Your Personal Directions

Direction is a broad set of patterns or purposes that represents aspirations and motives.

Directions may be satisfied or frustrated in many aspects of our lives; therefore, there are a variety of emotional experiences associated with them.

Directions represent our striving to achieve specific emotional goals in our lives. The way in which these goals are achieved may vary dramatically, depending upon the person.

For example, a person whose primary direction in life is giving support and affection to others is very different from a person who finds this focus less appealing and prefers to be highly self-sufficient and free of outside interference.

Directions reflect a variety of internal processes: motives, needs, drives, and values. These are the source of much individual behavior.

Directions differ from the methods we ordinarily employ to get what we want; they represent the strivings that we try to realize in our worlds. We then use the skills and insights we have developed to achieve the specific objectives that are related to these underlying Directions.

Depending upon the context in which they occur, our Direction

It helps us to create and build our unique worlds;

It helps us to describe the specific emotional content of our experiences;

These represent deep motivational patterns;

It helps us understand and predict our future behavior;

These motivational patterns represent the value we place upon people, places, things, ideas, goals, and activities; can affect the setting of future goals.

Think of your Directions as showing the direction and strength of the force with which you are likely to push against the world in order to achieve satisfaction.

Some Directions will complement each other, while others will seem contradictory.

When Directions are complementary, they tend to reinforce each other.

When they are contradictory, they may cancel each other out or emerge as inconsistent behavior.

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