Have you ever encountered someone with a powerful, independent personality? Did you feel like it was off-putting like the person might be hard to like? Chances are you simply didn’t understand the kind of person you were interacting with.
Often times, these types of people can come off as aggressive, rude, overly opinionated or just plain bitchy. Chances are it feels like they are trying to dominate you or make you feel insignificant. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Dominant, aggressive, rude, arrogant. These descriptors actually do not typify a person with a powerful, independent personality at all. In fact, strong people are often some of the biggest teddy bears, and emotionally available people you will ever have the chance to meet once you make a genuine effort to get to know them. It’s just that people with strong personalities tend to give the meeker, milder of us a bad rap.
Those people with strong personalities do not have to win, nor do they want to necessarily. It is not about being better than anyone else. They typically just are not willing to let other people walk all over them, or put up with being used and abused.
Sure, sometimes strong people might be intimidating to you. But that is only as a result of you noticing their outward manifestation of their inner self-confidence, and lack of need to seek validation from their peers.
Do you have a powerful personality?
Here are eight signs that you have a strong personality that might scare some people:
1. YOU ARE CAUTIOUS, MAYBE EVEN PICKY ABOUT WHO YOU LET INTO YOUR LIFE
As a person with a strong personality, you do not rely on other people to define who you are, or what you are capable of.
You recognize that some people need to put others down to make themselves feel better. Here’s the thing about being picky: it forces you to have high self-esteem and you build a great connection with your own self: you build your own voice of what you want and what works for you. It is not that you don’t necessarily get along with people, it is just that you know exactly what you want in your relationships and social exchanges, and you aren’t willing to settle for less.
Even if you are still trying to discover your own identity, you know that you do not need a significant other, boss, best friend or family member to tell you what you’re capable of, or how to accomplish your goals.
2. YOU CANT STAND TRIVIAL CONVERSATIONS
Conversations about the weather and trivialities are often unbearable, and uncomfortable. If you have a powerful personality, you probably spend a lot of time thinking deeply and have a lot of ideas to share. You do not want to waste time talking about things that in the long run don’t really matter all that much when you could be spending your energy changing the world.
You might feel like you are bad at small talk. But that is not true. Anyone can make small talk. You are simply uncomfortable with meaningless pleasantries.
Unfortunately, our culture has deemed small talk a social necessity. Wikipedia even goes so far as to describe it as a “social lubricant”, which makes it sound a whole lot more fun than it actually is.
Small talk is meant to be light and fun. It flees from depth and meaning. Personal questions are considered inappropriate. Likewise, any emotion besides happy or neutral is discouraged. Consequently, authenticity dies on the vine.
The truth is that small talk allows two people to have an entire conversation without really getting to know each other. Instead of being light and fun, the conversation is flat and boring. It is like a game of chess where both players always know each other’s next move. It is a predictable exchange, with predictable results.
For people with a powerful personality, it is one of those annoying hurdles we must cross to get to the good stuff.
3. YOU ARE IRKED BY INSENSITIVITY, IDIOCY OR WILLFUL IGNORANCE
Strong personalities are the result of being thoughtful and well-informed, as well as being confident in their mental prowess.
Because you have put time and effort into exercising your brain for good, it often can be nerve-wracking when people make instant judgments about things they do not know or understand anything about on more than a surface level.
This could be your best character trait, but not because you can use your knowledge to persuade, or influence people. It is because you can use it to encourage people to think for themselves and to carefully consider what they say before it falls out of their mouth.
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4. YOU DON’T TOLERATE EXCUSES
Self-empowered, strong people do not put up with excuses.
When you have a strong personality, you refuse to allow people to waste your precious time whining or complaining about what they can or cannot do. You are action oriented. You would rather focus on what you, yourself, can do and how you can overcome obstacles to do more. You focus on the solution, instead of agonizing over the problem. You are always pushing yourself to be a better version than you were yesterday, despite others who might want to drag you down.
Don’t question yourself for not making excuses. There might be a lot of reasons that you can’t do something but there are more reasons that you can.
5. YOU KNOW HOW TO REALLY LISTEN
Many people only listen with the intent of responding. However, those with strong personalities know how to listen with an open mind and an open heart. You might think that people would appreciate this. But in reality, being heard and encouraged often terrifies people who are not used to it.
6. YOU DO NOT CRAVE SUPERFICIAL ATTENTION
Having a powerful personality means that you do not need attention, nor do you seek it. A majority of the people that you encounter on a day to day basis might get the impression that you live with it, but this is simply incorrect. The attention a strong person receives is not sought, but given freely because others enjoy, and value what they have to offer intellectually, and emotionally.
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7. YOU ARE FREE OF IRRATIONAL FEARS
There is most likely one thing, or several that you are afraid of. But the difference between you and your peers is that your fears are not baseless or rooted in an unhealthy obsession with worry. You do not let your fears control you, instead, you face them head on and take control of the way you live your life.
8. YOU TURN YOUR INSECURITIES INTO OPPORTUNITIES
Insecurity for you is an opportunity to improve yourself, your situation or to just do better. You know you’re not perfect but if you are not giving your best effort to learn, grow, and evolve, despite what others may think, then you are not living. You are just existing in limbo. You value progress and embrace change.
They say everyone is insecure and this is most likely true for the most part. However, a strong person refuses to allow insecurity to rule their life.
Sure, some people have the perception that people with big personalities are hard to be around, or hard to love. They are simply too shallow to realize you’re only difficult to be around because you challenge other people to be the best version of themselves! If this is what being difficult is like then you already know that it is best to just keep being you.
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Originally written by Michael Prywes and published on Life Hack
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