Month: May 2015 | the Wakefield Doctrine Month: May 2015 | the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘only 23 days left to summer*, stay up late and enjoy it’

May 30, 2015 By

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

("you know, clark, if you would only put half the effort you put into these photos on our 'walks' you might find things going easier at work")

(“you know, clark, if you would only put half the effort that you put into these photos on our ‘walks’ , into your work, you might be surprised at how much easier and less stressful it will become. No, don’t say it, you’re right… you drive and I’ll look out the window, we do this part of the week…perfectly”)

(Here! lets try something different1 and take the 1st paragraph of the 3rd TToT Post and copy the initial 5 lines!!2 Won’t that be fun??!!3)

I feel like I should do better intros to these things – does that make sense? After all, we’re all about thankfulness in the midst of joy, adversity, the busyness and the sheer bloody BORINGNESS of everyday life, and yet so often I forget to mention, right at the start, how important it is to REMEMBER to be thankful. I’m thankful for thankfulness because it often saves me from becoming ridiculous, and if it doesn’t do that, then at least it reminds me to buck my ideas up and pay attention to the good things and good people in my life.
Here’s to thankfulness, in all its glitterysparklygoodness.

Here’s to getting it right this time, and making it ABUNDANTLY clear what’s going on.

1)  I (remain) grateful for inclusion in the company of the co-hostinae of the TToT. As the demands on my time increases on the work/real-life side, it’s heartening to know that there is someplace in the world that I can write a post like today’s and not be (overly) concerned at the response.

2) …speaking of Posts, I felt good about a couple of Posts (at the Doctrine) this week. Well, as good as I am capable of. (This last is not excessive self-criticism, simply a matter of watching my own approach to this blog change and develop over the years and seeing the way that, as we’re so fond of saying, I relate myself to it (the Wakefield Doctrine blog), is still, by and large, and on the whole a positive thing)

3) Work:  at once an item of gratitude and hypo-gratitude, it’s there, every day. Funny about work and blogs, as much as this Doctrine and blogs and people I know forms the center of my RL, I am constantly having to maintain a balance between work and blogging. I am not so good at balancing the time I devote to work and to non-work. Fortunately, what I do for work is never boring, always interesting (even when it’s horrifyingly stressful), but I find that the mindset that I have when writing blog posts is not the best mindset for accomplishing what I need to accomplish in the work world.

4) Phyllis and Una and the homeplace… it, though I often leave first thing in the morning and Phyllis returns last thing in the evening, is still a refuge

5)

(to follow up on the video clark’s claim of three items):

  • technology
  • canines
  • ego

9) the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules), even though everyone’s Post is usually interesting and relatable, the enthusiasm and creativity expressed when a participant in the TToT finds themselves needing the help that the BoSR/SBoR is there to provide… it’s just plain cool. It (the Book) is a manifestation of the unique sense of community that has become a part of this, ‘the blog that Lizzi created’….and there ain’t nothin out there like it.

10) speaking of the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)  …lol  you know, I usually invoke SR 1.3 (English ed. 3.1) for Number 10.  But, I also want to give a ‘shootout’ to our Seven GVs… especially, you know who…

 

Ten Things of Thankful

 

 Your hosts

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* the days get longer here in the northern hemisphere until the 22nd of June and then, alas they proceed to get shorter and darker and more and more winter like (the quantity of light available to us in a given day being very much a part of what makes winter so….wintery)

1) hey Dyanne…zoe no giggling back there… it’s not like I’m always striving for the …’the road less traveled’ in these Posts! (yeah, sometimes it’s ‘the road not even hinted at in any map I ever saw!’)

2) semi arbitrary algorithm   except for the odd and hopefully prime numbers

3) well, yes, fun is a subjective experience… that sounds like a valid item for this list!! thank you to whoever out there thought that!4

4) of course you exist in my mind out there! and no, it’s not (overly) weird to think about what the Readers will be thinking while writing, we all do that….don’t we? Now, if it’s weird you want, try this idea: everyone lives in their own perfect world. (Why, yes, I am quite prepared to defend that assertion! But that’s for another Post! We are reaching the footnote-to-content-equilibrium-point, anymore and this Post simply won’t make any sense!)

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-the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘an 18 minute Post’ (why, no, I haven’t traded in my parentheseses for commas!)

