Personal Development = Five Attributes

Because I was wasn’t actually “doing” personal development. I thought that reading, workshops, seminars, audiobooks, trainings, personality style certifications, and the like were personal development. I thought that simply understanding my tendencies and behaviors, understanding emotional intelligence, understanding how the brain works, understanding personality types, studying leadership and team dynamics, and understanding the human condition would change my human condition. Wrong. It didn’t.

“You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.” — Irish proverb

The bottom line is that true personal development results in true change, a true and sustainable transformation.

A transformation of the way you feel inside, the way you experience life, the way you treat people, the way you handle the practicalities of life (like money and power), the way you relate to and connect with life, and the way other people experience you.

The Four Attributes

A mentor of mine once taught what he called “The Four Attributes.” His framework was basically the notion that as we gain self-knowledge (the outcome of true personal development), we began expressing four attributes:

1. Sobriety — the ability to see things, people, and life straightforwardly, without distortion. It is the capacity to see in relative terms, and not see things, beliefs, etc. in absolute terms. This includes the capacity to hold multiple perspectives even when the perspectives appear to be at war with one another.
2. Feeling — the ability to intuit things, to “feel our way in the dark” in those situations where rational thought and prior experience don’t suffice. In other words, when we are facing that which is unknown to us.
3. Warmth — the ability to hold an inclusive attitude towards all of life, rather than clinging to some people and things while having aversion to other people and things. This means inclusiveness towards all of life, without omission, which by definition means what we like and dislike, people we love and those we have a great aversion towards, and all beings, big and small, seen and unseen. You might also call this a true feeling of connection with all of life, without exception.
4. Strength — the ability to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences to one’s self, status, security, image, etc. It’s also the ability to accept full responsibility for one’s life, and the capacity to look at the parts of ourselves and our life experiences most people spend a lifetime avoiding.

While these are presented separately, they are actually interlocking concepts. For example, if we lack sobriety and therefore see the world in very rigid terms, how can we possess feeling? And without warmth, that which he referred to as strength can be ruthless and brutal, which is not strength at all, but destructiveness.

But the title of this post is Personal Development = Five Attributes…

The Fifth Attribute

So what is the fifth attribute?

Presence.

In the prior posts where we explored what personal development actually is, a theme emerged.

Personal development is a movement from egocentricity to presence.

We saw this when we looked at personal development through the lens of adult development:

“What is ‘development itself’? For more than a hundred years, researchers have studied the ways human beings construct reality and have observed how that constructing can become more expansive, less distorted, less egocentric, and less reactive over time.” — Robert Kegan, PhD and Lisa Laskow Lahey, PhD

And we saw it when we looked at personal development through the lens of the Enneagram’s Nine Levels of Development. Here, we saw that higher levels of development are more free of egoic control.

And we saw it when we looked at PEMS, the acronym for the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels of being a human being. We saw that when our Physical, Emotional, and Mental aspects are not integrated, we lose connection to the Spiritual or Higher Self aspect of ourselves — at which point ego must step in and “hold things together.”

My mentor didn’t include presence as an attribute. He thought of it more as a state. He referred to that state as “being awake in the dream of life.”

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” — Edgar Allen Poe

To my mentor, gaining self-knowledge was the process of waking up in the dream of life. This concept was mirrored in the popular sci-fi movie, The Matrix. It is to wake up to the realization that we thought we were awake, yet were not. That our being awake was an illusion, a dream within a dream. To a degree, this is also reflected in Star Wars, wherein to possess power meant accessing the Force, which required waking up to it. As it is always there, ever-present everywhere. And then how the Force was used depended on the self-development and therefore motive of the character. Yoda wielded the Force differently than Darth Vader, for instance.

Therefore presence is about “waking up in the dream.” And when we do, we shift from egocentricity to presence, from thinking and believing we are awake to being awake, noticing when we are not, and returning to wakefulness.

I see presence not only as a state but also as an attribute in and of itself. It isn’t possible to possess true sobriety, feeling, warmth, or strength without presence. There are faux versions of sobriety, feeling, warmth, and strength that are possible without presence. But a real, life-affirming and therefore constructive version of each of the four is only possible when we are fully awake in the present moment. So there you have it, the fifth attribute.

