Psychology

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing and keep pretending.” –  Jim Henson

Authenticity is important. It’s important for ourselves and it’s important that we know other people are authentic as well. We always want to portray the real person we are, and we want to see the real person from other people. But is there a way that we can take pretend, play, play acting, and become someone else, to better our goals, and to give ourselves a new perspective. When we think about the word empathy, it means we step into someone else’s shoes and we primarily do this because we’re trying to feel what that other person is feeling, even though what happened to them didn’t happen to us. It helps us identify with other people. This podcast is going to be talking about a similar but different concept, where we actually step into someone else’s shoes to help us achieve our goals. When researchers took a look at this, they realized that something interesting was happening, when we try to imagine how someone else would feel about something or how someone else would look at something and act in a given situation. It’s somehow retrieving a memory in our brains that we have felt when we were in a similar situation. But it also tries to imagine the reaction the other person is having. Those imagined reactions influence how we perceive the situation that’s happening, and it can influence how we act from there. We’re going to talk about a couple of pieces of research that discuss how we can step into other people’s shoes and do better in our own shoes with that.

Simply Imagining Other People Can Change Our Own Sense Of Self

We just had Halloween last week. And if you’re anything like me, as a kid, you remember dressing up in your favorite superhero, or your favorite character from a TV show. And don’t you think that for a few minutes, you thought, “I am Wonder Woman”. Something like that. It somehow, as a child made you bold, made you step out of your own self, and really try to do that. Think about times at your play acting as a kid, and you stepped into the role of your favorite TV show character. It really helped us as children become someone else. But the question is, can it help us now?

“Psychological Halloweenism” is a term that was invented by psychiatrists Srini Pillay. He talks about it as the act of mentally dressing up as a creative person, such as an architect or a painter, really trying to get out of your own head and start doing things in a different way. He indicates that a 2016 study where two psychologists asked subjects to come up with new and creative ways of using regular items. But the people in that study were either supposed to just be themselves, they weren’t told anything. Some were told to be eccentric poets, and others a narrow-minded librarian. Now, we’re going to go ahead and think creatively about these objects and put them into a different perspective. And of course, the people who were the artist did best because they were told to step out of themselves and become someone who was a little bit wilder, and a little bit more interesting, and a little bit more creative than probably the regular people were. The interesting thing is the librarians also performed better. So, in some ways, just pretending to be someone else help the person regardless of what kind of person that was. So now it makes us question, is it possible that stepping into the shoes of someone else and play acting can help us in doing better for ourselves? And if you want to read the articles and the scientific studies, they are of course in my show notes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4749277/

When looking at this, it really asks us to step outside of ourselves when we are playing acting. Another scientist wrote in an article about actors pretending to be someone else. They felt that we are really “one voice, one face, one body”. But being another character allows us to devote our personalities to something else, and we diminish our own personalities. And we can go on to think outside the box and think outside what we would normally do. Other studies found that this type of therapy was great for people battling shame, or abuse, or even a study found that chronic rheumatoid arthritis was helped by play acting to be someone else.

The study with actors found that while they were pretending to be someone else, entirely different places of the brain, were lit up. And the normal part of the brain that lights up when we’re talking or thinking or planning about something actually shrunk a bit. So, this is not just play acting, this is actually changing the way our brain thinks. I think this all sounds like a really good idea. And the good news is, or the bad news, depending on how you look at it, the changes in our brain and our thinking, when we’re play acting, do not go on long term. So, there’s not much risk to harming our own psychological being. However, I would say, be really careful about this. You want to pick people who are going to inspire you to go to this other level of behavior, this next step towards your goals.

https://www.bustle.com/p/acting-out-a-character-can-change-your-brain-a-new-study-says-it-helps-explain-why-this-kind-of-therapy-works-16966396