May 28, 2015 By

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

ex-rom-28-10_resize

(Yeah, the subtitle?  I tried this once before, i.e. the ‘clock-is-ticking’ approach to Post writing, but given that I originally intended to write about the very early ‘Basics’ of the Doctrine, nothing wrong with trying it again, today.)

the Wakefield Doctrine is gender-neutral/the Wakefield Doctrine is culture-neutral

And…and! even though I found a perfectly good paragraph from 2009 that discusses this gender/culture neutrality, I’m gonna walk the straight and narrow and not copy-paste. One of the more interesting effects of writing on the same topic over successive years is how, in many circumstances, I will pick exactly the same words to describe a concept and, at other times, the concept I’m trying to explain has, itself, changed over time. This is, to no small degree, attributable to my own perception of the readership of this post (and blog). The early days were, well, early days. I spent most of my time thinking about how to get across the characteristics of the three worldviews. Hell, I spent a great deal of time trying to find the words to say, ‘We all exist in a reality that is, to a small but very real degree, personal and the very moment we are in can be quite different for:

  • the person across the counter
  • the classroom of students we are charged with teaching about history and calisthenics, hygiene and geometry
  • those others at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, where the lines are long and the patience seems to get sucked out of us the moment we see the people who are all writing and filling in their forms as fast as possible, the better to get into line ahead of the old person who seems happy to be standing anywhere and is surely going to take.too.long
  • us at the 2nd interview as we watch the Interviewer, hoping for some clues to the right answer, like we were trying to pick up a girl at the sorority mixer…only the fear of failure is not as great
  • the person on the other side of the bed
  • being at the gym, seeing the person that you didn’t think you had become like and definitely do not want to stay like, in the wall of mirrors in the exercise room

as in, ‘what do you mean, I shouldn’t put myself down all the time?’… ‘but everyone does care about how my day went‘ … ‘nahh! she thought it was funny! you’re always making things too serious!!’

I will now demonstrate my own development, (as a blog writer), and not apologies for not knowing all the above explanations and examples were not really necessary.

damn! look at the time!! (no, really!  look at the time… wherever you are at this very moment, this is what we mean by ‘your worldview’.)
The Wakefield Doctrine is all about our efforts to accept that ‘the other person’ lives in one of three characteristic personal realities and that, if we are successful in inferring which one that is, we will be in a position to know much more about ‘the other person’ than we have any right to know. (the Wakefield Doctrine) charges us with understanding how the other person is relating themselves to the world around them…as (does) an Outsider(clark) or a Predator(scott) or a Herd Member(roger). When we understand this, we become capable of seeing the world as the other person experiences it.

Out of time! shit!  (you know how I promised to not reprint an old explanation of gender and cultural neutrality? well, did I mention that I was a clark?  and, how, sometimes for us, things change? hell, a lot of times, for us, things change. So… I’m gonna leave the reprint section in block quotes.  If it doesn’t make a lot of sense, let me know and I’ll clarify.

…we would make a point of stating that the Wakefield Doctrine is both gender and culture neutral. What we meant is that it does not matter what part of the world you are from, it’s the nature and character of your own worldview that matters (personality type-wise). We contend that the worldviews that are the basis of the three personality types are inseparable from the human condition. Further, while standards of behavior may vary from one culture to another, a person who grows up, develops and otherwise matures living in a reality best characterized as the world of Predator and Prey, will be: aggressive, inquisitive, quick to react, action-oriented with a minimum of self-reflection. That reality exists in Zimbabwe and New Auckland as well as Mansfield Ohio. Not only that, but the Doctrine maintains that gender prescribes the capacity/ability (of a person to act a certain way), not their reasons for acting. A female growing up, developing and otherwise maturing in a world where she is the Outsider, will still develop: an insatiable desire to learn new information and facts, be drawn to the fringes of whatever culture she happens to be in and have an abundance of what is referred to as intuition, all that she is permitted (by physiology as well local culture) in order to live her life.

btw. the leap from Outsider to Predator is, somehow shorter than the leap from Outsider to Herd Member. This observation appears, at first blush, insightful and therefore, promising of some value, but that’s the just a clark talking.

 

 

…so Christine wonders at the statement: “scotts love loud noises”  Remind me, it’s about time we revisited the wild kingdom, I should write a Post strictly about our scottian friends.

 

although I would love to have the talent and the skills to come up with six sentences that relate to the word or concept or quality of ‘rush’, that doesn’t mean that you, the reader will not enjoy reading those who do. so get on over to zoe’s (tbpkaI) and read them things. (Yeah, I am counting my sentences, and totally want to this come out in six sentences. but… alas)

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-the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘the price of self-improvement is always almost more than we would pay’