Be Here Now

What is presence? Let’s take a brief detour. Ram Dass, in his seminal 1971 book *Be Here Now*, did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of presence. You can read a one-page excerpt from the book that I’ve placed here if you are interested. I think you might enjoy it. Give it a go.

I include it because an organization I do a lot of personal development work with includes the statement “Be here now” as part of their internal training. To them it means to be fully present in the meeting, or to the person you are talking with, or in doing the task in front of you. The statement “be here now” conveys a lot, doesn’t it? But I think it is more powerful if you look at it in the context from which it was lifted, because presence is more than–much more than–we think it is. And that is why I put it here for you in one quick-to-read page.

“I Already Possess These Attributes.”

The tricky thing about these five attributes — presence, sobriety, feeling, warmth, and strength — is that most people believe they already possess them. So it is hard, at first, to get our heads around them and why we might need to develop them. It’s like we want to check them off as already “done.” “Yeah, I understand what you are saying, and I’ve got ‘em covered.”

Not exactly. Here’s the twist. Yes, we all have the potential to embody all five attributes. They are inherent to an “awake” human being, one who has done true personal development and therefore possesses self-knowledge. We sense them, so we think we possess them. In a way, we do. As potentials. But we rarely embody them. Particularly when we need them the most. The easiest way to understand this is to become clear what we are embodying when these five attributes are not being expressed by us.

The Lower Expressions of the Five Attributes

Let’s look at it what we express as attributes when we don’t possess these five — what it looks like when we are not embodying them. When you understand the shadows cast when the above attributes are not embodied, it is much, much easier to see how infrequently most of us possess the above five attributes.

We are are not present, egotism is. Egotism expresses in an active way (self-importance, or arrogance), in a passive way (self-pity, or insecurity), or by alternating between the two. Therefore, the lower expressions of the five attributes–all expressions of egotism–are reflected in pairs. An active expression of the lower attribute, and a passive one. The only exception is fear, which is the bedrock of ego and therefore is common to all human beings… because egotism is common to all human beings.

Fear (versus Presence)

Presence and fear tend to have an inverse relationship, just like presence and ego have an inverse relationship. This makes sense when you begin to understand that fear is the tool the ego uses to direct us when we are not present.

To an extent that would amaze you, most (if not all) of the counterproductive behaviors you do arise out of fear. And it is the same for me and for everyone else. You very likely already “know better” than to do these counterproductive behaviors — behaviors that land you in the soup and that you later regret or trigger guilt or shame — right? Yet, when you are emotionally triggered (fear), you can’t stop yourself. Just like I often cannot.

In the moments we most need presence we tend to instead possess (or are possessed by) fear. So, presence is not typical. Fear is. Particularly in the situations that matter most and when the stakes are high.

The higher expressions of personal development result in the capacity to maintain presence no matter what is going on around us. It’s the internal flame that doesn’t flicker. And that’s a rare thing. Fear is more typical. And it is very, very hard to see (at first) the degree to which we are driven by our fears and anxieties. It is not only when we are “emotionally triggered”: it is ever-present within us, to one degree or another. (Read that sentence again, my friend.)

Mental Distortion (versus Sobriety)

The low (egoic) expressions of Sobriety both are mental distortions. The active version is rigid thinking, or fixed perception. The passive version is chaotic thinking, or ungrounded perception. Rigid thinking–fixed perception–is more common, so let’s focus there.

In the adult development model we reviewed earlier, the highest stage of adult development results in the ability to “hold multiple, divergent perspectives.” (We could use a little of this in Washington, DC, about now.)

We like to think of ourselves as “open-minded,” right? Believing we are open-minded typically is just another form of self-deception. Think back to the last conflict you had — maybe it was an argument with a friend or loved one, or a disagreement in a business meeting. How well were you able to “hold” their perspective? Hmmm?

I’m guessing that once you are emotionally triggered, it is more likely that you aren’t holding multiple, divergent perspectives at all. Instead, you are advocating for your position, telling the other person or people why they are wrong, disproving their assertions, and that you are expressing anger, disgust, or contempt. Or, if your ego expresses in a more passive than active way, perhaps rather than having rigid thinking you lean more towards chaotic thinking.

