Which of these do you put first?

Have you thought about what your life priorities are? I admit that when I was younger, I did not. I used to feel like I was doing it all (even though I wasn’t), and prioritizing felt like giving up. Over time I’ve come down to earth and realized I can’t do it all. And if I don’t prioritize, I end up neglecting everything. I’ve had to take stock of what’s important (health, family, friends, and business) and let the else sort of fall away.

Of course, day to day focus is just one sort of prioritization. I could write a quiz about it, but I figured you all probably know what you’re zoning in on right now. As some commenters would say “I don’t need a quiz for that!” You don’t need a quiz to tell you whether you’re in work or family or self-improvement mode right now.

What I started thinking about was something different. A more meta point about priorities. What do you prioritize overall in your life. It’s another twist on the whole question of life philosophy, and I think it’s an interesting one. What is your overarching framework for doing what you do? Are you putting yourself first, other people, a set of rules…? I think it’s interesting stuff.

With all that in mind, I wrote What Do You Prioritize? This quiz will tell you what you’re really putting first in your life, and you may be surprised with the results. Comment below and let me know what you think of you result!

Discussion topics (Comment below and let me know any or all of these):

1. What do you get on What Do You Prioritize? Is it true for you?
2. What do you prioritize most in your life? The least?
3. How have your priorities evolved over time?

Are you a playful person? Take my latest quiz to find out?

Happy April Fools’ Day! Let me get something out of the way right now. There will be now April Fools’ Day pranks on this blog, so you can breathe a big sigh of relief and read this post without skepticism or cynicism. I think there are more than enough pranks and sill jokes to go around on this day, so I like to opt out.

While I decided not to prank you guys, I did want to make something themed around April Fools’ Day. It’s a fun day (at least in small doses), and I was thinking about how some of use love it and some of us feel frustrated by it. My theory is that it all comes down to playfulness. The more playful you are, the more you will enjoy little jokes and pranks. It also explains why I like this holiday when it falls on the weekend but why I might have trouble with it on a Monday morning

Did you know that playfulness is actually something that psychologists study and measure? When I started doing research for my latest quiz, I was surprised to find playfulness scales for adults, teenagers, and children. Makes sense to me. Play is a powerful thing! It brings us together, helps us fight stress, and opens us up to creativity.

So on this most playful day of the year, I feel like it’s only appropriate to ask: Are You Playful? I personally consider myself to be a pretty playful person, but probably I am not as playful as I’d like to be. I’m still working on that whole stress management thing

P.S. If you’re feeling even more April Fools-y, take a couple past themed April Fools quizzes:

• What April Fool’s Prank Should You Play?
• Are You Easily Fooled?

Discussion topics (Comment below and let me know any or all of these):

1. What do you get on Are You Playful? Is it true for you?
2. Do you like April Fools’ Day? Why or why not?
3. What’s the best April Fools’ Day prank you’ve ever seen?

Do you like to follow the rules?

Do you like to follow the rules? I’ll admit that I’m a begrudging rule follower. I have the heart of a rebel, and it’s my first instinct to want to ignore and break all rules. However, I’ve learned that breaking the rules can be stressful, so I usually just follow the rules anyway. I suppose that I’m a wannabe rule breaker – at least when it comes to the law.

When it comes to less set in stone rules, I’m a total rule breaker. I have been working on Blogthings for almost ten years, even though people nag me to get a “real job.” (Too late – I’m hooked!) I also broke the rules by doing my education a bit differently than most I know. Oh, and by marrying Mr. Blogthings only after we had been dating a few weeks.

So yeah, I’m no lawbreaker, but I’m not so big on rules. I try to set as few rules for myself as possible. They’re too constricting. I admire, but can never understand, friends who go on very strict diets, fitness regimins, or budgets. It doesn’t seem like a lot of fun to me. I prefer to trust myself and take it how it comes. If I mess up a bit with my health or finances, maybe I’ll overcompensate a bit. No biggie.

What about you? Are rules important to you? Or would you rather throw your rules out the window? Find out with my latest quiz: Are You a Rule Breaker or a Rule Maker?

Discussion topics (Comment below and let me know any or all of these):

1. What do you get on Are You a Rule Breaker or a Rule Maker? Is it true?
2. Do you prefer lots of rules or lots of flexibility?
3. What rule do you break, if any?
4. If you could make everyone follow a rule, what would it be?

Are you easy on yourself?

