You have a Mental Set-Point problem

Take the Mental Set-Point Quiz

Open transcript

Unfocused and lacking clarity?

When you’re doing something real

* building something
* changing something
* committing to something

you will find thoughts that keep resurfacing.

The same little doubts keep coming back. The same memories and judgements keep getting in the way of progress.

And you need to do something about these thoughts or, after a while, you might start blaming yourself.

You'll assume you’re not able to focus because you’re undisciplined. Or not motivated enough. Or not smart enough. Or somehow not cut out for the thing you’re trying to do because you can't clear these thoughts.

But here’s what I’ve learned after more than a decade of working with people on this exact issue:

Most clarity problems aren’t about intelligence or motivation or discipline.

The problem is that your brain is doing two different jobs at the same time, and you’re not properly aligning those mental functions to the task at hand.

You see this most in people who are very smart and mentally capable.

People who think very deeply and can see multiple angles. People who are intelligent and articulate.

These people don’t lack ideas.

If anything, they have too many ideas but no reliable way to organise them into action.

So today I want to give you a simple model I use with clients, not to “fix” you, but to explain what’s happening mechanically when you feel unfocused and lack clarity, and how to get unstuck without forcing yourself to be somebody you’re not.

Whenever someone tries to make a change, they’re always dealing with three things:

* how they think
* what they do
* how they feel

These form the three aspects of who you are:

* Your identity - the thoughts, memories, and goals you keep returning to
* Your expression - what you actually do in the world, how your body and behaviour shows up
* Your personality - how you emotionally react, especially under pressure

So we’re talking about Identity.

Identity is shaped by the position and direction of your thoughts and ideas.

Imagine two axes. One vertical. One horizontal.

The vertical axis determines position.

Higher up are fewer, bigger things... Identity.
Mindset sits somewhere in the middle.
And lower down are the many smaller parts... Thoughts.

So if your thoughts are out of alignment, your identity higher up will also be out of alignment. You won’t have a clear sense of who you are, what your goals are, or why you keep having certain thoughts.

The horizontal axis is direction, moving upwards towards larger, more complex forms, building things up, or downwards towards simpler, more basic forms, breaking things down.

So the position is where we find the misalignment of your thoughts, mindset, and identity.

And the direction is where we find things moving in and joining together or moving apart and breaking down.

So this is where we see the two types of thinking.

On one side of the horizontal axis is a Dream State where we do what I call Dream Thinking.

It’s moving outwards and breaking things down.

It's open, creative, receptive. It’s where new ideas come from but it's also where we find ourselves confused, scattered, and unfocused.

On the other side is a Flow State where we do what I call Flow Thinking.

It's moving inwards and focusing on one thing.

It's certain, productive, fixed. It’s where ideas get applied but it's also where we can be closed-minded, short-sighted, and stubborn.

Neither state is good or bad.

They’re tools.

And clarity comes from moving between them deliberately.

Imagine a soldier and a civilian both walk into the same room.

Same environment. Same people.

The soldier will notice the exits and assess the threats or anything that seems out of place.

The civilian will probably be thinking about their lunch. Because they're not a soldier.

Even in a safe situation the soldier’s identity changes what they focus on and what they ignore.

And you can even get the civilian to change what they're focusing on by simply saying "act like a soldier".

That’s how Flow Thinking works.

The identity moves down into the individual real-time thoughts.

Dream Thinking works by moving up from thoughts into identity.

Imagine a person regularly receiving words of praise and encouragement.

At first, they exist as unconnected memories but over time they come together and form a coherent self-image.

The thoughts overlap and join and reinforce the identity and eventually, instead of just thinking “I did this thing well,” they start to think “I am someone who does things well.”

And you can even get someone to change their whole self-image when they believe in just one encouraging thought.

Some of us prefer to think top to bottom, working from a simple high-level idea first and worrying about details after.

Some of us prefer to think bottom to top, analysing the details and individual ideas first and only committing to high-level ideas once the details have been aligned.

It’s important to know that your preferred level - I call this your mental set point - is not always going to be right for the situation.

