Tag: fix it

Who Am I Supposed to Be? Overcoming Self-Doubt (Week 4-Blackened)

Posted on October 31, 2019May 30, 2023 by Brook Thornley

If we were to break down the components of self-doubt we would quickly start to see it is the opposite of self love, self-esteem, and the ability to support oneself. If we are functioning in self-doubt it can be very difficult to be planted securely in self-approval. Making small decisions as we go through life can add up and over time to become a critical piece of self-respect. When we make decisions that support our personal rights and healthy choices, we are immediately in a place that we start to experience an enhanced feeling of self-respect. We feel proud of our decisions and it grows our self-esteem. If we do the opposite of what is healthy for our person, we can instantly be flooded with self-doubt. It can be a small decision, or it can be a large dynamic that we find ourselves needing to make choices for; regardless, it is so important to move away from anything or anyone that would support self-doubt.

Some of us might not always look at each decision we make in life (large or small) with such a deep or complex lens. We might be the type of person that thinks of it as a casual thing, but then seem confused as to why, a few hours or possibly days later, we start experiencing feelings of doubt and don’t know exactly what to attach those feelings to. It seems to come on as a generalized feeling of self-doubt, and then our brain starts to survey to find what task or dynamic to attach it to.

In early childhood development we see this dynamic show up when the child is learning initiative. If the child is trying to accomplish a task, he or she needs to feel efficacy and a sense of accomplishment. If they do it in a way that they feel they were reasonably directing the process with the support and influence of a healthy adult they leave with a self-esteem boost. On the other hand, if they are managing the adult or caretaker and doing it to follow or overly please the adult, they are left with self-doubt.

An example of this is when a small child is asked to make their own bed for the first time. They do the best that they can and they feel a since of accomplishment and self-esteem because they did it. It doesn’t matter that the corners were not lined up and part of the bedspread were falling to one side, they think they did great. If the adult or caretaker comes in and remakes the bed in a way that is satisfactory to the adult, that can take away the sense of accomplishment for the child and leave them in self-doubt.

Some parents won’t let the child even attempt a job because they want it done to their own standard; possibly leaving the child arrested, or stuck, in the initiative developmental stage.

We can also experience this as adults. It might not show up in exactly the same way, but anytime we use our healthy initiative and it is shot down, we can experience this same sense of self-doubt.

Here is an example:

One of our clients at Human Art recently was excited to go to an event with a friend. They went to great lengths to plan the outing and were getting more excited with each task that they marked off their combined list to get them ready for the event. They would call each other and collaborate as to who was to do each task, and they would also talk and exchange excitement when the tasks were completed. It would make them feel as if each check mark of completion was getting them closer and closer to the event.

The day that they were to leave, one of the friends was not in the meeting place at the designated time. A few minutes after the designated time, the missing friend called the one that was at the appointed meeting spot to tell her that she was delayed hours and that she had decided to put off the time they were going to go to the event. That would leave little time for them to experience the event. This put the friend that was ready to go in a place of frustration and felt that her feelings and rights were not considered in the other’s decision to abort the original plan. When the absent friend was asked why she decided to not be there at the appointed time, she said she had a few things to do and errands to run. She had not gotten everything done to prepare to go, so she was doing it now. Upon further exploration, it was uncovered that really she was just doing something else; a different task at a different event that she valued more than the one they had spent all this time preparing for. She expressed that she thought it would be ok because she thought the prepared friend wouldn’t mind just waiting around for her to decide when she wanted to leave.

The prepared girl had to ask herself: was she being considered and respected in the decision making of the unprepared friend? Was she feeling important to the other friend? As she thought about these things, she expressed to us that she did NOT feel respected or considered, and going with this friend late would make her feel like a second choice to what the other girl really wanted to do. It was at that very point that she had a decision to make. Do I keep my self-respect intact or do I just put up with bad behavior for the sake of being able to go to the event? She decided that she was going to cancel for now and expressed to the unprepared girl that she would love to go with her at any time it was a priority to her. She believed if they waited until then they would both enjoy it more. This left our client, the prepared girl, in a place that she felt she had rights and that she made a healthy decision for herself and that she had considered her own feelings. That led to immediate self-respect and she expressed that she felt like her self-love grew in that very moment. She could feel it.

This month we are talking about what self-doubt looks like in each design. This week we will focus on the Blackened design.

In the rapprochement model, we know that when a Blackened person gets overwhelmed it is usually because they cannot complete a task or check it off their list. If they have a box or compartment in their head for a task, they have usually taken the time to carefully line up all the other boxes that are around it—the structure of how each task needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how it needs to be done. If someone gets in the way and they cannot complete it, this has the possibility to overwhelmed them. They can also get overwhelmed with drama or too much talk and not enough action or doing. It is also possible that the Blackened person themselves can get in the way of getting the task done. It is usually because they have completed the prior task on the list early and they don’t like to waste time so they try and throw another task in there. If they don’t have enough time, they might run into problems completing the next task on their list. In certain situations, that can lead to social or professional failures.

