Download Episode Hereright click link and select “Save Link As…”

In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about how our culture tends to resist maps and models of human development due to the threats it poses to our ideals.

In this podcast you’ll find:

  • Ability to handle feedback can be a personal growth challenge.
  • We objectify people in media.
  • The Graves Model (aka Spiral Dynamics) is a vertical model.
  • It feels like a hierarchy which is icky to some people.
  • Is it a bad thing to look at hierarchical models?
  • Graves Model podcast
  • Vertical and Horizontal Models
  • These are just lenses to see reality through.
  • The horizontal model assumes everyone is at the same level of development (MBTI).
  • A Vertical Model assumes everyone is at different levels of achievement (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs).
  • Clare Graves discovered the Graves Model.
  • Then there was an attempt to remove the hierarchical nature of it.
  • The numbered levels were changed to colors to make it feel less hierarchical, and it came to be known as Spiral Dynamics.
  • It is a hierarchical system, however.
  • A horrible human being can be at any level just like an amazing human being can be at any level.
  • Character isn’t related to Graves Level.
  • It is an attempt to see where we were and where we are going.
  • Are hierarchical models good or bad?
  • Enneagram attempts to create distinctions between how people show up within their Enneagram type.
  • Riso & Hudson Enneagram book had 9 point system within each type.
  • At the bottom of this 9 point system is suicide and homicidal tendencies.
  • At the top is transcendence.
  • That version of the system is hierarchical.
  • It is a good gauge for determining where you want to go vs. where you don’t want to be.
  • No one has arrived. There is no end game.
  • These hierarchical models are like a compass.
  • Be at peace with where you’re at and accept there is still a better version of yourself you can manifest.
  • This is the conversation of our time.
  • Lots of social causes today: memes, gender viewpoints, wealth distribution, nationalism, etc.
  • We tend to inject vertical models into horizontal models.
  • Even within Myers-Briggs, we try to create a hierarchical structure.
  • Zero to One Podcast
  • SPOILER ALERT: Star Wars The Last Jedi
  • The Force is available to everyone, which killed the hierarchy of the Jedi.
  • We get a massive pushback whenever we invoke a vertical model.
  • You are ultimately the person who navigates your healing and growth.
  • How do we get us all on a horizontal level, so we all have the same possibilities?
  • Personal empowerment is the birthplace of reform.
  • The more you work on your empowerment, the more the culture sees the need to change.
  • We oversimplify all this stuff which is why we like models because it gives us a simpler way of breaking down the nodes that contribute to the system.
  • As an individual, we are responsible for our personal growth and empowerment.
  • Models remind us that nobody has arrived. We are all on various paths.
  • Time and the universe aren’t going to stop to accommodate us.
  • Sometimes we have to start all over, and we don’t get rewarded for some of our hard work.
  • The universe rewards determination, persistence, and personal responsibility.
  • We cannot expect culture to do our work for us.
  • If you don’t want to be perpetually victimized you have to figure out how not to be a victim.
  • Our egos don’t do us any favors.
  • “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
  • When looking at maps and models, the question isn’t ‘Is this wrong.’ It is ‘Is this useful.
  • Don’t abandon a model just because your ego gets triggered and you don’t like how it feels.
  • If that happens, that makes it a very useful model.
  • It is shining a bright light in a dark place.
  • “I don’t like this because I don’t like where I’m at.”
  • It is your job to figure out where you want to be.
  • A lot of systems have been democratized and there is an expectation that everything should be democratized.
  • Not everything can be democratized.
  • One of the best ways to understand our You Are Here dot as humanity is to look at long enough timelines.
  • Forgetting history is easy.
  • The world didn’t start when you were born.
  • We are on an exponential growth curve, but we haven’t arrived.
  • Human evolution is incredibly slow.
  • You can tell when someone is doing personal growth willingly and when they are doing it unwillingly.
  • When someone’s life has fallen apart, and they have to do growth work just to survive. They may approach growth kicking and screaming.
  • Versus someone who has taken on the mantle of personal growth and does it willingly. They have a zen-like approach to change.
  • Our collective egos are bucking against where we are really at.
  • We don’t like it when reality gives us harsh reminders of how much work we still have to do.
  • Isn’t it better to have a map even if you don’t like where your You Are Here dot is?
  • The only way to get to where we want to be is to acknowledge where we are at and carve a path to where we want to be.
  • If you have some definite ideas about how you think the world should be, grab a microphone and create a platform.
  • Create content that moves the needle.
  • Stand for something don’t just stand against things.

 In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about how our culture tends to resist maps and models of human development due to the threats it poses to our ideals. #podcast #personaldevelopment #personalgrowth #gravesmodel #spiraldynamics

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

Subscribe with iTunes
Non-iTunes Link
Download The Android App
Subscribe on Soundcloud
Subscribe with Stitcher
Subscribe on Google Play
Subscribe with Facebook Messenger

If you like the podcast and want to help us out in return, please leave an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! We would be eternally grateful!

Want to learn more?

Discover Your Personal Genius

free-personality-test-myers-briggs-2

We want to hear from you. Leave your comments below…

27 comments

  • Matej Ferenc
    • Matej Ferenc
    • May 7, 2018 at 4:43 pm

    Where can I find the hierarchical structure for a specific enneagram type where one can see the stages of the particular’s type development?

  • John Danzer
    • John Danzer
    • May 7, 2018 at 3:30 am

    Just a little encouragement from Theodore Roosevelt:

    “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat… The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.”

  • Hal
    • Hal
    • May 5, 2018 at 1:37 pm

    Listening to this podcast I keep thinking, a tree’s leaves are way higher than its roots but that doesn’t mean leaves are in some way better. I know. Trees are not all vertical models. Just what I’m thinking.

  • Maureen Fanta
    • Maureen Fanta
    • May 2, 2018 at 10:08 pm

    My daughter, while hearing this podcast playing in the other room:

    “Oh. Antonia and Joel are in the apartment again.”

    Disembodied house guests, I suppose!

    Re: actual podcast. Good topic, good job. I go on the assumption that it’s difficult to understand the Graves model unless a person is AT LEAST a four, but probably a five. You’d have to have moved through enough levels yourself to be able to intuit the later levels so that you can even grasp the concept. A three will not want to hear that their rebellion is predictable. A five will be able to remember passing through three and therefore be able to take a more outside perspective on themselves as they go about raging against the machine.

  • Marilyn Schramm
    • Marilyn Schramm
    • May 2, 2018 at 9:58 pm

    I may be wrong, because I’m somewhat of a newcomer to Spiral Dynamics. (I studied it to try & make better sense of my world.). But isn’t it inherent in the Graves Model that those at the higher levels have greater ability to “see” & understand the worldview/perspectives of the lower levels? And, of course, it does not go the other way (ie, lower level “understanding” of higher level b4 they actually achieve). So, isn’t it expected that lower levels would be turned off by those who identify at higher level? But I think Antonia was saying – one can respond to that self-identification in an egoistic way, or one can use it as motivation for further work on personal development (and perhaps pick up some role models along the way). I believe I am teetering, not yet fully transformed to Yellow.

Leave a comment

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.