 So, your talk, I loved it so much because it seemed highly individualized and it seems like we love things that are here specifically towards us and that we can look and go, I'm this or I'm that and really define ourselves and sometimes put ourselves into boxes. So just tell me a little bit about disc, what it is. The disc system is old. It's been around a long time. I think it was devised in the 30s or the 40s. It's a personality profile that an entrepreneur developed. I don't know what his reasons were but it turned into a sales training practice and it's been modified several times and there people have attempted to copyright it. There was a disc system with a lower case I trademark that's controlled by Houghton Mifflin or somebody like that. It's practically speaking, it's in the public domain, the disc system itself. I learned it at a sales training event. I was a half hour class and I went in and the first exercise in the class was to read a list of questions and decide what your response would be and I read the questions really quickly and I took my pencil and I drew a straight line because I recognized which were my answers and because I am driven in the disc, I say driven, I am a high D in the disc system, I did it with the absolute least effort, least effort, least squares, least hypotheses. If you can put the word least with a hyphen in front of it, I like it. The driven personality type is focused on accomplishment, focused on doing, done, done, done, done and I am a very high D, I score very high in every measure that you could establish for measuring in the disc system. The other three personality types, I call them driven, incandescent, sociable and cautious. There are other words that you can use. I came up with those words to describe my own particular, my own peculiar reinterpretation of discs because I like them, because they tend to describe the way people with that personality type like to see themselves, so incandescents really like to glow, they really like to shine, they really like to grab the attention, grab the spotlight. Driven people are really driven, they really like to get things done. Sociable people really like social relationships, they really like connecting with people, having that deepening, quickening relationship with people, they want to love everybody, they want everybody to love them and they want everybody to love everybody else, they want everybody to love everybody. The thing they hate the worst in the world is conflict and conflict will drive sociable people crazy. Driven people have no problem with conflict, it's part of the job and when the conflict is over they will make peace, generally speaking with displays of wealth, they'll throw parties and buy jewelry and things like that. The fourth type is, I call cautious. Other words you could use are compliant, conscientious, computational, the cautious personality type where you saw yourself, am I wrong? I'm talking to Mary Lee Johnson, she's talking to me and so if you're not aware that she's asking me questions, she asked me to elaborate on the disc types and it's one of the things that we understood about you or that I understood about you from the very first time that I met you, that you are a cautious personality. I'm very good at disking on the fly and my attitude is having done this video, everybody who watches the video should be tuned into disc and should be disking everyone they meet as soon as you meet them, revising your disc profile for that person as you get new information, as you discover more about them because you can be incorrect. I was very interested in seeing Edward Drew's presentation yesterday and he said several things in the presentation that led me to think that he was a cautious personality type. When he wants to meet somebody he studies everything about them, he reads all their books. He tries to figure out what their next problem is so he can solve that for them and make himself useful to them. Making himself useful to them is a very driven idea but studying everything is very cautious. He also quoted Voltaire which made me think he was cautious also. But I wasn't sure because the presentation was very extroverted. He's naturally an introvert but the presentation was very extroverted and it was all about getting things done which is a very driven thing. So I walked up to him afterward. I assumed he was cautious and I assumed he was introverted but I didn't know for sure and so I walked up to him afterward and asked a couple of qualifying questions and then I started to cold read him from his point of view. I told him all about his approach to life, the way he does things and the way he makes choices and I can do this really easily because I'm disking all the time. I know how cautious people approach life. I know what they do and so it's really easy for me to make very accurate guesses about what people have done in the past, about how they approach choices now, about how they see their future, just on the basis of understanding these personality types and it doesn't mean that people can be slotted into little boxes and they're doomed to behave in certain ways. It just means that what happens is almost always what almost always happens. That one of the things that cautious people will do is they will always go to the outliers. They will always say what about, but what about this, but what about that. I think you did this when I was riding, Mary Lee did this when I was riding Father's Day. I forget what I said. Oh, I said that human beings are the only people who can look at the question of existence and get it wrong and you pointed out some species that itself extinguished by getting the question wrong that's immediately rushing to the outlier. It's a very common strategy among the cautious. It's a way of being smarter than everybody else and that's one of the things that's important to cautious people is to be smarter than everybody else and I don't have a problem with that because I understand that that's what's going to happen. My attitude is what happens is almost always what almost always happened in the past because I'm driven. It's a real easy way to deal with reality to be one of the things that cautious people run into again and again and again and they don't care