Your Hidden Symmetry Read online

  Natalie, a Four, was going to meet two friends for dinner after work one day. Since she worked in the neighborhood where they were going to meet, she agreed to find a restaurant once she left the office and then call them to let them know where to go. But when they got Natalie’s call, she was sitting on a bench on the street. The first place she went to was too crowded, at the second she didn’t like the menu, the third had a long wait, the fourth was too expensive, and the fifth too cheap. At that point, she threw up her hands, wailing, “I can’t decide!”

  The bamboo has many branches spreading out from its trunk, and in just this way, your attention can go in many directions. At times there are so many things to consider and think about that you can find it hard to focus on just one. But this theme of distraction can affect you in other ways as well. For example, it’s not unusual for Fours to be voracious readers of philosophy or how-to books but not do much with what they’ve learned. One woman had a floor-to-ceiling stack of self-help books by her bed; as soon as she finished one book, she’d immediately start another, but never put what she learned to use. She realized that she was actually using these books to keep herself distracted from deciding what she really wanted to do with her life.

  The Influence of … Influence

  One pattern that’s strong in the Four nature centers around the concept of influence. For one thing, you can be easily influenced by others. Being so good at listening and adapting to those around you can affect your own process. If you’re trying to make a decision, you’ll hear what your friends have to say and if there are too many differing opinions, you’ll feel even more uncertain. Or you’ll make up your mind, but then your best friend will ask, “Really?” and you’ll back off from your choice. If this happens too often, you can develop a feeling that you’ve been gullible and may become less trusting overall—not a good thing. Some Fours develop a strong natural skepticism and tend to doubt others’ opinions or motives, and people often have to work hard to earn this number’s trust. Some Fours take this too far and become overly judgmental and cynical.

  But at the same time, you can be highly influential for other people. They’ll listen to you because they sense you’ve thought things through and that you’re not trying to push your own agenda. As a Four, you make a great mentor; but you’ll also thrive if you have your own mentor or series of advisors to help guide you. You’ll need to bounce ideas off individuals whose advice you feel you can trust.

  Self-Judgment and Overthinking

  As much as there’s a potential to be judgmental about others, the worst of any judgment will be directed within: You can be extremely hard on yourself. The Four nature can keep you tensed up inside, upset with yourself over every little misstep. If you don’t find ways to not judge yourself so harshly, this can become a self-destructive impulse, at worst causing a struggle with depression or addiction. It’s important to find outlets for that tension, and regular physical exercise can be an easy solution.

  As a Four, you’re an excellent thinker! But you can be so good at it that you can get in your own way. You think and think and think about an issue and may end up overthinking and never moving forward with a decision. What can really drive your friends crazy is that your response to any question may be some form of “Let me think about it.” It can be days or weeks—or even months or years—before that thinking process is complete!

  As part of that quality, you pay special attention to timing, and if it doesn’t quite feel right for something, you choose to wait before taking action. You can seem like an excellent procrastinator while family and friends wonder what in the world is going on in your head. Sometimes your emphasis on waiting for that perfect time results in your being absolutely right and hitting the jackpot! But overconcern about timing can also result in your missing opportunities as you focus on waiting for some absolute right moment.

  Anna was a highly respected business coach who taught advanced trainings for professionals, but her workshops often didn’t happen. It wasn’t because she didn’t have enough people interested—in fact, they were clamoring to take her courses. But Anna had a terrible time settling on a date for each session. She’d decide on one weekend but then would back off and remove it from her website schedule, wanting to think about it some more. Anna’s students were continually frustrated and complaining that they couldn’t rely on her to give them what they needed to complete their course, and eventually many went off to study with someone else who wasn’t as good a teacher but who kept her schedule firm.

  Some Fours live all in their heads. They’re very analytical, interested only in theoretical concepts, and appear rather quiet and intellectual to others. But Fours can also be natural-born poets and artists and choose creative lives. In addition, they’re very idealistic and aware of all the suffering in the world; because of this, many Fours do philanthropic work or donate their time in their drive to change the world for the better.

  Being out in nature is especially nurturing for your energy if you’re a Four. You need to be physically active, but you may prefer a long, wandering hike over a short, focused run; or you will want to change it up with different kinds of workouts rather than go to the gym and use the same machines each day.

  Careers

  To determine the types of careers that align with your inner design, we need to consider the influence of both your first and third numbers, so be sure to read the description of your calling in Chapter 5 as well.

  Fours are sometimes called “lane drifters.” Imagine someone on the highway, driving in the left-hand lane, then the right, then the middle… . The pattern of changeability is the cause, and it appears throughout a Four’s life. For example, they may live many different places or have a variety of jobs over the course of their lives. If this happens, it’s often due to circumstances, not their deliberate choice, and certainly not a mistake; it’s very much in alignment with that gentle wind nature that keeps blowing with the breeze!

