Who Are You Meant to Be? (31 page)

Self-Protective Adventurers put themselves in harm’s way.
Their escalating need to experience greater levels of sensation can lead SP Adventurers to do things that are dangerous and illegal. These Adventurers don’t know when to stop and are prone to excesses in eating, partying, and overstimulating their nervous system. They may pursue the highs of gambling, drinking, and drugs; or they may cut corners at work, just to see if they can get away with it. They are reckless with their bodies, their money, and their relationships. They have no way of discerning what they really need and, as a result, are unable to say no to impulses that tantalize them. If their tendency toward and capacity for risk taking go unchecked, Adventurers are prone to follow their impulses down destructive paths, like Randle McMurphy does in the film
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.

Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) was a rebellious young man who grew up never staying in one place for long. He wound up in prison having been charged with battery and gambling. McMurphy orchestrated a transfer from the prison work farm to the mental hospital, thinking he would be able to serve out his sentence in comfort. McMurphy felt no need to conform or to follow the rules of the hospital and openly rebelled against things that other patients feared. In the end, McMurphy violently fights Nurse Ratched’s rule, which costs him his freedom, his health, and ultimately his life.

Self-Actualizing Adventurers take calculated risks.
They consider the consequences of their actions before doing something. They often have to experience the loss of something or someone they valued before they come to terms with how destructive their behavior can be. Recklessness is replaced with reasoned caution and they develop cause-and-effect thinking—for example, “If I have sex with that hot guy who is checking me out, it will wreck my marriage,” rather than “Oh my God, I hope my husband doesn’t find out!” They have come to terms with the fact that they are human and that their unrestrained behavior can hurt themselves and others, despite this realization being a great source of frustration to their need to be spontaneous.

Activators of the Self-Protective System

With their need to be spontaneous and free to seek excitement and engaging experiences, Adventurers are activated by people and situations that cause them to be afraid of their freedom being taken away from them. They feel confined or backed into a corner when others insist they do things their way or hold them to time lines or commitments. Feeling this way frustrates their need to be spontaneous and therefore is what they fear most. They will do whatever they can to protect themselves from these feelings.

Spending Too Much Time in Activities

Although they love being around people, too much physical or social activity makes Adventurers become even more impulsive than usual. They don’t have a natural filter for what they say and do at the best of times, and when they are stressed, they can go beyond the bounds of good taste and behaving outrageously, which can result in negative consequences. They become increasingly impulsive and run the risk of acting or appearing irresponsible.

Spending Too Much Time Alone

To Adventurers, their inner world is like a cage—once inside, they can’t get out. When they spend too much time alone, they can get trapped catastrophizing about the future. They move from being bored and restless to becoming prisoners of their depressive and hopeless imaginings. Like flowers in the desert, Adventurers need the life-giving water of human company to keep them from wilting.

Being Forced to Make Commitments

To Adventurers, commitment equals captivity, and it frightens them. Having to show up at a scheduled activity can activate their SP System because it takes away the freedom to act spontaneously if something better comes along. Even something as simple as making a commitment to go to the movies can provoke the impulse to flee. Being expected to show up at social and family events that they don’t consider fun will also activate the SP system.

Spreading Themselves Too Thin

Like Peter Pan, if they are having a great adventure, Adventurers just continue doing so and won’t deny themselves or impose any restrictions on how much they take on. If someone asks them to do something that sounds like fun, they’ll agree, even when they know they have something else planned. They reckon they will figure it out on the fly. Adventurers end up trying to do everything, and the situation can easily get out of hand and completely drain their energy.

Planning, Brainstorming, Theorizing

Nothing is quite as agitating to the Adventurer as when they have to talk about things that currently don’t exist. Speculation, theorizing, or figuring out the meaning of something causes them to feel trapped. Their ability to act spontaneously has no place in the realm of the theoretical. One just can’t do anything there; one can only think about things. If Adventurers can’t figure something out fairly quickly, it’s no fun to deal with at all.

Imposed Limitations

“Don’t fence me in” is the motto of the Adventurers and nothing frustrates them more than having their freedom restricted. A perceived restriction might be anything from having to sit through long meetings at work or lectures at school to attending children’s plays or sporting events—situations in which they can’t take action, only watch. If you’re going somewhere with an Adventurer, don’t bother trying to generate a Google map and turn-by-turn directions to your destination—a set route would be too confining for the Adventurer.

I live for CAN-ing other people’s can’ts.

—Steven Tyler

Blind Spots

Ignoring the Consequences

Adventurers have a blind spot around the ways that their dislike of planning affects their lives. This leaves them at the mercy of their need for instant gratification. They have difficulty managing their impulses, particularly where there is the promise of excitement. They prefer to live in the moment and for the moment without thinking about the consequences of their actions. They act first and reflect afterward, if at all.

Being a Barrier to Their Own Success

Adventurers are often ambitious and set their sights on being the best in their chosen career. They are often hampered by their fun-loving personalities. They run into problems when they let their social lives take priority over their career pursuits. Adventurers invented the candle that burns at both ends. Should they suffer a missed opportunity or other loss because of others’ perceptions of them as irresponsible or unreliable, they tend to divert blame or pretend that what they lost really wasn’t that important.

Conflict Avoidance

Adventurers sometimes focus more on the avoidance of difficult feelings than they do on the achievement of pleasure. They have a blind spot about how failing to deal with conflict, or to meet it head-on, causes them to create greater pain and upset in their relationships or at work than the original issues themselves did.

