Who I was and am

Mami is currently working on her MBA part time and with midterms around the corner, I’m helping her out as much as possible. By helping her, I’m learning some econ along the way and partially continuing to be a student in the academic sense of the word (though being a student is not limited to taking a class or learning from a textbook, we are in reality, students of life learning from the environment, including people, around us). One of the classes she’s taking is Organization Behaviour, very similar to my OB class at Cal. One of the articles that I read was particularly striking (wrong word, but I can’t think of the right one) as it was about abrasive personalities.

People with abrasive personalities are high/overachievers, perfectionists, have a need to be in control, tendency to be impatient with people who are “slow” to understand their ideas, competitive, need for power and recognition and not so good at developing people. Sounds pretty familiar. As I read the article, different incidences came to mind where I embodied the characteristics described. It was another realization of internal changes that have occurred over the last year in particular. I had an abrasive personality. I say had because I now feel that the negative tendencies associated with this characterization have diminished.

There are positive sides to an abrasive personality and I am trying to maintain these aspects, while ridding myself of the negative. It’s partially a concerted effort, ie. reducing my need to be in control and partially effects of other changes I am making in my life, such as an increase in patience due to meditation, etc. Whatever the reason may be, I’m happy to be moving away from being an abrasive person and hope that the detrimental effects of being such a person are overcome, particularly in the organizations that I was apart of.