Saturday, March 14, 2009

Refining Ourselves
The Chief Negative Features— 7
Stubbornness—[20%]
Stubbornness aids in persistence and drive. It makes it easier to get where you want to go. You can pierce through barriers and shout down your opponents. This, by itself, makes it one of the most commonly used Features. Furthermore, this Feature has the ability to slide to each of the other six— another benefit of Stubbornness —I guess.
In the positive pole, this Feature leads to fortitude and determination. It’s users will slog ahead letting nothing get in their ways. Stubborn folks will find their ways through bottlenecks and plow through obstacles. Not much will stop their forward motion.

In the negative pole, however, they find it difficult to change course. They’ll put on the brakes when moving forward would benefit them far more. They can look prejudiced and obstinate, digging in their heels. Being unable to listen to suggestions or advice put forth by others, “I’ll do it my way, myself.” Determination and grit become obstinacy and mulishness. Inflexibility becomes the order of the day and the individual puts on blinders seeing only one possible outcome and doggedly slogging toward it— even if an alternate goal might be better in the long run. Folks in negative Impatience tend to get stuck. Growth can, as a result, grind to a halt.

There are lots of Stubborn politicians. On the positive end, these folks can push their agendas and find the fortitude to plow through the required paperwork. On the negative end [as we’ve seen too often, lately] Stubborn people can refuse to see anything positive on the other side of the aisle and absolutely refuse to work with people who aren’t marching in lock-step with them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've read all the descriptions of the chief features you wrote, and I must say your preference shows. ;-) But that's common; self-destruction sounds much more awful than arrogance or stubbornness. Being a long term Michael student and being close to people with a variety of chief features, I suppose I've learned the truth that there are no "better" chief features. There are no positive ones. Each one is a defense against something essential to the soul. (Some may be better for career, true, especially if work is filled with cardinal chief features which understand each other.)

But if we think one chief feature is better than another, it really shows more of our own judgment that it's ok that our soul is denied something that it truly needs to be all that we are.

two crows said...

hi, Matthew--
welcome to AtI.

I wasn't aware of showing a preference for one chief feature over another.
I guess that arrogance and greed -- being directed outward -- might be easier to live with, at least, for the person whose feature it is -- though not necessarily for those around him or her.

having almost died of my self-dep, and still struggling with it on occasion, I guess I might lean toward preferring the outward-focused ones.

still, I do understand, intellectually at least, that no feature [or any of the overleaves, ftm] are any better or worse than any others. I'm just rooting for the day when I can graduate from needing any chief feature at all.