The role of animals in your personality type

The role of animals in your personality type

Did you know that animals play a role in your personality type?

I don’t just mean regular animals, although they are important. Like Jungian analyst James Hillman said, pets were the first psychoanalysts. I’m referring to the animal within with whom, according to Carl Jung, we must connect in order to become a whole person.

Jung said we have a “2 million-year-old man within” and that “we still have an animal character.” Our 2 million-year-old woman/man manifests in dreams where we experience numinous connections with animals. James Hillman called dreams “zoological cathedrals.”

Jungian analyst Dennis L. Merritt says:

The purpose of psychoanalysis is to enliven and enrich consciousness through contact with the animal instinctual level.

Jung again:

The body is the original animal condition, we are all animals in body, and so we have to have an animal psychology in order to be able to live in it. […] Since we have a body it is indispensable that we exist also as an animal.”

This brings us to the Objective Personality typology system.

Objective Personality: bringing animals to your personality

In addition to a function stack, Objective Personality includes an “animal stack” of four animal energies for each personality type. It’s like your body has a type of its own and this type has a direct connection to your personality type.

The animals are created by two cognitive functions working together. Here are the names and descriptions of the four animals as per the Objective Personality website:

Sleep — “Process and preserves energy for self, before expending energy for the tribe.”

Sleep is about budgeting one’s energy and attention. It’s what helps preserve the flow state in my mind.

Consume — “Takes in and respects info, before getting started and teaching.”

Listening, reading, and researching are some of the attributes of consume.

Blast– “ Gets started and is able to teach, before respecting and gathering info.”

Blast is often conflated with speaking, but this isn’t always the case with introverts people who have this animal. For introverts, blast is an internal energy that propels us. It’s also used to make our speaking and writing as concise as possible.

Play — Expends energy for the tribe, before processing and preserving energy for self.

Blast and Play are extroverted and Sleep and Consume are introverted. If two of your top three animals are introverted, then you are an introvert.

Conversely, if two of the top three animals are extroverted then you are extrovert.

The animal stacks can also help explain why some extroverts think they are an introvert and vice versa. The third animal in your animal stack is your “hobby” animal. For example, if someone has Consume as the third animal, they might tend to seek out reading and other Consume activities in their spare time. If someone has Sleep as their third animal, and their top two animals are the extroverted Play and Sleep animals, they might feel like they are an introvert sometimes, because they will be inclined to seek out Sleep activities in their spare time. These activities allow them to be quiet and recharge.

Create a field guide for your animal

You should also study your animal with objective or disinterested observations, the way a zoologist studies animals. Only you are studying the animal named you.

Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great and other business books, spent several years early in his career making detached observations about himself. But that’s not all. He also would make note when another individual would inspire him:

I’d spent a lot of it not just on my own experiences, but also very much on people that I admired. Not people from afar, people I knew and observed. Not their achievements, but something about the quality of what they were. And that was also a big part of that observation process.

How to care for your animal

The first step in caring for your animal is to understand how your animal cares for you.

Marie-Louise von Franz, who was a close associate of Carl Jung’s for several decades, and was an expert in both typology and fairy tales, said that the only “rule” or “ethic” in the mysterious world of fairy tales is this:

Anyone who earns the gratitude of animals, or whom they help for any reason, invariably wins out. This is the only unfailing rule I have been able to find.

Our animals are a vital support system to our cognitive functions. John Beebe describes the function stack as two axes. The “spine” axis is the hero (lead) function and anima/animus (inferior) function. These are the functions we use to develop ourselves.

The “arms” axis is the parent (auxiliary) and child (tertiary) functions. These are the functions we use to help others.

I view our animal as the reverse of this. Our lead and inferior animals helps us engage with the outside world. And our middle two animals help us take care of ourselves.

For example, Beebe says the second function is the parent function, but it is only able to parent others; it is not able to parent oneself very well. I think the second animal can swoop in and help you parent yourself.

The next step is to pay attention to your last animal. A person with Play last could endlessly remain in the realm of Blast/Sleep/Consume, but their body will occasionally let them know when they need to get up and move around, take a walk, or interact with others.

Those with Sleep last sometimes indicate they are capable of being on the go constantly, but their bodies will occasionally slow them down by getting sick, or they experience a flare up of a chronic medical condition. Then they spend a day or more in bed to recover.

