self-improvement | the Wakefield Doctrine

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘of serials and solutions, advice and ambition’

April 26, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

image courtesy of: ‘A Fly our Our (Chicken Coop) Wall’

2 Items: Chapter 4 and the Wakefield Doctrine

(That was easy!)

Hey! Chapter 4 of ‘Almira’ is out and loosed upon the world. If you haven’t signed up for new Posts, then here is Chapter 4 (at jukepop.com) and, for those less technological-inclined and prefer the simple and familiar format, here is Chapter 4 (at wordpress). The same Chapter 4, of course, it’s just that, while wordpress is simple and familiar, jukepop is geared to serial stories and presents the chapters in sequence. So, if this your first encounter with the Story of Miss (actually, it’s Mrs.) Almira Gulch and Dorothy and Hunk and a few people who, for some reason, they forgot to include in previous tellings of the Oz stories, jukepop is probably your best bet.
(btw…. I sent out links to, well, to everyone I could think of, but then I was reminded (by Denise) that those of you who’ve signed up, automatically receive each new Chapter, as it’s published. Ain’t science amazing! Sorry about the dupelation.)

[Hey! I’m working on final…final Edit of Blogdominion. Is there anyone out there who would enjoy being a Beta Reader? Let me know]

Item 2:

(courtesy of a Comment from Friend of the Doctrine, Christine)

‘Can’t wait to hear about your workshop. Channel that inner scott!’

As you would’ve guessed, my Reply was quite simple. ‘That’s exactly why we have a Wakefield Doctrine!’

the Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective on behavior and reality and, in a sense, proposes that there are three personality types among people (and, in a sense, everything else). The maintains that, all of us, are born with the potential to experience the world in one of three characteristic ways:

clarks (Outsiders)
scotts (Predators)
rogers (Herd Members

…at a very early age we all, ‘settle in to’ one of these three worldviews (the personal reality that everyone experiences world as/through…in) and then we proceed to grow up and mature and learn ways to deal with the world and it’s demands’, the people (and their demands) and our own potential (and that’s where Christine’s Comment comes in). Where many personality type systems focus on self reporting and the near-endless variety of Quizzes and Tests, without which Facebook would go the way of MySpace…. ( “What’s your Favorite Color!!” / “Don’t you Hate it when your Boyfriend says.…!!!” / “So! You Think You Have What it Takes to Be a Wildlife Biologist?!?” / “Girls! What’s Up with the Crying and Hand-Holding!” / “What Your Favorite Color Socks Tell about You! Don’t Leave the House until you Complete (and Pass) This Test!!”)

The Wakefield Doctrine is quite simple. If you grew up in a reality that was, (in character, nature, just-the-way-things-are), the world of the Outsider, then your ‘personality traits’ would lean heavily to:

‘being inconspicuous’ (without being totally ignored),
‘being funny’ (without having to, like, stand up in front of people and hold their attention),
‘persuasive’ (in a quiet, ‘now that I think of it, that’s a good idea’ sort of way),
‘curious’ (maybe the answer to becoming a real person is hidden in Zoroastrianism). In short, you’ll develop the coping strategies and interpersonal style that is most likely to yield success (however you might define that! lol)

This same view applies to the person who has grown experiencing the world as would a Predator:

‘quick responses’,
very little, ignoring-the-world-while-imagining-what-might-be,
if it moves, chase it,
live today, ’cause it’s the only place that’s real.

or as a Herd Member: the world is knowable! learn it and tell the others…..

So, what makes Christine’s Comment so appropriate, is that the Wakefield Doctrine’s approach to self-improvement is: you never lose the potential of ‘the other two’ world views. Find your inner (clark or scott or roger), practice it and you will become more than you were. This may seem a trivial distinction, that we have the potential, because the perceptive (but annoying) Reader might say (from the back of the classroom, meeting hall or audience),

“Hey! you just said that the personality traits that distinguish one type from the other is the result of growing up and learning to the cope with the reality you’re in… that took, well, years! What good does that do me, I got a presentation in a week and a half! Ain’t got time to grow up again! I want my money back!!”

True. The distinction we make is for those of us who (might) benefit by it. I like knowing that new skills, better ways of living, are not foreign or otherwise outside of my reality. I like knowing that it is inherent (if not practiced), because it’s easier (to me) to develop than it is to find, take, claim ownership and learn to operate something totally new.

