Finish The Sentence Friday the Wakefield Doctrine (what? no oh-so-clever wordplay with the bloghop title?)

October 18, 2013 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

It’s Friday, and time to play spin the bottle with our innermost thoughts and feelings and attitudes towards life and such. Rumpus room in a finished basement with one too many hormone enriched adolescents giving off waves of desire and fear pheromones? Hell no! we’re mature, accomplished and secretly-under-satisfied adults, playing with language and telling each other stories about our lives, both real and dreamed. Not that this is a bad thing. No, No it’s not! It’s a good, self-empowering form of expressing ourselves, sharing life, uplifting the spirit and other positive enhancing things.

…and then there is Finish The Sentence Friday. They might as well say, ‘hey! we lost all the cool ink blot cards, so tell you what, here’s a phrase. we need you to tell us the first thing that comes into your mind. And, with any luck, 60 or 70 people can look in and see if they agree that it looks like ‘2 mother squids wrestling in a pool of blood’, or …’a pretty butterfly’. Good luck.

So keeping with tradition and all, we must be at Janine’s parent’s house and Kate has just gone ahead and taken the bottle from the built in bar for use in our little game. Stephanie she has that look again and her friends know that something unexpected will happen somewhere just as things seem to be winding down and Kristi…. lol Kristi you know she’s here somewhere, she has her own car (at least she say’s it’s her own car)… she seems to have disappeared when those older kids showed up…

The Best Part of my Day is…

Easy ‘Finish’: …early mornings because it is not only the quietest time of the day, but it is the time of day when hope and optimism has the most credibility. The time to make plans for the coming day, the night preceding having the effect of erasing the disappointment and under-acheivement and lowered expectations of the previous days. Mornings are the Time for Goals and Good Attitude

Less Easy ‘Finish’: … the incredibly fleeting moment when a difficult task is completed and those around me feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. For that moment I stand among them and forget the past (triumphs and failures) and the future (fear and expectations) and feel like I belong.

Wakefield Doctrine Quick Insight #4

If the day had to be divided up according to which of the three predominant worldviews (aka personality types) were most ‘at their best’ it would be as follows:

Early Morning- until shortly after Lunch: clarks

Late Morning- until Mid Afternoon (short interlude and then) Mid Evening until Whenever: scotts

Early Afternoon until Late Evening: rogers

Hey! Don’t forget this afternoon!! After School Special Call-in! you have questions? call us! you have complaints? call us! you don’t have the phone number? call us…. 218-339-0422 access code 512103 followed by the # sign

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

‘when is conflict like love?’ the Wakefield Doctrine “…practical advice for an impractical personality type”

October 16, 2013 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

So DownSpring Cyndi writes us a Comment yesterday. Prompted by the request in Monday’s Post, Cyndi’s contribution, Picasso’s Guernica, serves as an aperitif, ( Five Dollar Milkshake, if you will), brought to the conversational potluck dinner that is our blog. Cyndi’s Comment provides the focal point of today’s Post, a Post we trust that will offer an insight into the use and value of the Wakefield Doctrine as a tool for understanding the people in our lives.

( Cyndi? you have the floor):

Ooh! GUERNICA – I actually cried when I saw that painting when I was at the Museo Thiessen in Madrid – I could not believe how big, gorgeous and how MOVING it was. A-freaking-MAZING. Shall I send a version to you? There’s so much to that painting. In other news: you know what I want, Clark? A post on how clarks can better-deal with the emotional roller-coasters that are rogers. I know, I know…there was that whole thing with my sister. But today, I was in a professional development meeting and I was affronted by a stupid roger. He was a strong roger who liked to hear himself speak. He liked to take charge. I know he wasn’t a scott. Every scott I’ve ever met, I’ve been able to tell within seconds. No, he delegated himself to take charge of this little group we were in and then proceeded to “nominate” me to “facilitate” since we were practicing on how to actually ‘facilitate” groups in work settings. He told me, “you have a gentle personality.” Then, when I tried to “lead” (which I tend to be diplomatic and invite discussion) he proceeded to strong-arm me and essentially take over. Even others in the group commented. Once again, he didn’t piss me off enough for my scott to turn on, but I knew this time exactly what was happening. Instead of reacting, I actually started to meditate so I could tune the dickhead out. Then he told me, “you did a good job, but you didn’t show confidence. You should be more confident.” It wasn’t that I wasn’t confident, it was about halfway into this stupid activity that I decided I didn’t want to facilitate any more and I was unfamiliar with the process, so I asked for help from the woman running the conference. Apparently he didn’t like that. I was a little traumatized from the whole experience and there’s a reason I WILL NEVER facilitate a big group of people – it’s simply not in my DNA and I don’t care to – not when there are personalities like this that just utterly….piss me off. I’m comfortable on the outside in this case. I don’t WANT to be a leader, nor a follower. I have embraced my outsideness. I love it. If it means I have less run-ins with the emotions of rogers, then I’m better off. I can’t deal with that crap. Crap. I’m such a freaking clark. LOL