for is chaos and they say things like embrace the chaos, manage the chaos, deal with the chaos. I love chaos. I don't have a problem with chaos. Chaos is normal. Chaos is the way things are. It's just the way things work. It's just the way things normally work is they normally don't work at first and because I recognize that everything I build is going to be broken at first. I don't stress over making it perfect right away. I want to get it done and then make it perfect because once it's done it's much easier to revise something that's already done than to incessantly plan something that you're going to execute as soon as you can perfectly plan it. You can't plan it perfectly and because you can't plan it perfectly I don't even try. Just well enough to get it done and then I do it but in any case I'm rambling which is what I'm good for. Poor Steve Mayetta has interviewed me twice and the ratio of my speech to his amounts to about 9 to 1 may be more. But the Dispersonality Profile is worth learning and there's nothing. There is no wrong answer. There is no wrong type. You are what you are. You're going to choose the way you choose but as soon as you understand the way that you choose and understand the way that the people around you choose you can accommodate yourself to your circumstance. You can tailor your own displays and responses to the other person. You can understand what in the displays and responses of the other person is resulting from their own personality profile and is not nobody is trying to frustrate. Generally speaking nobody is trying to hurt you. Nobody is trying to keep you from getting what you want. Nobody is the enemy. In circumstances where you perceive the enemy what you're almost always seeing is that person operating on his own motivations and pursuit of his own needs and they're contrary to your motivations and your needs and therefore it looks alien to you and by looking alien it looks hostile and aggressive where in fact nobody is being aggressive. Everybody is doing their best and if you recognize that this person is doing his best from his own source of motivation in pursuit of his own goals then it takes all the tension, all the ranker, all the conflict out of a relationship and enables you to find a common ground so that you can each achieve the goals that you're aiming for and this strikes me as being intelligent because you're trying to get your own needs met also and if you recognize your own despossibility that despossibility, I talked about this in the talk, despossibility is the thing that other people can never give me enough of so because I'm driven other people can never be productive enough for me they can never do enough work. You're always going to their kid's birthday. You're always showing off your kid's picture on your phone. Why aren't we making this video? Why are we looking at this dead end picture? I'm just teasing but this is a driven personality will get angry about things he should never get angry about. A social personality is always going to go home for his kid's birthday. A driven personality is never going to go home from work for his kid's birthday. Different people are going to choose differently on the basis of their motivations, on the basis of the goals that they're pursuing and nobody is wrong and nobody is trying to frustrate anybody else, nobody is trying to hurt everybody else, everybody's doing the best they can with what they have and as soon as you recognize that and you counter program for your own despossibility, for your own frustration, for your own abhorrence and take into account that other person's motivations, the goals that they're seeking, the motivation that they're working from then the scales fall from your eyes and you can reach a common ground, you can find a way to get along with each other even if here's a good example, many, many businesses are started by a partnership between a driven and a cautious, very common. The cautious personality is looking for abundance as a means of achieving financial safety, the driven personality is looking for abundance as a way of pursuing opportunity, the driven personality has a good idea that he can't plan out and figure out how to execute, the cautious personality can do the R&D necessary to get the product through the design stage and the driven personality can take it over from there and bring it to market, successfully execute it and bring it to market. If these guys are in separate offices they might be happy with each other for 30 years, they might work together for 60 years, they might both retire rich and play golf every Sunday and their wives get together and they have dinner parties together and they're fine together. If they share a partner's desk the relationship won't last 18 months. They don't work the same way and they can't work at a partner's desk straight across from each other because the cautious personality wants it perfect even if it's not done and the driven personality wants it done even if it's not perfect. And those two responsibilities, the driven will have endless frustration with the cautious personality, the cautious personality will have endless frustration with the driven personality, he's got analysis paralysis, he's always going off half cocked, this is one of the things that destroys marriages, this is one of the places where Mr. May becomes out as he gets tired of this conflict. She's verbally more skillful, she's better at elaborating, at describing, at elucidating how her needs are not being met, he's not nearly as good at competing in that arena, he's certainly not as aware of his own feelings and he's completely clueless to her feelings. All she wants to talk about are her feelings and how she's not feeling validated that he's not following through, he's not delivering and so he withdraws into himself more and more and more as a distancing strategy, like a turtle pulling a shell around him, it's a survival strategy really, it's a foxhole strategy, whatever you want to call it, it's his way of responding to what he sees as unending ranker and it's really not unending ranker, it's probably not all that serious at all, it's just that it's continuous and he's ill-equipped to respond to it and because he's ill-equipped to respond to it