Earlier in the series, we talked about Tolerance as measuring our capacity to appreciate others as intrinsically valuable humans with unique experiences and perspectives (this is not the same as agreeing with them).

We talked about The Meaningfulness of Work measurement that reflects how we see and think about the intrinsic value and unique qualities of ourselves.

Those measurements are about how we think about ourselves and others.

Now we’re looking at how we implement or carry out this thinking in real life.

These two indicators, Relational Skills toward others & Dealing with our own Personal Issues measure our integrity around how we connect with others and ourselves.

How This All Fits Together

The indicators we’ve talked about up to this point have been about how we notice and assimilate information. This includes how clearly we see the situations around us and how we solve problems and create solutions. Now we’re getting into the last part of decision making, which is about implementation.

Decision Making in Three Parts:

1. Noticing the information available to work with.

2. Problem-solving by taking that information and creating new ideas or new solutions.

3. Choose the best solutions to implement.

So we are looking at our degrees of consistency in the ways we think and how we implement that thinking in regards to People, Work, and Strategic thinking.

Relational Skills & Empathy is about how we connect with others, and treat others.

Dealing with Personal Issues is about how we make choices around our needs, desires, preferences, and we take care of ourselves.

When these two measurements are combined with the Tolerance and Meaningfulness of Work indicators, we have a pretty clear picture of how we connect with ourself and with others.

Integrity is the core principle of connection with yourself and others.

Relational Empathy Toward Others

The Relational Skills & Empathy indicator reflects our ability to understand and make sense of complex situations relating to other people, and then act in a manner that is consistent with our thinking.

For example, we might think other people are important but, in our actions, we do not take the time to hear the other person’s viewpoint.

This is specifically about our ability to be present to people on a personal level, to get them but also to act in a way that is consistent with how we value them.

In the example above, this score indicates a strong sense of really getting the nuances of people and seeing them as individuals. There’s a strong sense of congruence between how this person thinks about people (See the Tolerance score in Part 2) and how they actually treat people.

How We Care For Ourselves

Dealing with Personal Issues is the self-side score, which reflects the clarity and congruence in which we carry out and implement boundaries, prioritize important needs, and set personal standards.

In the example above, this score indicates that the individual can take the necessary steps to care for themself, but might tend to look for input from an inner circle before taking action.

This isn’t good or bad–it’s just information.

It might result in the individual being more open to different perspectives, or it might be that they have difficulty taking action on their own behalf without an external “permission slip.”

Another way we can use the information in the example is to put this self-side score, which is good, beside the world-side score, which is very strong. This gives us information about the difference of congruence between how this individual sees and responds to others versus how they view and respond to themselves.

In Real Life

Overall, this is about considering our congruence and integrity between how we think about others and how we treat them, how we think about ourselves and how we actually treat ourselves.

Signals that help us notice these gaps between our thinking and doing are things like:

• Feeling defensive around different thoughts and opinions.

• Listening distractedly while acting present.

• Treating others perspectives, ideas and needs as more important or valuable than our own. And vice versa.

• Resentment or anger and feeling uncared for or unheard.

When we experience a strong sense of congruence in both of these areas, we have the internal bandwidth to allow others to have different thoughts and opinions while being clear about our own. We can relax.

We recognize that having a strong self-side allows us to have a greater bandwidth in caring for others, appreciating others, and understanding others.

Ultimately when we have integrity in relationship to ourselves, we have a foundation for strong connection to others. It’s all ridiculously connected.

Subscribe now

NOTE: If you are new here–so glad to have you! This is the seventh part in a 21-part series about the specific information that is measured in a Hartman Value Profile report. The purpose is to create an HVP indicator index for anyone to use, whether you have your own HVP report or not.

If you don’t have a report, this series is designed so that you can use each article as a starting point to notice how you think and make decisions in your daily life. HVP reports reflect very specific information that is often challenging to see in ourselves, but it isn’t necessary to have in order to see yourself more clearly.

