Who Are You Meant to Be? (6 page)

There are eight Striving Styles
. Each Style performs specific tasks and behaves in predictable ways in our personality. We call them Striving Styles because each has an ability to help us to strive toward achieving our potential. However, each Striving Style has a distinct way of fulfilling its biological mandate; in other words, each has its own agenda. Each Style performs specific functions either in the outer world of activities and interactions with others or in our inner world of thoughts and feelings. We all have the energetic potential of all eight Striving Styles available to us, with all the natural talents, abilities, and patterns of behavior that go with them. However, some of the striving energies are more active than others are and will play a more dominant role in our personality.

Each Striving Style is represented by an archetype or avatar. These eight avatars are commonly recognized models of people, behaviors, or personalities that are easy to understand and apply to daily life. We consider each Style as complex and multidimensional as humans are, with motivations, needs, and patterns of behavioral and emotional responses. As we move through the Striving Styles and their corresponding avatars, we will undoubtedly find similarities to those near and dear (and perhaps not so dear) to us. More important, however, the Striving Styles presents a mirror in which we can get a good look at ourselves.

Eight Striving Styles

Each of the Striving Styles has a predominant need (biological mandate).
There is a psychological need or appetite that motivates each of the Styles to behave in a certain way to satisfy that need, depending on which of the four quadrants of the brain the Style resides in. Like other human appetites, the need “hungers” for satisfaction and is distressed when that hunger is not satisfied. The quadrant of the brain in which the need resides determines how we will behave to get that need met. Each of us has a hierarchy of needs, with one of them being strongest. This is our predominant need. This need is nonnegotiable because it provides the foundation for our psychological balance and security. The more aware we are of our predominant need and how to meet it, the more consciously we can strive to get the need met.

Our other psychological needs are not essential in the same way our predominant one is, and they are therefore negotiable. We can get along without having them met and can put them aside as we pursue meeting our predominant need. They don’t “make or break” us, as our predominant need has the potential to do if it is not met. And because the predominant is stronger and must be met, it tends to win over the others. For example, if your predominant need is to be recognized and you also have a need to be secure, you are more likely to follow your impulse to go to an event where there is the potential to get recognition than to stay home and garden so that you feel secure. You can delay or ignore gratifying the need to be secure as you seek the recognition that your predominant need craves.

We have one Striving Style that is the “alpha.”
We are hardwired from birth to favor one of the Striving Styles over the others. We call this our Predominant Striving Style. It is the functional area of the brain that houses our predominant need, which must be met for us to develop and grow toward our potential. The Predominant Striving Style is the area of the brain that we naturally use the most, and that works the most efficiently. As discussed later in this chapter, it is estimated that the quadrant of the brain where our Predominant Style resides operates roughly one hundred times more efficiently than the other three quadrants do. It’s easy to use our Predominant Style because it takes much less energy to operate than the other Styles do. We generally feel energized when we are using it, and we use it for long periods of time without feeling fatigued. Imagine how much energy you would waste if you spent your whole life trying to walk on your hands instead of using your feet. It’s likely that you’d feel exhausted much of the time, you’d have trouble fitting in, and you’d wonder why everyone else seemed so different. This is what it’s like when you are not living authentically according to your Predominant Style and your natural abilities.

The types of activities performed with your Predominant Style are very specific to the quadrant of the brain where the Style is located. That means that you will naturally excel at those activities and will learn new skills easily when they relate to that quadrant. This explains why some activities come easily to us and others don’t. When you understand the nature of the quadrant of the brain where your Predominant Style resides, you can predict what activities are going to come most naturally and truly capitalize on those strengths and abilities.

Your Predominant Striving Style’s psychological need must be satisfied in order for you to live in the most authentic, healthy, and growth-oriented way possible. Your natural striving to meet the need of your Predominant Style will be expressed in just about everything you do: if you are not having the need met directly, then its expression will take place indirectly through your behavior. In one way or another, it will make itself known.

You will find out your Predominant Style when you take the Striving Styles Self-Assessment in chapter 5.

We have access to three other Styles called Associate Styles
. In addition to our Predominant Style, we have three Associate Styles, residing in the three other quadrants of the brain that take various roles in our personality. Associate Styles have different functions, talents, and abilities and complement the functioning of the Predominant Style (more about this in chapter 3). Use of the Associate Styles requires more energy because they don’t have as many naturally occurring neural pathways as the Predominant Style has. However, with time and use, they become easier to access as you strengthen the connections from the Predominant Style and become more skilled in the behaviors that are most natural for the Associate Styles to perform.