instead of changing the conversation and saying, hey, wait a minute, I understand that your needs are unmet, my problem is I have no idea how to meet them or my problem is that the needs that you're expressing to me are in fact yours to work out, these are problems that I cannot solve, I can't choose for you, I can't think for you, I can't eat for you, I can't digest for you, there are some things that you have to take care of apart from the marriage because they're not my job, they can't be my job, but if he's not willing one way or another either to step up and deliver the goods that he promised or to point out that this is not a part of the contract because it can't be a part of the contract, if he doesn't do that, then he withdraws him into himself and he seems more distant, more uninvolved, less caring to her, his way of expressing his care for her is to work harder and this is one of the ways that even if they're not driven, men will start to work more and more over time because number one, they want to get out of the house, they want to get away from this rancor and number two, it's a way of cats will deliver socks to your bedside or deliver socks to your doorstep or deliver socks to your bedroom door or something like that, cats are wage earners, that's why they got to be domesticated, dogs are companions, dogs are also garbage disposal systems but they're companions, that's how they earn their keep, cats earn to their keep by eating mice and a cat doesn't actually eat them, eat the mouse, he just kills it and then delivers it to the housefrow to demonstrate his value, to demonstrate his worth and this is what men are doing when they start to work more and more and more that when you were dating he was working a 40-hour job and sometimes he flaked off early on Friday afternoon so you too could go to the beach, all of a sudden he's working late every Friday, he's going in on Saturday, he's every other Sunday, he's got something he's got to go into the office where I did this, this is a way of dealing with rancor in the marriage without really dealing with it and you're not solving your problem, you're just delaying it and making it worse and so something that was little and easily dealt with turns into something huge because it's one betrayal after another from her point of view he's disappearing like that as a betrayal and again it's easy to conclude when other people are not giving you what you want in the relationship it's easy to conclude that they're deliberately frustrating you, that they're, that they are the enemy, that they're trying to hurt you and in fact they're really not, they're just trying to find a way to make an unmanageable situation more manageable without actually addressing the real problem and that's why it definitely pays to be aware of the disprofile of your spouse in order to understand the disposability, in order to understand how the disposability is going to result in that impulsion strategy that I'm talking about in the movie and how that impulsion strategy is going to ping pong back and forth, you're going to each deliver the other's disposability as a way of taking revenge for having this pain inflicted upon you, the rancor gets amped up every time, every time you have this fight you start over with the last fight and so every fight is worse until somebody pulls the plug on the marriage and unfortunately for men in American society women are led to believe that they have the upper hand as soon as they invite the outside world into the house, while the marriage is strictly inside the house, there's a distinction that I make in the book Shiley's Delight about inside the house versus outside the house in German it's combined shaft and Zelshaft, inside the house this is very common inside the house that will be one particular moral philosophy and outside the house both partners will operate on a different moral philosophy, this is very common in Jewish marriages a lot of Catholic marriages many Lutheran marriages, the traditional marriage at home and yet outside the house both members of that couple have a different moral philosophy, this is where you have a very conservative Jewish household and both of the partners are politically liberal, they're assassinating their own marriage and they don't know it, they're killing their own marriage slowly they don't know it because they're inviting the state in whether they want it or not, but as long as man and wife are operating their own separate policy inside the house and the man is expressing appropriate moral leadership there is no outside the house inside that marriage but as soon as he looks too much like Mr. Navy to her she has tremendous resources outside the house and when she brings those resources in in the form of the state in the form of divorce and the form of family court all of a sudden that marriage is blown up and generally blown up beyond repair it can't be fixed from that point what used to happen is the rancor would get so bad that one or both parents would turn into Mr. and Mrs. Stick it out sticking it out for the sake of the children but because of the imbalance in divorce law favoring women to in their opinion I think it's an illusion but it is there their opinion that they have the upper hand as soon as they invited divorce lawyer into the marriage Mr. Stick it out doesn't even get a chance now and the beautiful thing about sticking it out is very often they will go through that rancor they will go through that cold war of the stick it out and five years seven years in they'll suddenly find that their marriage is fine that they're really happy they're the marriage anyway that one of the best if you're not being physically abused sexually abused if you're not being cheated on flagrantly repeatedly cheated on if there is no reason to blow up that marriage very often it's worthwhile to weather the pain that you're going through because you will work through it and your marriage will be delightful anyway because the fact of the matter is you got married for a reason and the reason was she said he was the best she could do he said she was the best she could best he could do and if neither one of you was actively shopping for an alternative you really are married that's my definition of marriage as