Surrounded by Idiots 👩‍👧‍👧

I forgot that one of my favourite use of these emails is to recommend some books that have improved my life or really got me thinking.

One that I’ve previously recommended and might even re-read myself is Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson

Myself and Sinead were living together last year and read it at the same time and it vastly improved our relationship!

The premise of the book is to assign a colour based on personality type. It’s not the most scientific diagnosis but I found it very helpful and simplified.

I haven’t read it in a year but my take of it would be along the lines of 

Red: The kind of person who says what they think without considering other peoples feelings. They don’t mean to say anything cruel, they are just telling the truth. Quite decisive and usually ends up in leadership positions in life and business.

Yellow: The kind of person who sees magic in everything and has quite a positive attitude. Doesn’t consider the small details and is terrible at time keeping and forethought. A people pleaser that struggles to let people down.

Blue: An analytical thinker but usually doesn’t offer an opinion unless asked. The type of person will listen to what other people are saying, consider all perspectives and come to their own conclusion. 

Green: A very laid back person who will not actively participate in conflict unless pushed to a point. Agreeable and doesn’t tend to have very strong opinions, and if they do - they probably won’t voice them too loud.

Are any of these sounding familiar?

Sinead had decided I was a red but I took a defensive position and tried to tell her exactly why she was wrong until I realised that by doing that, she was probably right!

You can be a mix of colours though, and I realised I was a mix of red and blue - so I would get quite analytical about something and then share my opinion without considering people’s feelings! 

What a great personality to have eh!

But what I loved about the book was that it helped me recognise some traits that I hadn’t realised. It also offers help on how to deal with people with different personalities.

For example, as a yellow, Sinead didn’t realise that when she said we would leave at 2pm, I would take that as exactly 2pm and if I was left waiting at the door, I would see that as her not respecting my time to the point of not caring about me. But then I realised that it was never intentional - it was just her personality. The blue part of me likes to plan my time to a tee so I learned to not wait at the door any more and let her tell me when she was ready. I would also communicate clearly if it ever really mattered if the time was exact.

As a red, if Sinead was saying something factually incorrect or exaggerating (that’s a yellow trait), I would just stop her and correct her. I then had to realise that, most often, it was completely unnecessary - even if I was correct. E.g. she might say something like “I’ve been doing this a year” and I’d interrupt with “it’s only been 8 months”, when it is actually irrelevant to the conversation.

By discussing these traits and behaviours together, we made it so much easier to live together and improve our relationship. Sinead became more aware of her head in the clouds and I think (hope!) I became a bit nicer!

This year, I’m living with Aoibhinn and she’s a green all over. So easy to live with but I worry that she doesn’t call me out if I’m being too red!

There is so much more detail in the book (obviously) so I’d recommend reading it and seeing if you can improve your relationships with or understand the people in your life more.

Myself and Sinead did a podcast on all our favourite books for the Sinead Says podcast last week and you can listen to that here.

Thanks for reading!

Siobhan “Redzer by name and nature” O’Hagan 

P.S. Link for the book - it seems to be only £2.52 on kindle at the moment!