Sobriety is the opposite of rigid or chaotic thinking. Sobriety — among other things — is the ability to hold multiple, divergent perspectives even when emotionally triggered. Even when one perception appears to be good and the other one appears to be dark or evil, both can be “held.” It is also the capacity to hold equanimity while at the same time access true mind, of which our rational minds are only a subset.

The above is just one example of how most of us don’t possess sobriety. We are possessed by rigid or chaotic thinking in many more ways than the one example above. This is a much bigger topic, in that our fixed perception doesn’t allow us to see what life really is, how it works, etc. One way of looking at this is…

We are quite intoxicated by the part life of life that appears cloaked as matter. In short, fixed perception is ignorance because there is a lot more to life than what we see in form as matter, just like there’s a lot more to a person than the way they look and dress. True sobriety takes us past the objective to the subjective, from just seeing matter to being able to sense that which the matter contains and that which gave rise to the matter.

See? Big subject. Too much for here. But this would be incomplete if I didn’t mention that there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye.

Emotional Imbalance (versus Feeling)

The low (egoic) expression of Feeling is emotional imbalance. The active version is hyper-emotional, meaning being overly emotional. The passive version is hypo-emotional, meaning emotionally distant or withdrawn. Let’s primarily focus on the active expression, as it is a bit more common.

Many people I know believe they have the capacity to truly “feel.” Often, what these people possess is a strong empathy. Or an addiction to the up’s and down’s of their emotions (and the emotions of others.) A.k.a. drama. The attribute we call feeling is not empathy. And it isn’t about being able to ride the roller-coaster of emotions with your hands up in the air, whooping and hollering (overly emotionally expressive).

Feeling is the ability access irrational knowledge.

Feeling — or the ability to access irrational knowledge — is the capacity to know without knowing why we know. In other words, we don’t have any education, training, experience, or precedent to know why we know this thing we know. But we know. And it is instantaneous. It requires no thinking or process time.

Ever had the “feeling” that someone you love was in trouble, and you called them immediately, and they were? Or, maybe as you went to call them, they were actually ringing you to tell you they were in trouble? That is an example of feeling, or “irrational knowledge.” You knew, but you had no reason to know what you knew, no “rational” reason, anyway. Therefore, it was ir-rational… not rational.

Yes, it is true we all possess “feeling,” just like we at times possess all of the other higher attributes of presence, sobriety, warmth, and strength. That’s because there are times when circumstances conspire for us to become incredibly present, and one or more of the other attributes arise. So the question really is, how often do we possess them?

The antithesis of being able to access “feeling” is emotional imbalance, and emotional imbalance is the general state of humanity today. Sad to say, but true. Again, look at Washington, DC, and look at how that mirrors the grave polarity we are seeing in the United States, and to varying degrees, around the world.

If there were any one skill that would most impact all of us in doing more good and less harm, it would be to cultivate the skill of learning to work with our emotions.

(By the way, we have a six week, online course on how to become much more skillful with your emotions. You can find out about it here.)

I need to mention that “feelings” and “emotions” are very different things, though in our culture we conflate the two. I’ll turn back again to my mentor, as I thought his distinction between emotions and feelings was helpful.

Feeling — as defined above — is irrational knowledge or intuition.

Emotions are “secondary reactions to the act of perception.” In other words, (1) something happens, and (2) we make meaning of it. We assemble a reality around (1) and (2) which is (3) the act of perception… and then emotions arise based on the “rules” in our “emotional operating system.” Your rules are different than mine…

Four of us could all be present to the same thing, and one of us may feel anger, one may feel fear, another sadness, and another an indescribable and inexplicable sense of joy. All of which are emotions, and all of which are each of our secondary reactions to the act of perception. That act of perception varied for each of us.

Get the difference between “feelings” and “emotions”? It’s important in personal development work to differentiate “feeling” from “emotion” in order to cultivate the capacity to “feel” (access intuition or irrational knowledge) and the capacity to work effectively with emotions (therefore freeing ourselves from emotions driving the show).

The most broad and powerful statement of the current human condition I can make is one that I’ve read and can’t recall where —

“Human beings are polarized on the emotional plane.”

To cut a long story short, what the author basically meant in that statement is that our inability to work effectively with our emotions cuts us off from accessing our higher capacities — like true compassion, true thinking, right action, unconditional love… and presence, sobriety, warmth, strength, and feeling.