both of them are committed to each other and neither one is shopping for an alternative if that's true you're married what a judge says what a priest says what a license says whatever paperwork you sign that's all incidental if nobody's shopping you're married if nobody's shopping and you're happy with each other you have no reason to split up and to split up is invariably or almost invariably the wrong choice because you can't replace the time that you spent on this relationship the people can seem to be fungible you can imagine being married to somebody better as soon as this falls apart i can finally go out and get get the wife i'm really looking for but in fact the time that you spent cannot be replaced it is not fungible and therefore it's very difficult to argue i am fortunately successfully married for a second time my second marriage is much better has always been much better than my first marriage but nevertheless i almost screwed it up three times and it's only in the last six years or so that i've really been getting the job right i've been mr married for the last six years i was mr maybe for the first 10 years we were together and god bless her she stuck it out with me and we're very happy with each other we could not possibly be happier and we say that all the time we couldn't be happier and yet the next day is even better and the same thing is true for the sex by the way and i'm going to be 55 next month um our sex life gets better and better and better the longer we're together it's always been great and that's one of the things that kept us together there was always great but it's consistently better and my advice to men generally is marry seriously and stay serious about your marriage deliver the goods deliver on your promises negotiate seriously and in detail before you commit so that you make sure you know what you've committed to and then follow through and if you haven't done that do it now um do it when you can and do it without rancor but um make sure that you spelled out the terms and no uncertain terms and especially for the man because he's not as adept at social cues and he's not as i'm very fluent very fluid very fossil i have a real easy time with language it's not a good idea to get into an argument with me i'm not guaranteeing i'll win but i'll think i won um but most men are not like that and so spelling things out in detail is a tremendous benefit to the man but also to the woman so there are no no illusions no belief that you're being betrayed that you're being cheated and if you are you can point to the paperwork and say no this is what we agreed to it's it's kind of it's cautious in that respect it's like um Sheldon Cooper on big bank theory with the roommate agreement and they're making fun of that kind of document and it doesn't have to be that elaborate it doesn't have to be that detailed it can be very very brief but by being explicit by being written down by being something you both can refer to you can say no this is not what we agreed to i don't think you're living up to the agreement and you may be mistaken when you say that but then you're having the discussion and in having the discussion you will work out you'll work out where the problem is really coming from and you'll solve it and that's how you stay married this is how you stay married i'll stop the easiest ways that you can identify yourself on the disc scale is how you break up with somebody because almost everybody has and for me that was i was thinking i might be one i might be the other but as soon as you were like this is how they break up that's what did it for me did you so merrily is talking to me about breakup strategies using the disc system in the breakups that you had did you break up by combat or did you break up by reconciliation by trying to make it work combat really because i'll i will bet that you went through a lot of reconciliation first a lot of times where you thought i should leave i should leave i should leave no maybe if i do this instead women do this women are biologically more inclined to be sociable than men are and even whatever their predisposition in disc is there's going to be a whole lot of social influence on them frankly because you're built to be sociable you're built to be sociable in the way that maria quite rose i have no idea how to say her last name not mayetta but steve mayetta's wife um she's obviously built to be sociable she looks like a painting of the madonna when she's holding that that child it's built into your biology much more than it is in men's biology men are sort of pre-programmed to be indifferent to historic relationships because they may have to go off to war for a long long time they may be on the hunt for months at a time the heartbreak of leaving your family when you are too sociable is too much to bear and so and it's in our biology that way too there's some little brain chemistry that divides the hemispheres the brain hemispheres for men in a way that doesn't happen for women women are just naturally more sociable so what i would expect is for a woman in a situation where she knows she needs to leave to attempt again and again and again to repair the relationship and only when she decides that it's only going to result in another failure does she go to another strategy and then the strategy that she goes to will reflect her her disposition predisposition and so that's where the combat strategy would come in and it's not really combat it's just rancor and acrimony and ugliness and you never talk to each other again disposition for you just you said that it was the sea was the cautious person the cautious personality will break up by combat typically by rancor and acrimony the driven personality breaks up by flight as soon as a driven knows that something's not working it's over it doesn't matter what's not working if it's a job if it's a business if it's a romantic relationship if it's a friendship if it's if it's a rented car driven hops into a rented car drives it off the lot realizes he doesn't like it he'll take it back and say i need you to replace this car um driven's break up break up by flight incandescence break up by distancing and so um unmarried women will often complain he never called back he never returned my calls we