The reason I started investigating this is that a number of years ago, is I found that I started to have a mixed personality. I wasn’t going the whole “Three Faces of Eve” method of split personalities. But what I started to do when encountering situations that I’m not particularly strong in, I started play acting in my brain. You remember a couple years ago, there was those wrist bands that said, “What would Jesus do?” Which The idea is, if we’re in a tough situation, step back and think what would Jesus do in this moment, hoping that we would take the higher road. That we would try to use Jesus’ behavior as a better emulation for ourselves. Not only did I do that part of it, but I also started doing it in terms of what would other people do? My friend who was my roommate in college, she is very organized and very detailed. And I started to want to go down this path of when I finished projects, taking that next step up. Don’t just finish a project but go to that next degree to make that project, fantastic. So, I would sit there and look at my project and think, what would my friend do? What would she do if she were in this case? How would she organize this? How would she take it to the next level? The next personality came in terms of fitness. Fitness has been a big struggle of mine, which is why I’ve spent so much time focusing on it. I love sitting and I love all these activities that involve sitting everything from reading, and computer work and knitting. But I want to be that adventurer. So, my fitness trainer, Heather, is an adventure. She does these amazing, adventurous things. And so, when I’m thinking that I don’t really want to exercise. I don’t really want to get out of my chair.  I think what would Heather be doing right now. She wouldn’t be taking this time to just sit here and not exercise today. She would be going out and going for a hike or going for a walk or going for a run or a bike. I have to be a little bit more like Heather, if I’m going to be the adventurer at least somewhat that she is and that encourages me to go out and do those things. Then the last one I can think of is my friend who lives a bit far away from me. She’s bold. She’s very bold, and I will tell you, I am not the most bold or confrontational person in the world. And when I feel like someone is taking advantage of me, I think, what would she do if she were in my shoes? What would she say right at this moment and it helps me to become more bold, more direct, and say the thing that’s really on my brain in a good way, instead of getting just run over? It helps me to say the thing that I really need to say. So again, at these times I take those positions to try to make myself do better.

I think that all that controversy that happened a few years ago about the TED talk about the power pose. You’re standing up in front of a group, and right before you’re about to do this speech and you stand up there like Wonder Woman, and it worked for her. It empowered her. But when it was tried in a study, it didn’t really help people the way that they thought it would. And so, the power pose, we thought, maybe this just doesn’t work. And I wonder if it didn’t work, because of the story, she was telling herself. “I’m Wonder Woman, I’m going to do great on this speech!. I’m powerful! I’m strong! I know what I’m talking about. I’m Wonder Woman!” And then she goes out and does her speech, it empowered her, not because of the pose, although that pose helped her do a little play acting. But because of the story, she told herself about the pose. And so, I’m wondering to that if there’s not a script that has to go along with the pose, and not just the pose itself.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2018/04/03/power-posing-is-back-amy-cuddy-successfully-refutes-criticism

So, think about it a little bit, I don’t even think that it has to be someone who’s a real person. Perhaps the person that you play act for a little bit, in order to come up with a good decision, might be someone on television or in the movies. It worked for us as kids. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work for us now? Find someone who has that right attitude you need right at that moment. And think, what would they do right now? What would they be saying right now? What would they be planning for and thinking right now and try to do that?

The other funny personality I took on was someone who is not even real, and I call her Grocery Shopping Jill, and I was going to buy sensible, healthy foods, what would those foods be? So, I came up with some basic rules, which we’ll talk about next for myself. And for whatever reason, it worked! Grocery Shopping Jill is discerning. She’s firm and she will not buy garbage food. It’s hilarious, because I’ll come home and I’ll think, “Wow, I don’t have a single snack in the house.” And my friends will say, “Was it Grocery Shopping Jill again?” Yes, it was. So, it even works, if the person was never real in the first place. But give it a shot and try to find someone that you can pretend to be in tough situations.

Something that’s tied to this pretending is also limiting your choices by trying to come up with personal rules and personal guidelines that you will not cross. And again, it’s not so much that you’re pretending in that particular case. But you’re pretending that there’s a rule out there, you cannot go against even though it’s a rule you created yourself. It’s something that is your personal guideline, your personal rules, and you will not cross those things. So, think about the story of Odysseus. In the Odyssey, he was going by the island of the Sirens. And the island of the Sirens had these women that would sing out to the sea crew. And that would lure them to the island which could cause them to crash on the rocks near these islands. And I think the Sirens ate them! So, what Odysseus did is he plugged up the ears of his entire crew, so they couldn’t possibly go to the bad Siren Islands. He wanted to hear it. So, he had his men tie him to the mast. So, he could not make the bad choice of causing the ship to go in to the islands. And he heard the Siren song, but he was unable to respond in such a way that would get everyone killed. In this way, we can also limit our own choices by coming up with these fake rules that don’t exist anywhere, but somehow give us agency to say no to things or to follow certain rules. And I think that’s where a Grocery Shopping Jill is born from. Some of my rules have included. I can’t buy a carb unless it has more than three grams of fiber. I cannot buy something with sugar in it. If it has more than 25 grams of sugar. I don’t eat after 6pm unless I am really hungry and not feeling well.

