Associating Hobbies And Activities With Your Values And Personality

Recently I was asked why I am so keen in using one’s hobbies and activities as a way to determine what their life values and personality is like. For many people sharing similar hobbies is more for recreational purposes where you know that you can enjoy an activity that you like with someone else.

For myself it usually goes a bit deeper in terms of what I am thinking when I person tells me about their hobbies and assuming I am trying to learn more about the real them. Let’s pretend a person told me that they were into something aggressive like boxing. My immediate way of thinking wouldn’t be something like “Oh cool. So we can be gym buddies.” Instead, it is more along the lines of “I wonder what past aggression or inspiration motivates him to do this sport.”

Usually through that you can learn so much about a person as there is a story to tell which shows you how the person has been molded and their ways of dealing with things in life. In many ways it is almost like trying to categorize people based on the type of music they listen to or the movies they watch. But instead of focusing on the surface level it’s about using those interests and seeing what kind of a back-story you can uncover about the individual that made them choose and continue with those activities.

Example, you could have two billionaires who give away millions to charities every year. You can’t really tell anything about them just by that alone I’d say. What if one person donated money to that charity mainly for tax reasons while improving his public image? Compare that to a person who donated to it because they had friends or family members who went through some kind of ordeal where this organization will help prevent others from going through the same thing.

Like that alone it tells you a lot about the person’s personality and their values. However, if I pre-judged it simply on a surface level saying “They donate to charity so they must be super nice” I wouldn’t get a very accurate picture of the person I’d say. But even with that you can see how much you can learn about a person based on the activities they do when you try to analyze it on a deeper level.