went out three different times and i thought things were going great and i never heard from him again this is an incandescent breaking up by not breaking up and the incandescent will tell you well i'm letting her down easy you're not letting her down easy you're making it miserable for her because she's going through months of wondering if you're going to call she's sitting by the phone all weekend long the movie i i'm just not that into you is a really worthwhile movie for people to sit i'm just not that into you as the name of the movie um really worthwhile for people to see especially for understanding the way that women handle romantic relationships breakup strategy is reconciliation which sounds absurd it's incoherent but sociables are always trying to repair relationships and so they will continue to try to repair the relation relationship long after the the drivins and the incandescence recognize that it's not going on anywhere each for their own reasons the driven is long gone long ago he may tell you he may not but he is long gone you you you you you can smell feel hear his absence he leaves an echo behind him when he closes the door but the sociables will attempt to break up by reconciliation they'll keep coming on back take it take another little piece of my heart now baby women is losers jenice joplin another song women is losers this is why women is losers because they keep coming back when they shouldn't and the real problem is the cautious when they are confronted with the breakup will attempt to block escape and so this is north korea in action every every tyranny is a cautious tyranny and in a cautious tyranny a cautious personality believes that the ideal that he is defending the ideal that he is has instantiated has made real is the perfect possible paradise there is no more perfect paradise cautious people don't understand the way other people think and that's where you get that you're wrong i'm right there is no other way to talk about this the fact that you're wrong suggests number one that your counter-revolutionary are at least that you're misguided you may be insane so let's start with reeducation if that doesn't work let's go through a process of imprisonment and if that doesn't work let's put you in the grave and so our friends our marxist friends have managed to bury a hundred and sixty million rebels so far what were they rebelling against they were rebelling against a perfectly planned paradise how could you possibly rebel against a perfectly planned plan paradise you are not permitted to escape and if the only way i can prevent you from escaping is to put you in the grave well dang you're just going to have to die and i'm not saying that regular people normal people who have the cautious temperament will do that but where cautious people are in power and where that power is not checked it will oscillate in that direction it will tend in that direction so i happen to mention steve balmer and the way that he screwed up microsoft microsoft is a horrible place to work because it was a cautious tyranny forever the way that cautious tyrants block escape is called golden handcuffs you got stock options you got an insurance plan your kids have a dental plan you have all kinds of reasons why you can't quit this job it's golden handcuffs i'm gonna i'm gonna give you something that's so valuable you don't dare escape it that's a horrifying thing to do to people especially to socials because socials break up by reconciliation and so they stay much longer than they should as soon as somebody says golden handcuffs to a driven he doesn't hear golden he hears handcuffs and boom he's gone the incandescent may may admire the gold for a while at the same time that he's sending out his resume to find a better job to find another job in any case but the sociable on the one hand will admire the gold it's a great reward will value those rewards because they help protect the other relationships the relationship with wife with the children thinking ahead to retirement and will only recognize that he's living in a cautious tyranny after it's already too late and then he's stuck and people who are stuck in a cautious tyranny are miserable the incandescent strategy says look at me look at me look at me a sociable who is stuck in a cautious tyranny has to emulate the incandescent strategy it's not natural to them but they have to emulate it and the way they emulate it is don't look at me don't look at me don't look at me one of the ways i have i i have a knowing that i'm behaving inappropriately with my wife as i can feel her flinching when i look at her and that's brutal for me to recognize that i'm inflicting an injury without even intending to but my responsibility is productivity and my response to that responsibility is frustration and i get frustrated i get cranky i get demanding and suddenly she feels a sale she feels put up on and i never want her to feel that way and fortunately i'm aware enough of it when i see it i end up pushing it too far way too often but at least when i pushed it too far i see her flinching i know that's the don't look at me don't look at me that's what it is it's the faux incandescent strategy as a way as a survival strategy and that's sad and i'm better and better about it because i recognize it earlier in the process and i do a lot to program against it anyway but nevertheless i am driven and driven people will be the driven going to be driven people will be what they are especially under stress especially in emergencies especially when being what they are is most important to them that's when the disproportionality profile will come out the strongest and so people are not necessarily going to show you what they are it's sometimes hard to suss out after a while it'll get easier and easier because you'll recognize the things that they say so for instance brent smith one of the speakers they use the word lazy twice and i know he's a driven lazy for a driven means inefficient that's what it means when a driven says i'm lazy i don't want to go to all that work it means all that work is inefficient i don't i don't respect that strategy and so they say lazy but what they mean is inefficient he said lazy twice i know he's driven i didn't even have to ask perfect we done