You can start too high and miss important details.
You can start too low and get stuck in analysis paralysis.

Sometimes, you have a clear sense of identity.

There’s a defined story arc.

You know where you came from, you know where you’re going, and you know exactly what to do.

Other times, your mind is a mess.

Half-finished snippets that don’t fit together.

You have no idea who you’re supposed to be and every time you think you’ve got it, you find expectations just aren’t lining up with reality.

We do this by asking questions and watching what happens when we try to answer them. To do this effectively, we need to be curious, patient, and most importantly honest.

Sometimes our answers surprise us and that can lead us to avoid answering questions honestly.

But an unashamed approach to our self-development is important.

Exposing ourselves to difficult work and hard truths is the first step to a better life.

So start with the first thing that comes to mind.

What is a significant event from your life?

You will have thought of something.

Don't let yourself change your mind.

Stay on the first thing.

What is this thing that happened to you in the past that was significant?

The first thing that comes to mind might not even be something you believe is important. But it's the first thing you thought of.

So bring it to mind a bit more vividly.

What happened?

Play it over in your head a couple of times, start to finish.

And answer the following questions honestly:

* What was negative about this event?
* What was positive about this event?
* What happened later as a result of this event?
* What could you have done differently?
* What did this event change or confirm about how you see the world?
* What did this event change or confirm about how you see yourself?

What we are doing here is called Reflective Practice.

We take a real-life experience, look back over it with some distance, form some ideas about what the event means to us, and then take those lessons into the real world and apply them to future experiences.

* Sometimes we find our thoughts don’t connect. When we are all over the place mentally, reflective practice helps us to see where we are struggling to make sense of fragmented thought patterns.

* Sometimes we find our thoughts looping around the same doubts and unhelpful self-talk. When we are mentally trapped, reflective practice helps us to see where we have become stuck in rigid thought patterns.

If you are trying to do something in the real world, you will likely find there are important conflicts to resolve in the thoughts you keep coming back to.

You can notice and capture these thoughts by engaging in reflective practice through techniques like writing, meditation, and regular dialogue with an impartial conversation partner.

By shifting in a deliberate way from practice and application to reflection and abstraction, we avoid doing too much of one type of thinking.

* Too much Dream Thinking results in rumination, avoidance, impulsivity, and difficulty making commitments. You become lost in possibilities, never landing on anything concrete, and this can make you unsure of who you are meant to be.

* Too much Flow Thinking results in micromanagement, obsessiveness, perfectionism, and often leads to burnout. You become locked into a strict set of expectations, never allowing yourself to consider any other options, and you hold onto a fixed idea of who you are meant to be.

Here are three things you can do if you find yourself lost in Dream Thinking:

1. Give yourself a simple specific goal to complete every day. It might be to make your bed or drink a protein shake. When you complete it, write it down somewhere and tally off how many days you have done it.

2. Make a commitment to meet with someone on a regular basis. Weekly or monthly. It’s important that it’s a person who can hold you accountable and ask you honest questions. You could meet for a workout or just for a coffee.

3. Create a Pros and Cons list. Frameworks for making business decisions also work for your personal life. You can make your thoughts less messy by first identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Write it down so you can keep track of things.

Here are three things you can do if you find yourself locked in Flow Thinking:

1. Let yourself take a break to do something with no lasting outcome. Make a nice meal and eat it. Go for a walk in the park. Listen to your favourite music and sing along. Something that is over as soon as it ends.

2. Write your ideas down and read them back with a critical eye. Ask yourself, “Is this right?” Give yourself distance from your own beliefs so you can judge them as if they belonged to someone else.

3. Simply try another way of doing things that is outside your normal pattern. Ask “How do other people manage to do this?” and try it their way. Swap your routines around, experiment with how you approach problems, and don’t turn away a solution before you’ve tried it.

At face value, these are all deceptively simple things to do but that’s because it’s not about the task exactly. It’s about the type of thinking required for the task.

The goal is to make sure you’re not stuck at one end of the horizontal axis.

This gives you the ability to navigate the patterns of your identity on your own terms.

