The Four Tendencies: A Deeper Look

The four tendencies in a neat graph via gretchenrubin.com

I’m in a bit of a ‘mastermind’ group on Facebook. The idea is we’re supposed to motivate each other with posts and encourage each other.

One of our group members Cherie (an excellent blogger who I am linking here) posted this link for the Four Tendencies quiz: https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1950137/Four-Tendencies-January-2015

If you are a self improvement junkie like I am, you’ve heard of Gretchen Rubin. She wrote ‘The Happiness Project’ and other books about being happier/forming good habits. Her latest book is “Better Than Before” and in it is the Four Tendencies.

Four Tendencies is a framework for how you deal with internal and external expectations. For example, according to the quiz linked above, I am an ‘Obliger’ which means I meet external expectations but have a hard time meeting internal ones. This is apparently the most common tendency. The name of the podcast discussing this is called “Meet a work deadline but can’t go running on your own?” Sounds exactly like me, which is why Kassie’s ability to run marathons is something I admire!

What’s interesting is that obligers will meet expectations over and over and then rebel, usually in a symbolic way. The example they used of this is dying their hair. Guess who was thinking of being rose/gray? 🙂

Now that I know I need external motivation for my internal goals (for example, reporting to my mastermind group online that I was an unmotivated sloth), I feel myself making some headway.