What were you raised to believe as a child?

I'm a D and I'm Okay!

I have just finished facilitating our PeopleSmart Solutions International, adolescent programme DISCovering Me and I have come away feeling as if I have been playing and having fun for two days! I love working with children of this age! Compared to adults they are for the most part like human sponges, all I need to do is provide new information, (the water) and they willing soak up whatever they can....they are for the most part, always willing to give new things ago. 

So what happens  as we grow into adulthood.... what stops us from being in the world in an experiential way, of seeing the magic in what we do? 

What were you raised to believe as a child?  

Did you PERCEIVE your environment to be friendly? 
Or not friendly?  Favorable? Or Antagonistic?

Did you think tasks SHOULD be handled by taking control of or dominating the "how it got done?  Or did you the decide that “things should be taken care of and handled CORRECTLY and guarded?  Or not?

Were you raised in a CULTURE, an ECONOMY, a WORK ETHIC with STRICT or LENIENT RULES to follow?  What story did you make up about yourself, your parents, your siblings and yourself?

Once you felt a strong sense of comfort, was it an emotional feeling that you could confidently keep behaving from your favorite of the four DIMENSIONS of DISC – and how often was that feeling reinforced?  Or not?  Did you keep having to try something new? Or did you know  at a very early age exactly who you were and what you could bring to life around you?

Over time, what did you find that worked for you?  Was it easy to get others to love you, accept you, approve of you for most of the time?  Were you blessed with a level of satisfaction that others seemed to envy?

Or are you still looking for that because no one anchored it for you very solidly as a child.  Or did you already know who you were?  Either way, you would have continued to "Gather Evidence" to prove that your way of doing things was “right.”

And were you given a profile that identified your style? Or was it mostly by “trial and error?”  Those who are lucky enough to have a teacher trained in the PeopleSmart DISC Method for Understanding Self and Others™ automatically recognize people’s primary style – AND they have a good idea of what underlying emotions are running them – or the other people around them.  Without training, the emotional response is all you have to go on – and those do not give people a sense of stability or security.  It certainly is not “fact based”.  

So what is this Method?

The system we call the  DISC Personal Styles was seen, researched, noted and described by a Dr. William Marston in the 1920’s.  An Amerian who identified the four most common patterns of behavior - Problems, People, Pace and Procedures that describe the main focus of the DIS and C primary styles.  He gave us this new language to use so we could start to understand why we are most satisfied and happy when operating in our COMFORT ZONE – being called on to use our greatest gifts – and it is what we go back to anytime we are under any sense of pressure, fear or fatigue.

A CHILDREN’S MINI ME DISCovery profile shows us where a child tends to be most of the time in the four primary dimensions or FOCUS’s of life.

Our DISC graph shows the intensity of our needs to use any one of the four dimensions as either LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH. And these four style-types become our friends!

Early this year I started working with a local principal who first invited me to profile the teachers. Because of what value the staff were getting we decided to explore and give exercises to the 11 and 12 year old students to better prepare them for entering high school.  The goal was to illuminate and bring into awareness these four dimensions of DISC and it turned into an overwhelming success according to the children and teacher involved!  

The children responded intuitively and enthusiastically, because they recognized and identified with the strength of their own unique style characteristics.  

Every child, teenager or adult needs to know that we are OK - just the way we are and are not!

Through the teacher identifying each child's primary style by answering a MINI ME Profile Questionnaire  and the children sharing their style with each other to help them see and identify theirs and other's strengths and their most typical styles... we were able to point out that they are not ALWAYS any one way - and they don't need to feel "Stuck" with the style they are using. There were smiles all around after that!! The quiet shy children now could see that they could change if they had the desire to. 

In fact, by just learning how to recognize each of the four major style types, children learn quickly that they are not limited by any one of them and they can truly adapt and adjust their own behaviors, thus resulting in harmony, caring and understanding types of behaviors consistently and in different ways – regardless of whom they are with!

Once anyone can see their behavior (and know that there are three other styles that others have that they do not), they can begin to CHOOSE the appropriate behavior for the situation they find themselves in - and they DANCE ON THE DISC!

Both Carol and I have a feeling that the DISCovering Me Programme is going is to be the access that helps us live out our mission that "children around the world are raised by families and teachers who help them value and understand what is special and unique in both themselves and others."

CLICK HERE to read what the children that have participated in the DISCovering Me Programme say about themselves after just two three hour workshop sessions... these comments were written by the children to introduce themselves to their new teacher... 

---