Introduction: Separated at Birth

IN LATE NOVEMBER 1958, newborn identical twin boys were delivered to an orphanage on the southernmost island of Japan. The boys' mother, unwed and abandoned by their father, had committed suicide upon their birth. She couldn't bear the intense shame placed on women who raised children alone. A few months later, the twins were discovered by a sergeant from the U.S. Air Force named Claude Patterson, who was stationed in Japan. Claude and his wife had high hopes of adopting a child they could bring back home to the United States. The Pattersons fell in love with both boys and requested to adopt the pair. To their dismay, the orphanage offered just one boy, with the explanation that the older brother was already spoken for. Forced with the choice of dividing the twins or looking elsewhere, the Pattersons chose to adopt the younger twin. They raised him in rural Kansas and gave him an American name, Tom. The older twin was also adopted by a couple from the United States, who raised him in New Jersey and named him Steve. For the next forty years, Tom and Steve lived separate lives, each unaware that his identical twin was just six states away.

Both boys learned growing up that they were one half of an identical pair, but neither family knew anything of the other twin's whereabouts. For most of their lives, the twins' attempts at locating each other were futile, as the orphanage in Japan was destroyed by a fire shortly after they left the country. Their paths finally crossed on the last day of June 1999. Earlier that year, Steve discovered, through searchable adoption databases on the Internet, that his twin brother was adopted in 1958 by someone with the first name Claude and a last name of Patterson, Peterson, or Paulson. Steve e-mailed everyone in the adoption database who matched this description, with no luck. So he sent out hundreds of letters – one to every Claude Patterson, Peterson, and Paulson he could find an address for – seeking information on a twin adopted in southern Japan in 1958. One of these letters ended up in the hands of retired Air Force sergeant Claude Patterson, who was still living in rural Kansas, just a short drive from his son, Tom. When Claude read the handwritten letter, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Could this really be the same boy he was forced to leave behind in the orphanage more than forty years earlier? He had to find out. He drove straight to his son's house, and they called the number given in the letter. Less than a week later, Tom and Steve stood face-to-face in the middle of terminal D at the airport in Philadelphia.

When they approached each other for the first time that day, the two buff men in red sweatshirts paused silently for a moment to size each other up. Seeing their spitting image standing in front of them was almost too much for the hulking, identical figures to bear. 'I literally could not believe he looked exactly like me,' Steve recalls, 'but when I did see him, I – I was in awe. I was just totally in awe about it. Even if you look at our teeth, I have a separation in the exact same place that he does. It's . . . it's just amazing how much he looks like me. It's like looking into a mirror.'

The twins spent the next four days together, trying desperately to catch up on forty years of separation. It didn't take long for them to discover they had far more in common than their looks. Both brought the same restless intensity to the conversation – head cocked to the left, a stiff upper body, and legs that bounced along attentively with each word spoken. Despite being raised in contrasting environments – Tom in a Christian household in small – town Kansas, and Steve as a Buddhist in a metropolitan borough of New Jersey – their lives had followed starkly similar paths. Both men had married Caucasian women, had two children, and had given their firstborn a Japanese name and their second child an American name. They found unusual similarities in everything, from how fast they talk to how they like to organize the sock drawer. These similarities are compelling, yet it's tempting to dismiss them as uncanny coincidences. It was when their discussion turned to careers that Tom and Steve knew there was something bigger at play. Like many other boys growing up, both were fanatical about sports. Though each was exposed to a myriad of athletics, bodybuilding so captured their interest that it led to an identical choice in profession – each owned and operated a gym in his hometown. But why did they choose to own a gym as their career? Both men delighted in the virtue of keeping the body physically fit, and possessed the remarkable amount of discipline required to maintain a statuesque physique. More important, they were both drawn by the opportunity to help others do the same.

Life is filled with choices. There are an infinite number of junctures on the road that can lead two people – even genetically identical twins – on disparate paths. Tom and Steve didn't try to be the same; they weren't even raised in similar homes. So what was it that kept them headed in the same direction? The twins share an identical personality – the single enigmatic element of the mind that is so central to who we are that it led two men to get out of bed in the morning carrying the same motivations, pursue the same interests, choose the identical profession, and ultimately land in the same place in life.

