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Identifying Your Super Power(s)

Hello little blog, my old friend. I’ve come to write in you again. It’s been a while, but you’ve been on my mind. There is no other platform so perfect for the morning thoughts I'm having about people and archetypes.

Asking the question, “Who are you?” can elicit confusion. Asking, “How do you see yourself?” prompts ramblings, a paragraph length of descriptors. “What do you do,” which is the favored way Americans like to identify to each other, is just a career or job question. It doesn’t really say much about who you are underneath and inside. But I think author Malcolm Gladwell was onto something when he described personality types in his book The Tipping Point back in the day. Though the book has been out for a while, and this info has been written about many times, it’s still good stuff and deserves a refresher look. In chapter two Gladwell describes three special types of people:

Connectors: These people link us up with the world, introduce us to our social circles – these people we rely on more heavily than we realize. Connectors are people with a very special gift of bringing people together. Some qualities include:

Surprised you know so many people?

You enjoy people?

Have a knack for remembering names?

Like to meet new people?

Find that you collect acquaintances?

Mavens: People who have information on a lot of different products or prices or places. These people are early adopters and identifiers who become sources of information. Some qualities include:

Junk mail reader?

Like to look for deals at the grocers?

Trend watcher?

Don't buy until you've researched?

Happy to share your "good finds" with friends?

Salespeople: These are the people who persuade others to adopt ideas or products. They are able to build instant rapport with another person and gain their trust. Some qualities include:

Can't sit still when you hear a good song?

Laugh a bit too loud?

Touchy-Feely with people?

Have that special charisma?

Being in the spotlight is no big thing?

It’s said when you identify your primary “Tipping Point” you know how to capitalize on your strengths, and most importantly, you identify the qualities in archetypes that you lack in your life. You might even say recognizing your primary archetype reveals one of your super powers.

The tendency is to see qualities from more than one archetype in ourselves. I did. With all three archetypes. I do have the nerdiness of a Maven and I have the touch-feely quality when talking to others. But if I look over the many years of my life, starting from my kindergarten years, especially how I am around others, I'm definitely a Connector.

When you recognize your primary archetype, you can look for people who complement you. You likely need a different archetype than yourself in your life to help you further your goals--personal or job related--to help you think and act more holistically.

So do these things: 1. Identify yourself. Are you a Connector, a Maven or a Salesman? 2. Evaluate your way of living. Are you setting yourself up for success or failure? Connectors build bridges, Mavens dig deep and research, and Salesmen influence and sell. What are you doing? 3. Identify your missing archetype. Do you need a Salesperson, Connector or Maven? Go find them.

Share and trade your superpower with others and watch your life bloom in ways you didn’t even imagine.

Connect with me if you want to learn the specifics of why I know I'm a Connector. I would enjoy learning how you identify yourself, too.

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Ms. Sassy Pilar

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Sunset looking from WSEA out to the Salish Sea

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My Creative Burst is Intrusive . . . but So Satisfying

Recently it occurred to me that my have-to-dos are distractions from living a balanced life. Every time I would think about my creative interests, I’d remind myself that am still working on my home, reclaiming space, decluttering, and reorganizing. And then the deep clean so I can hire the needed handyman, carpenters and painters. The necessary joys of having a house—or in my case a condo. I also realized that I am totally unenthusiastic about it all, even though I know I’ll love the result.

Creative dreams deferred What I really longed to do was dabble in paints and creative projects. I had a fresh supply art supplies bought more than a year ago. I wanted to finally focus on the last part of the memory place I had created to honor my Shih Tzu, Magnet, put down in 2018 after living 18 1/2 years. All that was needed was to choose images that would be framed or compiled into a collage. And I felt bad that I wasn’t working on my French lessons or taking up a musical instrument again. How long was I going to keep these things on hold until I finished the house projects?

During pandemic living, I have admired and resented all the people who showed off their successful projects done while hunkering at home. For a while I put it down to folks having the time to produce because they were not working. But I knew plenty of people were working and still managed to create and produce. The problem had to be me and my lack of focus and discipline. Apparently, I didn’t want it bad enough. And anyway, I still had the house to do, so one day . . .

The holidays were fast approaching. Being deadline driven (honed from a career as a writer and editor where deadlines are everything), I approached them with some solid plans. One of them was finally completing a couple of photography gifts for my family. I had bought the frames—a year ago—and was way overdue selecting images, which always seemed like it would be fun. I could never figure out why I was forgetting to do this project even when I had “time.” Right, time. I vowed I was going to make it happen no matter what, which meant setting deadlines.

Forward and unfurling To meet my deadlines meant stopping full stop, amidst the Christmas decorating, cleaning, and the desire to make cookies for gift-giving. I jumped in selecting images, editing and resizing. I had images printed and set to work framing them so I could get them in the slow mail to save money as the frames were oversized. When I was done I was so happy to have finally achieved my goal. And that was when I recognized it—a new feeling. Completing that project started something unfurling inside me. It would take me another month to realize that finally I was feeding my creative hunger pains.

To keep focused, once the new year started I decided to make a vision board rather than come up with a hackneyed new years resolutions list. To my way of thinking, my vision board would remind me of things I wanted to be part of my 2021 life. I did an electronic version, which turned out to be way more inventive than I had imagined it would be.

A good jolt Fast forward a couple of weeks and I happened to look at my vision board again. I saw the image of writing. Yes, there are several “open” projects in my folder, plus didn’t I say I was going to write a couple of articles for posting? I looked and saw the image of paints. Oh yeah, that’s right, I want to do art projects. My vision board also reminded me that I hadn’t really pushed past the idea of learning to play a simple instrument to get started musically. All this plus reading a post from a friend that pointed to how important it is to create and all of a sudden I had a huge mental jolt. If not now, then when? So without over thinking it, I declared to myself that I was going to work on my art right then and there. And that’s just what I did.