  You can thrive in structured kinds of organizations, bureaucracies like the government or corporations, changing the system from the inside. With your flexible spirit, you can get along with a wide variety of personality types, and you’re usually described by everyone as very easy to work with. You could do well in management, not only because of your people skills but also due to your ability to navigate change so easily.

  Your idealism may have you working for a nonprofit organization; or if you find success as an entrepreneur, it may well be that any business you start is either one intended to benefit humankind, or else you’ll donate a percentage of the profits to charity.

  Any job done out in nature could make you happy, such as work as an ecologist or nature photographer. With your flair for systems and design, you’d do well in careers such as analyst, landscape architect, or urban planner. Other fields could include woodworking or construction; and because of the influence of the theme of wind, I find that many airline pilots are Fours!

  You’ll be an excellent mentor in any field, and you could be an especially talented coach or consultant because you can easily see the direction your client needs to go but will never push or force them to change. Instead, you’ll guide them as if with a gentle hand on their back, easing them in the right direction without ever seeming to push.

  First Number: Five

  Center

  If you’re a Five, you are a force of nature! Powerful, resilient, endlessly caring, and resourceful, you can show up as a strong support for others in life. In nature, this energy is associated with the earth—the solid ground beneath our feet and our source of nourishment—and that’s definitely the essence of who you are. People just seem to sense that you’re the best possible person to help them, and they naturally gravitate to you, so much so that it can sometimes feel as if you’re the center of everyone’s universe. It can certainly be gratifying to be called on so frequently, but at times it can feel like people are always asking you to do things for them but not showing adequate appreciation or thinki
ng to return the favor.

  Even so, you’re always drawn to helping others, particularly due to your inherent good sense and skillful approach. You’re a natural problem solver, and it’s easy for you to spot errors in a system or see that others are going about something in the wrong way. But this characteristic can result in a bit of a know-it-all attitude because, frankly, you’ve rarely met anyone who has a better grasp of things than you do! When you can see that a plan is faulty, you’ll want to speak up so that you can be sure things are well taken care of, and it will be hard to resist taking charge so that the work can get done more efficiently and successfully. But as a result, you may be perceived as demanding or controlling, although your intention is never to try to take over or dominate. You truly just want to help.

  Need for Connection

  You can be generous to a fault and will probably struggle with guilt if you ever have to say no to a request for help. Even though you’ve devoted the better part of your day—or week—to helping someone, you’ll probably end up worrying that you didn’t do enough and will check back again to see if there’s anything else they need. Yet while you may be overly responsible and put everyone else ahead of yourself, at the same time, you can also feel taken advantage of or sense that people just take what you do for granted.

  Fives can sometimes be judged as self-centered or demanding, but this is often the result of being misunderstood. They want to feel fully connected, and how is that possible without giving each other time and attention? So they’ll tend to expect that people will spend quality time and a significant quantity of time with them in order to really focus on them, but they’re also very willing to give others that kind of attention as well.

  While you have a powerful need for connection as a Five, you disdain superficial relationships, small talk, or shallow social interactions. Instead, you have a lifelong, nearly insatiable need for deep bonds, to have a circle of friends who really “get” you, with whom you can have a certain level of conversation, and who recognize your abilities. You can also feel a frustration throughout life both personally and professionally that others are never fully aware of your efforts or how essential your work was in making an outcome successful. In fact, you may tend to feel vastly underappreciated in nearly every situation, and sometimes this is a valid conclusion. You also play a part in this because you’re so focused on making sure everything works out successfully for everyone that you can end up angry at yourself for not claiming the credit you deserve.

  The Influence of Resentment

  Linda, a Five, volunteered to be in charge of organizing a big family reunion in her home. This was to be a very important event for a group of about 35 relatives, many of whom hadn’t seen each other in years. She planned for months in advance, helped people coming in from out of town with travel arrangements, coordinated airport pickups, let several family members stay in her home, and used her connections to get discounted hotel rates for the overflow. She made sure to find out about any dietary restrictions for everyone attending and tracked down old family recipes so that there would be a wonderful nostalgic meal for everyone to enjoy. (Fives love to feed people.)

  She decorated the house inside and out and prepared a special PowerPoint presentation full of images from her family photo albums as entertainment for the evening. Her two sisters who lived locally offered to bring food so that she didn’t have to work so hard, and she assigned each of them a specific dish to contribute so there wouldn’t be any overlap or missing items.