Please feed your animals

The best scenario is to regularly “budget” time to engage with your last animal.

Someone with Play last could schedule regular time to exercise, schedule recurring lunches with co-workers or friends, and so on.

Someone with Blast last could engage in small activities with little planning beforehand or start writing blog or social media posts regularly with little preparation.

Someone with Consume last could have scheduled time where they read books, articles, watch documentaries, and so on. One consume last person said that after he finishes reading a book, he has to start a new book within 24 hours, otherwise there is the danger he will go months without reading any books.

Someone with Sleep last could budget a certain number of hours per week/month to devote to Sleep, which could involve writing a journal entry and reflecting in solitude with no set purpose.

Your animal helps you reach your full human potential

According to Jungian analyst Dennis L. Merritt:

To be truly human, Jung believed, and to reach our unique potential,we have to be in relationship to animals. This is both an outer relationship to animals and an intimate relationship with the collective unconscious, coming to terms with the animal in our inheritance.

The collective unconscious makes its appearance in our dreams quite often and is also a part of our animal nature. Keeping a dream journal is one way to maintain this connection with the numinous, archetypes, and your shadow side.

Many forces in our society suppress both our outer relationship to animals and our relationship to the collective unconscious. Making the unconscious conscious is the goal of individuation. Integrating your animal self is a part of this.

A good first step is to discuss your dreams with a Jungian analyst. Speaking from experience, (disclosure: I am a client of Dennis Merritt’s), I can’t emphasize the importance of this enough.

I think often about how animals are always fully themselves. A tiger doesn’t try to pretend to be a cow. A Northern Cardinal doesn’t pretend to be a Great Horned Owl.

Native Americans have a perfect model for this. When a boy reached puberty he was “put on a hill” and not given food or water for four days. He would call out for a vision in hopes of receiving his spirit animal, among other things.

According to Dennis L. Merritt:

The energy was embodied, for example, by studying the animal, wearing elements of it on one’s body, dancing it at sacred gatherings, etc. If a young man did not have a spirit animal he could not go into battle: it would be a crime for someone to die without ever knowing who they really were. [emphasis mine]

Humans are the only animal that can pretend to be someone they are not. This is also why personality typology is so important and an important tool for individuation, so you can understand your true essence beneath your persona.

Your type can be revealed to you over time through work with an analyst. I recommend studying the 8 function model of John Beebe, Lectures in Psychological Type by Marie-Louise Von Franz and James Hillman, the Enneagram (especially Don Richard Riso’s works and his concept of the Levels of Development), and the animal stack in Objective Personality, for a complete picture.

It seems appropriate to close this article with a quote from Ursula Le Guin, the fantasy and science fiction author:

The animal does not reason but it sees. And it acts with certainty; it acts ‘rightly,’ appropriately. That is why all animals are beautiful. It is the animal who knows the way, the way home.

Sources:

Objective Personality website

Dream Animals by James Hillman

Jung and Ecopsychology: The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe by Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D. and Jungian Analyst

Care of the Soul a lecture by Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., February, 2019.

The Child and the Shadow, an essay in the book The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula Le Guin

Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type by John Beebe

Tim Ferriss Show interview with Jim Collins

The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson

Lectures on Jung’s Typology by Marie-Louise Von Franz and James Hillman

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Introverted Intuition (Ni) and the Gestalt

Introverted Intuition (Ni) and the Gestalt

As an INFJ, when I receive an Ni insight, it is generally of a non-verbal, symbolic nature.  It is often very right-brained and it gives me this gestalt insight. It is as if this insight comes to me in this large block or chunk.  It is highly raw and often gets right to the point. But even as it gets to the point, it is still very holistic and is often hard to break down.  By its nature, it is very symbolic and taps into some very intuitive archetypes that can often come from the collective unconscious. It may have a narrative that I cannot fully articulate, but that I can feel quite viscerally.  

It is my Ti that aims to put language to my insights.  And to do that, it often feels like I am taking an axe and chopping away at that block of insight until I can find just the right words to articulate my thoughts.  Since my Ti is my tertiary function, which simply doesn’t have the same adeptness level as my dominant Ni, there are times when I will struggle to find the proper articulations necessary to verbalize the idea.  It is often a hit or miss proposition.

When I can capture a certain truth, using primarily Ni with a backup of Ti, it usually is something non-verbal that I can just so readily vibe that it is in alignment with something either true, good, or beautiful.  Ni simply knows the essence of these three qualities, and when something external taps into these states, something inside me simply goes ‘Uh Huh!’ with this sense of inner rightness. While Ti certainly taps into this assessment of the truth, especially when something makes logical sense, it is Ni that simply reaches a state of unwavering gnosis.  So when I am learning something and arrive at a point where I just GET IT, it is Ni that is involved with this process. However, because of this, Ni feels amorphous. What makes this really challenging is that it is very hard to justify the rightness of an Ni-derived truth. It is hard to take truth and to thin-slice it in a way that is fully explainable or articulable to the outside world.  To people who want all truths and all data to be verifiable, this can be a daunting task because it involves chopping up that Ni chunk after all.

As a result of everything that I’ve just described, I strongly suspect that Ni-dominants can sometimes become stuck with the innate challenge of explaining, justifying, or articulating a deep symbolic truth.  To other types, they may be able to attain the language to do this. Even to Ni-doms, ever so often, they can succeed at articulating these ideas. However, at other times, they are at a loss for words, since thin-slicing gestalts is not always attainable.  I tend to think that many Ni dominants will lean more towards writing than speaking, because in writing, they have the advantage of having time on their side to hopefully find some novel context (or canvass) by which they can create some mode of explaining their insights.  But even then, it can sometimes take months to years to fully describe a vision in all its splendid details (in ways that Si users might be more able to encapsulate).

With all this being said, Ni is likely the cognitive function most interested in addressing some of the most panoramic and big-picture archetypal themes that exist.  It is the pleasure of the Ni user to deal in paradigm-changing domains and to influence these areas in notable ways. So because these types will often think about grand concepts and themes, it is not uncommon for the grandness of these themes to be quite challenging to language in a highly detailed way.  This might appear frustrating at times for such an individual, as I’m sure that they would love to be able to concretely explain every archetypal and symbolic understanding that they encounter. However, undoubtedly, this pales in comparison to the Ni-user abandoning the complex for the sake of only dealing with highly routinized or simplified objects.  They want and crave to grapple with the complexities of life. To do so carries the utmost sense of meaning and purpose. For this sake, with all its payoffs and drawbacks, Ni-users would gladly say that grappling with the complex is well worth it!

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How you make others feel the pressure in your Human Design

How you make others feel the pressure in your Human Design

Human Design is a mystical system that combines astrology, Kabbalah, I’Ching, and the chakras to describe the mechanics of life and relationships. One of the fascinating things about Human Design is that your channels indicate not just what your qualities are, but what you bring out in other people as well.

The root is one of the nine centers and is a pressure center. It is about adrenaline and is a pressure to make something happen. When you have defined root, you are the pacesetter; others can’t make you speed up or slow down. You are constantly under pressure and can withstand it.

When you have defined root you apply pressure on others through your aura. You are unable to stop this from happening. It happens automatically.

The three channels that connect from the root to the sacral center pressure others more than all the channels in the chart. If you have one or more of these channels, they override every other channel in your chart in the pressure department. The three channels are:

*9-52 Channel of Concentration – This is a logic process channel. It pressures others to focus and concentrate.

*3-60 Channel of Mutation – This is an individual process channel. If you have this channel it pressures others to wait for something to happen.

*42-53 Channel of Maturation – This is an abstract process channel. It pressures people to enter into an event following the sequence of a beginning, middle, and end in order to maximize its inherent potential.

The three channels from the root to the spleen and the three channels from the root to the solar plexus also apply pressure on others

If you have undefined root, work on de-conditioning from the belief that you need to get your work done in order to enjoy yourself. You don’t have to be in a hurry! Those of us with defined root will never be wise about stress (alas). If you have undefined root, you can learn how to manage stress. Then you can teach us defined root people how to relax and take a vacation already. Please! I’m waiting for your wisdom. But don’t hurry.

The source for this post is Jonah Dempcy’s The Root Center in Human Design video. Also check out his brief What is Human Design video. I recommend all of his Human Design videos.