Like I said, I think that Grocery Shopping Jill is honestly just a set of rules that I’ve turned into a personality.  We could take some of these traits that we have. And these rules that we decide for ourselves and turn them into a personality, like Grocery Shopping Jill. I put some, I put some resources in the show notes about some good rules to live by.

Summary

1. When you’re stuck in a situation, and you can’t think about how to do this thing properly, step into someone else’s shoes, find someone who would do a great job at this particular situation, pretend like you’re them, and figure out what they would say,

2. Come up with a cast of characters who you can commonly refer to when you’re stuck in that situation. Who’s someone I can refer to when I need to be more resolved? Who’s someone I can refer to when I need to be more healthy? Try to come up with that cast of characters you can refer to frequently.

3. Come up with non-negotiable rules or guidelines that will help you stick to the goals that you’re seeking to do. Again, these are just for you. But they will help you if you come up with them and you repeat them often.

Challenge

Come up with your number one goal, maybe in some of the exercises that we’ve done in other podcast. What’s the number one thing that you want to work towards? Find an alter ego who can help you build those skills to achieve those goals? What would they do if they were in your situation? How can they encourage you to do the right thing?

Fun Advice

And here’s our fun, quote advice a day you start pretending to have fun. You might have a little by accident, Alfred Pennyworth for Batman Begins.

You start pretending to have fun, you might even have a little by accident. This is a great quote. I’ve heard many times before where people talked about if you’re in a terrible situation, or you’re at a party and maybe you’re not having any fun. If you start pretending to have fun, you will actually start to have fun. This quote is from Batman Begins in 2005. This is great advice and I highly recommend using it.

“The human brain is a wonderful organ; it starts to work as soon as you’re born and doesn’t stop until you deliver a speech” – George Jessel.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote a book called The Happiness Hypothesis. He says that there’s two independent brains, “The two brains are like an elephant and its rider, The Rider can steer and pull The Elephant in a particular direction, but ultimately, The Elephant is going to go where it wants to go.”

https://www.happinesshypothesis.com/

There’s another book that takes that theory and really tries to bring it to our personal habits. It’s called Switch – How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. The book is from 2010. The book talks about The Elephant and The Rider, and how to bring them together for our own good. We’ll go through each of the different steps, they talk about taking each of the different personalities.

Switch

The Elephant

First, The Elephant, The Elephant is powerful, stubborn, and emotional. It gets scared. Think about that fairy tale about the mouse and The Elephant, it panics, and it runs away. It also really hates negative emotion, like fear, and it desires positivity, you can use urgency to make The Elephant move, but eventually it will tire of it and just leave. The Elephant really needs to be motivated or have the removal of negative motivation. It hates to fail. It also finds hope, as fuel. It has to know that it can do it.

Here are three suggestions for helping The Elephant work. First, find the feeling. It really wants to be successful. Whenever you think about leaders or speakers who are very positive and very meaningful to you, it’s because they’re bringing that emotion out of you. They’re inspiring you and it’s talking to The Elephant directly. Emotions motivate The Elephant. The second step is shrink the change. We think that big challenges are motivating. We like to accomplish big things. But in truth, we need the steps to be smaller. that will help The Elephant realize they can win. By starting out with those small steps and encouraging The Elephant to make it look easier. The Elephant will work in our way. The Heath brothers talked about milestones; they said their dad used a phrase instead called “inch pebbles”. Small steps! The next item is to grow your people. Get people excited about this change. Which means we’re not going to be down on ourselves when we fail.  We’re going to be positive. And we’re going to understand that ‘failure is necessary’ and that ‘you’re just starting out, of course, things were going to go wrong’. But in the movies, that’s when the hero comes back and wins the day.’ Try to encourage ourselves into having that positive outlook.

