Rebel.

“You were a rebellious child.”

My father believed in hierarchy and order, though wasn’t necessarily the beacon of such organization. A rebel in his own right, he was king of the household and all shall bow down to his majesty or else, and never question him or any deviation from his high image of himself.

As an adult, I asked my father why he disciplined me the way he did–so severely at such a young age–and “you were a rebellious child” is the answer I got. His emphasis and tone on the term “rebellious” clearly did not skew positive.

From a young age, I detested any and all authority. It’s unclear which came first — the beatings for refusing to follow rules, or the refusing to follow rules prior to the beatings — but I didn’t like the idea that anyone, a parent especially, and especially one so stubborn and self-aggrandizing, knew better than anyone else.

The violent spankings and strappings through my childhood influenced my authority resistance, but the emotional side of our relationship was probably even more impactful. In his eyes, I had such great potential yet never lived up to his expectations. When I failed to do this, he took it personally, as if I was trying to hurt him when I wasn’t who he wanted me to be. When I wanted to become my own person, I was told, in so many words, to stay in a neat little box of who he wanted me to be. With no breathing room for my own opinions or unique existence, I shut down entirely. I completely failed to reboot.

Many years later, I’ve stumbled upon a personality quiz called “the 4 tendencies.” It isn’t a new quiz, having gotten a lot of play and criticism over the last few years, but I’m new to it.

The quiz focuses on what motivates us, and how we can form healthy habits. The four tendencies are obliger, questioner, upholder and, last, but not least, rebel.

I certainly had my suspicions which of the four would come back as my result.

Rebel. How shocking.

But reading the definition hurt more than perusing the results of any other personality test. The definition of this type, apparently the most rare, called out that we are not only unmotivated by others expecting anything from us, we’re even further unmotivated by expecting anything from ourselves.

We rebels are driven by freedom of choice. At all times. Even when it screws us over.

“For Rebels, the ability to choose is so important that sometimes they make a choice — even when it’s against their own self-interest or it’s not what they prefer — just to reassure themselves that they can make that choice.”

https://time.com/4938409/four-tendencies-gretchen-rubin-rebels/

It’s true. In my ripe old age I’m pretty sure I’m as capable as the next person to complete tasks that add up to something significant. However, ask me to do something and you’ve decreased the chance of said task being completed without much more mental effort on my part to force myself to get it done. What’s further interesting in this truth is that the second I place any expectations on myself, even secretly, I feel the same, immobilized by my silent agreement to get something done. That sounds super healthy.

What Gretchen Rubin, creator of this quiz and author of The Happiness Project and four other books, a Yale undergrad and law school graduate (doubt she is a Rebel type) fails to note in her four tendencies is why us rebels act so rebellious. She isn’t a psychologist, but somehow all those years working in law made her an expert on personality theory. I ought to start writing self-help books–working in tech has taught me a thing or two about, uhhh, personalities. But, I guess the point is I won’t because I think I ought to. Thinking I ought to is the first step towards a rebel’s never will.

But I’m awfully curious, why are we rebels are so darn rebellious??? Are we just, as Lady Gaga would put it, born this way? Or is something more sinister afoot — like parents who projected their intelligence and insecurities onto us so we could not develop a healthy identity on our own to positively develop good habits? Hmm.

Life Coaches Want Us to Be Our Best Selves
(That will be $1099, Please.)

Many other life coaches–seeking massive quantities of clients and cha ching–have borrowed from this motivation tendency framework to understand some of their clients fail to thrive. Career Coach Sheila Davi goes for the gut in her brilliantly painful-to-read-as-a-rebel-without-a-cause blog post on us Rebels. God the truth hurts.

This series was inspired by working with one of my clients. She’s an exemplary client during sessions. When she shows up, she’s always present, communicative, honest, and invested. At the end of every session, she feels clarity and excitement to go forth into the world and implement what we’ve been discussing.

But then…she doesn’t always do it…and she hasn’t known why.

I’m a certified coach who’s constantly doing more professional development. I’ve studied and read about all sorts of goal setting practices. This client and I have tried them all in order to help her move forward on her goals. Nothing has consistently worked.

https://www.sheiladevi.com/goal-setting/rebel/

The post goes on to explain how this client, who could actually be me (clone, are you out there?), has started so many projects and failed to finish them. And by started projects, she means thrown herself head first into them, yet somehow when any sort of expectation was set by anyone else (or heck, even by plants she grew into seedlings that needed constant nurturing to grow further), she couldn’t follow through.

Because these are “life coaches” here and not psychologists, we don’t get into why this woman acts this way. I would bet good money on this client having a history of authority figures who did not allow her to develop a healthy sense of self. So she rebelled.

Picking apart the self-help industry isn’t why I’m writing this post.

