My temperament training system gives you tools and knowledge to recognize a person’s primary temperament style through observation. Each primary temperament style exhibits a body language preference and has distinctive physical features and characteristics that are not related to gender, race, or age. This is a significant breakthrough in study of temperament understanding because it is a practical system that can be used with everyone you meet. My temperament training program allows you to put this information to use in your day-to-day encounters from boardroom to kitchen table.

Hippocrates, father of medicine, has been credited with originating basic theory of temperament styles twenty-four hundred years ago. Hippocrates believed that we are born with a combination of four genetic influences that he called humors; Choleric (Worker), Sanguine (Talker), Phlegmatic (Watcher), and Melancholy (Thinker). He observed that these four styles have a direct influence on our physiology, character traits and outlook on life. While we are each born with a primary temperament, our personality is comprised of all four styles. The order, in which these four styles appear in your individual profile, creates degree of influence they have on your thinking. For example, you might have Thinker as your primary temperament style and Talker as your secondary with Watcher and Worker as your third and fourth influence. There are six combinations for each of four primary temperament styles, which when combined, create a total of twenty-four individual temperament profiles. This article showcases Melancholy/Thinker primary temperament style.

The Thinker temperament style is C, or Competent, in D.I.S.C. temperament profiling system. Thinkers are introverted, private and shy by nature. They are logical and excellent problem solvers. Thinkers have an engineer’s mentality, strong analytical skills and a need to appear competent. They fear making a mistake or having their work criticized. Thinkers are loyal, conscientious and show restraint in their day-to-day work. They are introspective, aloof, pessimistic and moody. Overcast weather conditions will aggravate their mood by harmonizing with their melancholy nature. Thinkers project their emotion internally, rather than externally like extroverted Worker or Talker. The sensitive Thinker is traditional, romantic, and enjoys diverse interests such as; acting, art, astronomy, cooking or grilling, dancing, horseback riding, music, nature, photography, poetry, reading, singing, science, and sports. Thinkers like quality products and pride themselves on doing competent research before making a decision. They are not impulsive buyers. In fact, they are most difficult temperament to sell to because of their frugal and skeptical nature. It would be extremely rare for a Thinker to purchase something without having to first, “think it over.”

Thinkers have a compelling need for organization and order. They require time alone to plan and organize their activities and will normally work from a list. Thinkers love task accomplishment so much that they will add an already completed item to their list, just for personal satisfaction of crossing it off. The ineffective management of time is one of greatest stress factors for efficient Thinker. They are good at planning their time, but have a tendency to pack too much into their day. Their unrealistic expectations and drive for perfection can cause stress and feelings of inadequacy. They frequently experience feelings of guilt when they fail to accomplish all they had planned to do. They are researchers by nature and become overwhelmed and bogged down in details and information, resulting in “paralysis through analysis.” Their desire for perfection coupled with their need to avoid mistakes results in procrastination, which frequently leads to stress, anxiety, panic and depression.

Of four primary temperament styles, Thinker is most susceptible to stress and depression. Under pressure their tendency is to become sarcastic, withdraw, worry excessively and want to quit. Their stress often manifests as migraine headaches and/or tension in jaw, neck, shoulder and back. It is common for them to either grind their teeth or have TMJ. In his book, The Mindbody Prescription, Dr. John E. Sarno, “The Back Doctor” accurately describes relationship between Thinker's drive for perfection and stress:

Passage from one stage, place, stage, or subject to another—so states dictionary definition—words that describe movement, but that say nothing of substance and depth of human feeling. Nothing of nights spent tossing and turning, when craving sleep we lie awake, fighting our personal demons and feelings of failure. Or, terror resulting in knotted stomachs, shallow breathing, and desire to remain in our comfort zone or to run far away. Neither does it tell of moments of quiet contemplation, contentment, and joy, feelings of accomplishment, even ecstasy and delight change can offer. Transitions, be they small or large are rarely finite. With revisionist minds, we place timeframes around experience. Perhaps we use a ritual such as a birth, wedding, illness, death, birthday, graduation, or a new newspaper editor to define these significant phases. I think, these transitions, life's ever in process changes, most often have ragged edges that bleed beyond our neatly bound boxes, starting before we are aware and morphing into next process we call change.

Sometimes change is thrust upon us. Sometimes, it is cultivated by choice. But, almost always, it requires courage. Courage, I think, necessitates accepting journey as a challenging adventure that will pull some new knowledge, fresh wonderment, or innovative direction from us. We human beings, such creatures of habit, so rarely stay put. Much as boomerang in Kubric's 2001 was tossed into beyond; we too, often fling ourselves into unknown.