Who Are You Meant to Be? (35 page)

—C. S. Lewis

For our brains to lay down new patterns of behavior, we must follow a conscious process that begins with understanding our Predominant Striving Style and its need. The Roadmap for Development gives you the experiences you require to develop and helps you tolerate the difficult emotions that are a natural part of growth. Actions don’t always follow intent, so the Roadmap has been designed to ensure you move to action and are able to sustain it by directly addressing the tendency to revert to familiar self-protective behaviors, which is a predictable part of resistance to change. It helps you break through these stubborn habits of mind that inhibit development by identifying them in advance and deciding what you will do when they are triggered.

The Roadmap provides you with clear directions for living life as your best self. It gets you to explore how you are currently experiencing your life and whether you are living out of the Self-Protective (SP) System of your Predominant Style. It helps you “shake up” your existing neural pathways by having you check in with yourself through reflection on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It shows you how to challenge your assumptions and beliefs, and create new experiences that break old patterns. The Roadmap gives you directions on how to identify the activities and practices necessary to build your Self-Actualizing (SA) System, allowing you to break long-standing habits of mind and deal with the impulse to do what you “feel” like rather than what your intention is. It facilitates the process for you to get on the road to achieving your potential.

Each of the steps in the Roadmap builds on the others, so resist the impulse to skip through without completing all of the exercises and reflections. Remember, development is a biological activity that happens in your brain, not just through abstract thinking, awareness, or knowing. Developing your brain and learning to live from your SA System is not something that you can do without self-knowledge, self-awareness, and a great deal of reflection and introspection. Nor can you do it without facing your fears, trying new behaviors, and having experiences that change the neural connections in your brain. Make sure you give yourself the time you warrant to complete each step of the Roadmap.

Overview of the Steps

Step 1: Get to Know Your Brain

It’s important to spend some time thinking about your brain and your current state in preparation for creating your Who Are You Meant to Be Planner. The experience of immersing yourself in you helps you to embody the information, not just know it. For this reason, this first step provides you with activities to help you get to know your Predominant Striving Style, including its self-protective and self-actualizing behaviors. It instructs you to reflect on your current behaviors, because before you can start defining what actions you want to take, you have to first undertake an honest assessment of where you are today. This step also includes activities to examine the extent to which your predominant need is being met and ways in which you need to strengthen your SA System.

Step 2: Chart a Course for Development

In this step, the Who Are You Meant to Be Planner leads you through a clear process to create your personal Roadmap for achieving your potential. To begin, you envision your desired future state and set goals for yourself including what it will look and feel like. From there, you explore the fears and underlying beliefs that will get in the way of achieving your vision so you can be prepared when they are triggered. Next, you define your plan of action to achieve your goals and then the specific steps that you must follow to be successful.

Step 3: Move to Action

In this final step, you learn about the key practices for ensuring your success in executing on the action plan created in step 2 of the Roadmap. As well, you define how you will put these practices to work for you to sustain forward movement toward your goals.

Getting Started

Now that you understand the steps of the Roadmap, it’s time to get started. The following pages include structured activities for you to complete along with the space to do so. You can either complete the exercises directly in the book or use your own paper or journal. Copies of the blank forms are also available for download at www.whoareyoumeanttobe.com if you want larger-sized versions. It doesn’t matter how, but it does matter that you put your answers in writing. This is not a mental exercise—it has to be experiential—so doing it in your head doesn’t count.

If you find yourself not wanting to write down your answers, recognize this as a form of resistance to your own development that you need to problem solve before you can get started. For example, you might feel more energized to do this as a shared experience rather than doing it alone. One solution might be to ask a trusted friend to do it with you. This makes the process more fun and social for Styles like the Socializer, Performer, or Adventurer. Styles like the Artist and Stabilizer often need someone to get them started because of their fear of what they might uncover through the exercises. Writing down any fears or underlying beliefs that might get in the way of starting can help keep you moving along. The Leader, Intellectual, and Visionary might run into trouble because they think the process is a waste of time, so it helps them to note all their judgments and critiques of the process and get them out of the way before moving on. Remember, feelings are the biggest barrier to growth and development, so write them down and keep going.

You can also become more familiar with your patterns of resistance by thinking of the things you normally skip when you read self-help books or participate in a development program. As you work through the exercises in the book, when you notice the tendency to want to do the same thing, try a different approach. Know that your resistance or hesitation is influenced by your Predominant Style, and depending on the quadrant involved in the activities, some are going to require a bit more energy or self-encouragement to stick with. This is particularly true if your Predominant Style is located in your right brain. That’s because defining, making things real and tangible, and moving into action are all left-brained activities. That doesn’t mean you won’t encounter resistance if your Predominant Style resides in your left brain: many of these activities involve examining feelings and emotions, and being in process, which can create resistance from that perspective as well.

The important thing is to notice whatever resistance you experience and to do the exercises anyway. You don’t have to give yourself a hard time for what is naturally challenging to you; your challenge this time around is to experience the resistance and still choose to do the activities. Approach the questions and your resistance to them with curiosity and understanding rather than judgment and criticism. If you notice yourself being critical of yourself or the process, simply choose to shift to a kinder, more supportive position. For example, try a few words of encouragement to keep you moving along rather than giving way to feelings of frustration or impatience.

Should you notice yourself getting tired or thinking of it as too much effort, give yourself permission to take a short break while making the commitment to come back to it, or simply remind yourself that its natural to feel some resistance and keep going. This just might be the most important project of your life, but doing it will naturally test and discover all the ways you may be living in self-protective, self-limiting, and self-critical patterns. It will bring to light the relationship you have developed with yourself, so adopting an attitude of interest, curiosity, and openness to discovery is your best approach to success.

You will notice that chapters 14 and 15 focus solely on your Predominant Striving Style. This is because it is most important that we get our predominant need met first by learning about its self-actualizing behaviors and practicing them. Once you feel that you have mastered using your Predominant Style and are getting your predominant need met consistently, repeat the same approach when you begin work on your Associate Styles, making sure that their needs are being met in all aspects of your life. Remember, you have only one member of your Squad in each area of the brain, so it’s important that you work all four Styles throughout this process. If you have any questions about your Squad and want to validate your Associate Styles, you can complete the full assessment online at www.whoareyoumeanttobe.com.

Step 1: Get to Know Your Brain

Where are you right now?

What are you experiencing?

The first step in the Roadmap ensures that you fully understand the mechanics of your own mind as well as your current state so you can build your development plan in step 2. This will be based on your Predominant Striving Style, its need, and the extent to which you are getting this need met in your life. Before you can ensure you are getting your predominant need met, you must first become conscious of what it means to get this need met, including a familiarity with the self-actualizing behaviors you demonstrate when it is being met. Armed with this information, you can define the steps necessary to get your predominant need met in your life and shift to living from your SA System.

While the overarching goal is to live your life as who you are meant to be, no two individuals will take the same path to achieve this even if they have the same Predominant Style. Planning for your development requires you to be able to chart a path from your current state of being to your desired state. To change your patterns of behavior, you have to know what those patterns are. Assessing your current state openly and honestly allows you to examine where your need is being met, how you are using your Predominant Style, and what is activating your SP System.

We have provided you with information on what quadrant of the brain is most effective in coming up with the responses to the questions. If the quadrant you need to use is not one you tend to use as frequently, give yourself some extra time to consider your responses, or ask someone for help.

To complete this section of the Planner, consider what is actually happening in your life today. By answering the following questions, you will become aware of the extent to which you are getting your needs met, living in your SP System versus living in your SA System.