The Rider

Next comes to The Rider. The Rider is rational and loves to plan. And it tries to determine what the best path is. It looks for ways to move The Elephant, but it can’t really make The Elephant go where The Elephant doesn’t want to go. Then The Rider gets overwhelmed, stuck in planning and constantly looking for different ways and different paths and different methods to do it. It’s not very effective when you’re talking to an emotional being like we are. We would never train a dog by trying to appeal to the rational side. We always look for the excitement and the reward. We have to give The Rider some help in finding the right direction. Otherwise, they may spin, or they might go in the wrong direction. They talked about how there’s this positive/negative asymmetry. If we were to talk to a friend for a while, and they were giving you a critique about something. And they said some positive things and they said some negative things. We would only remember the negative things. If we get stuck with a problem, The Rider can get burned out and exhausted because The Elephant’s not doing what they want. And so that negativity really hurts The Rider and The Elephant,

To help The Rider they suggest first direct the rider and they call that by finding the bright spots. You’re driving on a road and you’re wondering if you’re going the right way. And you see the city lights off into the distance. Lights are always guides to where we want to go. I try to do it in such a way of thinking of what would a professional do or what would someone who I think is a great version of what I’m trying to do. What would they do? This person they lost a lot of weight or this person used to be out of shape, and they got into shape. And then I would try to figure out what they did and look for their bright spots. Then the next step they said to take is script the critical moves which just means that you want to make this familiar. You want to make this clearer. We always think that we love choice. And we like a lot of choices. We love to go to a grocery store and see 47 different kinds of jams. But what they found in psychology is it actually hurts our choice making, because we get overwhelmed with too many jams. And it actually doesn’t make us happier. This is where something called “Choice Architecture” comes in.  It really helps us define things down. So, if you’re that person who decides that you’re going to go to the gym. Then you stand there, in front of several hundred pieces of equipment. You might not really exercise, or you might not exercise as long as you could, because you’re just walking around trying to decide what to do. By giving yourself Choice Architecture, you will say, ‘well, it’s a day’s cardio day, either you’re going to get on the bike, or you’re going to get on the treadmill. Those are your two choices.’ That will help you to really motivate to do the right thing. We actually do better when we limit choices, instead of giving ourselves every choice. The last step is to point to the destination. And this is really my favorite step. They talk about “destination postcards”. If you were from the future, and you are going to send yourself a postcard about what it looks like when you’re on the other side of this project. What would that look like? Would you be standing there on top of a mountain in the Netherlands? Or would you be on the banks of Paris because you saved money for your vacation? How would you look when you achieved your goals? This is a lot of fun to try to think of ways to help you imagine what your future self looks like. They talk about the future self versus the present self. And we are always more concerned about our present self. We make choices for ourselves that are about today. And those choices don’t tend to be very good. We can look at the future self. And actually, bring it into today with these future postcards or these destination postcards, it’s really going to help us get there. Give us a way of seeing the vision for it. And what they said was “Don’t obsess about the middle. Because the middle is going to look different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending. And that’s what you should focus on.”

