Why Writing in First Person is the Best (and Worst) Way to Write

I know, that title was quite a mouthful, but it's an important point that occurred to me just last night.
 I've been having trouble with quite a few of my WiPs in that they either go nowhere or they just don't seem to do the characters justice. I was bored last night, so I thought I'd do a bit of character profiling. I tried to get to the bottom of the motivations and beliefs of all my main characters from the entire Holistic Collection, as well as those of a few less important characters, and I realised something that kind of shocked me:

All of the characters whose PoV I have written from (there's maybe eight of them) are, basically, me. They're all seperate characters, of course, but every single one of them has something about them that I see in myself, for example, 'Tamanique: doesn't always know when she's taken it too far'. Hello, me. :)
 I'm sure, for some of you gorgeously clever people reading this, you're sitting there thinking, 'duh'. But, the thing is, although I've read a lot of stuff about writing and I write myself, I'm a cynic, and so I never quite believed the whole 'your writing reflects you' thing.
 It does, it turns out.

 So I just thought I'd point this whole thing out to those of you who, like me, need nudging towards these little epiphanies. And I wanted to warn you, as it says in the title: if you want something realistic, where your character seems like an actual person, go ahead and write from your character's point of view. If you want to do something different and original from everything you've ever done and anything that's ever been written -- or just don't want the world to see you as you are yet -- go for something safe/exciting like third person.

 You'll love me for this post at some point, 'rinos (yes, you have been downgraded from Bloggerinos; you just aren't worth the typing anymore, you ungrateful sons of lovely readers).

Writer out!