You don’t need to wait for someone else to tell you who you’re meant to be.

When you’re thinking clearly, when you can solve problems and learn quickly, when you have a strong sense of who you are through that process, you don’t go through life as a victim of circumstance.

You don’t just have things happen to you.

You make things happen.

You have a Core Constraint problem

Take the Core Constraint Quiz

Open transcript

Held back and not progressing?

So you might feel held back, but it's not from a lack of effort.

You don’t mind working.
You’re not lazy.
You’re trying.
You’re busy.

But somehow, that work fails to turn into results.

You think, “I know what I want. So why can’t I make it happen?”

And other people seem to move forward with half the effort.

So you think: “What am I missing?”

You might blame yourself. You might believe you don’t have enough discipline, motivation, or willpower, or you're somehow not cut out for the thing you’re trying to do because you can't make any headway.

But here’s what I’ve learned after more than a decade of working with people on this exact issue:

Most progress problems aren’t about effort or just wanting it badly enough.

The problem is that you are constrained somehow, and you’re not properly managing those constraints to find the best path to your goals.

You see this most in people who actually care about what they’re doing.

If you don’t really care, it's not a problem to you because there's no tension between where you’re at and where you want to be.

But people with ambitions and plans for a better future have this frustration and drive about them that can turn into negativity when they lack a way to reliably express that desire in the real world.

So today I want to give you a simple model I use with clients, not to “fix” you, but to explain what’s happening mechanically when you feel held back and what blocks action even when your intentions and goals are clear.

Whenever someone tries to make a change, they’re always dealing with three things:

* how they think
* what they do
* how they feel

These form the three aspects of who you are:

So we’re talking about Expression.

Expression is determined by the position and direction of your actions and behaviours.

Imagine two axes. One vertical. One horizontal.

The vertical axis determines position.

Higher up are fewer, bigger things... Expression.
Embodiment sits somewhere in the middle.
And lower down are the many smaller parts... Actions.

So if your actions are out of alignment, your expression higher up will also be out of alignment. You won’t have a clear sense of who you are, what you’re doing, or why you behave in certain ways.

The horizontal axis is direction, moving upwards towards larger, more complex forms, building things up, or downwards towards simpler, more basic forms, breaking things down.

So the position is where we find the misalignment of your actions, embodiment, and expression.

And the direction is where we find things moving in and joining together or moving apart and breaking down.

So this is where we see the two types of action.

On one side of the horizontal axis we are Burning... as in burning calories and creating movement.

It’s moving energy outwards and breaking things down.

Energy is used in your body to contract your muscles and move things, even small actions like moving our lips to speak or moving our hands to write.

On the other side we are Building... as in bodybuilding, adding material to our body.

It's moving energy inwards and creating things we can use.

Bodybuilders build muscle, but building also means storing energy as fat or building other organs, creating larger and more complex forms out of the material we have absorbed.

Neither building nor burning is good or bad.

They’re tools.

And progress comes from moving between them deliberately.

When you lift weights or walk, or even just when you’re talking...

The energy needed to contract your muscles comes from breaking down fats and sugars stored in your body.

That energy then leaves your body in the form of movement and heat.

Over time, if that energy isn't replaced, the shape and structure of your body changes as it breaks down.

Whatever you are doing, however you express yourself outwardly through movement, you are burning energy.

This is how Burning works.

The expression breaks your body down into energy that dissipates outwards through our individual actions.

Building your body works by taking energy in and adding it to the body to express it in a particular shape and form.

When you eat a piece of meat, the amino acids in that food are digested and absorbed into the body.

As you recover from work, those amino acids move into the muscles, repairing and strengthening them in response to the actions we take.

Over time, each meal you eat adds to the body to become the muscles that hold you up and move you through the world.

Whatever you eat, even if it starts out as chicken or fish or cereal or lettuce or anything, the energy and material in that food is used to express something new, building your body.

But if you're feeling held back, there's something getting in the way of you being able to express yourself in the world.

