The 3 signs of a Narcissist Personality

Ever wonder who is a loser? It is a quite common term used in the corporate world. Recently, I put a question to friends on my facebook page as to what are the habits and traits of a narcissistic personality. I received very interesting responses and the common response was that “losers don’t accept responsibility and blame others”.  While I was pondering over the responses, the story of Prophet Adam and Devil as described in Quran came to my mind.

Iblees (Devil) was made of fire and Adam was made from clay. According to the divine scheme, the devil was asked to show reverence to Adam and his response was weird that made him loser forever.

Signs of a Narcissist Personality:

1-The Arrogance:

He showed arrogance and disobeyed the will of Allah and refused to bow before Adam on the reasoning that he was superior and would not do that. Arrogance is the first trait of a loser. Jim Collins in his book How the Mighty Fall describes Hubris as the first reason of fall.

2-Avoiding Responsibility:

When the devil was expelled from heaven, instead of accepting the responsibility of his dare-devil act, he accused God that You did that with purpose.  So accepting responsibility for one’s acts of omission and commission is alien to losers and passing on the buck is the key trait.

3-Revenge and Pessimism:

On the other hand, the attitude of Adam was totally different. When he fell victim to the persuasion of the devil, he was also asked to leave heaven. And Adam’s response as described in Holy Quran was:

Instead of repenting, devil challenged God that he would misguide His creature to take avenge of his expulsion from heaven. Using creative energies for the negative purpose is the way of losers. Narcissists dissipate their talent on creating an atmosphere of revenge, pessimism, and chaos instead.

“O’ God, I committed cruelty to myself, if You did not forgive me and did not take mercy on me, I would be among losers”.

The response of Adam vis-a-vis devil shows the winning attitude. Winners accept the responsibility of circumstances instead of blaming others for their miseries and misfortunes.

Conclusion:

In the corporate world, losers blame external circumstances and competition for not achieving results while the winners accept the responsibility of failures and take corrective steps in future to reach goals. But, many times such scenarios occur due to narcissistic personality disorder. There are several personality disorder tests to know where you actually stand.