Charlie’s House

As I mentioned in the “About Me” page, I do communications consulting on the side. It seems appropriate, therefore, to explain my communications strategy to start this blog off.

To my mind, a person’s personality exists on a coordinate system set up by two axes. These axes are introversion/extroversion (aka shy/outgoing) and mind/heart (or intellectual/emotional). No point on the resulting grid is any more important or valid than any other point, and to illustrate this, then entire structure is placed on it’s side, like a large letter “X”. I encourage each person to think of themselves as the center of the coordinate system. They are not ‘extremely shy’ or ‘very emotional’ or ’somewhat bland.’ Each person, is instead, just right; exactly in the center and the people they know exist in the continuum around them.

One of the key elements of The Big X however, is its mutability.  This is best explained by example: Perhaps you want to be more intellectual, you put effort into this, and over time slightly modify your personality to be less emotional and more thoughtful.   Rather than move farther along the “mind” axis, however, your position on the grid remains in the exact center, but the people around you move slightly to along the “heart” axis.

Staying in the center of our grid might seem odd.   After all, we changed, not the rest of the world.  But in reality, we continue to be the center of our own existence.  We continue to rate people in relation to ourselves.  We might occasionally compare one of our contemporaries to another, but for the most part, we think of the people we know in terms of ourselves.  We might say “Bob is not as shy as I am.” or “I wish I was more intellectual, like Jane.”

In a later post, I’ll explain how we determine where the center is, and how we explain our presence there.

-C