The Path

Then the last item that’s here is The Path. And The Path represents what we want to change. But what we have to do is we need to make The Path work in our favor. The first step is to tweak the environment. That means we make The Path easier; we make The Path looks smoother. Maybe we make it easier for us to do the right thing by setting out our gym clothes. But they said is to make the right behavior a little easier, and the wrong behavior a little harder. And then they said, “When it comes to changing behavior, environmental tweaks beat self-control, every time”. Make it smooth. Make it downhill. Try to make your path as easy as possible. The next step is build habits. Habits are the cruise control of our lives. Once something is a habit, it becomes easier for us and we don’t have to focus on it. It really helps us to do things without burning ourselves out or burning out The Elephant. I’ve always been that kind of person who thought habits are boring. But in fact, what it does is it helps us take the things that don’t require a lot of mental energy and makes it entirely easier. Then we can take our focus on what’s important. And those fights that we have with our goals and habits will have more energy, because we got there through the power of habits. Think about cruise control in a car. Maybe that’s boring, but that’s also easier. It helps us go at a constant pace. The last step is “Rally the herd”. Behavior is contagious. When we see people doing something, we’re more likely to do it. How can we go ahead and try to change our behaviors? They talk a little bit about organizational change and trying to get people to join in on that. And in software as a trainer, I look for people that have a gleam in their eye, and maybe a little smile on their face. I go introduce myself to them, and I bring them on as my champions. They’re the ones that are going to help me sell this new behavior and this new activity to other people, because they’re excited about it, and their excitement will be contagious. It’s also true that if you have dissenters, they will also cause contagions inside your new system. Their quote is, “When change comes into conflict with culture, a new rule is no match for the culture.” Even if you order people to do something, they won’t do it if the culture goes against it. What you want to do for yourself, when you’re talking about your own habits, is trying to get people on board. Maybe it could be people in your house. Maybe they have different reasons for doing the things you want to do. I see people go for a walk with their kids outside, but I’m sure their kids probably didn’t really want to go for a walk. But maybe they did actually want to talk to their parents. Or maybe they just wanted to play Pokémon. But somehow, the parent who’s trying to get exercise is now walking with their kid and it’s encouraging the behavior. You can try to get people inside of your family to help you support your habit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just doesn’t work. And then you have to find a different group of people to help support you. Maybe it’s a Facebook Group. Or maybe it’s a group of people in your reading club, who’s going to encourage you to get your books read. But whatever it is trying to bring people in because that behavior is contagious. Find the champions who will help you do what you want to do. You can’t find anybody, you can look online and try to find a group or become your own cheerleader and start talking to yourself, in a good way.

They also mentioned that “Change often fails because The Rider can’t keep The Elephant on the road long enough to reach the destination. changing behavior requires careful supervision by The Rider. And what looks like laziness is often exhaustion.” “And what looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.” In these battles that we have with The Elephant, The Rider and The Path, try to make it clear to avoid resistance, and try to make it easy and have a nice path and try to avoid exhaustion.

Jill’s Take

I really liked this book, it taught me that I’m way too focused on The Rider. I really have to start speaking to my inner elephant, I tend to be a real Rider-focused person, I come up with plans. I spin forever with all these different scenarios and pathways left and right. I can just spin in the plan making mode. Not only that, I probably talked to my inner elephant by nerding out, The Elephant doesn’t care. The Elephant wants to see hope and vision and excitement. That’s where I really go wrong and that’s where this book really helped me to understand that I have to sell a different part of my brain, not just the intellectual side of things.

Some ways that I’ve worked on and trying to get my goals to work is I love the destination postcards. I do a lot of things in my house and at work to try to encourage me to meet these goals. I have bulletin boards filled with goals. I also have photo boards that are filled with me actually doing those goals. I have this picture with a coworker when we went to Hawaii and did the hike at Diamond Head. And when you stand at the bottom of Diamond Head, it is intimidating! But you know what? I was in shape enough that I could go up this mountain. It was just such a huge achievement to get up to the very top and get rewarded by seeing whales swimming in the ocean on the other side. That picture always motivates me. It’s on picture frames that I have inside my house. I also have digital picture frames. And at work. It just cycles through all these goals and places I want to go and places that I’ve been that really excite me so I can motivate to keep away from the snack room and remember to exercise. I also add inspirational quotes from books and podcasts. That’s why I create quote images on Instagram and Pinterest, for you so that you can also use them to inspire yourself. Then I also like to put these pictures on my phone so I can frequently look at them. I want to show myself the vision I have. I want to show the reward of all my hard work. I know friends of mine also like to bullet journal so they can see in this book, all the things that they want. The next thing I do is I love to think about my future self and who I will be and sometimes I even asked myself if you are an adventure who is going to go and climb the mountains of Norway. What’s the next best action I can do, or what’s the next best choice I can make? I also work really hard when something goes wrong, or I didn’t do a thing I needed to. And again, telling ourselves that we knew that this was going to be hard, reminding ourselves that we understood that, but we knew it was going to happen, and really giving ourselves self-talk to help that elephant not be so afraid of failure, ‘Hey, this is just how it goes’. ‘It’s okay, we got this.’ I used to be a part of a bowling team. And on the bowling team, I had a teammate on there, who at crucial times in the match would say, “You’ve got this!”. And I always think of that, whenever I come up with a tough time to just say that in my brain, “you got this!”

 Summary

1. Make sure you entice The Elephant by making small changes, giving it those feelings that it wants to have a positivity and get some peanuts!

