Air, Water, Fire, Earth

Life has been crazy busy at our house this week.  It isn't so much with school beginning but just all of the end of summer, beginning of fall, stuff.  Drew, as an accountant, closes out the fiscal books for the court in July and then in August has all of July's regular work and budget planning in August.  So he is totally busy and is working extra hours to take care of all of the extra work.  (Summer family vacations are out!)

Copyright: Karen Larsen photography.  This is what I want the day to be like

This week alone, I have had three extra visits (to other people), a couple of child-care services (where the kids were dropped off here), a couple of extra appointments, and four evening meetings, and extra unplanned driving for the older boys---pretty much since Wednesday of last week.  It is just exhausting.  Tomorrow the calendar is empty.  I am looking forward to that.  This morning I looked on the calendar and realized that I had forgotten a scheduled appointment.  Crazy!  (Anyway, that is why there hasn't been much blogging activity.)

I am glad for fall and school, but some weeks are just ridiculous!

About three weeks ago, I found Carol Tuttle teaching us to Dress Your Truth.  Actually I read it in Heather's blog and listened to what she had to say.  It was awesome!  And though I cannot afford to buy her program, which I would just do if I could justify the expense, what I did learn has helped me a ton!!

If you haven't watched her videos, you won't know what I am talking about, so go a watch them first!

But here is what I learned:  I am definitely a Type 3 woman.  I am organized, succinct, irregular (though consistency is something I have worked on for years and am fairly good at now), bold, textured, rich woman (rich as in deep, not financially wealthy).  I am constantly thinking in my head when I talk to people 'and the point is???'.  Occasionally, I have even said to my children when they are telling me a story, "Skip to the end, tell me what you need/want me to do about it and why you are upset."

I have learned that most people cannot manage my bold, aggressive style.  It is too much for them, so I have tried to soften it.  Type 2 is my second nature.  I mask my Type 3 personality with Type 2 because I feel more people will be more accepting of me if I am a Type 2 person.

Well, I'm not!  I'm a Type 3.  As I have dressed more true to my nature and embraced who I really am inside, I am more at peace.  I am happier.  I have also had to just let go of the fact that some people are put off by Type 3 individuals.  And that's OK.

Drew is a Type 4.  When I realized that, oh my goodness!  The world changed.  I can embrace his nature also without taking offense at his ability to think critically and analyze everything and find all of the holes and then want to fix them because Type 4 people seek perfection.  My Type 3 personality moves just a little too fast for him.  But together, we have some balance in that he slows me down and keeps me from jumping too quickly into something and I spur him on so things actually get accomplished.

The children are all a mix.  We have some fire boys (Type 3), a water girl (Type 2), a few earth men (Type 4), and maybe only one air man (Type 1).   [The kids are Avatar watchers, so the air, water, fire, earth analogy makes more sense to them.]  The first day I listened to the four different types and realized they matched the Avatar, the Last Air-bender series, I sat the kids around the table and we each got a piece of paper and labelled everyone in our family.  It was a pretty fun activity.  The kids really got into it.  Then, of course, we had to all discuss why we put some people in certain labels and defend our choices.  Some of us compromised, and some of us just agreed to disagree.  But it was amazing which ones were completely consistent!  Everyone pegged the Type 4's and Type 3's without question.

As we talked, like Carol does, about embracing everyone for their gifts and their natural abilities, relationships in our home have improved.  And it is totally funny to hear one of the kids say, "Oh well they are (fire, water, earth, or air bender) which is different than me and that is why they are like that."  And when one of us fire benders is on the war path, watch out!  But now we just say "My fire personality is going to burn you up if you don't back off."  (And when two fire benders in our home are at each other, it isn't pretty).  But if we take the analogy just a little further and try to embrace each one's personality, we provide balance and then our little world can be in harmony.

But for now, we are all just learning to live together, some days in harmony, some days praying for harmony.