Speaking of new and find, time to leave the virtual world and head out into the ‘real’ world. Any questions, write ’em in the Comment box, yo.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT-retrovisual -the Wakefield Doctrine- “hey! look what I found!” “Wait! no, wasn’t what I thought” …”never mind”

April 23, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

So we’re driving around, about 20 minutes ago, on our Friday evening walk and I decided to do a video, but after three takes, I don’t believe I have anything to show for it. Other than Item 3.

But, then I got back in front of this electric brain and I thought, hey! lets go find the First TToT Post! I started to search back in 2012 in May (because I was pretty sure this started in May), turns out I was wrong. On two counts, the month and the year. (Yes, to the rogers out there, suggesting a fairly direct way to have predetermined the start date (or at least narrow it way the hell down, I did think of that, but this is the equivalent of rummaging through piles of old magazines. Way more enjoyable.)

Anyway. Turns out to be a year later (2013) and a month later (June). I must have been thinking about the week that I met Christine. (yeah, I love that story, but I’ve told it a bunch of times, so if you want to know, you’ll have to ask her… or Lizzi).

So lets start this weekend off with a re-print!

(No! lets not. I just watched the video I did (one of three takes) and I liked it enough to substitute it for my original Item 1, which was to have been a re-print of the First TToT Post here at everyone’s favorite Doctrine. We’ll save it for a more sentimental weeks, ok?)

Item 1:

Item 2: Una and her good nature and natural ability to live in and of the here and now. A power of example.

Item 3: the grey Toyota that was driving up behind us as we drove around the golf course on our walk. They appeared to be in a hurry, but turned off before I had to pull over and let them pass us. (Yes, it can be the little things that mean a lot.) Not being an organized and detail-oriented blog-writer, as many of my co-hostinae and others in this band of mutants, I have little sense of how to present the seemingly trivial, in a way that doesn’t make them sound like I think they are ….well, trivial. Believe it or not, I was grateful that the bastard-to-be driving the toyota came to the decision to find the Way and not bother me and my dog.

Item 4: We are fortune here at the-blog-that-lizzy-built in that, being all pretty damn, non-ordinary, we have features and tools, conventions and ways of approaching this fairly common bloghop theme, in some very un-common ways. We have Items of Hypogratitudiness that allows us to express certain events and, in this case, passings of people that, no way can you start the item as, “I’m grateful because” (I just noticed that this has become a legitimate, if not frequently cited, Grat Item at the Doctrine. But hell, Secret Rules are Secret Rules, so I’m gonna go ahead and make this a standalone item.)

Item 5: Prince died this week. Readers of the Doctrine might raise an eyebrow at my mention of this, as it falls under the heading of ‘things that happen out there in the world’. Reader all know that it is our way to leave the real world to the experts, and focus on the nature of our relating ourselves to the world around us. And, what makes Prince so noteworthy is just that. I’ve been surprised, (in a good way), at the diversity of the people expressing their sense of loss at his passing. It might be my own myopia, or maybe it’s because people who liked Prince, (and everything that that entailed), didn’t seem to flaunt it. I mean, when you think about it, other than maybe Purple Rain, (movie and the song), he did not get a huge amount of airplay in the fm bandwidth. In fact, I was thinking yesterday, the people who make up the audience of the 2 ‘dinosaur rock’ radio stations in my area would have cared a lot, even the DJs (as people in the music industry) would have cared, but I’ll bet they didn’t have a single Prince album anywhere in the studio. (Yes, I did just qualify myself as a person who might have a ‘dinosaur rock’ radio station set in my car radio. …and, for the record, I do know that they don’t call them albums anymore. lol). Anyway. It’s always sad when someone who has created something that affects so very many people dies. And, at the same time, there’s something about witnessing the reactions of people, a kind of belonging.
oh yeah, another thing. Prince was a clark. (yeah, I know! sometimes people have a problem with that, given his remarkable stage personality. But 20 seconds of watching him in an interview will remove any doubt.) It’s good to know my people can have accomplish so much good in the world.