2. Help The Rider know which direction they should go. Put up some bright lights, so they know where the destination is located. help them plan, script the moves, reduce the number of choices that The Rider has to make, and help them by making the right choices at the right point by giving them guidance, then point to the destination. create these images of their future self so that they know what the destination looks like.

3. Shape The path – tweak the environment, make The Path as smooth and easy to travel on as you possibly can. And build habits so that we have a little bit of cruise control

4.  Build a community of contagious behavior to carry you through.

 Challenge

Find things in your house that you can create that would help The Elephant be enticed The Rider have a path and a way that you can show The Path as being easy. Come up with creative pictures that will inspire you to see the future you.

Fun Quote

Now we’re going to have our fun quote of the day from the Wizard of Oz

“I don’t know. Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they? Yes, I guess you’re right.”

And there are people who like to talk without brains. Try not to do that by engaging both sides of your brain.

Thanks so much for listening. Come to the website. If you want the transcripts of the podcast. You can find out ways of contacting me either on the website itself or in social media. Please subscribe. Please leave a review and tell your friends and have a great week.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of wisdom – Aristotle.

Personality tests are interesting, I’ve always been very intrigued by them. They can reveal certain parts of our brain or certain aspects of how we act. Most of them are not science based but are instead observational. There is one personality test that has any scientific backing, and that is called the “Big Five”. We’re not discussing that one today, but that one does have some research behind it. Keep in mind, though, just because it’s observational and not scientifically based, doesn’t mean they’re untrue. UC Davis’s Psychologist Dr. Vazire says “It’s fairly easy to reach some level of validity. If I were to ask you to make a questionnaire on extroversion, you would probably do a pretty good job. It’s because we are all judges of character. And we often do well at intuiting, whom to date or hire, or who we are. If the process seems confusing, or if the question veers into abstract, that’s a red flag. Personality is not that mysterious. There are often others who scoff at personality tests and even call them dangerous. Of course, mistakes can be made and there are limits in place to how much personality tests can tell about ourselves. They are based in opinion of the writer. They do have some biases built into them. But they also can be valuable if put into their proper perspective. They point out aspects of our personality that may give us insight of how we work and how we think. Today we’ll talk about two tests, and specifically speak about what motivates you to act. Since we’ve been working on goals and trying to put things into action. personalities are often double-edged swords; our strengths are reflections of our weaknesses. Maybe you’re very nice. But maybe that also means you get walked on by others. If you’re highly skeptical. That means you have a keen mind and can sort truth from not true. But it might mean that you’re tearing down good things in your life, because you can’t find any evidence or validity in them from other sources. The key is to take your strengths and push them. Then take your weaknesses and try to reduce them. You can you be nice without being taken advantage of? Can you be creative and ordered prior to take all those different aspects of yourself and sharpen them. Two tests that we will discuss will help us move towards our goals.

At one point I was pondering why it was I was able to help customers do any tasks. I was diligent about getting them done. But why is it I can’t get myself to exercise simple things just for myself. I also noticed that when a friend would ask if I could help them garden or work on a project, I would jump at the chance of doing it. But I would never garden for myself. What was that I was trying to figure out why it was that I’m so good at some things and so terrible at others. I just realized it’s because someone else is asking me to do it. At that point, I hired a personal trainer and told her just asked me to exercise and expect that I would do it. And every once in a while check to make sure I did. And I would do it. She told me at some point that if I didn’t exercise she would be able to tell. And I said never tell me if that’s true or not. Those words that she said, Put me on the right path to motivation.

