The Producer Personality: and 3.5 steps to find balance
/As a society, we have a leaning towards our masculine side: the producer personality type. We’re achievers, doers, goal-setters, and task-masters. We’re often more comfortable giving than we are receiving. And when a child walks in the door from school, the first thing we ask is: “What did you do today?”
things that should be asked
often. in every type. of
relationship :
how is your heart.
is your breath happy. here.
do you feel free.
- Nayyirah Waheed
Producer Tendencies:
When we are overly exerted in our masculine, we become very attached to the way something should go, look, or feel. It’s easy to become headstrong about a goal or an idea.
At any given moment, producers are focused on the next achievement. Often it can feel like happiness is just around the next corner, an always elusive destination. There’s rarely a moment to stand still.
If you’re like me, you were raised in or adopted the tendencies of “hard work,” “life is not easy,” “no free rides,” “if I don’t do it nobody will”...
Eventually, we tie our self-worth to our achievements, and bolt it together for safe-keeping. Life becomes a rapid routine of hurtling one challenge after the next.
Awareness
Any of those tendencies sound familiar?
They certainly do to me. And a great number of my clients as well.
In my own work, I have found that even the slightest change of perspective, or awareness, can create a lot of good in our lives.
At some point, I became exhausted of chasing endless goals and never really arriving at destination happiness. So I came to my own awarenesses around my producer tendencies, that helped me to heal expand. Here they are:
ONE /// Tomorrow is not guaranteed. I don’t mean to go full-throttle “end of days” here, but let’s be honest. It’s not. Chasing tomorrow’s happiness is a waste of today’s happiness. Instead of focusing on the BIG items that will make you happy down the line (this job, this amount of money…) focus on the small things that make you happy now.
TWO /// Work with the power of intention. Instead of goal-setting, consider being of intention. This is the ability to set forth a positive affirmation for yourself. Think in terms of feeling. Here’s the difference:
Goal - I am going to make one-thousand dollars in sales by October 1, 2016.
Intention - Abundance flows to me, easily and effortlessly, in all forms as I live my divine right livelihood on the planet, now.
Neat. Huh?
TWO & A HALF /// Let go. That’s the beauty of an intention, it creates s p a c e for good to show up. Meaning, we’re not trying to fit our good through a straw, instead we open up to allow our good to come in all forms (especially those we could not have conceived on our own).
THREE /// What’s the point of building castles in the sky if there’s nobody there to share the view? One of the biggest tragedies I see in the over-achiever is tendencies of isolation / separation. The gift of focus can foray into the extremes of spiritual separation and separation in our relationships with partners, children, families, or friends. Over achievers are often so independent, or used to going it alone, they have not even considered opening to something beyond his or hers’ own capacity. That’s why it becomes important to open up to receiving help from others. That’s right. We get by with a little help from our friends.
For an over-achiever this can be as simple as saying YES when someone offers a helping hand.
I distinctly remember a fellow healer offering me the suggestion of being more in my Divine Feminine / receptivity. “How on Earth do I do that?” I asked. She gave a round of examples of common things we often refuse in the form of service, one of them is allowing someone to hold the door open for us. I remember laughing a bit at the simplicity of this suggestion. Until the following week when someone offered to hold the door open for me and I literally felt a guttural reaction of “NOOO!!” As if someone holding the door open was insinuating I could not take care of myself - thankyouverymuch.
This can be one of the many signs we’re shutting down our ability to receive. And folks, what I’ve learned in all of this, is that it’s just as honorable to receive as it is to give.
In my own work, I have found I am far more effective, “productive,” and certainly happier when I round out my masculine tendencies with the strength and power of the Divine Feminine. Together, we become a fluid force, like the breath, able to give and receive.
So let me ask:
How is your heart?
Is your breath happy here?
Do you feel free?
Resources
Additional poetry by Nayyirah Waheed:
