What’s Your Cuppa?

“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?”

-Anthony Trollope, English novelist

For an introvert like me who recharges with spending time alone, “Absolutely nothing!” is my answer to the question posed by the novelist in his quote above. If I can spend every morning with a nice hot cup of coffee and a good book with no other demands on my time, that will be sheer bliss for me. Unfortunately, given my busy weekday morning schedule with seeing my daughters off to school and morning calls, my coffee time is often more of a necessity to keep me going rather than a luxury to be savoured.

Do you enjoy your coffee as much as I do? I enjoy a nice cup of tea every now and again but have a special relationship with coffee. Coffee has seen me through law school and bar exams, faithfully supporting me through long nights of working through my litigation files in the early years of my legal career. If I don’t drink a cup of coffee in the morning before I start my day, I often find that I am not fully functional. It’s as though I can’t start my day right without coffee. Have I refrained from drinking coffee before? Yes, when I was pregnant with each of my children but never again! My love affair with coffee is here to stay!

That’s why when I came across this article by Emily Waters on PsychCentral.com titled “What Does Your Coffee Reveal About You?”, I couldn’t resist sharing it with all of you! She extracted the information from Dr. Ramani Durvasula’s book, You Are WHY You Eat: Change Your Food Attitude, Change Your Life and came up with a list summarising his survey results of different coffee drinkers’ personalities based on their favourite types of coffee. Have a look and see which category you may fall into, with a pinch of salt. I don’t believe we can easily pigeon-hole ourselves into neat stereotypes based on the beverages we drink but let’s just have fun with it!

• Black Coffee - Personality Traits - Old school and purist

  • The Light Side

    • Keep things simple

    • Patient

    • Efficient

  • The Dark Side

    • Can be quiet and moody

    • Abrupt and dismissive

    • Sort of set in their ways

    • Resistant to making changes

• Latte with milk/cream and sugar - Personality Traits - Comfort seekers, people pleasers, open book, likes to soften the bitterness of life

  • The Light Side

    • Generous with time

    • Will go out of their way to help others

  • The Dark Side

    • Can get over-extended

    • Don’t always take great care of themselves

• Frozen/blended coffee - Personality Traits - Try lots of new things, socially bold, trendsetters

  • The Light Side

    • Childlike

    • Spontaneous

    • Imaginative

  • The Dark Side

    • Fall for quick fixes

    • Don’t always make healthy choices

    • Can be reckless

• Decaf/ soy milk/ Very specifically ordered coffee - Personality Traits - Likes being in control, may be labeled as selfish, obsessive, perfectionist, very aware of their health and bodies

  • The Light Side

    • Monitor their health

    • Tend to make healthy choices

  • The Dark Side

    • Overfocus on rules, control and order

    • Overly sensitive

    • Tend to be worriers

• Instant coffee - Personality Traits - Traditional in some ways, laid back, may procrastinate

  • The Light Side

    • Take life as it comes

    • Don’t get too lost in details

  • The Dark Side

    • Too laid back

    • Put things off and may neglect basic health issues

    • Poor planners

As I said, take the above with a pinch of salt. I am a latte drinker - it’s my go-to drink, almost defaulted in my system. However, I don’t take my latte with sugar. How shall I interpret my traits then? I am an open book but without the sugar, I don’t sugar-coat the bitterness of life? Who knows?

Photo by Matt Walsh on Unsplash

We all know that personality tests and quizzes are not entirely accurate and a lot of the ones found online are not scientifically proven either. Then, why do we enjoy doing them? Why do we believe that our resilience directly correlates with our choice of favourite movie characters? Will your affinity to a particular colour have an impact on your outlook in life? Does it give us comfort to know that our preference for a particular Disney princess will indicate the personality traits of our future spouse?

I know it sounds ridiculous. I think we enjoy doing such quizzes because they provide us with simple answers on why we behave in a certain way. If I like purple, it means that I am a perfectionist. Simple, right? I don’t have to go deep and think about why I always have to ensure that everything is perfect. I can just say it’s because I like the colour purple!

We want our lives to be simple, to have clear answers to difficult issues and situations. We want to be able to categorise the causes of our bad choices in life into neat compartments. We want to take a happy pill and make all the misery disappear. It is painful for us to look at ourselves in the mirror at times, to admit the mistakes we have made and to change our perspectives on failures.

One way to find clarity for the reasons of our choices in life is to know our core values. I did the Values in Action Character Strengths survey several times during different phases of my life and each time, my top 5 values remained the same, albeit in different orders. Values are our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people and ourselves. They are what we stand for in life, how we want to behave and what sort of person we want to be.

Try this free test at https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register and discover your core values based on proven positive psychology research. If you want to explore your results and leverage on your values and character strengths to reach your goals and live a purposeful life, reach out to me here! We can talk about it over a cup of coffee!