Either what you are doing outwardly, or what you have built internally, is limited by four core constraints:

* Time - we don't have the time, we run out of time
* Money - nobody has infinite money
* Body - obviously your body has limits
* Relationships - not having the right relationships can be a big obstacle

I have frameworks and projects that will help with all of these, but here we will start with the body because this is where you have the greatest opportunity right now to break through some of those constraints.

First we need to know the position of your body.

Where are you at physically right now? Where are things not lining up? Where's the blockage?

So we look at what I call the Seven Cycles. They are:

* Digestion
* Performance
* Energy
* Work
* Breath
* Light
* Attention

They're called the seven cycles because they all work at their best when they cycle in a routine.

This makes it easier to have enough time and energy to do the things we want to do.

So if you struggle with time and energy, Step Zero of any plan that involves taking physical action is to work on these cycles.

If you want access to my Step Zero Action Plan, just go to GymnasiOn dot Net and join the network.

You can also build great relationships there too.

The seven cycles are not complicated.

You just have to go through them in order.

Digestion:

Are you eating good nutritious food? Are you in control of what you eat? Are you eating in a predictable way? Do you know what’s in your food? Is it food you can digest and absorb so your body actually gets the nutrition it needs?

If the answer is no, something's not right. Start there. This is right at the bottom of that vertical axis. It’s the material that goes into your body. If you’ve got that in place, move to the next cycle.

Performance:

What are you trying to achieve? Is it realistic? Are you biting off more than you can chew? Are you accumulating wins over time or losses? Are you giving yourself too much? Are you challenging yourself enough?

This is important because it’s about your actions. Your body responds differently depending on whether you are getting what you want and need. So you need to be going after something that’s achievable. If you’re not doing that, start there.

Energy:

Are you taking in the right amount of energy? Are you eating enough? Are you putting on weight? Are you losing weight? Are you burning out? Are you hungry all the time?

We’re talking about calories here. It’s about not just the type of food but the amount, and how that fuels the work that your body is doing. Remember not to worry about this if you haven’t first figured out the previous two cycles.

Work:

How much physical output are you demanding from your body? Are you exhausting yourself? Are you wasting energy? Are you lazy?

This is the other side of the calorie equation. It’s workouts but it’s also the calories your brain is burning when you do knowledge work, calories burned fighting off illness, calories burned moving around, and getting from place to place.

Breath:

Do you snore? Are you holding your breath? Can you walk up the stairs without getting out of puff? Are you breathing deeply? Are you able to use your breath to calm yourself down or amp yourself up?

Sometimes the higher things like breathing can fix themselves when you have the lower things in the right place, but this might still be where things aren’t lining up.

Light:

What time do you go to sleep? What time do you wake up? Do you need an alarm to wake you up? Do you rely on caffeine? Are you looking at screens all the time? Do you feel a lot worse in the winter?

All of these things relate to light. There are certain things that your body does better when the light is dimming to darkness. And there are other things that your body does better as the light gets brighter.

Attention:

Where are you putting your focus? What are you physically looking at? Is it something near or far? Is it something small or large? Do you ever look up from your desk? Do you need glasses?

These questions only really become relevant if everything else is perfectly lined up and, in my experience, there’s probably something further down the vertical axis that you need to deal with first. So make sure you are being honest with yourself about where you are at physically.

Physical health and fitness is not just adding more strength, more discipline, more efficiency, more, more, more.

It's also about balancing that out with a kind of beneficial destruction through the deliberate burning away of inefficiency, weakness, and the behaviours that don't get us closer to what we truly want.

Too much Building without Burning leads to overgrowth.

If you are only accumulating and holding onto old ways, avoiding all forms of damage, refusing to take risks, you remain locked in place, overweight, and unable to change.

Too much Burning without Building leads to collapse.

If you are constantly depleting resources by not sleeping enough, putting in too much physical exertion, dieting restrictively, or just trying to follow an unsustainable routine, you will eventually break down.

So I use a system I simply call The Process.

The Process is designed to help you move between these directions deliberately. Breaking down inefficiencies and reinforcing structure, ensuring that energy isn't wasted and instead used productively and creatively.

