Are You an Eeyore, Tigger or Full of Pooh?
When it comes to personality types, you can find most of them in the characters that grace the pages of the Winnie the Pooh series of children’s beloved classics. Which type are you?
By nature I am most definitely the Tigger. As an eternal optimist I bounce happily and with great excitement into unknown territories and cool new projects. I’m in this life for as much adventure as I can find. Fortunately, I have found plenty and keep my eyes peeled for new opportunities.
Challenges? Sure, there are plenty, but once I learn what I’m doing, I can strike another one off my list and it’s on to the next thing. I love life. I love MY life. I view the world as a pretty fun place. That said, I live with a couple of Eeyore types. I’m not naming names, but I work with a couple of them, too.
What’s an Eeyore?
He’s the guy who when you give him great news will simply sigh, look down and say, “That’s nice.” He might even be happy about things, but the outside world would never know it. The smile is way, way, way deep on the inside of an Eeyore.
Here’s a “fun” quote I found online from good ol’ Eeyore:
End of the road. Nothing to do, and no hope of things getting better.
As you can see by the above quote, Eeyores tend to look on the glum side of life, expecting to get screwed (and maybe even a little disappointed when they aren’t).
In the wonderful children’s book, Eeyore’s Birthday (not sure that’s the exact title), his friends go to great lengths to try to brighten his day.
They get him a balloon and a big pot of honey. However, due to their unique character flaws, the balloon pops and the honey gets eaten. (Pooh eats it; he just can’t stop himself.)
Eeyore’s friends bring him their gifts anyway, and he smiles just a little. He spends the rest of the day putting the broken balloon into the pot of honey and out again. Is that because his friends delivered just what he wanted? After all, they brought him a bit of disappointment, which he sort of expected. (Ho, hum…)
The optimist Tigger type would tell us that Eeyore was looking on the bright side. I’ll take that viewpoint for now, too, but since I have known plenty of Eeyores in my time I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. Eeyores don’t look on the bright side. They tend to be blind to all the pretty colors. They just expect and accept whatever happens to them; they don’t try to make things happen in their lives.
Then there are the Poohs of the world… with brains all stuffed with fluff. They have trouble thinking their way through problems and rely on their friends and loved ones to help them get by in life. Hey, we’ve all known plenty of them, right? Maybe you’ve helped a couple of them?
They are usually quite lovable and harmless. They are very happy to continue on just as they are. They will embrace neither a Tigger nor an Eeyore mindset. They are too busy just humming along thinking of their next pot of honey. No harm; no foul. Certainly no action or forward thinking involved.
The point here is that you can choose to change your mindset.
If you are a Tigger, maybe you want to bring it down a notch. You can tire others out with your eternal optimism and energy. Not to mention they won’t understand your tendency for taking risks or your devil-may-care attitude about everything you see around you and all the fantastic opportunities that maybe only you can see.
Better yet… find other Tigger types to connect with and with whom you can communicate. A room full of optimistic risk-takers could change the world. Well, if they take action that is! That’s where the boundless energy comes in handy. Tiggers bounce! If you’re a Tigger type, pounce on the next opportunity and give it a whirl. I guarantee if you make mistakes, and you aren’t going to die from them. You really can bounce back.
If you are an Eeyore, you can do exercises to bring up your mood, train yourself to be more positive, get the negative self talk out of your head, learn to smile more, and surround yourself with more positive people. Change your mindset and change your life.
Finally, if you are more like Pooh, you probably aren’t reading this post. You’re probably messing around on YouTube or flitting from one silly cat video to the next on Facebook… and you are perfectly content in these activities. That is your choice, but maybe it’s time to get your head out of the honey pot so you can set and accomplish a few goals.
If you’re a Pooh type and want to try on a different mindset, there are supplements to help you gain more clarity that I’ve seen work wonders for the Primary Pooh in my life. For example, consider taking a little Ginseng and Gotu Kola. You might surprise yourself in how much more you get done in a day and how clear-minded about your intentions you become.
That’s all I came to say today. Time for me to bounce, bounce, bounce away now! I see some shiny, new opportunities just up ahead…