The bottom line is this: while many of us think we possess “feeling,” in the moments that matter the most we are possessed by our emotions and are therefore in a state of emotional imbalance.

Separativeness (versus Warmth)

The low (egoic) expression of Warmth is separativeness. The active expression of separativeness is intensity, sending out an overly charged physical vibe. As in, “don’t mess with me.” The passive expression is timidity. Let’s primarily focus on the active expression, as it is easier to see.

Like all the attributes we’ve covered so far, we’d all like to believe we possess warmth.And, of course, at times we do. Yet again we must ask ourselves the question: How often do we possess warmth, and do we possess it in the moments that matter the most? Typically not.

The anthesis of Warmth is typically either some form of intensity or timidity. Warmth is inclusive. Intensity and timidity are separative. Inclusiveness enables psychological safety. Separativeness — even if only expressed occasionally — does not.

Our inability to embody Warmth in all situations is closely related to emotional imbalance above. Depending on how our emotional operating system works in given situations, when we are emotionally triggered Warmth goes out the window and it is replaced with either intensity (an attempt — usually unconscious — to “get our way” with the other person or situation) or timidity (an attempt to have the other person pursue us, take pity on us, and/or and make it better for us).

Self-Centeredness (vs Strength)

While the prior four attributes are first and foremost internal states, when we get to this attribute it is mostly about physical plane action or inaction. Stated differently, the admixture of the prior four attributes give rise to internal states which are predictive of the way we will act or (not act). One type of mix will give rise to the higher attribute of Strength, Another (lower) type of mix will predictably give rise to self-centeredness.

The patterns here should be clear by now… and it continues here.

While most of us like to think we consistently possess the higher attribute of Strength, we instead typically express self-centeredness. The active expression of self-centeredness is forcefulness. When the stakes are high, we become increasingly forceful (in order to get our way). It’s all about us or our agenda. That’s self-centered.

The passive expression is powerlessness. We back away from the challenge because we don’t want the risks and potential negative consequences that accompany “doing the right thing.” Again, this is self-centered, just like the active expression of forcefulness above. It is self-centered because we are succumbing to our own anxieties and are putting “playing it safe” ahead of the true needs of others, ourselves, the situation, of life.

Therefore, Strength is the ability to “stay our hand” when we’d otherwise attempt to wield forcefulness to get our way. It is also the ability to “do the right thing” and “bear the consequences” in situations where we’d typically placate, capitulate, concede, compromise, or run for the hills… all of which are expressions of powerlessness. (This is assuming, of course, that you are not actually in physical danger. Then, the latter often isn’t about powerlessness, it is about being smart.)

Bottom line, the embodiment of true Strength is a rare thing, indeed! It is so rare we scarcely recognize it, for in our culture we confuse force with strength. Forceful people tend to get the spoils, and in our culture we admire people who get the spoils (“winners!”).

Pulling It Together

There’s your in-depth look at the five attributes you can expect to embody more and more consistently as you do true personal development. And, expressions of lower attributes you can watch out for… bellwethers that you have slipped into ego and have lost presence. Understanding the lower expressions is just as important as understanding the higher expressions.

So here’s the bottom line.

True personal development involves increasing…

• Presence… and therefore less egocentric and therefore less fearful.

• Sobriety… which means being able to hold multiple, conflicting perspectives, seeing life for what it is, and seeing our mental distortions for what they are… very, very limited, inaccurate, and incomplete views of reality.

• Feeling… which means being increasingly able to access irrational knowledge and to feel our way in the dark in the situations that arise where our prior experience, training, thoughts, and precedents are inadequate. This requires learning to work skillfully with emotions such that the din of our emotions don’t cut us off from feeling.

• Warmth… towards all people, all situations, all of life… and therefore to down-regulate intensity and/or remain connected in situations where we’d typically withdraw. It is a shift from separativeness towards inclusiveness.

• Strength… the ability to accept full responsibility in all situations, to stop blaming others for our suffering and life for our misfortunes, and the ability to do the right thing in all situations and bear consequences that we’d normally shy away from. This is a far-cry from the more typical reactions of using force to get our way, or indulging in powerlessness in order to avoid the consequences and/or fear of taking what we know is the right action. This is a shift from self-centeredness towards a feeling of personal responsibility towards all of life.

True personal development also involves increasing our capacity to embody these five attributes together AND our capacity to possess them in more and more situations where the “flip side” attributes typically used to show up in and through us. (The flip side attributes again are: fear, mental distortion, emotional imbalance, separativeness, and self-centeredness).

Conclusion

In this series of posts, we’ve looked at personal development in four ways:

• Personal development = increasing mental complexity. (That post is here.)
• Personal development = increasing awareness. (That post is here.)
• Personal development = increasing integration, meaning healing. (That post is here.)
• Personal development = increasing five attributes. (Covered herein.)

The purpose of this post and the above related ones has been to help demystify what personal development is. We looked at one thing in four different ways in order to see that one thing with more depth, perspective, understanding, and appreciation.

When you see personal development for what it is, it is nothing short of incredible! It is incredible because it is available to every human being alive, and it is incredible because it leads to freedom, increased capacity to perform, increased capacity to love unconditionally, and an unparalleled sense of purpose, meaning, and connection to others and with life, and therefore brings fulfillment. More than we can possibly imagine.

From time to time I will meet people who are struggling to find their purpose in life.They ask, “how do I find my purpose?” The answer is simple. Your purpose and mine is to gain self-knowledge and apply it in ways that serves others and life, and the vehicle for that is to do personal development. Personal development involves increasing our mental complexity, becoming more aware, healing ourselves and therefore integrating our PEMS, and therefore embodying the higher five attributes of Presence, Sobriety, Feeling, Warmth, and Strength in all we do (and most especially in incredibly difficult situations).

This then — because you will be connected with Life itself and your higher self — will drive you to serve others in all you do. How will you do that? By doing what is in front of you. “Purpose in life” isn’t first and foremost something we do. It isn’t a doing. It is a way of being, no matter what it is we do. What needs to be done by us will present itself. In fact, it is always right under our nose. Personal development results in capacity to see it, the inner state required to attract it, and the wisdom and courage to do it.

To Lift the Veil

As we close this review of the question, “what is personal development?”, there’s one more thing I’d like to say…

The original meaning of “development” was “to lift the veil.” What veil are we lifting? The veil of ignorance. Our lack of understanding of ourselves, of what it is to be human (including our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects), of what life is and how it works.

”Ignorance” gives rise to “suffering.” Therefore, a true path of personal development — traversed in its duration — leads to the end of ignorance and therefore of suffering. We lift that veil of ignorance, and become the embodiment of “open heart, strong spine, clear mind.” Or said even more succinctly, we embody love-wisdom in every action (and non-action).

[For a short, real, fun little ditty about our human ignorance and how it creates suffering, read this from Lou Cozolino’s highly recommended book, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains. It’s a delightful contrast about how humans and rats are different. It’s here.] Enjoy!

It isn’t necessary to traverse the full distance of personal development to benefit from it. We don’t “lift the veil of ignorance” without triggering a transformation. Transformations, by definition, cannot be controlled (because true transformation it is not possible without a full surrender, which requires giving up all control). And that’s not for everyone. But there’s good news!

The exceptional news is we can make some really amazing and significant enhancements to our way of being in the world without going the full monty. How far we can progress is related to how much control we are willing to give up and how much fear we are willing to face… so we can each go as far was we are willing.

But how, right? How do we do personal development?

Next Up

Now that you perhaps have a better understanding as to what personal development is, to complete this series of posts we next turn our attention to the question I’ve kept putting off (and putting off, and putting off) in this series. And that question is…

How do you actually do personal development? First, let me say there’s no one way to do it. But what I can give you is this…

I’ll share the approach I’ve found that works quite well, in hopes that it helps you increase the positive, sustainable effects of your personal development efforts. It is proven, time-tested, and involves seven ingredients.

Make it a good week,

Otis

P.S. There are prior posts in this series you might enjoy. They are, in order:

Personal Development… Without Knowing What It Is?

My Mission: Help You Better Understand Personal Development

Personal Development: Working Definition

Lens 1: Personal Development = Increasing Mental Complexity

Lens 2: Personal Development = Increasing Awareness

Lens 3: Personal Development = Integrating (or Healing)

P.P.S. Subscribe and Get More Good Stuff Like This. If you’d like to add yourself to our mailing list so you get more stuff like this automatically, click here and we’ll keep dishing it out for you.