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The only path I’ll ever know

The only path I’ll ever know

I am blessed to be going down a road that only I can go down. It may take all types of twists and turns and may lead me into many dark alleys. But it’s a path and it’s the only path that I know. I know that I have the UNIVERSE behind me with every breath that I take and every moment that passes. I have EVERY manifestation that I am on the right road. Why? Because it’s the only road that I know. It’s the only road that exists. It’s the only road that exists for me.

It has been a road where I could claim that I’ve been stripped of all my skills, all my strengths, all my experiences…where I have been thrown under life’s ‘bus’ and where I am damaged forever. But really, in an ideal manifestation of reality, have I been damaged or perhaps have I been freed from an altered reality where there is no sense of whether it was congruent with who I was and with anything that I am about! The path that I am taking is the only relevant and necessary path. It is not a path worthy of shame. Why? Because even if I have 99 successes, there is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that number 100 will align in the same way. I am not entitled to the next breath, the next heartbeat, the next ANYTHING. It could go away in a flash…..and it could re-emerge in another flash. This isn’t chaotic…It is simply A PATH. A trajectory that only I can take.

By being left bare, it allows ANYTHING to manifest at any time. Do you realize the extent of how things can emerge and HAVE EMERGED in this vulnerable state? It is like I am riding right on the edge of chaos and dissolution and also on the edge of a DIVINE ORDER. But I have to be authentic to myself and to literally ‘let the sunshine in’. I can’t force myself into situations that are inappropriate for my spirit and I also can’t not acknowledge my own needs. They have to be fully taken into consideration for me to live the type of authentic life that is congruent with who I naturally am.

I also have to allow myself to be ‘fooled’ by the Universe. I don’t run GOD! GOD runs me!!!!! I must let go of control and of expectations. Since my path is unique and since my path is the only path I know, whatever is meant to happen will happen DIVINELY!!!! I have no further choice in the matter, as my choice has been shown to be crushed and flattened, because I never really had a choice in the first place. My say in the matter is the biggest illusion here. Frankly, I would not be writing this if I got what I wanted. I would be living an alternate reality. Now I can speculate on a million alternate realities, but in the end, I need to reflect the most on the actual reality that I have…because that’s the one that I’m living, and again, that’s the only one that I know!

This is a blessing! Just think about it! To be consciously aware and to be dynamically breathing and pulsating with life. My gosh! To BE HERE NOW is the most precious gift. It’s such a grand gift. Fools may say that it’s a simple one because I am not the most ‘successful’ in their eyes. But this is an illusion! I can’t control how ‘successful’ I am using outer standards. But I can control the fact that I’m on a path and that it has an inherent trajectory. I am HERE and I am consciously aware. That’s the only thing truly controllable. The funny thing is that sages and gurus tell me that this is a Divine Essence. So there is obviously something really precious beyond price about the capacity to be fully aware. With awareness, anything can happen in the next moment. This fact is just so juicy. But I can’t make a concrete expectation, because I don’t really know what will happen. To predict it can turn out to be equally correct or incorrect; I simply don’t know. But that is the beauty of life! That is the beauty of being aligned with Divinity! One doesn’t know! One can’t claim to know! One only can LIVE! One can LIVE fully and with complete FAITH that the right path NEVER ceases. It can be a roller coaster ride, just like the book ‘Oh, the Places You’ll Go’. It has all sorts of ups, downs, and all-arounds. But that is life! There is nothing more or less to it. That is the only thing entitled to me. That alone is all the GRACE in the world that I could ever desire.

So I am blessed! There is no such thing as the illusion of a chaotic life. It is just as ordered as it ever was and ever will be. It just flows and emerges and is simply ideal and precious, in whatever way the path goes. Because it is my path, and it’s the only path that I could ever know!

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How to parent others with your parent function

How to parent others with your parent function

The second (auxiliary) cognitive function is, in archetypal terms, your parent function. This is the function you can call upon when “parenting” others.

Someone who is an ENTP or ESTP type, for example, has introverted thinking (Ti) as their parent function. They use this function to help others define their problems more sharply and bring clarity to the situation.

An INFJ or ISFF has extroverted feeling (Fe) as their parent function. When advising others, they use this function to relate to the other person and understand their motivations.

Things get more complicated and nuanced, however, when factoring in the age of the other person and their relationship to you.

