The Power of Understanding Yourself

Chapter 10 Punching Down the Cap The Pursuit of Balance

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather, and a little music played out of doors by someone I do not know.

– John Keats

We’ve come a long way. By now, you have explored your core ideology – including your vision, mission, and core values. You have started the process of understanding your style. If you have been documenting each of these activities, you now have an impressive journal of information that reflects much of your innermost nature. However, just like those many trips to the library to deepen your research into a topic, we still have a distance to go to truly extract Me.

In Part Two, we began the exploration of how our interactive style informs our true self. For some readers, this process began several years ago when they read my previous book, The Power of Understanding People. In that book, I explored the 12 iconic interactive styles by comparing them to famous characters in film and television. The purpose in that book was to better understand how to lead, sell to, provide service for, and develop better relationships with other people. This book takes things one step further by helping us determine, in an even deeper way, how to develop a better relationship with ourselves. Examining the complexities of our interactive styles is analogous for the vintner’s efforts at achieving balance in a wine. Each bottle is a combination of acidity, sweetness/alcohol, fruit and tannins. To be completely accurate, ...