Archive for Alchemy Network Workshop
I attended the Alchemy Network “Life Bliss” retreat weekend from July 21st to July 23rd, 2006 in Sechelt, BC – Canada. The workshop was conducted by my personal life coach and close friend, Jean-Pierre LeBlanc.
This was my 8th Alchemy weekend in the last three years. I always pick up something valuable from these retreats. This time we focused on enneagrams, which deal with nine different basic personality types. If you are interested in learning more about enneagrams going to the Enneagram Institute web site would be a good place to start. Enneagrams are an alternative method of assessing personality types to the Myers-Briggs test and the DISC test.
There are a lot of personality and communication style assessments out there. My current assessment of these assessments is that they all have something to offer and the more we can do to discern personality differences without pigeon-holing people, the more empathic and less judgmental we can become in dealing with other people. This can be a good thing.
There are a number of forces that influence who we are: in addition to choice, we have genetic make up, birth order, gender, nutrition, exercise, education, having nurturing parents, not having nurturing parents, having nurturing mentors, not having nurturing mentors, physical challenges, psychological challenges, and emotional challenges to name just a few. All of these influences blend together, some with greater impact than others, and the result is the unique human beings we are. I find this fascinating and very useful when considering our clients, opposing parties, opposing counsel and ourselves. Hmm, that’s an interesting expression “opposing counsel.”