Keep the Hero in its proper place

When interacting with a peer that you get along with well, it is fairly easy to remain in parent function mode when providing assistance or interacting with them.

When dealing with the elderly, a vulnerable person, your own parents. or a peer that you dislike, however, it is all too easy to slip into Hero (lead) function mode instead. The hero function’s more proper role is to serve in developing your personal identity. When used in an interaction with someone you are ‘parenting,” it can overwhelm them.

For example, an INFJ has Hero introverted intuition (Ni). When they have an insight to share with someone, it is best if they filter it through their parent function first and not just blurt it out. That filtering process will quite often result in the person keeping that insight to themselves until the time is right to share it.

In their zeal to help a person in need, an ESTJ or ENTJ might overwhelm the person with too much extroverted thinking (te) style solutions.

Things get even more interesting when pondering which functions you use with your parents. Karma and baggage from childhood may trigger you to use the Hero in anger, or regress into using the Child function, all too often. When you find yourself triggered in this way, it will reveal growth opportunities. If your parent is elderly, try using your parent function with them as much as you can (assuming your relationship with them is fairly healthy).

If you find yourself feeling impatient when helping someone, or if it is obvious that you wounded them or were unable to help them, check to see if you inadvertently slipped into Hero mode instead. Of course there are more extreme situations when, in order to get through to someone, or to set a boundary, you may need to invoke your Hero, with a strong helping of Anima/Animus, and bypass the parent function.

How to (not) use your parent function with children

When interacting with young children, using your child function instead of your parent function will help you meet them at their level.

One of the ironies of parenting is that using the parent function can backfire. This is because the shadow function of the parent function (the Witch/Senex) can get activated. The Opposing Parent contains the scripts of things we received in childhood from our own parents. Complexes sometimes run amok here. Before you know it, your parent function can be overtaken by your Opposing Parent function if you aren’t conscious of it. And if the Hero function gets thrown into the mix, it will escalate into a contentious situation.

For an interesting twist, or to break a negative pattern, if you are a parent of teenagers or young adults, try tapping into the child’s parent function. You might be pleasantly surprised at how well an ISFP teenage daughter can redecorate a room for you or pick out an outfit for you in a store. A 23-year-old ESFJ son could be just the right person to plan the family next vacation. An INTJ child could help you learn the best practices of a particular video game. And so on.

An important factor of children in regards to typology is that they can help you type into your Anima/Animus (inferior function) in a healthy way. A daughter may see her father’s feminine and softer side in a way her brother, and even her mother, does not. The same is true of mothers and sons. A mother may be able to better tap into her masculine energy if she has a son.

How to parent yourself

Re-parenting – or, parenting yourself – is an important part of maturity. Eventually one has to take care of oneself and stop relying on, and blaming, their parents for their problems.

However, you can’t use the parent function to parent yourself very well. You’ll need the parent functions of others for that, along with your other three functions, especially the Hero and Anima/Animus functions.

The right archetype for the right situation

A great thing about viewing the functions as archetypes is that it makes it is easier to call upon the functions deliberately – and to avoid using a certain function – as needed,

Keep in mind no two people use the same parent function the same way, because the parent archetype means something a little different to each person, so therefore there isn’t a “right” way to use a parent function.

There is a delicate geometry involved when interacting with others and the unique expression of their own functions. Respecting this will result in fewer collisions and more harmony and self-awareness.

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Nothing but You: Establishing Genuine Relationships With One Another

At the heart of Buber’s theology was his theory of dialogue—the idea that what matters is not understanding God in abstract, intellectual terms but, rather, entering into a relationship with him. Such a relationship, he believed, is possible only when we establish genuine relationships with one another.

Whoever goes forth to his You with his whole being and carries to it all the being of the world, finds him whom one cannot seek,” he wrote. In daily life, we usually fail to live up to this ideal. We tend to treat the people and the world around us as things to be used for our benefit. Without this mind-set, which Buber called “I-It,” there would be no science, economics, or politics. But, the more we engage in such thinking, the farther we drift from “I-You,” his term for addressing other people directly as partners in dialogue and relationship. Only when we say “You” to the world do we perceive its miraculous strangeness and, at the same time, its potential for intimacy. Indeed, it’s not only human beings who deserve to be called “You.” As Buber wrote, even a cat or a piece of mica can summon up in us the feeling of a genuine encounter with another: “When something does emerge from among things, something living, and becomes a being for me . . . it is for me nothing but You! – from The New Yorker

I totally relate to the I-You vs. the I-It dichotomy, and I find that having this I-You quality adds this intensely mystical property to it. It adds genuine life and dynamism to pretty much any reality.