To the general question, ‘how (can) I as a clark, better manage the emotional roller-coasters that are rogers‘ and to the specific question, ‘how do we go about effectively managing the rogers in our (work/professional) lives?’, does anyone reading this Post have the slightest doubt as to the value of this ambition?

No? I didn’t think so.

Then what would we have Cyndi do the next time she finds herself in a situation with an aggressive roger and an established (albeit transitory) peer group? Two words: love the roger.

(You know that the Doctrine is meant to be fun, as well as useful, right? Then lets enjoy this very serious effort to understand the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine as we try to apply it to this all too common situation).

I said ‘love’ the roger. I did not say: like the roger, be a friend to the roger, hate the roger, ridicule the roger, try-to-get-the-roger-to-be-nice, tell everyone what a jerk the roger is being, hide from the roger, run away from the roger. But, in keeping with our having fun, (and this fun is kinda restricted to clarks who are reading this, who know how difficult and wearying this horribly common situation actually is in our lives…but this is the Doctrine and we understand. don’t we?), lets look at why this is the most effective approach to solving the problem that Cyndi has brought to us.

Cyndi is to be commended on her acceptance of (her) Outsider status. At the same time, her challenge is to accept her (inherent) rogerian and her (clearly evident, lol) scottian aspects. Never forget rogers and scotts are not alien lifeforms…they are us, with the insecurity volume knob turned up to 11. The Doctrine maintains that we all have the potential of all three worldviews within us.

OK! This ‘loving the roger’ strategy?

Its only right that I use my own damn self as an example. My own experience derives from a very similar situation: professional work environment, less structured, however, there are weekly meetings for all the associates in my workplace. These meetings are intended as an opportunity for the (actual) Manager to keep everyone up to date and provide an opportunity for everyone to exchange ideas and information about the work. The roger (in this example) is very successful in the work they do, but does not carry any official ranking in the group, which does not prevent this roger from ‘holding forth’* In the past, I would sit in these 45 minute long weekly meetings and listen to the incredibly self-aggrandizing bullshit come out of the mouth of this roger. I often found myself caught up in how incredibly clueless the person was, and at the same time, I could not deny that not only was the group listening to what was being said, but appeared to be appreciating it. Invariably I would leave the meeting thinking, ‘what the fuck! are those people children? are they deaf to the arrogant and condescending nonsense that was being said?!?’
Eventually I realized that I had to stop reacting this way, as it would be a distraction throughout my work day.
And so I decided to ‘love the roger‘. I began to participate in the discussion but rather than compete with or contest the roger, I made an effort to support them, to reinforce what they might be saying, even going so far as to referencing them as I made a point or ventured my own opinion. (ex. I might say something along the lines of, “...it’s been my experience that when dealing with clients in this situation, what is useful is….” and then add, “..as I have often discussed with (name of roger here) this can be helpful” )
Yes, I know! I will say to any and all clarks out there, this is not an easy thing to do, but it is worth the effort. You, as a clark, must find a place within where you can deliberately feel positively about the roger. If you do not, then this advice not only not work, it will backfire and things will be worse than you would imagine.

lol… I will not say that it is easy. I will say that it is nearly impossible to do this thing right/correctly/properly but once you do, the roller coaster becomes a merry-go-round… predictable, somewhat repetitive, but you can always jump off and go find another roller coaster, god knows they’re there…all over the damn place.

