car—your preferred model.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“I’m an HSP to the core. I avoid violent imagery (I abandoned reading Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person on my first try because—in typical HSP fashion—I couldn’t handle the frequent references to sexual abuse). I’m very empathetic, and I feel as though my head will explode when two people try to talk to me at the same time. I have difficulty making dinner while the counter is cluttered with the morning’s dishes. I lose my mind when someone is singing while the radio is playing a different song. Watching the news makes me want to assume the fetal position and never get up.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“We are constantly evolving products of the influences we take into our brains. What we look at, what we long for-to a large extent, this is exactly who we become. The foundational habits we adopt, the people we hang out with, the thoughts we dwell on-these all greatly impact the kinds of people we are and the kinds of people we become, as well as how we change and how much.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Researchers generally agree that introverts and extroverts are born, not made.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“seriousness, denial is a powerful force. Or as Christopher Alexander said, “We are not always comfortable with the true self that lies deep within us.” 4”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“I’ve come to think understanding personality is like holding a good map. That map can’t take you anywhere. It doesn’t change your location; you’re still right where you were before. But the map’s purpose isn’t to move you; it’s to show you the lay of the land. It’s the tool that makes it possible for you to get where you want to go.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Growth is a multistep process, but it is an actual process. Spiritual formation isn’t quite as slippery as some make it out to be. The first step is to crack ourselves open to see what we’re hiding, either deliberately or inadvertently, and to drag what is in the dark into the light. This is the process of self-discovery and self-awareness.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“The foundational habits we adopt, the people we hang out with, the thoughts we dwell on—these all greatly impact the kinds of people we are and the kinds of people we become, as well as how we change and how much.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“The diagnosis is its own sort of cure.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“high sensitivity describes people whose nervous systems are more receptive to stimuli than those of the general population. This means they are more attuned to subtleties in their surroundings and are more easily overwhelmed by highly stimulating environments. Their internal “radar” for detecting external stimuli is quite good, but it takes energy to keep that radar operational, which can be exhausting.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Big feelings. HSPs process information more deeply, including emotional information. For example, listening to a girlfriend share her troubles can make nonsensitive friends feel just fine but can be completely overwhelming for HSPs. And HSPs can feel overwhelmed by their own emotions. Sorrow, joy, fatigue, anxiety—there’s no such thing as a little bit sad or a little bit happy or a little bit tired. HSPs don’t feel things halfway.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Idealists believe everyone is unique and special in their own way. It’s true that Idealists probably see themselves as special snowflakes, but the truth is they see you as one too.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Introverts are often thought to be shy, and they may battle the perception that they dislike people or company or that they’re grouchy or social misfits. Extroverts, however, battle the perception that they’re flighty or shallow or relentlessly happy. People tend to assume extroverts are bad listeners, hate being alone, and are irrationally “needy” for the company of others.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“C. S. Lewis’s marvelous essay The Weight of Glory. He writes, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” In light of Lewis’s eternal view of life after death—heaven and hell—he explains, “All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all love, all play, all politics.”20”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Because we live in a world with many other people…we need to be not only smart about meeting our own needs but also gracious about their needs…we have to learn to be flexible.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“When we bring personality types together, communication breakdowns are inevitable…Thinking types may feel they’re being considerate by getting straight to a point in a conversation, unaware that their feeling friends perceive them as uncomfortably blunt. Intuitive types may think they are contributing by sharing their grand plans in a team meeting, unaware that the thought of so many changes at once completely stresses out their sensing colleagues. Extroverted types may feel disappointed when their spouses don’t immediately respond with enthusiasm to their ideas, ignorant that they just need time to think the ideas over.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“My type is naturally emotionally expressive; Will’s type is naturally resistant to emotional displays. When we disagreed, I would tell Will how I felt, and he would remain calm, seemingly cold. I thought that meant he didn’t understand me, or care, and I’d get upset. He didn’t understand why I was upset, because he definitely understood—and felt my disappointment deeply. Then I’d get angry that he seemed not to understand. That night I finally understood that Will wasn’t being cold or trying to exasperate me. He just wasn’t me, and I’d been expecting him to act like me.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“...it's great for my outlook to focus on the positive instead of only calling out people for messing up. It's a face of life that people tend to get what they give.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“I've come to think understanding personality is like holding a good map. That map can't take you anywhere. It doesn't change your location; you're still right where you were before. But the map's purpose isn't to move you; it's to show you the lay of the land.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“Woo. This stands for “winning others over.” They enjoy meeting new people and securing their approval, admiration, or friendship.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“The very process of wrestling through the inventory’s questions forces people into a useful posture of self-awareness and self-examination. It’s helpful on a personal level too. So many young people may feel they’re a mess, especially if they’re one of the rarer types. When a person identifies and learns about their type, they discover it’s okay to be themselves.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“The MBTI is focused on personal growth. At its core, it assumes that self-understanding leads to growth. The MBTI makes you feel special, and at the same time it makes you feel as though you’re not alone.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

“To get the most accurate MBTI type for yourself, you need to identify the cognitive functions you rely on and the specific order you use them in. It’s a surprise to many when they find out that this is in fact the whole point of the assessment. The end game isn’t simply to label your preferences but to discover the mental processes that underpin your personality.”
― Anne Bogel, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything