Blast is perhaps the most misunderstood of the four “animals” in the Objective Personality personality type system.
People conflate Blast with talking, which is understandable, given its name. But the name “Blast” primarily describes the energy of taking initiative, getting started, and making quick decisions. Kind of a “3-2-1 Blast Off!” quality, but not in terms of physical energy.
There is also a communication aspect to Blast. To better understand the communication side of Blast, you have to look at the animal stack as a whole, and not just Blast as a single part.
The focus of this article is the four Blast Sleep animal stacks (SB/C, BS/C, SB/P, and BS/P). I will write a separate article about the Blast Play animal stacks. Blast Play is the animal stack more associated with talking.
Here is a quick summary of both the communication and “getting started” components of Blast when paired with Sleep:
Blast and Sleep as saviors (the top two animals in the stack) deliberate before communicating, but do not deliberate before getting started and taking initiative.
Blast Sleep as “demons” (bottom two of the animal stack) deliberate before getting started and taking initiative, but do not deliberate before communicating. This is why someone with Blast last may come across as Blast savior to people who conflate Blast with talking.
Blast and Sleep together as the “saviors” (top two) of the animal stack figure out what to say before they speak or write. Whereas Blast and Play as saviors talk or write until they figure out what to say.
Clarity and conciseness is the focus of Blast Sleep as the saviors. It is like a funnel. It can take a jumble of ideas, data, or walls of text, and narrow it down to a singular idea or statement.
Blast Sleep is more comfortable in the realm of one-on-one connection with people. Although they do have audience in mind when crafting their communication, the audience doesn’t have to be real time in order for the communication to be gratifying to them.
Now we’ll take a look at the Blast Sleep animal stacks and how the energy flows. The graphs aren’t literal, they just give a sense of how the three main animal energies might flow during the course of an action or an entire day:
In SB/C vs. BS/C the former will be a bit more deliberative in both speaking and taking initiative, but not as much as a SC/B would be. The SB/C might even have a bit more endurance than the BS/C because the most energetic function, Blast, is in the middle. The BS/C starts out stronger, but could fade out quicker than the SB/C.
SB/P is technically an extrovert. They start out slow and might be a night person. Dave Powers of Objective Personality has this animal stack and once talked about how when he parks at a parking lot at a grocery store, for example, he has to sit in the car for awhile and summon forth his energy. Once he’s in motion he is energetic. He is a night owl, with his energy accumulating throughout the day.
In BS/C vs. BS/P, the BS/P is an extrovert, but will still have the “deliberate before talking, don’t deliberate before getting started” qualities. The Play gives them some extra zip in the form of more physical energy than BS/C.
I added animal images to the infographic because it’s high time we have some fun and associate some actual animals to these energies. I wasn’t terribly scientific in selecting the images. I chose a bird for BS/C, my animal stack, because I love birds, and birds represent the BS/C stack well (extra credit if you can identify the bird in the image; it’s my favorite bird). Birds have a lot of energy in the morning, fade in the afternoon, and then have more energy in the evening when they eat and congregate (roost) with their flock.
I based the other animals on the ones from this article that seem to match the energy flow of the respective animal stacks. Feel free to suggest alternatives!