  Finally the big day came, and Linda was up at 5:00 A.M. to start cooking and finishing the preparations. As people began to arrive, she brought out homemade hors d’oeuvres, making sure everyone felt welcome and comfortable. But the sisters who’d promised to contribute food were late; it also turned out that they hadn’t prepared what she’d asked them to, but had stopped at Costco on the way over and bought chips, dip, and boxed salads.

  When it came time for the big meal, everyone gobbled it up and raved about how delicious everything was; but to Linda, no one really seemed to recognize how she’d cooked everything from scratch, as well as all the trouble she’d gone to reviving the old family recipes. After dinner, most of the group settled by the TV to watch the game, and only a handful dutifully viewed her PowerPoint show. Some tried to help her clean up, but she soon told them not to bother. She realized she was just going to have to unload the dishwasher and do it all over again because they just weren’t doing it right.

  In the end, Linda was left fuming, feeling deeply unappreciated despite the effusive thank-yous, and resentful about the lack of support. In fact, her party was the talk of the family for years to come, but as for many Fives, that wasn’t enough. She felt her relatives didn’t fully recognize all she’d done.

  Family and Relationships

  Family can be a big issue throughout life for Fives, especially in their relationships with their mothers. Some experience a kind of role reversal in childhood, where they had to be the parent even when they were quite young. Others had it even worse, being raised by an emotionally disturbed or even abusive mother. Some Fives leave home at an early age because the family dynamics are so dysfunctional; in certain cases, it’s only because of their tremendous personal strength that they’re able to survive childhood emotionally intact. But even so, as adults, Fives may be called upon to deal with the family’s needs and problems, sometimes even to the point of moving back home. This can make them feel stuck and resentful—especially if it’s a situation where they weren’t well supported emotionally as children—and there they are, giving, giving, and giving, when they never had received much in the first place.

  Aside from family, relationships of all kinds are a priority in your life, and you’ll try at all costs to keep a friendship intact. Grace, a Five, taught workshops about developing intuition. She’d worked for ten years to create a structured training with thick handouts that really helped her students hone their skills; people were getting phenomenal results. A friend organized a workshop for her and in return got to attend for free. This friend then turned around and published her class notes as a book, plagiarizing Grace’s handouts and only slightly changing the names of her methods.

  When Grace discovered this, she agonized for an entire year before deciding to just let it go. It was too painful for her to imagine losing the friendship, especially because this was a person who had obviously deeply recognized the power of her work, something that’s so important to a Five!

  Extremes

  Some Fives experience extremes in life, and the pattern can be one of a difficult childhood followed by both highs and lows as an adult, great success followed by some level of hardship. They may even have financial problems intermittently throughout life. But the good news is that as they age, things get easier and they can become financially stable.

  A Five’s personality can range to extremes as well. These are usually not mild-mannered, easygoing types; their deep personal power can be expressed in correspondingly powerful emotions. I advise people to never make a Five angry because they can be blasted by hurricane-force winds in response! But a Five’s love and support is every bit as strong, and anyone lucky enough to have a Five as a friend knows the enormous lifelong benefits of that relationship.

  Some Fives are ambitious and driven to claim a place of high achievement in the world, and they can even behave unethically to attain it. But at the other end of the spectrum, it’s almost as if some are afraid of their own power. They can be shy and insecure or keep their lives small almost as an attempt to suppress what feels dangerous to them.

  Careers

  To determine the types of careers that align with your inner design, we need to consider the influence of both your first and third numbers, so be sure to read the description of your calling in Chapter 5 as well.

  You’re an incredibly good student, catching on quickly to new subjects; and once you pick up a skill, you’ll look for ways to put it to use. So no matter what kind of care
er you have, it’s likely that you’ll always be adding to your abilities and integrating that knowledge into your work soon after.

  Even so, you may continue to struggle with issues of low self-confidence that can affect your success. As much as you may have a know-it-all personality, you can also flip into worrying that you don’t know enough, or you may have had such a lack of support in childhood that you don’t have the natural Five confidence you could have gotten if there’d been a healthy environment at that time. Some Fives also have high self-esteem and low integrity—for example, one woman started promoting herself as certified after only an introductory workshop in coaching rather than completing her full professional training.

  Fives are often found in the fields of business, real estate, education, and law; but a large percentage of them are also in the helping professions, such as social work, nursing, or the healing arts. Yet no matter what they do, they’re more likely than most to end up at the center of an organization or even be its founder. Even if they’re part of a team, though, it will be very important to them to not be left out of anything, and again, this can be mis-understood by others as the Five trying to be in control. It’s not that; it’s their inherent need to be in the middle of the action—and that’s actually where they belong!