How To Find Your Archetype

In this episode of the Soulfully You Podcast, coach Chris Rodriguez explores the concept of archetypes and their importance in self-awareness and personal growth.

Click here to take your FREE Inner-Soul-Child Assessment.

For all episodes and info about my coaching program, visit me at www.coachchrisrodriguez.com.

Connect on Instagram at @coach_chrisrodriguez and on TikTok at @coach_chrisrodriguez.

Be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

Transcript

0:05

Hey friend. Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. I'm a movement and mindset coach, and I believe in a deeper way of living, a more soulful way of being. Join me each week for conversations about how to put a little more soul. Into our work, our relationships in our everyday lives. have you ever wondered why in the different seasons and eras of your life you meet different people, but it kind of feels like you're meeting types and shadows of the same types of people? Just in different places and different faces. I've worked in a bunch of industries, worked a lot of different jobs from restaurant management to banking, to event coordination, to fitness and dance, and whenever I'm on a team, I always see the same people. there are a few folks like psychologists and anthropologists and social scientists who were asking the same question about this phenomena of people who didn't come from the same culture, who didn't come from the same place, who didn't even come from the same time. Whose personalities and behaviors are similar One of the foremost authorities on mythology and cultural stories. Joseph Campbell, He wrote a book called The Man With 10,000 Faces. And when he looked at all of the major myths from Greek mythology to early Judaism and Christianity and different tribal stories, he found this arc called the Hero's journey. As the synchronized story of. Cultures of all different places and times trying to find meaning and making sense of the world that they were discovering of their relationship to the land and how they should move forward in community. He writes this, the agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth, art, literature, myth, and cult psychology, and. Aesthetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual pass his limiting horizon into spheres of ever expanding realization. Mythology in the form of religion, of cultural storytelling, of literature. This is one way to plot out your path in the world and make sense of these shared connected stories. But another way is through finding your archetype. In today's episode, I'm gonna break down a few of the mainstream archetypes that you can use to. Rediscover yourself. I'll give you an overview of them and then I'll tell you some of my favorites. So this idea of archetypes, why do we even have it? I think as people, we are constantly looking for ways to plot ourself out in the world. I think it's very primal and some of our earliest forms of survival is finding patterns and disruptions to those patterns that help us stay safe and help us survive. This is a good thing and it got us a long way. When we're plotting out these patterns, specifically in the forms of people, one of the ways we can misuse this idea of archetype, is by stereotyping folks, typecasting folks. A lot of times we do that. Again, it's that primal part of us that's trying to survive. Trying to stay safe, and usually it's either based off of two things. One, a bad experience with a person or a group, and the need to survive that says this person, this group of people, they're all the same. so you have a bad relationship with the dude from this city, and then you meet another dude in that same city because that's the city you're in. And these string of bad experiences. Might tell you, All these guys in this city ain't it, but it's a stereotype based off of limited experiences. every guy in that city is not the same. You just experience something that you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I need to protect myself. I need to keep myself safe. Another reason why we stereotype and typecast is lack of information or education, racist people. They'll tell these stories of inferiority of another race Not based off of any true evidence, but based off of ignorance. people who are anti-immigrant, they'll tell stories about these illegals. They're coming here and they're taking all of our jobs, and they're hurting all of our women and our kids, and they're stealing from us. Even though that information is not based off of any. Science, any true data, it's based off of racist and prejudice assumptions and ignorance, but having categories in and of itself, specifically for types of people, it's not a bad thing and. More than trying to find patterns in others. It's important to try to find patterns within ourselves because if we can find the patterns, if we can find a pathway to maneuver through the world, then we will be a better discerner of the people in our life will be a better supporter of the people in our life. Through discovering ourselves and self-awareness, everybody's better. Everything is better. and now we have so much information. We have so much research. We have a lot of organizations who do this work of assessing skills, assessing personality, assessing temperament, assessing emotions, assessing mindsets. An assessment is a powerful way to measure where you are and where you can grow. So before I break down some of the mainstream assessments around archetypes and share some of my favorites, here's some things in general that might help you in your growth for you to measure in your life. You can measure your emotions. You can measure your introversion or extroversion. You can measure your strengths. You can measure your weaknesses. You can be more specific with your emotions. You can measure your joy, you can measure your anger, you can measure your assertiveness. You could really measure anything, but when you are assessing yourself, it's important to have a context for you as an individual internally and, and then a context for you and your outward reactions with others. And your work life and your personal life, anywhere you have interactions with people. All right, so there's a bunch of assessments out there. here are the big boys. so the first archetype assassin is the Jungian archetypes. This is kind of like the father of. All modern archetypes, it categorizes 12 different archetypes like the hero or the caregiver or the explorer or the sage. Some of its benefits is it provides a symbolic framework of understanding universal behaviors, roles, and narratives. It measures deep collective patterns and behaviors and personality expressions. Now, one of the most popular assessments that came after this is Myers Briggs. It has 16 different archetypes and it breaks it down into these four quadrants. This one is beneficial for interpersonal communication and team dynamics. The four categories. It's measuring is introversion versus extroversion. Sensing versus intuition thinking versus feeling and judging and perceiving. another popular one that I actually love a lot and when I'm building assessments or I'm working with a team on assessments, I. use this approach as far as how do we move forward and how do we grow. So Clifton Strength Finders, right? It has 34 primary themes. And the reason I love this one is because it measures your strengths personally, professionally, and the philosophy behind it is. A lot of times we can see, our flaws and we criticize our flaws. But what if you knew exactly what your strength was or your primary strengths are, and you made a decision to focus your energy on being better at your strengths? Taking your time, your discipline to really improve this aspect of yourself so that it affects all the other areas of your life. so I love strength finders for that. And The next one is the DISC assessment. This one has four main types and DISC is a acronym for dominance, influence, steadiness, and consciousness. Right. In this one, one of these are gonna be your dominant. This one is good for leadership, for communication, for team Dynamics. One of the reasons I like this one is because it gives you, a picture bar graph and each. Letter has a different color associated with it. sometimes what I've done is I've introduced myself with my graph of my disc so people know, all right, this is me and this is where I. I am on this D chart for me, I'm a high S for steadiness, right? This is what you're gonna get from me in a team. This is what you're gonna get from me in leadership, okay? Probably one of the most pop culture, but also one of the most dismissed archetypes that I love, I do a lot of work with is the Enneagram. And one of the reasons we dismiss it is because it is become so popular. They're social media dedicated to memes about Enneagrams, and they're funny because they feel true. But another reason why people dismiss or discount this one is because it relies on. Anecdotal data versus just clinical data there's no, case studies and research or anything like that. My pushback to that is the Enneagram, the concepts of it have been around for a long time and you see these elements of people writing about these kind of ideas of these different types of people in ancient times. And I've worked with clients around the Enneagram. I've taught on the Enneagram. Whenever I'm working with a team, I've never had somebody say, nah, that ain't me. You got it wrong. Anecdotally, I've worked with dozens of teams. I've worked with big teams, small teams, and they're like, yep, this is me. And it's really cool because when I work with different types of teams, I see dominant Enneagram types. the Enneagram has nine types. I think I'm gonna do a episode on this at some point. I'm breaking'em all down, and it's set up in a nine point star. And each point on that star is a connection point to another type. The one sitting next to it are wings, so this is where you might lean to. So you might have a primary type, but you lean to one side or the other for your secondary type, and then it has the points that go diagonally across. The lines that go diagonally across from that, main point, these are your legs, and what this assesses is where you can go, like what other personality types can you move into when you're stressed or when you feel like you're growing? Another way that I've heard it said is. When you are disintegrating and pulling away from people or when you're integrated and more connected to people. I love the Enneagram because it measures intrinsic needs, fears, and desires. I also love it because it's a good way to understand yourself and understand others with that nine point star, what it says is everything's connected. It's a nine point star that sits inside a circle, so there's always room to grow, but the way that you grow is through connecting with other types. And learning how to embody those other types. this next assessment. I love it because it deals with how you learn and problem solve. So Carol Dweck, she wrote a book called Mindset where she lays out her research about. People who have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And if you're a parent, this is a great book to read because a lot of her research was done with kids discovering these two different types of mindsets of people who believe that you're either born with it or you're not. So there is a mindset assessment where you can assess if you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Now you can go deeper into that because you can have a growth mindset in one area and a fixed mindset in another area. But measuring where you are. And your mindset is super important. It informs your beliefs about intelligence, talent, personal growth, and adaptability. And taking an assessment like this, it helps you kind of cultivate resilience and continue to learn, grow, and adapt. Here's two other assessments that are based around authors who have written books around their research. And made an assessment to go with it. So Susan Kane, she wrote a book called Quiet about the Power of Introversion, and she has an assessment where you can get assessed on if you are an introvert, an extrovert, or an ambivert. So an ambivert is kind of in the middle This is important because it helps you measure your social