Taking the advice of the opposites

The home base strategy is ‘what comes naturally.’ It draws on your most dominant resources.

The two strategies directly opposite home base are likely to be strategies that do not come naturally at all, as they draw on your least dominant resources.

And with all nine strategies being pieces of good advice in different situations, the strategies directly opposite home base – the two strategies that do not come naturally at all – may well be the pieces of advice most worthy of special effort and attention.

Gut type NINE can often be trapped by inertia, or swept along by the crowd ‘for the sake of an easy life.’ It is good advice for gut type NINE to stop and think things through first, and try to ‘be true to yourself.’ These are the two strategies that draw on both head and heart – NINE’s least dominant resources – at FOUR and FIVE on the board, directly opposite NINE.

Heart type THREE often invests a huge amount in a network of relationships – and not every ‘investment’ will prove wise or beneficial. It can often be good advice for THREE to try to ‘test people out’ a little before investing too much – and, should a relationship turn sour, not to sink into despair but to keep going and ‘stay positive, come what may.’ These are the strategies that draw on both head and gut, at SEVEN and EIGHT on the board: not always easy for heart type THREE, but good advice – complementing the dominant heart influence.

Head type SIX functions best with the familiar. It is a challenge for SIX to venture out into the unknown, and there is a danger that SIX can become reactionary or insular. The advice most needed by SIX is the advice of heart and gut acting together at ONE and TWO: when venturing out into the unknown, a direct engagement characterized by courtesy and politeness and generosity and caring will often serve you well – and these are the heart and gut strategies of ONE and TWO. The logic is the same for the remaining six sectors, which each have a primary and a secondary influence: the two opposites for each type provide valuable advice.

ONE, for example, is the gut type with a secondary heart influence. The head is the resource held in reserve. It is often good advice for gut-plus-heart ONE consciously to choose the head strategy, SIX, or the head-plus-heart strategy, FIVE, as pieces of good advice. In both cases, ONE is developing ONE’s less dominant resources. In practical terms: ONE often acts impulsively or judgmentally, according to some rule of conscience or etiquette, without really thinking through the consequences. It can therefore be good advice for ONE to adopt the natural caution of FIVE and SIX – ‘think it through first,’ and ‘stick with what you know.’

The spontaneous generosity of heart-plus-gut TWOs can often leave them over-committed, so ‘stick with what you know’ – the head advice at SIX – is good advice for TWO. And TWOs can often be hurt, having so much generously invested in their relationships with others: ‘stay positive come what may’ – head-plus-gut advice at SEVEN, can also be good advice for TWO.

FOUR’s natural strategy – ‘be true to yourself’ – can leave heart type FOUR vulnerable when choosing to be open with others. Testing people out a little first – the advice of EIGHT – can protect against this, and can help sensitive FOUR to be a little more thick-skinned when that is necessary for self-protection. FOURs can also suffer from an inhibiting inner turmoil, and the strategy of NINE is then good advice: edit out all the unnecessary complications; keep it simple.

FIVE can also suffer from an inner turmoil – more of the mind than the emotions – and again, the advice of NINE is good advice: sometimes it is best to edit out the complications and keep it simple in order to engage effectively with the world. And another piece of good advice for head type FIVE – often tied up in the distant inner world of observation and calculation – is the gut-plus-heart advice of ONE: to keep with the etiquette of the world outside, trusting at least some of its established wisdom, and taking care as a minimum to be courteous and polite.

SEVEN’s talent for finding the positive in every situation often sees SEVEN responding to situations rather than creating them. There are times – including for SEVEN – when it is good and right to take a lead and deliberately influence or change a situation: this is what comes naturally to THREE, and the advice ‘achieve and lead’ can be good advice for SEVEN. Bringing joy into a situation where there is no joy may mean taking a lead. And determining to achieve some clear goals – like THREE – may encourage SEVEN to finish off at least some of those many tasks which have been so enthusiastically begun. And when the temptation of SEVEN is gluttony and excess, the remedy to that can be to look away from the self and toward others – taking the advice at TWO, to give and to care.

EIGHT can get caught up in kicking every boundary and every rule in a destructive way – fighting against things rather than achieving things or taking a positive lead. The advice at THREE may be good advice: to achieve something, to try to give a positive and constructive lead; to woo people sometimes, like THREE, as well as confronting them as EIGHT. And part of the challenge for EIGHT, out there in the gut zone, is to discover the inner life, especially of the heart: to discover the emotional heart of the self behind the battling exterior, and to be true to that self – the advice at FOUR.