Do you believe in being self-compassionate? I believe in it, even though practicing it isn’t the easiest. I think we should strive to be easy on ourselves because no one else might be. And I also see self-compassion as the first step in change. You can’t make a positive improvement if you’re beating yourself up about something.

I had a challenging moment of self-compassion yesterday. I temporarily broke the Blogthings database by putting a semicolon in the wrong place somewhere. An easy mistake to make, but I wasn’t so easy on myself about it. Of course, making myself feel bad about my little mistake made everything worse. I had to step back, collect myself, and realize that this would be a perfect time to practice showing myself some compassion, empathy, and understanding

According to some research I found, there are three elements of self-compassion. The first element of self-compassion is self-kindness. This means being warm and loving toward ourselves when we fail or are in pain. The second element of self-compassion is recognizing your “common humanity.” Knowing that you are human and that you will make mistakes, suffer, have bad days and so on. For some reason, this is hard to admit at our worst moments – at least it is for me. The final element of self-compassion is mindfulness. Being aware of negative feelings and thoughts but not letting them become a part of who we are.

I agree that the above are all important aspects to caring for yourself, and I incorporated them in my latest quiz Are You Compassionate Toward Yourself? As always, there is not a right or wrong way to score on this one, so be sure to be easy on yourself even if you don’t get the result you want

Discussion topics (Comment below and let me know any or all of these):

1. What do you get on Are You Compassionate Toward Yourself?
   Is it true for you?
2. What’s something you do to be compassionate with yourself?
3. Do you think you’re too easy or too hard on yourself?

Are you grossing people out?

I don’t know about you, but I find disgust to be a psychologically fascinating concept. As far as I know, every culture has things that they find disgusting, but what those things are vary widely. For example, in the United States, it’s considered disgusting to eat horse meat – while others in various countries have no problem with it. On the other hand, I’ve heard that many people who visit the US think that the hotels aren’t clean enough (I agree!), while they’re able to stay in business catering mostly to Americans.

I suppose we have all evolved to have a disgust trigger to keep us safe and healthy. After all, we all find rotting food and grotesque disease to be stomach turning. It’s our body’s way of telling us to avoid the danger we’ve noticed. I think that’s why disgust increases during pregnancy. And while what we’re disgusted by can vary culturally, it can also vary individually as well. We all have a particular “disgust sensitivity,” and some interesting new studies are showing that our disgust levels can correlate with interesting characteristics – like conservatism and neuroticism.

When developing my How Gross Are You? test, I tried to pick things that were disgusting in my culture, especially things that people rarely talk about. A lot of friends have told me that this is their favorite Blogthings quiz, because it is so taboo breaking. Do you agree? Do you have the stomach to even take it? I have to admit that I’m a high disgust person, and even rereading the quiz grosses me out a little (I’ll also freely admit that I DO kiss my dog on the mouth.)

Take How Gross Are You? and let me know what you get. Or don’t! I know this sort of result can be a bit personal. Maybe you could let me know what sort of thing you don’t find disgusting that other people do.

Are you high or low maintenance?

Are you a high maintenance person? I kind of think it’s hard not to be in our advanced, customizable world. It’s so easy to develop preferences, and when those preferences stick, it’s hard to shake them. I really blame the hedonic treadmill. The more choices we’re given, the more we adapt to them… and having a choice taken away is difficult. For example, I know I should just be happy that we have the ability to fly on airplanes. I still get grumpy, though, if I end up in a middle seat.

I try as best as I can to fight against being high maintenance, because it’s an annoying characteristic in others. How many times have you tried to be friends with someone, but it was too difficult because he or she had to have everything a certain way. The people I gravitate towards tend to be the lowest maintenance, and I would like to give others that ease as well. I purposely try to say yes to things I may not enjoy simply to be easygoing. And it usually works – I have fun anyway

I do like to indulge in a bit of high maintenance behavior, but my compromise is I keep those activities to myself. At home, I like my food, entertainment, and work a certain way, and I rarely deviate from that. By giving myself exactly what I want, I have more room to compromise with others and at least appear low maintenance

What about you? Are You High Maintenance? Take my quiz to find out! I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer to this one, so don’t be offended if you’re high maintenance.

Let me know what you get on Are You High Maintenance? Is it true for you? Do you have any tips for dealing with high maintenance people? Or do you prefer to be around lower maintenance people?

How eccentric are you?