battery, where you get your energy from. How to restore yourself. So for an extrovert, knowing that you're an extrovert, being alone isn't energizing for you. So you need to make a plan to recharge your battery, and that battery is recharged with. Interacting with folks. For introverts, it's the opposite, right? You have to interact with folks, but you need to make a plan to recharge your social battery by pulling away and doing something restorative by yourself. When you can measure this in yourself and know where you, where you naturally lean, introversion, extroversion, or ambivert, you can. Make a plan to restore yourself, restore your energy, but you can also make a plan to challenge yourself in situations that aren't natural. Set up practices to make sure that you're getting what you need in your alone time so that you have the energy and the capacity to grow in more extroverted experiences and encounters. This next one comes from author Tara Eurich. She wrote a book called Insight, and I love her research. She has a TED Talk. In one of my very first episodes, we discussed her research on emotional intelligence and self-awareness, and she did the study where she asked people how self-aware they thought they were, and like 96% of those people thought they were self-aware when in reality like. Like low, like in the teens, percent of people, like, I think it was like 18% of people that were asked that question actually were self-aware. So she has a self-awareness assessment that, that goes alongside the book and. It's really important to have emotional intelligence in your decision making, but then also in your relationships with other people. the reason I like this assessment is because one of the ways she measures it is you answer some questions, but then you have to send an assessment link to someone who knows you really well for them to answer the question as well, and it compares your answers versus a person who knows you better than anybody else. This idea, even if you're not using an assessment, you can only see as much of yourself as you can see. There are blind spots. There are places that we can't see behind us. It doesn't matter what mirror you're looking in, there are spots that you just can't see. The people in our lives who know us, they are our mirrors. they let us know the things about ourselves that we can't see, not just the people that are closest to us. There are people you encounter in your life who may cause negative reactions for you. They may be the foil to your story. They may be the antagonist at work. They're also helpful mirrors for you. Because if you are reacting a certain way to them, what's up? Like there are things that they do, but our reactions, our responses come from us and we're responsible for it. Self-awareness. Measuring your self-awareness is a great way to help you respond better to other people. There are so many more assessments, but the assessment that I love the most is one that I created called The Inner Soul Child Assessment. this is based off of my research on eight different qualities that I've found in all children who feel loved, a sense of belonging and who feel safe. And what my assessment does is it measures these eight qualities like play and honesty, and. Emotional expression, curiosity, imagination to name a few, and it gives you a core inner soul child archetype using this strength finders approach. For this one, you lean into that core archetype. and you make a plan to have practices of ways to express more of this in all the areas of your life. So for me it's creativity. how can I incorporate that in the way I interact with my family and the way I have restorative time for myself and in the way I approach projects and my work? You can also look at your lowest score. this is the inner soul child quality that I am least like, and you can ask yourself, who are the people in my life who embody this quality? So maybe honesty is something that I'm not the best at, but I know somebody in my life who honesty is what they're strong at. How can I. Engage with them, learn from them, and start to gr against and embody some of the practices they do. Asking yourself things like, what would such and such do in this scenario where I need to be bold, where I need to be honest. And imitating them as a practice, not losing the core of who you are, but growing in another area. And this is just a little plug if you're interested in taking that assessment into free assessment, and the link is in the show notes, takes about five minutes. And yeah, I would love for you to participate and, and learn and grow, about this aspect of yourself. So I laid out these different assessments for you. Where do you go from here? What do you do? yeah, you can take as many as you want. But the most important thing about an assessment or any type of learning is not that you get bogged down with the information. There's some people where they go to school, to go to school, to go to school. Some people they research, to research, to research. and we can go on this self-discovery road and just kind of, oh, I want to take this assessment. I want to know this type. I want to know about this. And we can try to get so much insight on ourself as a way of distracting ourself from actually doing the work of growth, of connection, of adding value and being the full expression of who we are in the world. Learn about who you are from people in the past and. Get a sense of shared and collective identity. But at the end of the day, our self reflection, our self assessment, is ultimately to make everyone and everything around us better. So take the information. And use it. in a way that makes the world a more beautiful place. Thank you for listening to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. If you like the show, help others find me by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at Coach underscore Chris Rodriguez. For more episodes along with all of my coaching programs, visit me@www.coach chris rodriguez.com. Special thanks to my team behind the scenes music by Dan Smith. And remember, whatever you do, wherever you find yourself today, make sure you put some soul in it.