Oh! before you leave! possible After School Special this Friday! tentative 3:30 EDT might be vid or just phone… let us know availability or suggested alternate times…whatever

* I think I borrowed this expression from Stephen King, in the novel ‘The Tommyknockers’

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, psychology of personality, relationships, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

TMT Tuesday …the Wakefield Doctrine (shh, they think I’m listening to Classical music)

October 14, 2013 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Twisted MixTape 29

I admit it. As the Music Director of My Skewed View I occasionally choose topics because I want to do them. Ha haha! Sorry, I crack myself up.

This week’s topic is: Make a mix of songs that are completely from a genre or style of music that you don’t usually listen to. You know… 5 songs that you love anyway… kinda like Clark pulling the Classical Music card for Best of. My original intent is for people to choose all 5 songs from one genre. But if that is too hard for you and you ~~wanna be a baby about it~~ don’t think you can do it, then mix-it-up, there will be ~~demerits~~ no repercussions.

I had a surprisingly difficult time this week. (Yeah, I know…again?) The thing of it is, other than yodeling, there are not any genre (of music) that I hate. From Classical to Country, Tibetan Throat-singing to nursery rhymes, my feelings are totally positive, ranging from ‘not minding’ to ‘totally loving’. I must say, this has not always been the case. There was a time, back in the 70’s, there was music that I would not have been hesitant to tell you that ‘(fill in the blank) music sucks’. However, at some point in the 80’s I decided that I needed to acquire a taste for all of the music that I hated. So I set out to listening and learning and (eventually) I found things that I liked about the music that sucked. That being said, I realize that the intent of our co-hostini, Jen Kehl and Kristi Campbell is not to call on us to produce songs that ‘we feel we should hate but find that we like’, rather they are trying to trick us into discovering (and sharing) , songs that, while out of our ordinary listening habits, nevertheless is music that we enjoy.

I didn’t used to like bluegrass. I do now, (in small doses), and if I am given a choice, (as I am), and asked to cite examples of bluegrass-ish music, the following is what I enjoy.

So for the purposes of this week’s theme, I will say, I don’t often set out for an evening of listening to bluegrass music, I would pay to listen to the following:

Will the Circle Be Unbroken – Ralph Stanley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h0dpiM9c0k

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Old Blue – Eric Uglam & Sons

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Blue Moon of Kentucky – Bill Monroe

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Foggy Mountain Breakdown – Flatt & Scruggs

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Bohemian Rhapsody – Hayseed Dixie

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Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

Thousand Word Monday! the Wakefield Doctrine ( …take it easy, it’s Monday! what possibly could go wrong?)

October 14, 2013 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

…you know what I like (and fear) and (resent) and (then) really like about the Wakefield Doctrine Sunday Video Brunches? it’s the fact that they (the Brunches) take place in the real world with real people. not that you’re not real. I know you are, you’re a Reader and I know all about you, as a matter of fact, I know exactly what you’re doing at this very moment! you’re doing one of three things:

smiling and thinking, ‘alright, lets see you keep me here‘
laughing and thinking ‘alright lets see what you got‘ or
smiling and thinking ‘hah, never get out of this one…lets see you try‘

But real real is: video chatting where you see the person, and when you say something, express a thought, venture an opinion, stake a claim, make your move….whatever it is you do, there is no ~~edet~~ edit, save, reprint or delete! There’s only one button:’Publish’ and you’ve already pushed it.

…in any event, Michelle and Lizzi and I were discussing the Doctrine and got on the subject of art and artists, when Lizzi got that look in her eye and after staring to her upper left, says: “hey clark, suppose you asked Readers to send in examples of art that really spoke to them and then let the Doctrine have a ‘go at it’ do you think you would do that?” Without looking at her, I could hear Michelle smile in approval and said, “yeah!”

Hey! Reader! Send us in a Comment containing an example of a work of art (painting or photo or sculpture or whatever), the only requirement is that it moves you. We’ll take it from there.

(Here at the Doctrine we’re not all ‘do as we say, not as we do’, so up there? …at the top of this Post? That is one of my favorite pitchas…. oh btw you may need to send a link, if the Comment section doesn’t allow you to ‘cut n paste’ just let me know and I’ll get it up on the Post.)

First Up is Cheryl from A Pleasant House

Anything by Karl Larson. I love his technique and subject matter. I just want to BE IN his art work.