Gretchen Rubin and the Four Tendencies

This is a few years before Gretchen Rubin came out with her book, the Four Tendencies: The indispensable personal profiles that reveal how to make your life better and other people’s lives better too. I am very into this book, spent a great deal of time in her community on our website and really love the information that it gave because it made something very clear to me, that I do things because other people asked me to do those things. But she explains how this works, and how to really dig into this personality type to make it work. She got into her theory by observing people who were able to get things done and other people who were not people who were able to do certain things, but not other things. She said, “As I consider these questions, I tried to make sense of certain patterns that I saw. So many people told me, ‘I can take time for other people, but I can never take time for myself.’ Other people told me. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because January 1 is an arbitrary date.’ And still others tell me ‘When someone tells me to do something I immediately don’t want to do it.'” She goes on later to say by asking one simple question ‘How do I respond to expectations?’ we get insight into ourselves. When we look at how other people respond to expectations, we understand them far more effectively as well. Knowing our tendency can help us set up situations in ways that make it more likely we will achieve our aims. We can make better decisions, meet deadlines, meet our promises to ourselves, suffer less stress and engage more deeply with others.” This was really true for me. When I started reading her book and realizing how her scheme fit into my life, I realized how I could really not only succeed with my own goals but help my friends and others around me succeeded. there’s because now I understood them better. She breaks up all tasks into two different types of tasks, outer expectations, those are things like going to work, doing your homework, going to the doctor, getting a request from a friend, then there’s inner expectations, practicing meditation, or cleaning your house or exercising or eating the right foods. Things that are intrinsic are inside of us. And then she breaks people up into four personality types. The first one is Upholders. They just write something down and they do it. They can do resolutions; they can do tasks for themselves and for other people. They just really take to things. But on the downside, sometimes they won’t take on new tasks because they worry about the obligation. They know they will uphold it. They know they will obsess about it getting done. And it could become quickly overwhelming to do everything that you have as expectations for yourself. Then there’s Questioners who question everything. They’ll do something if they think they understand it correctly if it meets their own standard of truth. When I first heard about this theory, I thought I was a questioner. I do I question everything. A downside of this personality can be that they can talk themselves out of doing something that’s really working for them, because they can’t find evidence that it’s truthful. It’s good to know the truth. But sometimes a little bit of fantasy can help us get through life too. Then there’s Obligers, they meet outer expectations, but struggle with inner expectations. Obligers will do anything for anyone. They will have no problem when someone is expecting them with a deadline or something to do. But they would struggle to do the very same activity for themselves. Because there’s no expectation there’s no oversight, no accountability, and they can just feel burned out and overworked and sometimes quite honestly being taken advantage of. This is where I fit in. I used to think knowing the truth about things motivates me. But instead, obligation motivates me. Knowing that someone is expecting me to do something that will get me in line right away, no matter how much I understand it, or don’t understand it. My endless questioning and learning were just a form of procrastination. There’s also something called Obliger Rebellion. And I think that comes along, at least it does for me, when you feel like someone may be taking advantage of your ability to accomplish things for other people. You always come through for them. There can be kind of a flash of anger that comes in there. You have to be really careful with your Obliger friends. Then there comes Rebel, they resist all expectations inner, outer, they don’t want to do anything anyone expects to them. They want to be a unique person, they want to be independent, and they hate to do the mundane. And so a lot of times, the way they get themselves and other people get them to do things, is by insisting it’s not important, Insisting that they don’t even have to do it if they don’t want to. This test taught me how I need to get things done. I need accountability. That might be telling someone else what I’m doing so that they can hold me accountable. The other interesting thing about the personality test is my friend who’s the upholder always wondered about me.  She just never understood why I struggled so many times to get things done. Just put it on checklist and you’ll get it done. Just write it down and just do it already. Gretchen has classes and books on our website. She also has a podcast and an app, and the app is there where she breaks people up into their personality types so they can help each other. Again, for Obligers. There’s a lot of accountability groups in there. For Upholders. It’s about really how to throttle

https://gretchenrubin.com/books/the-four-tendencies/intro/

Enneagrams

The next test I want to talk about is called Enneagrams. This test is used by a variety of groups and businesses. It’s finding out how you motivate by based on what you are compelled by and what you fear. This test puts people into nine categories and reports the top three attributes. For example, the type 1 personality wants to be right wanted to strike for a higher ideal, it’s very important to them that they are doing things wise and noble and heroic. They fear being wrong or being bad. personality type number 2 wants to be loved. And their fear is really being unwanted. 3’s are self-assured and charming, and they have the fear of not being valuable or not being successful. Type 4 is that they want to be authentic and unique. And their fear is not really having an identity or not being significant in their own way. 5 love intellectual understanding of things, they like to be competent, and they fear not knowing something 6’s like to be safe, be self-sufficient, non-demanding. They really fear being unsupported or being without that good friendship. 7’s like to be upbeat, and they also enjoy contentment. But they fear pain, they fear being deprived, 8’s, they are independent, and they are scared by being controlled by others. And 9’s would like to be at peace, and they fear, conflict and separation. I’m a seven to nine. I seek contentment primarily. I also love future plans. I think about the possibilities that are out there. My second number means I crave to be with others.

