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Most of our pet peeves can be traced back to the actions of humans. Discourteous behavior with cell phones, road rage, inconvenient food packaging, rudeness and myriad other pet peeves can all be summed up by analyzing personality types and pondering their resistance to progress or change.

Based on this assumption, my pet peeves are persons who wallow in their skewed beliefs and make no effort to improve or change. Consider the following:

* Judgmental personalities

These individuals would top the list. I am a believer in the philosophy that until we have walked a mile in another's shoes we should reserve opinions about that individual. There is simply no way we can assess another's mindset of experience, so "benefit of the doubt" is an excellent tool for interaction.

* Chronic complainers

I am not referring to individuals temporarily venting stress and frustration. I am addressing the individuals who constantly complain about their situation, but never make a motion to change it. These are persons who do not take control of their life, but rather allow life to control them.

* Negative personalities

These individuals would also win a top spot on my list. Persons who seldom count their blessings, or believe they have no blessings, for they are too busy recounting their bad luck to even notice a positive occurrence.

* Blamers

People who blame others would also get honorable mention on my list of pet peeves. These are the sorry individuals who cannot own up to their own mistakes, and never take responsibility for their own lives. Everything that happens to them is the fault of "someone else."

My list of pet peeves would not be complete without adding the racist, the greedy, the selfish, the angry and the prejudiced personalities.

While I acknowledge the fact that we all have idiosyncrasies, shortcomings and periods of discontent, most of us would not hesitate to seek help or advice if our attitude was interfering with our contentment in life. We want to be reasonably happy and we want the same for others. As life becomes more complicated, we strive harder to cope.

The reason my pet peeve list encompasses dysfunctional personalities rather than specific annoyances is because these toxic individuals often create atmospheres which increase frustration levels. When inconveniences and annoyances arise as a result of our hectic, complicated, overcrowded and technology driven lifestyles, these individuals protest change and are often part of the problem, as opposed to being facilitators of solutions.

We cannot turn back the hands of time to recreate the simpler lifestyle of days gone by, nor would we want to. We can, however, maintain a sense of humor, not take ourselves too seriously and be kind, considerate, generous spirited and empathetic toward others to mitigate the daily stresses and insure a maximized quality of life for ourselves and all those we encounter.

If we fail to do this, we become pet peeves.

Learn more about this author, Carol Gioia.
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