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Listen to the audio description while you read this page about Type 3 — The Performer:
more about the performer
The Performer is concerned with work and getting the job done. They are driven by the need to succeed. In essence, they believe that love and acceptance is based upon what they do, on their performance, image, achievements and success.
With their high drive to get the job done, a Performer puts feelings aside — theirs as well as the feelings of other people. This becomes a problem in relationships.
For the Performer, accomplishments are seen to be the measure of a person’s worth. This leaves them very dependent on external approval and recognition, based on how well they succeed in accomplishing things.
In relationship, others may sense they are not cared for, especially because their feelings are ignored by the Performer. The whole realm of emotional contact will seem to be missing. People want to know what a Performer feels. But there is discomfort around the arena of emotions, so a Performer will avoid this vital area of human interchange. Their partners end up feeling a lack of connection. As a Performer gets stuck in to-do lists and workaholism, their emotional absence will become the critical issue.
Personal growth for a Performer is to know and honor their feelings, and to freely discuss feelings with others. They grow with the realizion they are a human beings, not human ‘doings.’ They also need to become the source of their own acceptance and appreciation, rather than depending on external recognition. It is vital for a Performer to slow down and smell the roses — to feel good while doing nothing — and appreciate the importance of emotion in life and love.
Lost essential quality: A connection to a universal hope that everything that needs to be done will get done according to universal laws or principles.
Compensating belief: The world rewards doing, not being. To be loved, you must become a ‘human doing’ instead of a ‘human being.’
Attention/coping strategy: Going for accomplishment, success and a good image, since love comes from the approval generated by your performance. Focusing on tasks and goals, and pressing forward with little attention to your feelings.
Trap: Believing that becoming super-efficient will assure success, recognition, love and acceptance.
Driving energy: Deceiving yourself in order to accomplish the goal by altering yourself, telling a good story and projecting a good image. Self-deception about your true feelings.
Avoidance: Being a failure, becoming incapacitated by your strong, true feelings (an unconscious fear that you will be unable to accomplish anything).
Strengths: Achievement, competence, enthusiasm, leadership.
Paradox: Outer success does not bring inner fulfillment or the feeling of true well-being.
Path of development:
- Moderate pace
- Welcome feelings
- Understand failure is not disaster
- Realize that love is for you, not for what you accomplish
Ultimate task: Reclaiming the truth that love comes to you because of who you are, not because of what you do.
The basic proposition:
You lost sight of the original state of hope where everything works and is accomplished naturally according to universal law. You came to believe instead that what gets done is dependent on each person’s individual effort. You learned to get love, acceptance and recognition by working hard to be the best and maintaining a good image. At the same time, you developed a driving, go-ahead energy of self-deception to match to your image of success and approval. Your attention naturally goes to tasks and accomplishments.
The central issue for healing:
The task for Threes is to avoid making life into tasks. Performers are not just human doings, but human beings. So the simple prescription here is to slow down enough to allow your feelings to emerge and to realize that love and acceptance come to you for being as well as for doing.
Performers depend on active force and mistrust being receptive. Hooked on producing and succeeding, they do what it takes to get to the goal, automatically adjusting their image to become what they perceive will bring the rewards. This is where deceit comes in. Performers take short cuts and sometimes soften the truth to get the job done, which makes sense since the focus is on gaining approval and creating an image of success through the accomplishment of tasks.
Six healing and growth commitments for Performers:
- Slow your pace and allow your feelings to emerge
- Welcome the feelings, realize that doubt and anxiety often arise first
- Develop empathy and understanding
- Develop receptivity and patience
- Be truthful to yourself and your own true feelings
- Allow for failure
If the above personality type seems to fit you, we recommend you print out this page for easy reference. We also highly recommend that you listen to the audio description at the top of this page.