Item 6: ‘Almira’ Chapter 4 will be released Sunday, (hopefully) Monday (at the very latest). Now that we’ve learned more about Dorothy Gale, it’s time to turn our attention to Almira Ristani, (Gulch, was, of course, her married name). For that we’ll be going back in time to the Winter of 1912 and meeting a young Almira who, along with taking care of her brothers and sisters, (and, if the truth be told), her father, (always a good provider, but he never recovered from the death of his wife Idresca), works in the Everett Cotton Mill, in Lawrence Massachusetts. She has the good fortune to meet Anne LoPizzo during one December ‘lunch break’. Funny thing, always a good judge of character, Annie knew that Almira was someone special from the first time she saw her on the weaving floor, but, when she found Almira, outside, reading her well-worn copy of ‘Self-Reliance’, she knew that she’d found a friend. Like veterans of a forgotten war, or, members of a forgotten sect, Annie held up her copy of Fuller’s ‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century’ and a bond was sealed. Oh! yeah, and Hunk goes back to the library early, there’s this girl there that seems to have a crush on him. Read the rest for yourself.

Item 7: (Just so Kristi doesn’t get too mad about Una having ‘her own Item’), I’m grateful for Phyllis

Item 8: (lol…. come on! I was kidding… that was a joke!!)

Item 9: Got an upcoming challenge at work that involves self-development! How exciting!! I know! What it is, I’m going to put on a Buyer’s Workshop, (along with an agent who has been a co-conspirator in a number of rather creative and pretty damn successful marking projects in the past.) But this is the biggest challenge so far, as, for this to succeed, I’ll need to find within myself a way to be, that will engage the people who attend. The key word is ‘engage’, not teach, not inform, (at least not primarily), and certainly not lecture. ayiiee! lecture is what clarks tend to do, (meaning the best), and that is so not what I will be attempting. Will keep you apprised as the project develops towards the first Workshop May 12.

Item 10: SR 1.3

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

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “and, how, exactly, is writing a post, when ‘out of words’, supposed to help?’

April 19, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

How messed up is this? My biggest concern this early Tuesday morning is, ‘is that the correct use of commas in a sentence, or am I just getting a little too caught up with the grammar-passion’?

lol…

So, quick Tuesday Post. And then out into the world for a day of, (hopefully), ‘one last chance’.

Topic 1: the use of the Wakefield Doctrine as a tool to enhance life and it’s endless challenge to get off the ground (or, as we clarks say, ‘out of my head and into the world’) and live. Stating it this way, always gives me a fresh sense of pre-optimism*, as it’s accepted (here at the Doctrine) that ambition, realistic or not, is a hallmark of those who exhibit the traits of the clarklike personality type. Well, that didn’t exactly convince us that there’s a great world of exciting ideas just waiting for us to get out of bed and run after them, did it? No. No, it did not.

But the truth of the matter is that using the (principles) of the Wakefield Doctrine in order to gain one more, additional perspective on the world, the people we interact with in the course of the day today, and ultimately, ourselves is both fun, exciting and very, very helpful. Try it. Look at the people around you today, infer, (on the basis of: how they act, how loud and forceful their voices are, what seems to attract their attention, their apparent emotional state and how-many-non-naturally-occuring-colors-have-they-dyed-their hair), how that person is relating themselves to the world around them. It will be one of three ways:

as an Outsider would (clark): they seemingly have a marginal investment in whatever it is they’re involved in, (this, of course, is a false impression. not your fault, even clarks sometimes mistake the hedging of emotional bets, for ‘just not giving a shit’. clarks do, in fact, give a shit. they’re just convinced that if they’re are too upfront/outfront, about their interest, they’ll get disqualified, (a concept that’s alien-to-the-point-of-non-understandable to those of the scottian and rogerian worldviews)
as Predator (scott): the world is, in essence and in fact, a hostile, yet not evil world. it’s just the world. a world, (and, for our purposes here, a day today), in which there are opportunities and there are threats, prey and larger predators and action, right-here-and-right-now action, that is the only sane response. for a scott, to live is to act, in acting they live the only worthwhile life
Herd Member (roger): all the world’s a stage and everyone has access to a script, although, following it, unfortunately, seems to be quite optional. rogers live in a world that’s quantifiable and, with enough effort, totally knowable. they float in a sea of emotion and all things are connected.
(btw: we all are born with the potential to experience the world in any of these three ways, but, all of us find ourselfs living in only one of them. that being said, we retain the ‘other two’ worldviews. that’s where the Wakefield Doctrine is semi-unique in the matter of self-improving oneself. if you want to improve yourself, you need not be concerned with acquiring anything new, all you need do is find, within yourself, those skills that you would have developed, had you grown up in one of the ‘other two’ personal realities.**)