It's like an alchemical experiment that has very specific steps that must be done in a particular order to produce a transformation.

The 12 steps are split across four major stages:

* The Black Stage where obstacles and failures are revealed. Most people don't get past this stage on their own because of that.

* The White Stage where the focus is more positive. We celebrate success instead of focusing on failure.

* The Yellow Stage where the results begin to show. This encourages and motivates us to keep going.

* The Red Stage where the transformation becomes the new normal.

Each stage contains 3 steps:

* Step 1 is Smelting - Stepping into the fire. Making a full commitment, forcing a break with the past.

* Step 2 is Dissolving - Seeing what comes up. Exposing negative behaviours and finding those areas of resistance.

* Step 3 is Purification - Removing the bad stuff. Holding ourselves accountable so we can nullify weak points.

These make up The Black Stage.

* Step 4 is Unification - Integrating the good stuff. Standardising successful behaviours and building a strong foundation.

* Step 5 is Discarding - Exploring better incentives. Replacing unhelpful reinforcement loops and establishing new rewards.

* Step 6 is Crystallisation - Ensuring stable progress. Protecting ourselves from failure by ensuring setbacks don’t spiral into collapse.

These make up The White Stage.

* Step 7 is Reinforcement - Strengthening good habits. Making them work together in positive sum games.

* Step 8 is Evaporation - Testing and evaluating periodically. Stepping out of the work to see if it's working.

* Step 9 is Proliferation - Reapplying successful strategies. Taking things that work in one domain and bringing them into others.

These make up The Yellow Stage.

* Step 10 is Elevation - Redefining what is normal. Raising the standards and setting new goals.

* Step 11 is Compounding - Refining things. Making them work better and better over time.

* Step 12 is Inspiration - Using what you have learned and taking it into the next challenge.

These make up The Red Stage.

Health, fitness, and self-development are not just about growth and hustle and levelling up. They're also about knowing what to keep and what to throw away.

When I am helping people to walk through The Process step by step they are able to balance both sides of the horizontal axis, Building and Burning towards something they actually want from their body.

When we follow The Process, the way we express ourselves is never random or wasted, it's never static, and importantly, it's never over.

There is always further to go.

You have a Leading Emotion problem

Take the Leading Emotion Quiz

Open transcript

Frustrated and stressed out?

Don’t ignore your emotions.

It’s easy to think that suppressing them makes you more rational - especially when emotions seem to take over your good judgement.

When you feel anxious and impulsive, or frustrated and stressed out, you might want to swallow it down and battle on.

But here’s why that’s a bad strategy.

For one, emotions don’t just go away.

They build up, leak out, and make you unhealthy over time because they affect your body and brain chemistry.

Secondly, emotions are signals.

They contain information that can help us make better, more rational decisions.

When we learn how to solve the mystery of what these signals are actually telling us, we can use them to our advantage.

You see this most in people who combine emotional sensitivity with a high level of intelligence.

When you care about how people feel, and you're able to pick up on subtle cues in an intuitive way (both in yourself and others), you may find that your decisions get interfered with by something outside of your control.

And that can be a problem if you need to be objective, unbiased, and capable of making intelligent strategic decisions.

So today I want to give you a simple model I use with clients - not to “fix” you, but to explain what’s happening mechanically when you feel held back, and what blocks action even when your intentions and goals are clear.

Whenever someone tries to make a change, they’re always dealing with three things:

* how they think
* what they do
* how they feel

These form the three aspects of who you are:

So we’re talking about personality.

Personality is shaped by the position and direction of your feelings and emotions.

Imagine two axes: one vertical and one horizontal.

The vertical axis determines position.

Higher up are fewer, bigger things... personality.
Emotions sit somewhere in the middle.
Lower down are the many smaller parts... feelings.

So if your feelings are out of alignment, your personality higher up will also be out of alignment.

You won’t have a clear sense of who you are, how you’re meant to react, or why you feel the way you feel.

The horizontal axis is direction - moving upwards towards larger, more complex forms, building things up, or downwards towards simpler, more basic forms, breaking things down.