I accept that this “rebel” type fits me to a T. Where I see it can be helpful is in the strategies that are laid out in how to actually lead a productive life for this specific type. Instead of trying to “fix” myself, I can work with what’s broken–and even see it as a positive–as “coaches” do. Let’s not fixate on why we’re incapable of doing anything once someone expects us to follow through on it, or why the mere possibility of giving up on having a choice to change our plot at any moment is absolutely crippling. No–let’s accept this is an innate part of our personality and move on. Let’s focus on what we can control (which, by the way, is my current mantra. Focus on what you can control, woman, everything else be damned.)

A Rebel on a mission is a force of nature, a superstar. No need for checklists, for routines, rules, or habits to get things done. The need to find a cause, something to truly believe in and fight for, is vital. The inner belief is so strong, it will withstand any external pressure. A Rebel believes in his/her own uniqueness, and even superiority. There’s certainly an aspect of arrogance. But if Rebels find the cause, then that’s their master.

Rebels place a very high value on authenticity and self-determination, and want their lives to be a true expression of their values. Others can find it very freeing to be with Rebels, because they’re so in touch with what they want and have no trouble refusing obligations.

https://time.com/4938409/four-tendencies-gretchen-rubin-rebels/

Do go on… oh you flatter me so…

At times, the Rebel Tendency is enormously valuable to society. As one Questioner pointed out, “The Rebels’ best asset is their voice of dissent. We shouldn’t try to school it out of them, or corporate-culture it out, or shame it out. It’s there to protect us all.” Many “Rebels with a cause” use their Rebel spirit to support the principles and purposes they believe in. One Rebel explained, “I’ve always had the impulse to defy authority. I ‘use my powers for good.’ I’ve argued against rules, and sometimes even broken them deliberately, on behalf of others to whom they’ve been applied unfairly.” Whenever I hear about people following an unconventional path — like the first woman to work on an oil rig — I think, hmmm, perhaps that’s a Rebel.

Ok, you had me at “voice of dissent.” Gretch, you know me too well.

But in all seriousness, perhaps there’s something here. I mean, I’ve never read a personality test description that is so accurate in explaining why I can do the seemingly impossible yet fail to complete even the most basic of tasks. And this is something I’d like to fix–something I have to fix.

How do you motivate a Rebel?
Hint – you don’t.

The strategies for how to motivate Rebels to do, well, anything, are worth swishing and gurgling, like some connoisseur of — I-will-certainly-not-do-that-if-you-ask-me-to-or-if-i-plan-to-but-if-i-feel-like-it-i’m-going-to-put-a-hundred-billion-percent-into-it-because-I-am-not-afraid-to-fail-no-one-even-expected-me-to-try.

There are 21 strategies in the book for how people can be productive human beings. That sounds like about how many we need to successfully get out of bed in the morning, but I’ll accept it as a start.

Of those 21 strategies, few are fit to motivate a rebel. Strategies of scheduling, accountability, monitoring, or rewards, do not work for us freakish fractured souls. These strategies supposedly do:

• “Strategy of Identity” — we can embrace a habit if we view it as a way to express our identity.
• “Strategy of Clarity” — we can take up a habit if it has personal value to us and aligns with our definition of our self. I.e. I am a creative person therefore I will take this creative class.
• “Strategy of Convenience” — we can do something good if all the stars align and it feels like the right time to do it.
• “Strategy of Other People” — we can motivate ourselves to do things if we can do them differently from other people, because, again, we’re freakish fractured souls, amirite?

Ok, so what the above tells me is… to thrive as a rebel, we must accept that we’re just self-absorbed and incapable of being motivated in a normal way and thus must find motivation by really getting in touch with what drives us, who we are, and how to align what we do every day to that identity.

I’m not quite sure how to do that, but I’m going to start with baby steps in trying to manage my health journey by motivating myself in the above ways. Strategy of clarity — my definition of myself = loves to dance, despite having two left feet. Going to hip hop dance class is something I enjoy when I get there but it’s always hard to get myself ready to go and out of the house. If I focus on tying this to my identity, maybe it will be a bit easier.

Ultimately, though, there is something bigger here, amidst the self-help pseudoscience bullshit that tells us what we already know——we want to change, but we don’t know how to. I’ve spent countless hours in therapy rehashing the same stories and cognitive behavioral suggestions designed to change how I respond to the world at large and at little.

But, maybe it’s time to stop trying to change who I am and, instead, start embracing it. If I can really get in touch with those guiding principles–to live honestly, to a fault, raw and open in all the darkness and light humanity has to offer, in all its crudeness and its delicacies, to put myself out there without fear of judgement, to help others feel slightly less alone in the world by coming to peace with what’s going on in their minds, then maybe I’ll spark something far bigger than myself, and be truly unstoppable.

Until then, I’m going to attempt to self-identify as someone who goes to sleep just before 1am and who needs less than 5 hours of sleep to function, especially on Tuesdays.