Anatomically, two of the Associate Styles have direct physical contact with the Predominant Style, and these two Associates have neural connections that allow them to communicate directly with the Predominant Style. The fourth Style—the one that is diagonally opposite the Predominant one—has no direct connection to the Predominant Style and must communicate via the two Associates that reside next to the Predominant Style. This Associate Style often operates in opposition to or independent of the other Styles and is most difficult to access. You can get a clearer picture of the relationships among the Styles if you imagine four neighbors whose properties form a square.

The picture above shows that the four neighbors (A, B, C, and D) have walls around their properties, but there are some gates that connect them. The gates allow Neighbor A to communicate easily with B and C, but not with D. If A and D want to communicate, they have to go through B or C. So if we now take the drawing to represent the four quadrants of the brain, and if we imagine that A is the Predominant Style, we can see how Associate Style D is the one that A will have to make the most effort to communicate with. And, just as it is with neighbors, we usually get chummy with the ones who share property lines with us, and we may even forget about the ones we seldom see. The picture can also be used to reinforce the idea that if your home were A, it would be a bit strange to spend most of your time in B or C (or especially D!); yet this is in essence what we do when we keep “living in” a Style that isn’t our Predominant one.

Two of the four Styles are used in the outer world, while two function in our inner world.
The Style located in the quadrant that is diagonal to the Predominant Style will function in the opposite direction; that is, if your Predominant Style is used in the outer world, the one diagonal to it will be used inwardly. This diagonal pairing means that one of them will reside in one of the rational brain quadrants and the other in one of the experiential-emotional brain quadrants. For example, if your Leader (outward focus) is your Predominant Style, your Artist (inward focus) will be on your Squad as the opposite; if your Predominant Style is the Stabilizer (inward focus), your Performer (outward focus) will be on your Squad as its opposite, and so on. These pairings are intended to work in a balancing fashion, in the same way other systems in our bodies do (for example, the autonomic nervous system, which comprises two systems; the sympathetic system, which stimulates and moves us to action; and the parasympathetic system, which is responsible for rest and relaxation). Each brain quadrant is paired in this manner, which means that your other two Associate Styles, located adjacent to your Predominant Style, will also be used in opposite directions to each other and will balance each other in terms of their functionality.

The Predominant and Associate Styles together are called the Striving Style Squad
. The Predominant Style plus three Associate Styles make up what we call the Striving Style Squad. Becoming aware of the attributes and strengths of each of these Styles and using them all is like having the energy of four different “people” at our disposal. When we learn to use our Striving Style Squad in an integrated fashion, we achieve greater choice and flexibility in our interactions with others and the world.

If you have watched the TV show
Survivor
, you have an idea of how the members of the Squad work together. On the show, a group of strangers comes together and has to cooperate as a team in order to survive in a challenging physical environment with little but the shirts on their backs. Each individual has his or her own strengths, and typically one leader emerges early to hold it all together. Some members have great skills of physical strength, some possess mental ingenuity, some excel at caring and compassion, and some are best at practical survival skills. Each individual approaches the situation according to his or her natural strengths. They work together to ensure that their team functions, becomes cohesive, and can surmount each challenge. In this environment, as in our amazing brains, things go best when all the different energies work together, each contributing its natural talents and allowing the others to compensate for any weaknesses.

The remaining four Styles are called Auxiliary Styles.
There are also four Striving Styles that will not be part of our Striving Style Squad. We call these Auxiliary Styles. These Styles will be used in the opposite orientation (external or internal) to those in our Squad relative to the brain quadrant they reside in. The needs of our Auxiliary Styles are less acute and therefore mostly out of our awareness. We tend to be aware of them only when we have to do something that requires their unique abilities, so it’s important to understand the deficit that exists when you don’t have them on your Squad. Attempting to access the energies and abilities of our Auxiliary Styles is difficult without focused effort, and tends to push us far out of our emotional comfort zone. Think of Lady Gaga taking a vow of silence, or Chef (Gordon) Ramsay being sensitive and empathetic, and you’ll get an idea of the type of focused energy it requires.