Personality and Personal Growth: Stress-Causing Traits

Some people carry around more stress than others, and a lot of that comes down to the way they're wired. If you're building a personal development plan, the first step is figuring out which of your own traits tend to crank up your stress. Naming them gives you something to work with.

Why bother? Because stress leaks into everything. It clouds your judgment on big decisions about your career and small ones about your day. It strains your relationships and wears on your physical health. When you're stressed, you're not operating at full capacity, and that affects every corner of your life.

This is one area where neurofeedback can help. The brain-training hardware and software are built to encourage the brainwave patterns tied to clear thinking and healthier social behavior, which can take some of the edge off these challenges.

What follows are a handful of traits that tend to make stress harder to manage. Reading through them, you can decide which ones sound like you. That recognition does double duty: it points you toward the right stress-relief methods, and it helps you work alongside the parts of your personality you can't simply switch off.

You chase perfection. Plenty of people want everything to be flawless even while they already know flawless isn't a real place. The trick is setting goals that tell you when you've actually given something your best, so you can stop. Define the finish line in advance. That way you perform well without punishing yourself for falling short of an impossible standard.

You stay stuck in the past. Replaying old events is a common habit, and probably one you'd rather break. When you catch yourself drifting backward, pause for a minute and pull your attention back to right now. What already happened is done. Your energy is better spent on what's in front of you and what's coming.

You feel like you're never enough. Everybody has days where it seems like they've got nothing to offer. The problem starts when that feeling never lets up. If it's constant, the thinking behind it needs to change. Everyone brings something, and what feels trivial to you can mean a great deal to someone else. Next time the feeling hits, spend a couple of minutes listing the good things you did that day. Holding a door for a stranger counts.

You're short on confidence. Anyone who has read about personality types and self-development knows how much confidence matters. Nobody arrives in the world confident; it gets built through effort and attention. Don't expect it to show up overnight. Keep at it, and over time you'll catch yourself feeling steadier than you used to.

You struggle to connect with people. Every day you run into people who are nothing like you. Being able to relate to them and feel what they feel is a big part of getting anywhere in life, and some experts rank it among the most valuable abilities a person can have. The good news is you can practice it, and as you do, working with people from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds gets easier.

You resist adapting. Life keeps throwing you into new situations, and some are far rougher than others. If you can't shift gears and stay productive when the ground moves under you, the stress piles up fast. Flexibility keeps you comfortable no matter what lands in your lap.

Write these traits down along with the specific trouble each one tends to cause you. From there you can build a stress-focused development plan with goals aimed at each problem individually. You won't erase any of these traits, and that's fine. With steady, focused work you can improve them, so your plans for growth cooperate with the personality you already have.

References: truity.com personality type tests; a visual guide on stress at visual.ly.