Alex Fayle has a really interesting post today, Taming the Voices in the Personality Zoo. It describes a fun and really useful way to sort out what stops us from achieving what we want.

By assigning each piece of resistance a personality, I can diffuse the internal argument by recognizing the emotion attached to the thought and therefore come up with effective ways to work around or dismantle the particular excuse for not continuing. (It’s also a whole lot of fun!)

Alex links to his own zoo and the Lab Rats (Cat, Jim and Brett) list theirs. It’s an interesting read and I started to list my own voices.

My own voices.

My list include the good ones as well as the not so good ones.

  • Zen Bengt is always around, calm and centered.
  • Optimistic Bengt is almost always there too, thinks that everything will work out and it all just gets better and better.
  • Confident Bengt is also mostly there, he knows that it will work out in the end, even if it’s unchartered territory part of the way.
  • Tugboat Bengt is doing most of the work, moving stuff and get the ball rolling.
  • Lazy Bengt pops up now and then, thinks that we have worked a lot and deserve a break, we can start again later or even later…
  • Distraction Bengt is looming in the background. He comes in sometimes and talks about nice things like walks, reading and Twitter. Could we not do that, just for a while?
  • Impatient Bengt is also looming in the background. He thinks that we could have been there already if we only had focused on what we should do.
  • Procrastination Bengt is luckily a rather rare visitor, he tries to team up with Lazy Bengt in order to get more influence.
  • Frustrated Bengt is a strange companion to Zen Bengt. He comes in to clear out the disturbing voices in order to get back to work and focus.

What’s in your Personality Zoo?

Credit image: Sign @ Africa Alive, Suffolk at Flickr

This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.