Topic 2: Chapter 3 of ‘Almira’ is on the newsstands! It’s available to read on wordpress, but I also have it on jukepop as well. If you don’t mind having to enter an email when you get there, they allow a sequential layout (and ease of access to Chapters, once we get this boat moving, that wordpress does not permit), plus ….plus!! you get to vote for the story! In any event, we learn more about our protagonist-wannabe, Dorothy Gale. And, not to give anything away, because of her determination to interact with Almira Gulch, we will soon be learning much more about that ‘really-I-had-no-idea’ character in our story. We just getting started!

Topic 3: hey! our Friend Cynthia is doing some very cool work over at ‘the ‘tude’ with meditation and such. A simple (and therefore almost always underestimated approach to self-improvement) topic in the hands of someone who has the gift of teaching is always a pleasure to read. Go there, tell her the Doctrine sent ya.

That’s it for today.

*regular Readers of this blog will recall that, for those of us living in the reality of the Outsider (aka clarks), ‘hope’ is a bit of a dirty word.

**hey! I’d forgotten the fun of writing a post in a manner comparable to rummaging through a box of saved stuff… eventually, without needing to know what you were looking, you find the thing that you currently need! In this case, it was the point: the Wakefield Doctrine, as a personality theory, maintains that our personality type, (clark, scott or roger), is simply that style that is most appropriate and effective in dealing with the reality that we’re living in, and that the reality is, well, real! We don’t need to ask people about their interests and appetites and secret urges, we just need to get a look at the world as they are experiencing it and everything else follows! And, for the self-improvement piece, I just need to accept the fact that I have, as a native, if not practiced, ability to chase and hunt prey and hug and emote with the best of ’em. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT (TToT unofficial motto: ‘sharing valuable insights and remarkable conclusions for more than 13 years running!’) -the Wakefield Doctrine-

April 16, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

Writing this TToT Post way early, like Friday morning early, thinking about a combo Post or maybe a Friday Post or just getting a start on the TToT Post for the weekend. As must be abundantly clear, not really sure what, if anything I would write. Following my own personal rule, ‘it’s easier to edit than it is to write’ I’ll just do some finger-aerobics here for a short time and then head out into the world. (yeah, clark here)

1-5) Reference above video (camera, actually its a new phone): dog, car and dog, cows to harass and nice weather

6) Chapter 3 ‘Almira’ due to be released this weekend. The First Two Chapters are out on both the website and on jukepop (jukepop is a site that hosts serial stories, basic advantage is that they provide a sequential format (of the stories by the Chapter) which makes them easier to follow as the number of Chapters increases. If you have a minute, you should go there and ‘Vote’ for Almira (yeah, what the hell!, is there anything, in this culture, that’s not obsessed with competition?)

7) work, which is kinda necessary to all this typation, fortunately it remains interesting work. That being said, the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of work, at least in my own experience, is repetition of (skilled and un-skilled) acts and actions, interspersed with brief, (not seeming so, at the time), intervals of terror and/or stress. (lol) Speaking of jobs, I saw an opening for ‘forklift operator’ the other day. I was sorely tempted. Buried in my work record, are a couple of interludes during which I was a professional forklift operator. Very enjoyable work.
Back to my ‘tedium interrupted by terror’ thesis; most of the other work I’ve done in my life has conformed to that description. It is, (as always), the exceptions to that rule that prove to be interesting, in light of the topic of this Item. I’ve worked in mills, both textile and manufacturing. How cool is this reality of mine, when the experiences of the worst job(s) I’ve held are, in very real fact, the most useful and valuable thing to me today? Damn! Working in a mill. It’s important to me today because, Almira Gulch (the at-the-moment, very silent protagonist of my Serial Story, ‘Almira‘) worked in a mill when she was young.( Lawrence, MA 1910 to 1912). While un-deniably repetitious, factory work can be very difficult work, the very same, limited number of motions, 8 hours a day (or more) 5 days a week (or more)… for the rest of your life. I’ve met people who were at the same punch press for 20, 25…30 years! Incomprehensible to my then, 19-year-old mind. I eventually learned. They did it for someone/something else. Someone, (singular or, more likely plural), else needed what working a punch press 8 hours a day, forever provided right then and there that day, that dinner, that future for others. Gotta give ’em credit.

8) grateful for the people here, (in the ‘sphere), who, by their presence, allow me to experiment with the tools I’ve found for self-developing myself. The Wakefield Doctrine is, of course, primary among these tools, however, I’m come to realize that the inherent flaw to ‘hermitized self-improvement’, is that, without feedback and reflections/suggestions from people walking in the same world as I am, I have no way of knowing if it’s ‘working’. So thanks to those clarks (and scotts and rogers who are possessed of a significant secondary clarklike aspect)

9) (to be completed mid day…. ) yeah, no! I’m serious, I’ll get us something un-rote for this TToT list. I have a pretty full schedule today: several houses to inspect, Chapter 3 to work on and an Open House… bound to be something in all that, small, but definitely measurable portion of my life, to include here.

10) SR 1.3 (and Our Miss Lewis and her co-hortessae, Christine and Kristi, Lisa and Zoe, Kristi and Michelle, Sarah and Dyanne )

(yeah… should have some music…. will try to find us some)

Out in the world in the course of this day: found a tune, will post….more from the field as it develops…. (remind me again, this gratitude thing, like even when the world is not cooperating or I’m getting too busy to stop and notice? jeez bar set high or what?)

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Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

Friday -the Wakefield Doctrine- (1/3 Finish the Sentence Friday, 1/3 Almira and 1/2 Doctrine…something for everone!)

April 8, 2016 By clarkscottroger

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

“…we verbose few, we Band of Bloggers!!”

2 things:

Chapter 2 of ‘Almira‘ will be coming out this weekend. Due to technical difficulties on the site where I wrote the Serial: ‘Blogdominion’, I’ve not yet been able to post Chapters of Almira on that site. I have a wordpress site (click here to go there) for the story. If anything, I appreciate the Readers of Blogdominion, (and now), Almira. Last weekend, I sent links to Chapter 1 to those of you who followed Blogdominion. Of course, anyone can sign up at the blog and have new posts sent to them as they are published. Or, if you’d prefer a more…personal touch, write a comment and I’ll send you the link.
the Wakefield Doctrine is a very useful perspective on life, self and ‘reality’ for those of us out to self-improve ourselfs. And it’s fun! It’s been proven that, with the studious, industrious, assiduous, meticulous and totally determined application of the principles contained and inherent in out little personality theory, you can change things about yourself that have resisted change, you can improve things about yourself, (provided you feel the need, desire and hope to) that you have only dreamt of and you don’t have to do anything more than add a single, additional, perspective to how you see and interact and respond to the world today. No, really! It’s that much fun, that simple and way cooler than I can present here, on these pages. Give it a try!
1. Finish the Sentence Friday… Friend of the Doctrine Kristi’s bloghop totally grabbed my head this week with the pre-complete sentence:

“Sometimes, I wonder about my writing. I keep on and on because…” (Feel free to adapt the sentence to) “I write because…” (or) “I wonder why I write…

I surely would not be here, had I not decided to write a blog. While a fairly self-effacing statement*, I mean it to imply, that here, today, writing this Post is part and parcel with the explanation/illustration/demonstration of why I write. To paraphrase a favorite dead person famous statement, ‘I blog therefore I am‘

the previous written Thursday evening, the following written Friday (and therefore, technically the actual Finish to the Sentence), morning:

So, now that I’ve had some time to think about the prompt, my response takes a slightly different form**, form not content. The simplest ‘finish’ to this Friday Sentence would be “…because that is where my heart was hiding”.

Thanks virtual and/or imaginary people and friends!

* a rogerian expression of my own construct, surely not as potent as one from a roger, it’s fun. To read all about rogerian expressions, go to rogers

** different from my Reply to Kristi’s Post…last night…late last night (lol…)