7 faults in your personality that are secretly your tickets to success

You’re one of those who ate their lunch with the janitor in the classroom, while the entire class was out playing truth or dare. The humans/creatures who share your bed, cringe or purr with pity, when you divulge the contents of your ideal Saturday night. Your head often gets whacked for plans, ideas, and suggestions that don’t exactly belong in the human variety of reactions to situations. You probably have moments when you feel you should at least pretend to care about fitting in. Let that moment pass – all these traits probably mean that you’re destined to lead, not to follow. The following seven ‘negatives’ could become your biggest strengths, if you are to go down the entrepreneurial path:

1. The insufferable know-it-all

You’re that person that raises their hand and causes all eyes in the room to roll heavenward as if seeking respite from the deluge of their unsolicited wisdom. “This is just my two pennies worth” is a sentence that could go on your tombstone someday, for how many times you used it per five minutes in your lifetime of poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Chances are – your knowledge and that uncontrollable bile that rises in your throat when you, the pastry chef, must interject, correct, or improve a conversation that lawyers are having about lawyer-ing, is worth a lot more than two pennies. They say entrepreneurs are supposed to be jacks of all, and no two days are identical in their lives. If you’ve spent your life eating trivia for breakfast and are not afraid to rub it in people’s faces, your business will have a leader who always knows the starting point to solve a problem, and a head who is constantly thinking of ways to apply his knowledge in diversification of their offerings.

1. The force of Monday blues is strong with this one

You succumb to the pressure and shake off your idleness, but everything about jobs chills your bone. You’d rather shoot yourself in both your eyes, than sit at one place taking orders from a person you can’t even fathom why has been given any authority. Then there is the risk of your vampire secret being outed when you are made to work in daylight. It isn’t because you aren’t cut out for professional excellence. This probably means you’ll be more motivated to work for yourself, on your own schedule, your own terms and for a cause you feel for. Rules are just somebody’s version of how something must be done – you happen to trust your judgment over theirs. You’re putting your instincts before someone else’s.

1. Paranoid like a lost puppy

You’re Monica from that episode in F.R.I.E.N.D.S, where she self-checks her own checklist out loud while packing for London. You always run upstairs to check if you left the iron on, almost never to find it that way, and instead, see it neatly wrapped and back in its box. But you like to be doubly-sure. If you can make good time on your nth-round of inspection for everything, this caution will make sure you are never apologising for anything from last-minute runs to the printer at events, to missed flights or meetings, to burnt-down factories or the next greatest man-made environmental disaster.

1. The party-pooper among the party-poppers

Social media is going crazy with people hashtagging #BFFs about virtually every acquaintance they have, but you’re just not buying it – for you have never found people you have much more in common with aside from your biological classification. You find social obligations to be redundant and pretentious. You aren’t ashamed to admit that going out is bloody exhausting and talking to strangers at parties is mortifying. You like to think of yourself as Batman when he surveys the city from a distance. You are indeed the hero we deserve, but not the one we know we need, yet. You have decade’s worth of intelligence on patterns of human behaviour, and you are an excellent judge of character, having observed mating and breeding activities of social animals from the fringes. Besides, all the time you have spent by yourself, not indulging superfluous shenanigans, you probably spent mulling over everything from life, to society, to the economy, to come up with some path-breaking solutions that everyone else lacked the objectivity to engineer.

1. Commitment-phobic for a cause

Your friends describe their weekends as having swum in barf, either of their partners as they spent the night holding their hair back, or that of the most beautiful little baby who can’t keep her innards in control just yet. You smile in sarcastic congratulations, while being lost in a reverie of yourself swimming in your money like Uncle Scrooge, earned from the only baby you’d have in a decade – your startup. You’re courageous enough to not subscribe to the societal order of priorities, and are willing to make some personal sacrifices for the larger picture. Now, I don’t necessarily conform to Whiplash’s Neiman’s school of thought, where the Charlie Parker wannabe cold-bloodedly dumps the girl he has the perfect relationship with, in anticipation of the fact that he will get too busy (or important) for her. If you know what you want for yourself and when exactly you want it, being bold enough to always have your cards laid on the table and averting the addition of filial priorities on your list reflects on your animalistic dedication to your goal. When you’re not fulfilling someone else’s agenda and idea of a perfect life – you’re spending that much more time getting your own little dreams fulfilled.

1. Anal in penal proportions

Like Zoey Deschanel’s character in 500 Days of Summer, who used to be called “Anal Girl” in school because she was such a perfectionist, you’ve had a lifetime of people dissing your nitpicking and obsession with perfection. For every penny that your accounts are showing a discrepancy of, you’d lose an average of three days of sleep. You have never left anything halfway, not even raking dry leaves in stormy weather, let alone a goal you’ve set for yourself. Enough said. Haters gonna hate, meticulous people gonna meticulate.

1. The main-meri-favourite-hoon syndrome

The idea of marinating in your own mediocrity is actually a valuable lesson in shameless self-love, if you ask me. You don’t comprehend how you can love and respect yourself lesser, and then expect to be treated that way by the world. Being so sure of yourself, you will take risks, be different, and maybe even fail – but with flair. You will revel in your victories and raise envy, or wear your failures on your sleeve and inspire. Either ways, your confidence in yourself will lead you through many uncharted territories.

Everybody has their quirks. It’s how you own yours that makes all the difference.You don’t want to be the wimp who didn’t listen to everyone’s favourite imp, afterall. “Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like an armour and it can never be used to hurt you.”