Me and my kiddo

Me and my kiddo

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Spitting Sticks

I have a dear friend who told me that we were good cows; we were both good at spitting sticks. I love this idea, but she did need to explain.

We have both dealt with medical challenges where we needed to go beyond conventional medicine to look for root-causes. When exploring those realms, one often finds resources that have mixed value. There can be awesome gems of insight and... um, less delightful things mixed in.

So, the cow analogy. A good cow excels at eating the green grass (finding and cherishing the good bits) and spitting out the sticks.  I use this metaphor often!



One of my favorite examples of this experience is this tool which is one of many personality / temperament / tendencies tests: https://my.liveyourtruth.com/freecourse/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMItri3soSO5gIVQP7jBx0HFgHIEAAYASAAEgJTkPD_BwE

(Start 5min in to the 37min, just re-watched this half hour with my son again and we delighted in how powerfully our types predict our tendencies. But, ya, hefty dose of spitting sticks!)

I have been amazed at how well I find these four types cover the spectrum of people and how much insight there is for mining. I find it more useful than Hogwarts houses or Meyers-Briggs or a dozen other categorizing tests I've done.

Of course, there's always the caveat that no system eliminates individuality and everyone makes their own choices. But, I see this as another example of the unique, Aristotelean slate that we are all born with.

(I'm a solid type 1 (secondary 2) and my husband is a type 4 and my child a type 3. We've chatted about how much that explains for our tendencies and preferences.)

But, there are references in this system to which element is associated with the types and yin / yang energies and other things that didn't provide any value to us. So, this a fun one and a useful one and free-with-an-email-address... but, for us it required being good at spitting sticks.