What is your temperament?

I spent the last three days at my church camp. Which means one thing: I didn't get any work done. Bleargh.

Anyways, a brief overview of what we did. We had lots of fun and really interesting main sessions and workshops. One of them was about identifying your temperament - which for the sake of time had apparently been shortened considerably.

So the temperaments are described as the fundamental determinants of who we are - our actions, our personality, our motivations, e.t.c. And we have roughly 4 temperaments. To keep this short, I'll summarise what they were: the first is the 'sanguine' or 'happy-go-lucky' person who tends to enjoy life and is generally the life of the party, making friends easily and generally plunges headfirst into everything. The second is the 'choleric', who is brilliant in leading others and solving problems, matching intuition with ability to almost always make the correct decision. The third is the 'melancholic' or 'serious and sensitive' type, the latter which more or less sums up what he's like. This type of person tend to be more intelligent and excels in many vocations, with a tendency to desire perfectionism. The fourth is the 'phlegmatic', who is the 'cool and steady' person, taking life at a slow and steady pace. This person is often the quiet, reserved person who observes everything, analysing and evaluating everything at his own pace. And thus he makes a good listener, and often a good giver of advice when asked.

Of course all these 4 temperaments have their downside. These are logically deriviated. For example, the sanguine person tends to be restless and unable to stick to a single task, always wanting to jump from thing to thing in search of fun. The choleric always tends to be right, and is driven to maintain his 'rightness', thus often trampling on those who get in his way, adopting a sense of superiority and never willing to experience defeat in anything. The melancholic who takes life too seriously ends up being all bottled up and self centered and worrying too much about things. This person would also be called 'emo'. Lol. And the phlegmatic tends to border on being sluggish and lazy, wasting much time, and in his relationships tends to be stubborn, not willing to listen to advice.

So anyways, there I was looking at the bunch of characteristics. For the sake of length, I have in fact shortened the list of attributes that might help to determine the make up of your temperament. And I was wondering what my temperament was - by the way, there are two: one is your primary and one is your secondary. Haha. For those of you who know me, I'm definitely a choleric. Mr. I'm-always-right, I can do everything myself and no problem is too big that I can't solve it. What I'm trying to figure out is what my other temperament is. Am I melancholic or phlegmatic? I have the strengths of a melancholic but none of its weaknesses, yet I also have SOME of the strengths AND half of the weaknesses. As I see it, the balance is finely poised. In short, I'm both slow and steady in my ways and also serious and sensitive, when I'm not my choleric, overpowering self. Mmm. The vote seems to be swinging heavily towards melancholic.

But how about you help me decide?

I will see about posting a more comprehensive list.