So position is where we find the misalignment of your feelings, emotions, and personality.

And direction is where we find things moving in and joining together, or moving apart and breaking down.

So this is where we see the two types of feeling.

On one side of the horizontal axis are external signals - we can call this the aura we give off.

It’s the way our emotions are broadcast outwards, and the way we sync with the emotions broadcast by others.

We pick up on body language, subtle expressions, and reactions from other people, and that has a direct effect on our own emotions.

On the other side we have internal signals - we can call this the vibes of a situation or place.

It’s the way our emotions are influenced by memory and judgement.

Little clues in our surroundings unconsciously remind us of similar situations we have experienced, and that gives us an intuitive feel for what is going on around us.

I call these both Mystery Signals, because they operate below conscious awareness.

You feel something shift emotionally, but you can’t quite explain why.

These signals aren't good or bad.

They’re tools.

And insight comes from interpreting them deliberately.

Think about when someone starts to cry as they tell you a story.

You can’t help but feel a little sadness yourself.

Even if it turns out the person was happy crying, or it turns out there’s nothing very sad about the story in your opinion.

That feeling still gets triggered by the presence of those emotional signals in another person.

People broadcast and pick up on these external signals to varying degrees.

Some people react very strongly, while others are less sensitive or outwardly emotional, depending on their personality.

This is how external signals work.

The high-level personality breaks down into individual momentary feelings.

Internal signalling works by taking lots of individual momentary reactions and averaging them over time to form your personality.

If you go to the gym and you have a good experience each time, over and over again:

* first time you receive a genuine compliment
* second time you learn something new and you're naturally good at it
* third time you randomly get a free protein bar

You have a lot of good things happen to you one after the other.

Because those good experiences make you feel joyful and happy, you remember the gym as a place of happiness and joy.

After a while, going to the gym unconsciously makes you more joyful and happy, even when nothing in particular causes it in the moment other than the memory of previous experiences.

At that point, going to the gym simply makes you a more positive and confident person overall.

But what if we don’t feel good?

What if we spend most of our time feeling stressed and frustrated?

Your leading personality traits are relatively stable across time, but their expression is deeply influenced by experience.

Our feelings show up differently depending on the people around us and the situations we find ourselves in.

That’s why some environments bring out your best, while others make you feel disconnected, stuck, or out of sync.

The key to managing your personality is not changing who you are, but leveraging your traits in positive ways.

We do this by choosing environments, roles, and peers that best fit your personality.

Even emotions that seem like weaknesses - anxiety, perfectionism, impulsivity - can be powerful assets when applied in the right context.

So when something feels off, it’s not necessarily because there’s something wrong with you.

You might simply be positioned in a less-than-ideal environment.

But when an environment gives us bad vibes, it’s not always because the environment itself is bad.

Before we go into this more deeply, it’s important to highlight that feelings arrive both externally (from other people) and internally.

Sensory input from the environment informs our memories and expectations, and this creates an impression of ourselves in the world.

This impression is what we react to internally.

Unfortunately, our sense of self can be incomplete, outdated, or distorted by past traumas or deluded fantasies.

This is why our feelings can be misleading when we don’t have a grip on the real world.

So it’s important to keep that in mind when dealing with your emotions.

Human beings have four fundamental needs:

* Novelty - newness and change
* Stability - coherence and predictability
* Community - help from other people
* Safety - certainty about the future

However, we don’t all need them in the same amounts.

And thank God for that, because if we all needed the exact same things in the exact same proportions, society wouldn’t function.

* Some people need to be discovering new ideas and having new experiences all the time. Some people don’t really care about new things at all.

* Some people need everything to meet their expectations logically and coherently. Some people are fine with things being a bit messy.

* Some people need others around them and love being part of a group. Some people don’t really mind being alone most of the time.

* Some people need to know exactly what’s going to happen at all times. Some people are unfazed by ambiguity and risk.

Our feelings come from our drive to fulfil these basic needs, each beginning as a simple automatic reaction to the situation we are in.

