I have a strong personality which I think is awesome. I only recently realized this even though I’ve known I had some of the traits of this personality for a while.

Over the past couple years I’ve been working on self development and have learned things I’ve never been taught or thought about before. One of those things is about personalities. We all have a main personality that will never change and other traits of other personalities as well. We can’t change our personality, we can only mask it. Masking our personality would be acting a way that does not come naturally to us.

Growing up in my family, I was seen as shy and quiet. I actually had adults tell me they were surprised to see me being loud. I was shy and quiet but it was because I never felt allowed to express my feelings or thoughts in my house so I just stayed silent. I thought I was shy because that’s what people told me but really I was ignored and invalidated so I just didn’t speak at all and held everything inside. I didn’t even know what a personality was.

I was probably around 19 years old when I started noticing my personality and I didn’t like it. I was loud and expressed my feelings and opinions. I confronted people that said or did something wrong and was the goofy one in the friend group. When Christian and I had been dating for a while and I spent more time with his family, the more I felt like I didn’t fit in. Most of the women in Christians family are quiet and sweet and I felt like the odd ball. I tried to be pretty and quiet like them but always found myself speaking my mind, making the decisions in the group and wanting to have real conversations and have fun rather than sit around talking about work or looking at our phones.

The thing is, I’m not living my life to be quiet, sit still and look pretty. There’s nothing wrong with people who do that but it’s not me. I’m here to speak up about difficult things, share my story, heal myself and inspire others. My strong personality makes me comfortable doing those things.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with people with different personalities, they are just doing what comes naturally to them. No personality is all good or all bad, they’re just different from each other. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We should help each other thrive in our strengths instead of trying to change each other because of our weaknesses. If you try to change the personality of someone, you’re just causing them to wear a mask of a fake identity around you. You could even be stopping yourself from recognizing your own strengths because you’re too busy thinking about things you don’t like about yourself.

I am getting better at understanding and expressing my personality and I was actually surprised to realize I have a strong personality. I’m sure it was always there somewhere but now I can actually express it.

Sometimes strong personalities can get a bad rep. Let me explain some of the traits of someone with this type of personality:

  • You hate small talk.

I’ve always hated small talk because it’s such a waste of time. I want to talk about interesting things! People with strong personalities have lots of ideas and want to work on those big ideas, not waste time on things they don’t care about.

  • You can’t stand insensitivity or ignorance.

Strong personalities are the result of being well-informed and thoughtful. You seek to understand issues. You hate when people make false assumptions about things they don’t understand. Strong personalities are not bullies or mean people, they just want to educate others and stand up to injustice.

  • You do not need attention.

You don’t need the validation of everyone around you. You are confident in who you are. Strong personalities often receive attention because they tend to be the leaders of a group or fun people to be around but you are comfortable spending time alone.

  • You are fearless.

Of course you still have fears, we all do. I’m still afraid of the dark. What I mean is, you don’t let fear dictate your life. You do what you know needs to be done in order to accomplish your dreams regardless of your fear.

  • You speak your mind.

You share your opinion even if it is unpopular. You stand up for what is right. You don’t hide your feelings, you’ll have difficult conversations instead of holding your emotions and thoughts inside. You say no to people and set healthy boundaries.

  • You are goal oriented and know what you want in life.

You set goals because you know the steps you need to take in order to have success. You maintain a clear vision of what you want in life. You don’t believe it to be unrealistic no matter what obstacles you have to face.

These are just a few traits of a strong personality. Maybe you realized that this sounds a lot like you! Or maybe you had a negative view of strong personalities before and can see things differently. Like I said before, we all have weaknesses as well so I’m not saying this personality is better than anyone else’s.

Even though you might think a strong personality means horrible things like bullying, anger, someone who is self centered or judgmental, the exact opposite is actually true. A weak personality is all of those negative things.