So how can I use this personality test to help me achieve my goals? First thing is I love thinking about what I will do in the future. I plan things I know that when I have a trip coming up, like an adventurous trip, it motivates me. I had a big hiking trip to England, I exercise like crazy, I also saved money. But as I get older, if I don’t take care of myself by eating healthy by sleeping well, by getting exercise, I will eventually lose my ability to have adventures that’s motivating to me. Type 2, where I crave being with other people and having great relationships. When I look at that, I want to think of all the fun things I will do with my friends in the future. But if I can’t do those things, I could be left out. You’ll have to take the tests on your own and determine what could be motivating to you.

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

Quick & Free Test (not as good as the paid tests)

https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test

Sleep Chronotypes

Our last personality type, since you don’t really need a test, are Chronotypes which have to do with whether you are an Owl or a Lark, and I know for years, this was highly controversial. Scientists didn’t used to think that night owls and larks existed, it was just a matter of laziness. People who slept in later, and went to bed later, were lazy. Even though they were getting the same number of hours of sleep. Remember, the early bird gets the worm. Morning people or larks are able to just get a ton of stuff done in the morning, they’re able to just get up and exercise and do things before work. It’s really pretty amazing. But you also have to realize that by early evening, they’re spent.  They’re ready to relax and watch TV or read a book. They like to go to bed earlier. The key here is to know yourself and matching your goals to your schedule. This is where you have to know what really works for you. If you’re at Owl, does it work you to exercise before you’re barely awake? Because you don’t even really have energy to fight yourself? Or do you prefer to do it in the afternoon? You’re a morning person, can you get up and exercise and do all the things that are part of your goals early on before the day takes its toll on it. It’s nice to be a person in the morning, because the longer the day goes on, the more chances you have to decide you’re not going to do a thing. Let me give you an example. If I were decided to get up in the morning and exercise at a time, I do not like at least I get it done. But as that day goes on, I think well maybe I should work out at lunch. Well, no lunch is pretty busy. I’m not going to work out at lunch. Well, maybe I’ll exercise after work. While work really knocked it out of me. I’m pretty tired, and I just want to go home and watch some TV. I missed all my opportunities through excuses to actually get my exercise done. I think again, you have to analyze what really works for you. In the end personality tests are interesting and possibly informative. Realize that they’re not exact science, so be careful with them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-25777978

Alternative Chronotype

Your Sleep Chronotype Is the Key to Productivity, Not Being a Morning Person

The best advice I can give you is to use ways to pick apart your personality. Know yourself. Once we break apart our personalities and are able to dissect how we get things done. We will know what triggers work for us. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Summary

1. Go find some personality tests and see if you can learn a little bit more about yourself

2. It doesn’t take a personality test to necessarily learn about what your personality is. Start writing down time. When you thought you were able to get things done, what motivated you? How did you accomplish those things, really look into what has been successful to you in the past? Can you draw string between them and realize key factors to what makes you do things or when you find it hard to do things? Just by observing our own life, we should be able to come to conclusions about ourselves.

3. Once you’ve taken some personality test, jot down those key factors that really made sense to you.

Challenge

Start this reflection of your personality, take the personality test, write down, what makes you motivated and what stops you. Here’s our fun quote of the day, you know,

“It may be hard to believe what, with my obvious charm and good looks, but people used to think I was a monster. for a long time, I believed them. But after a while, you learn to ignore the names that people call you and you just trust who you are.”

That is from our wise green fellow Shrek. And what Shrek knows is that when we learn our personalities, and we learn about ourselves, not only does it empower us to be ourselves, but it also stops the people who are trying to bring us down by telling us things that are not true about ourselves and we can fend them off. T

Thanks a lot for listening.

I hope you’re enjoying the podcast. Please give me feedback, leave a review. Tell your friends, join any of my social media and let me know how you’re doing. Are you able to pick a particular task that you’ve been working on? Have you learned to say no, thank you and have a great week.