One of the biggest questions I get asked is “Where do all your quiz ideas come from?”  I typically think of quiz ideas out of nowhere (inspiration!), but occasionally I take requests from Blogthings fans. And even more occasionally, I see what someone is searching for to get to our site and decide to include it if it’s a good match. (All major search engines automatically give web sites this anonymous information.)

The last way is what happened with today’s quiz. I noticed a while ago that someone was searching for a quiz on eccentricity, but we didn’t yet have one. I was surprised that I hadn’t written an eccentricity quiz yet, as it seems like the perfect topic for Blogthings. After all, we all wonder where will fall in the spectrum of unusual to normal.

At first, I didn’t know how to write an eccentricity quiz because it’s not a typical psychological dimension. I wanted to make my quiz as theoretically valid as possible, especially considering there are many ways to look at eccentricity. While doing my research, I ran across the idea of a schizotypal personality, and I think a mild version of this describes eccentrics to a ‘T.’ (And I should know, I am one!)

Schizotypal people tend to exhibit odd behavior and thinking. They have trouble fitting into normal social situations, and they look at the world very differently. Schizotypals are unusual in lots of ways, and they don’t have much normality in their lives. Obviously, this can be troublesome at the extreme, but when I thought about it, a lesser version of this is exactly what it means to be an eccentric. (And yes, if you were wondering, these types are a lot more likely to be creative or “genius” types!)

So I took a few schizotypal personality scales and riffed on them a bit to make my own test milder. Are You Eccentric? Take the quiz, and let me know what you get. Do you consider yourself to be eccentric?

What do you do to live the good life?

Have you thought about what it means to live the good life? It’s a pretty loaded question. No wonder philosophers, psychologists, and all sorts of other folks have been talking about it for years. It’s an important topic – if not *the* topic, and at times it feels like we’re no closer to any answers. I’m pretty sure that most of us are interested in living as well as possible, it’s just not easy to do, and there’s no agreement on how to do it.

Recently I was reading an old psychology book, and I was introduced to some of the theories of a mid 20th century psychologist, Carl Rogers. Rogers had a humanistic approach to psychology, and his ideas struck me as very relevant and compassionate. In particular, he had a whole view on what it takes to live a good or fulfilled life, and I was surprised to find myself agreeing with all of it.

Rogers laid out five concepts that must be embraced for a good life:

1. Being fully open to experience
   
2. Living in the present moment
3. Trusting ourselves
4. Taking responsibility for our choices
5. Creativity

As you can probably see, Rogers put a lot of emphasis on self-expression, self-acceptance, and self-directed growth. I found his concepts of the good life to be empowering and positive. I think we could all use a little more of these things (I know I could!), and adopting them seems like a doable plan.

As usual with Blogthings, I like to think about what’s already going well in life, so I decided to write a quiz to see which concept of Rogers’ good life each of us are already embracing: How Do You Live the Good Life?

Take How Do You Live the Good Life? Do you agree with your result? What do you think of Rogers’ theory of the good life?

Are you a “Type A” or “Type B” person?

Have you ever heard the term “type A personality”? Maybe you’ve even used it to describe yourself. When we think of “type A” people, we are thinking about people who are driven to succeed. Type A people don’t give up easily, and sometimes they’re so focused on their goals that they neglect the effects of their hard charging ways. It’s classic type A for someone to take on more than he or she can handle.

Originally, typing people as “A” or “B” was used to figure out their personality type’s risk for heart disease. Scientists now question the validity of type A people being more prone to heart attacks, but there have been studies that suggest people who adopt a more laid back, “type B” lifestyle have less recurring heart problems. And I think we could all agree that it intuitively lines up. Stress is never good for your mental or physical health.

I don’t know if anyone else is like this, but I’m a recovering type A for sure. When I was in school, I used to get upset if I got less than 100% on a test. And of course, having such high demands on myself only led to failure. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tampered my ambition quite a bit, and I feel happier for it.

Take my quiz Do You Have a Type A Personality? to find out how Type A you are. Unlike, most Type A / Type B quizzes, I give you a bit of gradation with A-, B+, etc. And remember, A is not necessarily best. Or worst. I think we all go through phases in our lives with this, and it’s more about where you are right now.

What do you get on Do You Have a Type A Personality? How accurate is your result? Are you a recovering type A or type B?

P.S. Fun fact about this quiz… It was once featured in the online show notes for the Howard Stern show back when he was on regular radio. I’m not really sure how that happened, and I’m not sure how Howard scored personally