The Personality Code is a book that explores the vital role of personality in who we are today and what we become tomorrow

The Talentsmart Study
The impetus for this book surfaced more than a decade ago, in the form of a perplexing question batted around among a group of industrial psychologists: 'Is there a universal characteristic that makes people successful?' With no answer in sight, this conundrum needled our curiosity. We decided to launch a study to find out. We assembled a team of statisticians, programmers, administrators, and psychologists to execute a global search for the universal source of talent. Aptly named the TalentSmart study, this quest operated outside the confines of an underlying theory – any preconceived notions as to what produces success would only muddy the waters. TalentSmart took a broad brush and measured the scope of people's skills, motivations, and opinions. We observed their behavior at work and at home. And, perhaps more important, we noted the choices people made and measured the results that followed. An overarching determinant of success, should it exist, could only be found by separating the actions that get results from those that are inconsequential or even harmful.

The TalentSmart study grew rapidly and by the time it was complete we had profiled people on every inhabited continent. This enormous database contains millions of pieces of information that represent the input of more than 500,000 people in ninety-four countries. (See Appendix B for details of the study sample.) At the heart of The Personality Code are the discoveries from this effort. And, yes, the answer to our question ultimately surfaced, but not before we had stumbled upon two revelations that fly in the face of what people have been told their entire lives will make them successful: (1) your personality sets your direction in life, and (2) the greater your self-awareness, the more able you are to use personality to achieve your fullest potential.

Character Is Destiny
In our homes, schools, and the workplace we're encouraged to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and be the person we wish to become. Success, we're told, is a matter of choice. The incredible flaw in this well-intended advice? We actually have very little say in the matter. Like a massive boulder tearing down a hillside, our destiny is set in motion by our personality – a set of behavior traits we all possess in varying degrees. Like the tendency toward introversion or extraversion, these traits influence how we think, how we feel, and ultimately what we do. Each of us has a personality profile that reflects our own unique blend of the personality traits, and is produced by hardwired paths for thinking in the brain. By the time we reach adulthood, these paths are fixed. They serve as the conduits by which our brains think, the mental funnels through which our choices must flow. Personality is a collection of our motivations, needs, and preferences that serves as a blueprint to our strengths and weaknesses – each individual's 'code,' as it were.

Steve Tazumi and Tom Patterson didn't choose to take identical paths in life; they simply followed their hearts. These men pursued the activities that held their interest, enjoyed the opportunities that made good use of their talents, and fell in love with someone who made them feel complete. Before they met, each man considered himself the master of his own destiny. So it was incredibly unnerving at age forty for each to meet his clone living the same life six states away. Steve's and Tom's matching lives were driven by matching personalities, which is an unusual occurrence, even for identical twins. The personality traits measured by the TalentSmart study yield more than 123,000 unique configurations. This means it's highly unlikely you'll ever bump into someone who shares your exact personality profile.

The brain is the most complicated organ in the human body, and there are a multitude of methods available for sizing up how people think and what makes them tick. We administered a myriad of tests in the TalentSmart study, to measure the variety of qualities that people bring to the table. We were surprised to see the degree to which personality traits influence so much of what people say and do each day. The real power in managing human behavior lies in the very code of our own personalities – it is the single artifact of the mind that is ' so pervasive that it is the key to developing self-awareness. Your personality profile is, to the greatest extent, who you are; it captures the essence of your motivations and preferences in life. Since your profile doesn't change, aligning your efforts with it is the only way you can use it to your advantage. Personality is the tool that can pave the way to success, or leave you inexplicably stuck.

The study of personality can be approached broadly with meaningful results. You don't need to squander valuable time fixating on the minute details of people's behavior to put your knowledge of personality to use. Through an extended series of statistical analyses, we were able to condense the 123,000 possible personality configurations into fourteen unique personality types. These types represent the fourteen kinds of people that can be discerned based on their fixed personalities. This book includes a pass code that lets you go online and take the IDISC TM personality profiler to discover your own type. You'll learn which of the fourteen personality profiles you are, and how you can make the most of this hard-coded determinant of human behavior.

We ignore our personality at our own peril, for it sets our direction in life with or without our support and understanding.