Here is an example of this dynamic:

One Human Art client was Blackened and was so good at structuring her tasks that she had a planner where each category of tasks even had their own color. To look at her organizer was like looking at a carefully crafted graph and was an exercise in organization. She was equally as good at completing those tasks.

She had just been given a new title in her job, and with this new position came the requirement for her to accompany the CEO of the company to meetings and events. This client would mark the start times of all these different events in her organizer, but often found herself early in completing the task that was before the event or meeting, so she would try to squeeze an errand in beforehand. She did this because she couldn’t tolerate wasting time. Unfortunately, many of these errands would take a little more time than expected and she found herself being late to the meetings and events. When confronted, she told the CEO that she was only a few minutes late each time and that it didn’t seem to be a big problem. But the sheer amount of times she showed up late was a problem for the professional expectation of the leader of the company. This later led to the decision to let her go from this position and the company. The client was left hurt and confused because she thought she had done a great job on each task, but she failed to see the overall reflection her tardiness had left on the professional reputation of the business.

One of the strengths of the Blackened design is they are efficient and resourceful. They value making good use of their resources and don’t appreciate waste in any of these areas. The challenge is, one might lose credibility with a Blackened person if they are careless with resources; and when it comes to collaborating the respect level has diminished a bit due to this perceived carelessness, so it is difficult from the get-go. The Blackened person might not see the “careless” person as their equal and might dismiss them quickly.

The problem with the Blackened design is that they might be quick to see perceived carelessness in others, but it might be harder for them to see the “resourceful to a fault” in their own design. Both of these instances can lead to failures and self-doubt.

If you are high in the Blackened design, do what you do best and just “fix” it. If you see that something is not working, you have a natural and warm logic that can see what is not working without throwing out what is, so focus on that. Take a step back and evaluate what is working and increase that, while at the same time see what is not working and eliminate what is destructive and creating self-doubt. You are the “no drama” design, and you are quick to reassess the situation and abruptly move to what is working. Your casual demeanor makes things easy to move along void of a lot of fuss or conflict. You just offer reasonable solutions that are made fun with your dry wit and the realness you bring to each situation. Your profound honesty and your “it is what it is” attitude lead to accountability when used in healthy interactions and tend to keep those you are with safe and secure.

So go out and fix, get things done. Take care of those things that you are responsible for. Move to help and create solutions. It creates a sense of security for you and those around you. And always remember, Everyone is a Masterpiece.

Brook

“Once Upon a Time”: How to Prosper in the Blackened Design

Posted on August 12, 2019May 30, 2023 by Brook Thornley

We have talked a lot about what the “Once Upon a Time” Dynamic looks like and why it is important to recognize it. We have already spent a lot of time on the dynamics of it so you can become familiar with it, so I ‘m going to veer off-script a little and focus in on one component that is present in this “Once Upon a Time” Dynamic and also in the prosper and success part of it. The component I’m talking about is information—how it is used to create a dynamic and how it is used to take it back to a healthy place. The reason I am doing it in this week’s blog is because we are going to focus on the Blackened design, so it seems fitting.

Information and how it is used is an important piece of the “Once Upon a Time” Dynamic. If someone is to create a projection for you then how they get and use information determines whether they can cause a narrative to stick or not. The Blackened design is all about being real, and they have an “it is what it is” attitude; this is what leads them to be so honest about things and call it for what it is. Keeping that truth is critical if you want a healthy outcome. If you let information be used in unhealthy ways then you will get the opposite—reactivity and a lot of emotions will become involved.

Information used in an unhealthy way is what we refer to commonly as gossip. The interesting thing about gossip is it is loyal only to the unhealthy narrative. It is not loyal to the truth of things. If someone is controlling or dominating, they collect information that serves or rings true to the narrative. They will then use that information to support a projection and fact stack against the person it is directed to until the narrative seems to be true. It is done until the narrative sticks; it is designed to get you or others to believe it. It has no curiosity, the projection is designed only to support the unhealthy story line that the controller wants so they can get their way. The controlling person in the dynamic is only interested in information that supports the narrative of the person they are projecting onto so they only give approval to those who spread or serve up information that supports the narrative.

Healthy people want the truth. They are curious, so they like to look at all sides of things so they can make a healthy and integrated statement about the truth. A person who is high in Blackened values honesty, so it is important for that Blackened person to make sure it is the healthy truth and not the truth according to an unhealthy narrative that has been set in motion to control someone or an outcome. They want to make sure it will lead to prosperity for the Blackened person and those they like to protect.

What does prosper look like?