* When there’s difference and newness, people who need Novelty react with feelings of Curiosity. But too much strangeness and deviance leads to feelings of Disgust.

* When things are going well, people who need Stability react with feelings of Joy. But when things don’t go to plan, this leads to feelings of Anger.

* In the presence of others who can help, people who need Community react with feelings of Happiness. But when help is needed in the moment, this leads to feelings of Sadness.

* When things are risky and uncertain, people who need Safety react with feelings of Fear. But when there is the potential for many positive outcomes, this leads to feelings of Excitement.

These core tendencies don’t change significantly over time.

A person who needs stability will always gravitate toward structure, and someone who needs novelty will always seek out the unknown.

But the same trait can lead to success or disorder depending on the context.

Your need for stability might express itself as being meticulous and responsible in a corporate role, but appear overly controlling and rigid in a startup.

Your need for safety might benefit you in risk-assessment roles, but in social situations you might end up feeling overwhelmed and insecure.

In the wrong setting, your natural strengths can be expressed in ways that don’t serve you.

Social groups, work structures, and cultural expectations can transmit confusing signals that don’t align with what the situation actually requires.

* Those who are highly attuned to external signals can read people well and adapt easily, but this can make them too focused on approval, or prone to losing themselves in the expectations of others. You might mistake a neutral expression for rejection and overcompensate to win approval.

* Others rely more on internal signals. They have strong self-awareness and personal conviction, but this can make them unaware of how they’re coming across. You might struggle to engage in collaborative environments because you’re processing everything only from your own perspective.

Understanding where you fall on this axis helps you adjust.

You don’t want to be too externally driven, bending to every social cue.

But you also don’t want to be too internally driven, ignoring the valuable input of others around you.

The focus here is on strategically placing yourself in environments that naturally amplify strengths and minimise weaknesses.

Environments that align with our internal signals reinforce and give us an optimistic sense of who we are in the world.

Our automatic reactions create good outcomes.

These allow us to frame the way we feel positively because our emotions have benefited us in some way.

Even the negative feelings of disgust, anger, sadness, and fear can feel like positive traits in the right environment when they create positive outcomes.

* Someone who leads with Fear might steer their vigilance and attention into mitigating risk, identifying threats, and calling others to action in times of crisis.

* Someone who leads with Sadness might find that their social sensitivity helps them when caring for others or working closely in teams.

* Someone who leads with Anger might steer their perfectionism and determination into high standards, rigorous precision, and quality execution.

* Someone who leads with Disgust might make their preference for the familiar work in their favour when protecting systems from intrusion or corruption.

The key reason different personalities exist is so we can work together and benefit from the strengths of others.

We all need novelty, stability, community, and safety - but not always in the same amounts, or at the same time.

For this reason, each of us has a unique perspective based on how we feel in the moment.

But the people we interact with also shape how we feel, and some traits work especially well together.

The wrong group can amplify negativity, while the right one can bring out the best in us.

Environments aligned in external signals are filled with people who can pick up on what others are feeling and complement one another’s instincts, allowing the group to act as one while benefiting from a diversity of perspectives.

People who lead with Curiosity are complemented by people who lead with Anger.

The creative and expansive one helps generate ideas.

The strict one helps implement those ideas and keeps them on the rails.

People who lead with Happiness are balanced by those who lead with Fear.

The energetic, social one brings the party.

The cautious one helps keep things in budget and stops them getting too out of hand.

We need good friends around us because when we pick up on their feelings, they influence our own emotions, and we end up doing things that are better for everyone.

This also helps weaken the effects of internal distortions and delusions that can create negative or disordered emotional spirals.

Your leading personality traits are mostly fixed, but the way those feelings are expressed is infinitely adaptable.

The key to long-term fulfilment and effectiveness isn’t trying to change your personality, but placing yourself in the right context.

The right settings, peers, and professional environments can turn personality from a constraint into a strategic advantage that benefits you and the people around you.

IDENTITY
MINDSET
THOUGHTS

EXPRESSION
EMBODIMENT
ACTIONS

PERSONALITY
EMOTION
FEELINGS