Quagmire Style (Statement)

I was intrigued when I first heard about the Style Statement concept, as developed by Carrie McCarthy & Danielle LaPorte, at The Happiness Project last year (Gretchen is "Constructive Insouciant"), and then it was fun to read about SCB's Style Statement ("Refined Creative") adventure a few months back. Then a few weeks ago, Gretchen posted an interview with Carrie and Danielle, and I decided it would be fun to look into this for myself. (Note: if unfamiliar check SCB's or Gretchen's posts for the background and concept - since there are already summaries out there, I won't rehash.)

I found the book at one of the local libraries, but it didn't take much time browsing it to realize that I'd need to scribble all over this thing to make it work for me, so I broke down and bought a copy. In format, the book is a sort of wide-ranging, free-form workbook. It asks loads of probing questions, organized in various ways, interspersed with case studies - profiles and Style Statement definitions of various real people. Reading the case studies was nearly as significant to the process as answering the questions, because they presented a huge number of verbal concepts and traits to contemplate as you look for the ones that apply to you.

Yes, I had a bit of trouble with the authors' preferred language - that of a certain variety of New Age bathos for which I have little patience. I could go on at some great length complaining about gag-inducing phrases like, "the divine audacity of dreaming big," and, "authenticity magnifies and heals and delights," which would typically induce me to drop-kick the book through the window of the nearest independent coffee shop right in the middle of their Tuesday night all-female poetry jam. But I was interested enough in the basic concept to stick with it anyway, and it could have been far worse. (Yes, I'm holding back.)

Notwithstanding the above, I really did enjoy the exercise. There are a ton of questions, and some are much easier to answer than others - but, of course, some question that leaves me scratching my head might be the key to the whole for someone else. I loved that the questions covered both, "What Works Well for Me," and, "What Does Not Work Well for Me" (those are actual headings under each section). Some themes emerged pretty readily as I was answering the questions, and they didn't surprise me much. Some recurrent notions (from both the positive and negative sides):

• Ease
• Order
• Low-Maintenance (a craving)
  
• Respect
• Systems
• Solitude
• Intimacy
  
• Quiet (as in, not loud)
  
• Thinking (as an action)
• Ideas (as objects)
• Connections
  
• Freedom (a couple of different sorts)
• Space (mostly figurative)
  
• Avoidance/Evasion/Escapism/Withdrawal
  
• Functionality (the supreme value)
• Idealism (as in, what annoys me)
• Sentimentality (as in, what else annoys me)
  

Of course, none of those ideas is wholly new to my conception of Me, so I had to pause to ask whether I was getting through this too easily. Am I just generating the answers I expect to see? Or, am I fixating on concepts that, due to present circumstances, I'm particularly feeling the burden and/or lack of right now? Possibly - but I honestly do think they're all pretty Authentic (in Style Statement parlance) and representative of the greater part of me. And I did make a few new connections. At one point I found myself writing, "Books contain ideas, and ideas are what I take with me when I go to live inside my head." Oh. That's why I have so many books.

The first style statement word, the Foundation, is meant to represent 80% of your self, your essence, your first nature. It's also meant to apply to physical things - things associated with conventional meanings of "style." Looking at the ideas I'd communicated through the question exercises, I was able to get a feel for what my Foundation should express: intentional order, ease, connections between elements, an attraction and devotion to the things that work and make sense, balance.

The appendices contain extensive definitions (like this one) for 40 or so Foundation words. Once I'd narrowed my concepts down to a few possibilities, I went over the definitions with a highlighter and pen, lining the statements that were a strong match, and redlining the ones that were no match. With the results of that exercise, the answer was easy to see.

The second word, your Creative Edge, represents 20% of your self, your image and persona. If the Foundation is "what" you most basically are, the Creative Edge describes "how" you are that "what." Carrie and Danielle offer a long list of Creative Edge starter options, and advise you to sit down with the list and a dictionary and thesaurus (!) and all your answers. Again, given the ideas I'd generated and the explanation of the Creative Edge concept, I figured out what my Creative Edge should relate: thought, as both an activity and an approach; ideas, as tools and playthings and things to just look at; mind, as both concept and place. Abstraction. Ideation. Cerebral existence.

So, after tweaking and trying on and so forth, what seems to work is:

Composed Intellective

Carrie and Danielle's definition of Composed is here. One key bit: "Inner peace and feeling “at home” are synonymous to them." Intellective is the word I use when I mean Intellectual (as in cerebral) but need to avoid socio-cultural baggage - but in this case, I think there are nuanced differences that make it the more precise option.

On balance, this was definitely a worthwhile exercise, though it's time consuming and occasionally frustrating. Compared to other systems of self-analysis (self-labeling?), this is organic - if you're looking for another form of, "Take this fifty-item quiz and sort yourself into one of our four (or nine or sixteen) types," that's not what you'll find here. And I think that's probably a good thing every once in awhile.