Blackened

For someone who is high in the Blackened design, to prosper is to fix. That is the bottom line to them. If something is wrong, they want a solution. The first thing they will do when they see that something is broken is want to know what happened—how did it break, or was it always this way? They don’t want to analyze the story, they just want the why, the how, and the what, in order to determine how it will lead to a solution. To a person that is Blackened this is the very way in which they protect those around them. It is how they care for people. It is like a first responder; they have to leave emotions at the door for a moment and move into a logical place so they can do the hard things that need to be done to protect. They will eventually let the emotions in, it will just be after the fix.

In the unhealthy “Once Upon a Time” Dynamic, a controlling person will start a narrative for them that because they show no emotion in those times, they are cold. Because the Blackened person rejects drama in the crisis, they don’t care and are emotionally stunted. That is the hook—as the Blackened person is still moving to fix or protect, they are riddled with self-doubt and the controller in the story is a bystander happy to throw around labels about how feelingless and primitive the Blackened person is. All the while the controlling person is on the sidelines working the crowd, telling everyone in their sights just how empathetic and emotionally advanced they are. So much so that they can hardly stand this awful situation. This then directs the attention and help to the controller, leaving the Blackened person alone to carry the weight of the crisis themselves. This can lead to isolation and a version of social shutdown.

The “can be” of the Blackened design is they can get forceful and resourceful to a fault. To the degree the Blackened person believes a narrative is equal to the degree they show up in these can be’s. This has high potential to make an unhealthy narrative of being void of emotion look like it could, in fact, be true.

If a Blackened person is at a point where they want to navigate a healthy “Once Upon A Time” Dynamic and turn it into their happily ever after, the best way to start is to communicate what those feelings or emotions will be, when they are past the fix or crisis, so those around them see both sides of the story—the logic and empathy. It would sound something like, “I can see that you are all scared, I’m going to fix this and then we will all talk about how scared we are. For now, let me do my job.” When the controlling people around you start to throw out those unhealthy adjectives from their desired narrative, correct them while you are working and protecting. When they say you are forceful, you follow up with, “I’m just strong.” When they say you are too resourceful, you say “I’m protecting our resources.” Then anyone can negotiate a situation from there.

One of the best things about the Blackened design is that they relate to realness and honesty. It is the hallmark of the Blackened design and it is the beauty of your authenticity. So start there. You can make anyone feel secure just through your actions. When they see your desire to fix, it makes us all feel more stable. Communicate your intentions as you go. It seems so obvious to you what you are doing when you move to fix things, but it is not as obvious to the other designs. The higher you are in the Blackened design the more you don’t enjoy analyzing the dramatic nature of situations. That is what makes you so real, so reassuring, and so secure. Your authentic strength starts from that place. Love it, live it, and celebrate it, and then celebrate others. You deserve it and others do too, because everyone is a masterpiece.

Brook

New Year Goals by Design – Part 4 – Blackened

Posted on January 22, 2019May 30, 2023 by Brook Thornley

We are finally to the week of learning about the Blackened Design and their inner landscape tools! (if you haven’t read about the first three yet, read them here: Introduction and Saturated, Whitened, Grayed)

The Blackened design craves tasks, so the required inner landscape tool is Effort. The central focus of the Blackened design is to fix it. They love to get the job done. This has the potential to step over emotions in order to get things done. This may alienate others because they become too narrowly focused on the task at the expense of bringing others along and integrating others’ perspectives and priorities.

When you meet a Blackened person, you immediately notice their effort and focus for the task. What is often missing is effort directed at considering different opinions on how the task may be accomplished. The Blackened person puts their energy into the obvious thing that needs to be fixed but it is a challenge for them to listen to the factors contributing to the problem or the impact of the problem in terms of emotional fall out.

When the Blackened person sets a goal, they focus on the obvious solution and can become resourceful to a fault. This looks like finding the most simple and pragmatic solution which is efficient and cost effective. It is hard for them to set a New Year’s goal because they tend to wait for something to break before they engage. It is kind of like a cycle of “break and fix, break and fix, break and fix,” etc.

When a Blackened person comes into Human Art, they express that others are too dramatic, too wasteful, too complicated, too stuffy, or too irresponsible. When we get to work and broaden their perspective, they can start to appreciate the bigger picture. Their effort is to look deeper to see what is really broken. As they understand a broader array of variables, they will be able to see and prevent problems before they break.

So the call to action this week is to ask more questions. Listen more deeply. Slow down and collect more information before acting. Fix feelings instead of things. Consider the intentions and values of others. Try taking the other’s perspective. If they are happy, then you fixed it.

And remember Everyone is a Masterpiece.

Brook

READ OUR OTHER GOALS BY DESIGN POSTS!

Part 1 – Introduction and Saturated
Part 2 -Whitened
Part 3 – Grayed
Part 5 – Landscape Your Goals