Thank you Cheryl

Hey! new Commentationer up… say ‘ello to Mike (from ‘Joe Floggers’ )

Are we real? Is this the matrix or is reality a creation of the mind? Oh, art, yes, I am not sure really. I have no particular thing in mind, if I like something then I like it. It could be something from a vendor in a flea market. I guess if I had to pick one thing it would be “The Scream”.

Thank you Mike… we think you will be right at home here at the Wakefield Doctrine (lol)

Lizzi? you have a painting?

See, now, I would not have thought that (the above) would be yours, Clark! Fascinating!

And as the alternate favourite, I do love Matisse’s ‘Icarus’ in Jazz, and Jack Vettriano’s ‘Dance me to the end of love’

I concur!

oh Cyndi! is that you on the stairs?

The only painting that has ever made me cry. And shake. And wonder about the human spirit.

from DownSpring Cyndi

this just in from zoe!

Hey Clark, I meant to leave this link… it is the woodcut I so love… for yours and Lizzi’s art project… It is the second picture … its under Dr. Freud…how ironic?!

zoe can be found over at: rewritten

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

TToH&RO #1!* the Wakefield Doctrine (yes, he’s at it again!)

October 13, 2013 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Today is Sunday, Day 2 of the TToT. One of the coolest things about this blog (for me) is that it does not stop until late Sunday night. Come on! you remember! that one party that you were at once (and tried and tried to re-create for the rest of your life) that was and incredibly good Saturday Night Party and how it almost stopped at, like 2:30 am (when you either give up on getting lucky or you get lucky), but it didn’t stop! …and you found yourself talking to interesting people and they were interested in what you were contributing and it seemed like you never repeated yourself and then it started to get light out and you found that other people wanted to get breakfast too and even after breakfast someone came up with an idea and the day took on a new energy and you went through the day as a continuation of Saturday Night just different in a better-yet-equal sort of way and then you ended up home on Sunday Night, exhausted but happy, nothing broken (literally or figuratively) with no regrets (about what you did or even about having to go to work the next morning)…the TToT is like that! Just a teensy bit different.

…speaking of different. lol So, I was thinking this morning, ‘but, …but! I came up with a list on the basis of the whole preceding week! do they have any idea how much work that is? they’re (mostly) women they have talent for sensing emotion and putting it in words! not fair!’ So, being the clark that I am, today I will present my TToH&RO List. I started out with ‘Hope’ but that was too… wishy, un-grounded or something, so I added the ‘RO’ which stands for Reasonable Optimistic. Not quite Goal Setting, and not dreamy Hopes… just what I plan to try to find in the world in the coming week.

In the coming Week I will be open to:

1) looking forward to work, as an opportunity to improve my understanding of those I interact with,

2) exploring my desire to understand those I interact with, it can simply be a way to deal with others that it will require me to better understand myself

3) enjoy the weather, which is expected to remain moderate, so I will be optimistic about how ‘bad’ a Winter we will be subject to in this part of the planet

4) work on a project with Cyndi, well it’s actually I’m working on an idea of a project with Cyndi… to figure out how we can manage a live video Post with the 2 of us somehow in it (involves the use of technology, but in a good way…lol)

5) looking forward to TMT Tuesday ( Jen and Kristi ) and will make every effort to find out the prompt before Tuesday morning!

6) am reasonably optimystic that I will continue with my new exercise regime that I started last week…(speaking of optimistic outlook, the good thing about not exercising is that when you do get back to it your ‘threshold of exhaustion’ is so much nearer to your rest state! so I can get a great workout feeling in half the time!)

7) still dealing with the state of flux that I am in about my blogging. …fortunately this is a never ending cycle for me: i.e. I say, “what the hell, I’m gonna have fun” then it becomes “oh man, I better be careful not to alienate the Readers I have” which leads to, “jeez I gots nothing to write” and finally (so far) “the hell with being successful, I gonna have me some fun!”

8) the Video Brunch this morning…every Sunday with Michelle and them, has been fun and interesting …can’t wait

9) continue the Wakefield Doctrine ‘hey!-this-is-an-Effective-Tool-see-watch-the-effect-it-has-when-applied-to-a-live-Subject’

10) that Lizzi and Christine the other Hostini will sense the true spirit of my efforts here (of course, Dyanne, she a total wildcard… damn, just have to take my chances!)

* TToH&RH: Ten Things of Hope and Reasonable Optimism