May 25, 2015 By

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

20150525_110009_resized

I went to check the progress of renovation work being done to one of my properties today. I stop by at least once a week and, each time see a different set of contractors working on the house, this being a full roof to basement re-do. Today the dry wall/plaster crew was there. I saw the dog, (in the photo above), as I parked my car. Smiling, I got out of my car and waited for him to be a dog and bark and come over to me and make sure I belonged and/or had any right to come on his property.
I talked to him, (no matter what the breed, how big and ferocious they might be), I always start my conversations with, “Puppy dog! what a good-looking doggie you are!”  [funny, isn’t it? a person’s sense of self-consciousness, when it comes to behavior that might be regarded as silly or inappropriate, is totally tied to how much that person enjoys whatever the reason is…for…acting silly. It didn’t  matter if anyone was watching this real estate broker get out of his car and ignoring everything, have an out loud conversation with the approaching dog].
In any event, we met and he was a friendly dog. I started walking towards the house, (“come on! lets go see the house!”). He was a German Shepherd, probably 6 or 7 years of age, and I immediately noticed the slant of his hindquarters. (It’s my opinion that the most monstrous form of animal abuse I can think of is the breeding of dogs to match some person or breeder organization or show dog judges. The words of this conformance standards can be seen in some German Shepherds. My guard dog today being one them.)

My new friend and I walked towards the front door. As we stepped up onto the raised brick walk leading to the front door, he fell. He half-fell. His rear legs simply did not negotiate the step-up on to the walk.

I turned and looked at him. He looked at me with an expression that… represents what makes dogs so amazing. It was a look that said, ‘hey, sorry. legs gave out. Go on without me, I’ll be alright…just have to get back up.’

I felt sorrow for him. I didn’t ‘feel sorry for him‘, I felt sorrow.

What an awful feeling. My stomach fell, trying to pull my eyes into my throat.

I waited. He got up, without undue distress, clearly he was used to this happening. Once he was back on all fours, I actually said, in all sincerity and seriousness, “hey you should go back to your post, I’ll just go in myself’…. (yes, I said this out loud ), and he did just that.

What does this have to do with self-improvement and the Wakefield Doctrine?

You will read in these pages the statement, ‘…the Wakefield Doctrine is a tool to help you better understand the people in your life‘. This is a true statement. It is also a tool to better understand yourself. Which, when you think about it, can be a much more difficult task than:

  • understanding why your husband insists on using a sharpie to make outlines of the tools that he hangs in the shed or
  • your daughter who totally thinks that her expression of her individuality (purple hair, nose rings and combat boots) should not go against her in the upcoming job interview.

Using the Wakefield Doctrine allows me a slightly different perspective on myself. Which, given that I am a clark, is at once more difficult and more valuable. We all, (clarks, scotts and rogers), have blind spots.* And, if you’re after improving on the way you relate yourself to the world around you, then you had better find a way to see into that area. There might be treasures there.

The biggest blind spot for those of us who grew up and live in the personal reality of the Outsider, is emotion. Not that we don’t have or feel emotion. It’s just that we’re not always on the best of terms. (New Readers? If you read and learn the worldviews as well as some, people like zoe and Kristi and Val…. then, had you heard a person utter that last sentence, (“It’s just that we’re not always on the best of terms’), you would be totally thinking, ‘probable clark‘.  lol

But I felt the raw emotion today. Just for a second. And I knew that it, (the emotion), was, as Castaneda might have said, ‘a thing of power’. It was an indication that there are parts of me that I do not know very well and that, if I am to self-improve myself, I will need to come to know better.

….but, it was so sad.

But hey, no one said it would be easy. In fact, most people will say, ‘if you want to change for the better, there is a price to pay and it’s always going to be almost more than you’re willing to pay.’

 

 

* I will not go into how insufficient the term ‘blindspot’ is in this context. It is. Maybe the next Post.

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TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘it’s all in the perspective… by chance or by design!’

May 23, 2015 By

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

(does anyone else see the ‘Tim Burton-ish’ flower-man trying to sneak up on Una, or is it just me?)

Item Number 1: Una and non-snow covered ground

Metm Number 2: Comment from Vanessa… it was, (of a), content and, (a), timing that I am really appreciable for*  (The Comment: “I will be sure to keep this reference guide handy to assist with translating future posts. I think I might be a clark – and I’m not fond of many of those saying although “drill down” had it’s place until it became popular management buzz speak.”)  I felt the feeling that has (always) served as a reminder of the reason for writing this here blog here.

Item Number 3: The TToT co-hostinae and them… I continue to feel grateful for being included in that very exceptional group of bloggerini

Item Rebmun 4: I will cite, (as we all do, from time to time), the current technology that makes all this not only possible, but enjoyable (through the relative ease of use of the computers and internets and such.

Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules): Where to start? The Book is growing weekly by virtue of the contributions of clever (and desperate) bloggers who, like a modern day Indiana Jane(s), sees the idol, knows there is a trap, senses time running out and…cites Chapter, Section and (at times) verse. one of the reason that this is the best of all blohops.

