Personal Growth

One thing about being a professional network marketer is that your leaders stress the area of personal growth.  I believe as a Christian we call it sanctification.  Now before you get the tar and feathers out… again, hear me out.  Fixing your flesh has many parallels to fixing your heart (soul & spirit).  In most cases, you need a coach / church to help you along the way.  You also must be a little further down the path of the person you are hoping to help.

At our Vancouver training in May, they used the color code personality analysis to open people’s eyes to themselves and others.  Here is the link, you should take this test yourself.  Free Color Code Personality Test  (post your results in the comments section below). The two I want to focus in on is Blue (that is my true color) and Red (that is what I assume people, that don’t know me, think I am).  Blue is motivated by intimacy and Red is motivated by power.  When I first took the test I assumed I was a Red.  Primarily because of the constant leadership positions I invariably place myself in or am forced to assume.  That was the first eye opener.  When I studied it, I knew I really was a Blue.  I did not understand the basis of the personal conflict of my Red persona.  I naturally understood this system.  I presumed my wife was a White.  My daughter was a Yellow.  I understood and began to contemplate how to use this in my life and my business.

The second and most important revelation came the final day of the Vancouver training.  Shawn Owens told the story about as 4 year old, his natural father started undermining him and his self worth.  He intentionally and callously did and said things to make Shawn feel like a failure.  Shawn has had to overcome that scarring to succeed.  Hence the stress on personal growth.

After hearing Shawn’s story, I immediately thought of my relationship with my step father.  My Mom remarried when I was 12,  and as an old school southern man, my step father did not tolerate any smart back talk from a Yankee boy.  That is when the beatings started. You see, I never lacked confidence in who I am, so when things were wrong, I said so.  He did not appreciate that from me, so a leather strap was used to attempt to correct that.  I remember going to Junior High PE and being asked how I got those marks on my legs / back from the PE teacher.  Now a days an investigation would be held.  In 1973, in the south, nothing more was said.  These beatings continued through me graduating High School and since the strap was not doing the job, apparently a handy hammer was going to be more effective.  It was mostly a threat, but that was the final straw.  My Mom and I took off for California.  They reconciled a couple of months later.  My Mom went back to Florida and I stayed on my own in California.

Now, before you get all out of shape.  My step father found the Lord and became a different man.  He became a loving husband to my Mom and the closest thing to a father my younger brother ever had.  He was beloved by our children and I actually gave his eulogy and testimony at his funeral.  God had a happy ending planned all along.

Back to the personal growth and my color code identity crisis.  Reds love and seek power.  They respect power.  I learned to act like and respond like a red.  Why?  I did not understand until that Sunday in Vancouver.  Where Shawn’s confidence was crushed, my confidence never wavered.  I suffered in a different way.  I learned to act and behave like a red, because they had the power.  Obviously men like my step father can not be trusted with power, so I took over when I deemed it necessary.  I was not going to allow another innocent (like that small boy inside me) to suffer at the hands of those in power, who are undeserving.  Anyone in power was always suspect (I still believe that is a good course of action).  That being said, I took on more than I should have.  I took on more than I was prepared for.  I took on the accusations, the blame, the envy, the hurtful words and all the consequences, just to make sure an undeserving Red did not abuse their power.

This has caused stress in my family and other relationships.  When there is a threat to the innocent, naive or simply unaware, I feel compelled to protect.  That often means a scorch and burn approach between me and the potentially offending Red.  I make the DMZ very clear and leave no doubt that the consequences will be intensified if they do not back off and leave the unharmed I am attempting to protect.  In many cases I get pain from both sides.  The potentially offending party as well as from the one I am supposedly protecting.  Why?  Many times they do not recognize the situation, are enamored by their afflictor or perhaps I am just flat out wrong.

Here is the personal  realization I came to that Sunday morning.  Where my confidence was protected in my childhood event, it created in me a desire to protect those that potentially were like me.  You see, no one came to my aid during those 6 years of physical and psychological abuse.  That young boy cried alone at night.  He fantasied grabbing a gun off the rack and killing that horrible man.  He wondered why no one was there to protect him.  He grew up to be a man that would not stay quiet when those circumstances appeared in other people’s lives.  He shut the abusive Reds out.  He scorched them in action and word.  He found it safer to destroy the relationship, then take a risk of allowing anyone else to be hurt like he was.

You see, I have to personally grow and wander a little further down the path, before I can help myself and those that are following me.  Losing weight is just one more step.  Unburdening myself from my past is another.  Healing is just one more.  I have to do all of this, because some of you will be following me down the same path I am traveling.  I need to be prepared and ready to help you, like those that went before me, are helping me now.  May God Bless You.

Comment on this article if it helps you or you agree with it. It will encourage me to write more.