As I pause and re-group between completing my Level 3 On Line and launching into my Level 3 Freestyle, I’m doing a little review of my Fast Track notes, and my plan is to do some blog posts on some of the main points that I’ve taken away from the course now that the dust has settled.
First off, I have become truly fascinated by horseanality and personality. I've appreciated the work Parelli has done on horseanality ever since it came out as being something that immediately clarified so much about how to understand and interact with different types of horses. But personality has always seemed a bit more muddy to me, partly because there's so much complex stuff out there on personality (who can even keep track of all the Myers-Briggs designations?), and partly because people just seem unnecessarily convoluted compared to horses.
So I was intrigued when John went over personality a bit on our last day. As I've mentioned before, because of horses, I've begun to see the benefits that thinking about personality can deliver: the ability to be a little kinder to yourself and others by seeing characteristics as just that--characteristics rather than limitations--and the opportunity to establish better relationships based on a better understanding of what motivates both yourself and other people.
But reading horseanalities and personalities doesn't come easily to me, so I've been really happy with the information Parelli has distributed. As far as horseanality goes, everyone involved with Parelli has seen these charts:
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| Click on charts to see a larger version. |
But when it comes to similar breakdowns of personality, I haven't found much out there. Alex directed me to one Parelli instructor's blog that had the following personality chart:
Though things line up differently on this chart, there are some useful parallels here. Sanguine roughly equates to RBE, Choleric to LBE, Melancholic to RBI, and Phlegmatic to LBI. But the obvious limitation is that this chart sees half of the personalities in a purely negative light. The wonderful thing about the way Parelli views personalities and horseanalities is that each type has its challenges, but also its opportunities. You work with the horse/person you find to help them become more centered no matter what their type is (because any of the 4 types, taken to extremes, is going to become negative), but at the same time, you also consider what that horse or person is ideally suited to do or be, given their natural aptitude. And every quadrant has positive potential linked to its characteristics. Here are the horseanalities from this view:
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So I'd like to add some (slightly less pretty and less detailed) charts that we got in class to help flesh out personality along similar lines:
Self-talk of the different personality types breaks down in the following way:
(I find this chart a little odd in that it implies LBE's are the clearly desirable personality; however, in terms of what their unconscious tells them they may indeed have fewer challenges.)
Left-brain extroverts and right-brain introverts are on the group/family axis: they are both oriented toward thinking in those terms, though the RBI's run the risk of over-sacrificing for the sake of the relationship.
Right-brain extroverts and left-brain introverts are both on the "self-centered" axis and are the two personality types that tend to butt heads. I can attest to this myself, as I'm an LBI who's had intimate dealings with two RBE's, and it's a situation built for frustration. RBE's tend to be unconfident and get emotional, which is a huge turn-off for LBI's who sit there and wonder to themselves what in the hell is wrong with these people that they can't just sit down and be calm and rational about things. Meanwhile, the RBE's read the LBI's calmness and reticency as not caring, which pisses the RBE's off because they don't understand how the LBI's can be so unfeeling. This whole situation causes the RBE's to go more extroverted and the LBI's to go more introverted, and nobody has much fun.
I find that I can understand and even move into the RBI and LBE quadrants sometimes, but I just don't get RBE's, so I'll be needing to get a good deal further along in my horsemanship journey before I even think about owning a RBE horse (though having a horse with such a horseanality would probably ultimately make me more tolerant of people with that personality, as I find myself a lot more forgiving of horses than I am of people).
Okay, one final personality chart, courtesy of my friend Alex, who is an absolute whiz at nailing other people's personalities. (Alex, incidentally, claims she is a RBE, but while I put a great deal of faith in her readings of people generally, I have trouble believing her reading of herself because I got on with her so well and saw no sign of her going emotional during the month we spent together, despite the fact that we were both under-going a lot of personal growth. It's possible, though, that Alex is just a very together RBE, though she would deny that as well.)
In any case, Alex and I spent a good chunk of our drive home from Colorado talking about personalities, and she explained that she factors body types into her readings as well. The following is how she pegs the different personality types, though I don't recall exactly how she described RBE's:
John did give us a couple of references for further research. Linda based her horseanality stuff on the work of her teacher Glynn Braddy, who came up with something called "The Elements of Man," though I haven't been able to find this. John said the closest book out there is called The Personality Compass by Diane Turner, which I've got on order.
2014 update: I've just taken Linda and Patrick Handley's Horsenality/Humanality course, about which I've begun blogging here.
I'm including below a brief and entertaining video we watched in class that illustrates the four humanalities by the Eysenk names:
I'm including below a brief and entertaining video we watched in class that illustrates the four humanalities by the Eysenk names:
(1) sanguine=RBE
(2) choleric=LBE
(2) choleric=LBE
(3) melancholic=RBI
(4) phlegmatic=LBI
(Click where it says "Four Basic Personality Types" to watch a larger version on youtube—this video is subtitled.)
Looking forward to more posts, Marian!
ReplyDeletePetra Christensen
Parelli 2Star Junior Instructor
Parelli Central
Marian, I'm certified in the Personality Compass and know Diane Turner and Thelma Greco fairly well. I'd be willing to chat further about the Compass if you have questions after getting the book. My website, www.integrityhpi.com will help you get to me. I did want to mention that one of the issues we find inpersonality science is really what to do about extroversion vs. introversion. The book you are getting won't talk about it very much--it's more in a second compass book coming out soon. I'll just give you the simplest ideas from the compass perspective.
ReplyDeleteExtroversion and Introversion aren't really qualities in themselves but are factors of other traits. That is in the Compass, the North and the Wests tend to more extroverted than the Easts and the Souths. The wonderful thing about the Personality Compass, my preference over all other tools, is that we can all have all four points of the compass to one degree or another. Sometimes they seem like quirks but it's all a matter of how we have learned to compensate. I don't know much about horses except that they are amazing. I can imagine, however, a horse learning to behave in a way contrary to what their personality might tend. You may think you have trained the horse to perform or behave in a particular way and then when the horse is under stress of some sort, you might see an abandonment of that behavior. Tasks and behaviors can be typified for certain personality tendencies. A north, for example, wants to make a decision now and move on it rather than deliberating with the team--a South approach. We train people to understand the requirements of the tasks/culture/work environment, and to learn how to accomodate them. This might well be why some animals seem more difficult to train and understanding their personality migh enable the trainer to achieve a greater level of success--just like we do in the corporate environment.
Joseph,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response. You may not know much about horses, but you've nailed exactly the kinds of things that can happen with them. Parelli talks about "discovering your horse" because, when we start listening to horses, often a whole new horse emerges than when we just forced them to do what we wanted. And even once you've built a relationship with them, yes, a different horse can show up on certain days depending on what situation they're in, what the weather is, etc.
The great thing about Parelli is not only that you learn this kind of flexibility to deal with different horses and different tendencies in the same horse, but also how to help your horse become more centered--not limiting him by his horseanality on one extreme, but also not having totally unrealistic expectations about what he can achieve given his natural aptitude.
It sounds like the Personality Compass is right in line with this kind of thinking, and I'm looking forward to reading it even more now that I've read your comment. I'll definitely be in touch with any questions!