SGV: (Seven Guard Virgins) the Enforcer(s) and Temptrae charged with adjudicating challenges and solicitations from writers since…well, since this blog hop started! (New Readers? zoe/ivy is the Mistress of Dance and Hope, and Intermediary par exemplar

7: soo you didn’t get what I was referring to in the photo caption at the top of this Post?

see?!! see?!! "Una!! Look out behind you!!"

see?!! see?!! “Una!! Look out behind you!!”

 

8) grateful for not being so caught up in work that I’m not able to find the time to spend getting this photo ‘to work’.

9) yeah, more photos from the road won’t be a bad thing  ( oh yeah,  thank you to Kristi for the Drexel photo that’s on this post…on the landing page at the Doctrine, coming here by the link means you wouldn’t see it. excellent dog.)

10) 1.3 baby 1.3!

Ten Things of Thankful

 

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* yes, yes that is a rogerian expression (-ette)


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Friday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘lets begin again at the beginning….one more time’

May 22, 2015 By

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

Bono-three-way

It is understood that this blog is intended to present, explain, convince and otherwise allow those who might stumble across it, (on their way to someplace else in the blogosphere), and that, among (this group), there is a certain percentage who not only might benefit from the use and application of the Wakefield Doctrine, but possess the requisite  personal qualities (or qualities of personality, one might say), to stop, read, understand, apply and enjoy… this here personality theory, here.

(…for our scottian Readers): HEY!! lots of laughs and fun and interesting stuff here. Come on!! What’cha got to lose?!

(…yeah, no! I know)(on the outside chance that Mr…er  Bono* happens across today’s post and wonders what about his image did this writer find so fascinating as to cause  us to use it, surely it was the sincere and sensitive expression on his face as he patiently waits for the ‘other two’ people to stop chattering so that he might further help them to find the correct way to proceed):  What a lot of the new Readers have said and, are spreading the word is about how effective and useful the insights into the lives of the people that surround them, this Wakefield Doctrine has proven to be, even more than what they originally felt it offered.

You know, in the early days of this blog, I was convinced that what I needed to do was develop my writing skills to the point that I could write in the scottian and rogerian language(s). By doing so, I believed, I would reach all Readers. We all know that that was not a correct assumption. What is clear now is that the Readers will get from (this blog) everything that has a value to them personally. (Which is, in the passive, indirect language of clarks, to say, if they ‘get it’ and enjoy it, they’ll stay. If they don’t, they won’t). So, like Ellen, in the photo above… she chooses to believe that there is something in what Mr Bono is, no doubt, going on at interminable length about, worth listening to, and,  knows that it would be impolite to tell him to just stop talking…. (if that were not enough to aim a ‘pretending-to-be-interested-and-listening-face’ at the guy, she would not be 100% certain that Portia is hearing the same thing, the same way that she is, and would not want to deprive her partner of any (possible) enjoyment.)

ya know?

P.S.  ‘writer’s block’. the subject of so many un-published posts. I’ve mentioned my own theory about this horrible affliction, haven’t I?  It isn’t that we don’t have ideas and such about what to write, it’s simply a matter of our own internal critic, (and we all have one of those!), somehow getting too prominent a place in our heads. Just thought I would share that.

P.P.S. … er, nope, thought I had some clever final punchline. I guess I was wrong.1

1) no, wait! All this talk about Readers, (new and otherwise), lets be sure everyone has a ‘take-away’2

the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) is a perspective on life and human behavior. Predicated on the notion that we, all of us, experience life from one of three characteristic viewpoints:

  1. as clarks. We grow up and develop as Outsiders, we develop strategies and coping mechanisms that allow us to remain in the background as we try to discover the information that we lack, the knowledge that everyone else seems to share in common
  2. scotts… the life of the Predator. everyday is the only day that (really) matters. Life is meant to be lived, and the one rule is: stay alert! the day is filled with opportunity and threats, while one is preferable to the other, neither is Bad or Worthless… mercurial in temperament (to hold grudges requires too much introspection), decisions are made on the fly… natural leaders (for better or worse)
  3. Member of the Herd. that phrase says it all! to ‘be a part of’ assures that the world is (potentially) knowable, always quantifiable and you never are alone. The only responsibility a roger would admit to is that they must work harder than anyone to learn, (and then), be an example of ‘the Right Way’ to live

That, for today, is the simplest description of the Wakefield Doctrine. The only thing (it) asks of us, in return for the fun and such, is that we try to ‘see the world as the other person is experiencing it‘.  (they’re out there!  you’ll see the scotts first, followed by the rogers… then the clarks.) (no! really!)

 

2) someone out there, not a clark, please tell me that you don’t find these modern sayings all kinds of annoying… ‘take away‘ ‘reach out to‘…. ‘drill down‘…. all those half-good, middle-management facilitating expressions… there! see? I said ‘facilitating’! sorry guys

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