Taking Excessive Risks

Adventurers have a blind spot around how dangerous something actually is; they often seem as though they are fearless. Activities such as mountain climbing, heli-skiing, and white-water rafting are popular with Adventurers because they demand immediate responses to unpredictable, difficult, and often tense situations. But there is a fine line between fearless and reckless, which Adventurers don’t really consider.

I thought I was bulletproof or Superman there for a while. I thought I’d never run out of nerve. Never.

—Evel Knievel

Absence of Boundaries

In their pursuit of greater levels of sensation, Adventurers can take excessive risks and act like the law doesn’t apply to them. Gambling, stock and financial swindles, counterfeiting, confidence rackets, and other “sting” operations are all manifestations of Adventurer talents that have gone bad. Adventurers can get so caught up with their need to be spontaneous that they constantly flirt with imprisonment and punishment for their actions.

Here’s to the fear of being trapped.

—Thomas Crown, from the film
The Thomas Crown Affair

Upshifting to Their Self-Actualizing System

For Adventurers to upshift to their SA System, they must become more self-aware and redirect their striving energy by doing the following.

Facing Conflict Head-On

Adventurers stop reacting to perceived restrictions from others and learn to negotiate to get their needs met. They recognize when they have the impulse to get away and stop themselves from running away from feelings and conflict.

Sharing the Floor

Adventurers recognize when they are monopolizing the conversation to keep things stimulating. They stop talking and entertaining and start listening to others. The act of conversation can be a one-sided event for them, and Adventures have to learn to refocus their attention, making sure they aren’t talking more than they listen. Reminding themselves that others also have needs and want to be heard is important to their relationships.

Checking In with Themselves

Adventurers need help in distinguishing those activities and friendships that take them away from their home base, so they can pare away the ones that are less important. They need to be able to see when they are pursuing immediate gratification at the expense of their closest relationships. Slowing down and considering the bigger picture allows them to respond skillfully instead of reacting impulsively to invitations and requests.

Cultivating Discernment

Adventurers need to learn to distinguish quality of experience from quantity of experience. A missed opportunity will often arise again, and responding to everything that presents itself is not always a good idea. Some possibilities that sound exciting are actually harmful in the end, so Adventurers must learn to realize that a quick rush toward pleasure can produce long-lasting pain.

Using a Time Management System

Adventurers need a way to remind themselves of their commitments. They need to remain aware of all they have to lose by being impulsive, to think about the potential consequences of every action and the impression they may be making on others. Learning organizational and time management techniques is often useful, because these skills do not come naturally to Adventurers.

Practicing Mindfulness

Although Adventurers live for the present moment, they need to develop conscious awareness of the choices they are making. The practices of mindfulness and self-reflection can help them develop the habit of observing their impulses rather than giving in to them. It helps them to develop an observing self that can monitor and manage impulses that are most likely to carry them into self-destructive behaviors.

Achieving Their Full Potential

It is through “being in the world” that Adventurers light up the lives of others and bring fun and enjoyment to all they do. Tolerant, unprejudiced, and open to new experience, they seek the freedom to approach each new day as an adventure. They inspire others to live their lives in the present moment with optimism and enthusiasm. The Adventurer is a Striving Style with potential for making the lives of everyone around them more exciting through their vibrant, entertaining, and action-oriented personality. Their ability to respond to problems and crisis, create a not-to-be-missed event out of an informal gathering, and negotiate and mediate among conflicting interests are only a few of the talents that emerge from Adventurers when they are consistently able to meet their need to be spontaneous.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

THE STABILIZER—STRIVING TO BE SECURE

Well pick up your feet

We’ve got a deadline to meet.

—“Working for the Man,” Roy Orbison

W
E ALL KNOW SOMEONE
who is a Stabilizer—a dependable, reliable friend who is always there when you need him or her and willing to lend a hand. As industrious and orderly as worker bees, Stabilizers toil to create and maintain a secure life for themselves and those they care about. Stabilizers are the pillars of society, demonstrating a strong sense of commitment, duty, and responsibility, and doing whatever it takes to make them and others secure. Their actions are always practical and sensible, guided by a set of rules that they apply relentlessly to keep everyone in line. Cautious and traditional, they show how much they care by protecting and serving others.

Their overarching need is to be secure, so anyone who appears keen to change them is seen as a threat to their security. They consider a threat even well-meaning suggestions like “Have you ever thought of wearing your hair short?” or “Could we spend one day of our vacation just winging it, without a plan?” Maintaining security is their mission, their reason to exist. You will easily recognize the Stabilizers at your high school reunion: they’ve stuck with the same company, relationships, and neighborhood for years, with none of the restless desire that makes others long for change. “Why change?” they ask, and in the absence of a very solid reason, they don’t. Their steadfastness (or perhaps, rigidity) extends to their daily activities and thoughts. If you’re looking for someone to play hooky from work with, Stabilizers will decline with words of caution about being caught. They’re rarely impulsive in their actions, preferring instead to weigh their options carefully before responding.

It was probably a group of Stabilizers who invented the work ethic. They believe in work for work’s sake, and for building character. They also believe that greater effort is rewarded with recognition, positions of greater responsibility, and ultimately, financial security. Their need to do things for people is much greater than their need to relate to them. Once they commit to something, they stay with it until they fulfill their obligation. So if your own restless streak causes you to start a new home improvement project every year, while it will bewilder your Stabilizer friends, they will be the ones who actually show up to help you and will leave only when the last piece of tile is neatly glued to your new kitchen countertop. Stabilizers don’t question their motives for being the way they are; they simply do what is expected of them.