In the middle of reorganizing storage (I had two new shelving systems to put together) I gave into an art project that had been on my mind for a few years. It meant painting an old frame I had and repurposing an art board. For over a week I worked on my project. And when it was done, I could not have been more delighted. Not only was I pleased but I was able to refresh a wall space for my office nook that every time I look, I am simply happy. And I knew. I couldn’t suppress my creative self anymore, just letting a bit of personal writing out here and there. I am being who I am supposed to be at this moment no matter how impractical the timing or environment might seem.

“Mess and Confusion” I read a blog once about stifling creativity. Never did I think I would be stifling my own artistic instincts. At one point the blogger wrote: “What I do know is that most great creative ideas emerge from a swirl of chaos. You must develop a part of yourself that is comfortable with mess and confusion.”

I am embracing mess and confusion. And inconvenience and intrusiveness. They are contrary to popular thinking or how I’ve lived most of my life, yet I’m learning not to care. Plus, the bonus is that the more I give into my creative spirit, the more energetic I feel overall. Clearly this is part of my creative-life balance. I can no longer deny that.

So, today, instead of doing another load of laundry, cleaning the bathroom, or taking out the recycling, I made a great cup of coffee and ordered a recorder so I can surround myself with fledgling musical sounds of my own making. Then I started selecting images for a photo project that is two years overdue. And I’m finishing this piece that will be a new blog post. I’m smiling because no matter what the landscape, my creative life will find a crack, burst through and make itself intrusively known.

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"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."

Louisa May Alcott

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Buzzing Post-Covid Work World

We all seem to be wondering, talking, or imagining what our work life could be after we get through the coronavirus pandemic? Every other day there is some new article reminding us that we can use this time to reset, to create a new normal. It is encouraging that many people despair of going back to the way things were before we started living self-distancing lives. We are 20 years into the twenty-first century and many of us still work some version of last century’s business structures as shown in popular office work movies from “Baby Boom,” “Working Girl,” and “Office Space” to “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Clockwatchers,” and “Up in the Air.”

We laugh, we sigh and we connect with these movies that seem to capture our work lives, much of which we have found less than ideal for many, many years. Meanwhile, we are also told that to be happy we must do what we love, otherwise, why spend so much time every day doing what we dislike. In a world that is more than black and white, the media and entertainment industries often set us up in many-hued and unwinnable scenarios. Phrases like work-life balance and living a whole-health life sound good, seem evolved but so far, very few businesses have been able to incorporate those elements into their last-century business models. This is likely because the work-life version we’ve lived is way past its prime. The five-day work week, 40-plus hours, 30-minute lunches of the last 70 years, married to the immediacy of technical communications and abilities of the last 20-25 years isn’t sustainable. The coronavirus is showing us that we are all hungry for a fundamental shift, it not a monumental change, in how we do work world.

In a recent HuffPost article, “The Coronavirus Reveals Everything That’s Wrong With Work In America,” author Amanda Schupack wrote, "The coronavirus has shaken our sense of security, exposing chasms of instability and inequity along fault lines that already existed in the mantle of society. But it has also exposed our humanity, the private portions of our lives we pack away before commuting to the office, the fine lines we walk between personal and professional, the unraveling threads by which so many in this country are just barely hanging on."

Schupack concluded that from the people she interviewed, the consensus is we are craving “humanity” in our work lives. She says it’s a clarion call.

If many of us are hankering for a work experience that is more humane, or filled with more humanity, then it will be fascinating to see how business owners and corporations actually respond to this need. Especially in a work world that will likely become more virtual across the board. Will businesses be able to nimbly back off encouraging us to practice self-care, take time to focus on family and friends or look outside our homes to the needs of our neighbors and fellow man as they have encouraged us to do during this pandemic? Will businesses resist the habit to jump start us straight to 75mph work world from our safe and serviceable 35 mph virus, self-distancing lifestyles once the pandemic ends? And even if we are prodded, will us workers find ourselves resisting and putting on the brakes to making changes either out of fear of the unknown or behaving outside our expectancies? I hope we won’t get stuck, mired in moldy pre-COVID, business-as-usual bureaucracy. It will be fascinating to see if we can truly move forward, whether with careful one-day-at-a-time steps, bold risky leaps or twenty-first century high jumps.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-reveals-american-work-wrongs_n_5ea2f57bc5b6d376358e5f0a?ncid=newsltushpmgnewworld

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Unapologetic living is an affirmation to live a life that is nonconforming to ill-fitting standards and definitions and to not have any regrets about being yourself and living up to your highest potential. (Erin Johnson)

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PARABLE OF THE PERSISTENT FURRY CRITTER Then it came to her—like a voice in the daylight—a parable to show her that her Shorkie would always persist and not give up. “In a certain town there was a mistress who feared the Great Father but didn’t care what people thought. And there was a very cute little critter in that town who kept coming to her with the plea. Wagging her tail and dancing round and round she seemed to say, ‘Grant me never-ending play and all sorts of treats against my constant needs.’

 “For some time the mistress refused. But finally she said to herself, ‘Even though I do fear the Great Father but don’t care what people think, yet because this cute critter keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets pity sakes, so that she won’t eventually come and bite me while I sleep!’”

 And out of the blue there came a voice like an angel, “Listen to what the mistress says. And will not the Great Father bring about pity sakes for even the furry critters, who beg day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get treats and walks and play times galore. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find such persistence and faith on the earth?”

And like Balem and his donkey, much was learned from an animal to keep her humble on that day and for many days to come.