In the past, I’ve been accused of being over-enthusiastic, hyperactive and various other things that indicate to me that those people don’t understand my energy and passion. Recently a close friend also said something similar. Instead of ignoring the comment, as I have done, I asked him why he thought it was a problem. He couldn’t really give me an answer other than to say he thought I could ‘pull my head in a bit’ about some of my passions. At first I was a little bit disappointed and angry but then I realised the problem was his, not mine. This got me thinking about how I’m perceived by others and why they might think less of me because of my enthusiastic nature.
I was talking to my wife about this and we were actually laughing at how other people can’t, won’t or don’t want to understand personalities that differ too much from their own. In talking, we came up with a great idea for a t-shirt:
My default setting is: happy
The way we see it, if we all had t-shirts or badges or some such that indicated our default state, then we might actually get on better with each other, or at the very least, avoid those whose default states didn’t suit ours. We came up with a fair list of potential states such as silly, horny, condescending, pissed, sleepy, crabby, angry, confused etc. My question to everyone here is: if you had a default state, what would it be?