Personality Style SEVEN: The Joyful Person
Core Value Tendency: SEVENS are attracted to and value joy, variety, and excitement. They desire to be happy persons, seeking to make the world a more delightful place to live in. SEVENS want to taste and experience all the possibilities life has to offer. Having fun and being positive is what life is all about.
Adaptive Cognitive Schema: The objective vision that keeps SEVENS aligned with their true nature and with reality is the realization that reality exists only in the here and now and reality unfolds through action and work in the present. Perspiration is as important as inspiration. Living in accordance with what is, with the objective plan of the universe is more satisfying than living out of one’s own unrealistic plans and fantasies.
Adaptive Emotional Schema: The condition that accompanies the SEVENS’ objective paradigm is sobriety, which involves a sense of proportion. Sobriety means living a balanced life in the present moment. The sober person takes in only as much as is needed and expends only as much energy as is called for. Fulfillment comes from living a temperate reasonable life-style. Happiness is the result of living and working in the present.
Adaptive Behavioral Schemas: Persistent work in the present and bringing projects to completion are behaviors that flow from responsible action and the virtue of sobriety. Work and play become indistinguishable when you do what you love and love what you’re doing. SEVENS have a great appreciation for life and want to celebrate and enjoy it. Able to find some good in everything, they have a childlike responsiveness to the world. Optimistic, vivacious, creative, and full of interesting ideas, they have an intuition for future possibilities and are great visionaries. They have a sense for what might go right, what will be a happy outcome.
Maladaptive Cognitive Schema: When SEVENS exaggerate their joyful qualities, they over-identify with the idealized self image of I am O.K. To compensate for a maladaptive belief that their options are limited and they are on the verge of being bored or depressed, they overindulge the pleasure principle, seeking to maximize enjoyment and minimize pain. They dislike having their options limited by the reality principle that says they must accommodate to what is and occasionally do what they have to do vs only doing what they want to do. They become compulsively optimistic, seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. They become addicted to highs and only want to have good experiences. By staying up, SEVENS try to avoid every feeling down.
Maladaptive Emotional Schema: By believing they must stay above and ahead of pain, SEVENS experience the passion of gluttony, if a little pleasure is good, more enjoyment is better. SEVENS develop a hedonistic approach to life seeking to spice up their life by having ever more interesting and exciting experiences. They opt for a fun-filled if not a fulfilled life.
Maladaptive Behavioral Schema: Perceiving the world as their oyster and fostering a glutinous life style, SEVENS are driven to make things more exciting and fun. They overindulge their imaginations, coming up with fantastic schemes and plans. They keep proposing new options and possibilities. They find it difficult to stay with one project or relationship for a long period of time. They may flit from one interest to another, filling their lives with fluff.
What is Avoided: Because they are trying hard to be happy, SEVENS avoid experiencing or expressing any pain or suffering. When something or someone ceases to be fun, SEVENS may drop them and move on to more novel adventures. They get nervous when they only have one thing to attend to or only have one option available. They don’t believe any good can come from quiet and darkness and instead seek distractions and light, whether it be light-hearted or light-headed. They avoid getting too heavy or serious.
Defensive Maneuvers: SEVENS avoid suffering and pain through sublimation. They program their computers for pleasant experiences and nothing computes or reaches them that’s not nice. They look for the silver lining in dark clouds and make sure everything comes up roses. Like alchemists, SEVENS turn dross materials and drab circumstances into precious experiences and happenings. Even death becomes an interesting trip.
Childhood Development: SEVENS learned that a little sugar helps the medicine go down and honey gets you what you need faster than lemon can. A cheerful pleasant disposition pleased their parents and got them approval. Entertaining others and being the life of the party brought its social rewards. SEVENS may not have experienced much pain or humiliation in their childhood, or if they did, they laughed at their hurt instead of being brought down by it. They found that people were more interested in their stories than in their pain so they became master storytellers.
Non-Resourceful State: When SEVENS are under stress, they may intellectualize, spiritualize, sublimate, and plan more to avoid confronting painful situations. They get further into fantasy and farther from doing. They may try to avoid work more, distract themselves, and attempt to lighten things up. If all of the above don’t work, they may get resentful, critical, and disappointed that reality is raining on their parade and their fantastic expectations aren’t being met.
Resourceful State: When SEVENS are in a resourceful relaxed state, they channel their energies and stay focused vs scattering and getting distracted. They say to themselves: “I am wise and perceptive” instead of I’m a lightweight. They put their creative bursts and inspirations into a system and structure. They stay with a project or interest, going deeply into it, until they really understand and savor the experience instead of being a dilettante. Now able to be still and observant, they appreciate silence and solitude. Practicing detachment and sobriety, they stay in the present taking in only as much as they need and expending only as much energy as the situation requires. I am therefore I delight replaces I have to be up to be accepted.