I know that I’m in a really good vantage point when I’m in this deeper I-You interaction, because I know that it is breathing and pulsating with life. It is a game changer in terms of how we can view and directly interact (in a mystical way) with the universe!

Now on an even deeper level, I’ve heard Richard Tarnas give talks about this dichotomy of an I-You vs. I-It universe. In a nutshell, prior to Copernicus and his heliocentric theory, there was generally a greater mystical quality to the universe (an Anima Mundi) where the I-You was deeply living and breathing. However, after this pivotal point and progressing deeper and deeper as the Industrial Revolution occurred, a switch took place towards I-It, where a more impersonalized interaction with objects generally took place.

Tarnas does a fascinating job of describing how both of these worldviews really came alive at the various times in human history. It really stresses how the dichotomy of I-You vs. I-It strikes at the heart of how mysticism and science/technology have been viewed throughout human history.

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The biblical “great cloud of witnesses” and archetypal astrology

The biblical “great cloud of witnesses” and archetypal astrology

The biblical phrase “cloud of witnesses” has long enthralled for me, for it hints at the mystical and archetypal.

Hebrews 12:1 is the Bible verse where it’s mentioned:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

As I continue to do dream work with my Jungian analyst, and have begun to study archetypal astrology, the phrase “cloud of witnesses” keeps coming to mind.

Dreams are populated with archetypal figures that are, in essence, a cloud of witnesses. Animus/anima figures, who often have the persona of the inferior function of one’s personality type. Powerful cameo appearances from loved ones who are deceased and bring a message of healing. And, of course, shadow figures, that remind us of what we have trouble facing in waking life.

I love how James Hillman, the late, great Jungian psychologist and founder of archetypal psychology puts it:

In astrology, this cloud of witnesses is just as evident. It is easier to have self-compassion, and empathy for others, while reviewing the times in your life when you had difficult transits (such as the Saturn return and Uranus square Uranus) because you know that every other person has had a similar period. We are all witnesses to each other.

This archetypal support emboldens us to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

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What is mysticism?

What is mysticism?

During my podcast travels today I heard an excellent definition of mysticism from Elizabeth Gilbert and Richard Rohr.

Gilbert said the three things you need to create a feeling of peace in order to create are priorities, boundaries, and mysticism.

Mysticism is a human being encountering the mysterious and adding their labor to it. I believe that ideas want to be born, I believe that ideas have consciousness, that they circle the early formlessly looking for human beings to collaborate with to bring them into being.

In Oprah’s interview with Father Richard Rohr on her Super Soul Conversations podcast and show, she called Rohr a modern day mystic. He defined mystic as follows:

Someone who sees in whole rather than parts. They always end up emphasizing love as the center and the goal and the energy. Mystics are always non-dual seers.

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Your Two Weakest Cognitive Functions

So based on everything that I know in Socionics, there are specifically two functions that lag behind for us in terms of our proficiency:

1) The inferior and 2) The PoLR.

The main difference between the two is that in 1), we value it, and because of this (mainly our difficulty in applying this function), we would preferably seek out some complementary partner to perform it.

Contrastingly, in 2) we simply don’t see much value in performing it and so our difficulty here really stands out, likely even more so than in 1).

Based on this, I would almost say that both functions serve as quasi-PoLRs, even though one stands out more predominantly than the other.

Basically, I (as an INFJ) share with INFPs that dual pronged difficulty with both Te and Se, and both of these two functions in both types can be a decent struggle for both INF types to execute.

I would imagine that this can be generalized to all other types (where the first three letters are the same).

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The Prayer of Approach

The Prayer of Approach

Elizabeth Gilbert recommends saying this prayer before work:

I will drink from your well.

I will honor your gods.

I bring an undefended heart to a meeting place.

I will not negotiate by withholding.

I have no cherished outcome.

I am not subject to disappointment.

Amen.

Source: Debbie Millman’s interview with Elizabeth Gilbert

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