Indicator Series:

Terms & Definitions

About the 21-Part Indicator Index

Pt. 1: Noticing & Self-Regard

Pt. 2: Tolerance & Meaningfulness of Work

Pt. 3: Trainability & Value of Work

Pt. 4: Strategic Conceptualize & Organizational Ability

Pt. 5: Problem-Solving Styles

Pt. 6: Realism to Idealism & Role Identity

Yesterday was a day that called for more sunshine and fresh air and less time in front of a screen. Here is the short and simple. 

Intro

So far, the indicators we covered reflect different amounts of bandwidth for noticing and problem-solving. But these two indicators are just a range or sliding scale–it’s information that can be helpful to know about ourselves.

If all the indicators on a report were to be divided into chapters, the stages of thinking or good judgment that is parsed out in the HVP, it would be something like:

Step 1 - Noticing: How we take in information from the outside world and our internal world.

Step 2 - Problem-Solving: How we create options and ideas with the information we have.

Step 3 - Implementation: How we choose solutions and implement our thinking.

We’re picking up on the second step: problem-solving.

Both Problem Solving Styles reflect the time, intention, and bandwidth we have for thinking through the choices we’re making. 

Now, the Realism/Idealism indicator reflects the perspectives from which we tend to start our problem-solving process. The Role Identity indicator reflects the internal grounds from which we tend to stake our deepest sense of identity.

POV: What Is and What Could Be

The Realism to Idealism is the World-side indicator that reflects our general point of view towards the situation when we start our problem-solving process. “This is how it is” is on one end and “This is how it could/should be” is at the other end.

In the sample above, the indicator reflects an individual who tends to see situations through the lens of “This is how it could be” or “This is how it should be.”

On the far ends of the range, there tends to be more resoluteness of perspective. In the middle, there tends to be more flexibility and ease in seeing “what is” and the possibility of “what could be.”

The opportunity here is to pay attention to our vantage point when we’re thinking about how to best find a solution to the problem or issue in front of us.

We might start from the perspective that this is just how it is. Or on the end, that this should be different.

Or somewhere between, like this is how it is now, and I wonder what it could become.

The Realism/Idealism indicator reflects how we tend to first see the situation and problems in front of us.

Where We Anchor In 

On the internal Self-side, the Role Identity indicator reflects where we tend to anchor our deepest sense of identity.

On one side, an identity rooted in “Who You Are” is that our sense of who we are is attached to our intrinsic value as a unique human being. Because our intrinsic value never changes, this tends to be a more solid foundation to anchor into.

On the other side, when our identity is over on the “What You Do” side, our identity is informed by our roles, titles, purpose and work in the world, beliefs, and lifestyle.

Because this is a range, it’s fair to remember that we scoot around between these poles and always have a bit of both going on. The opportunity is to pay attention to what we have anchored our identity into so we can determine if it’s a foundation that is serving us well.

In Real Life

As we pay attention to the perspective we tend to solve problems from, there are opportunities to hone into what works well for us and where we drain extra energy.

If we lean toward the Realism side of “what is,” we have the strength of seeing people, situations, work, and projects more for what they are. We can be intentional to also remain open to the potential for change and hope for what can become.

If we lean toward the Idealism side, we have the strength of seeing people, projects, and situations for the potential of what they can become. We can take care to see the current reality as the starting point so we don’t get stuck in the disappointment of reality not matching our hopes of what could become.

We experience the full range of our creative problem-solving power when we can hold the tension of both—the clarity to see what is and the hope and vision to know what can become.

Subscribe now

NOTE: If you are new here–so glad to have you! This is the sixth part in a 21-part series about the specific information that is available through a Hartman Value Profile report. The purpose is to create an HVP indicator index for anyone to use, whether you have your own HVP report or not.

If you don’t have a report, this series is designed so that you can use each article as a starting point to notice how you think and make decisions in your daily life. HVP reports reflect very specific information that is often challenging to see in ourselves, but it isn’t necessary to see yourself more clearly.

Indicator Series:

Terms & Definitions

About the 21-Part Indicator Series

Pt. 1: Noticing & Self-Regard

Pt. 2: Tolerance & Meaningfulness of Work

Pt. 3: Trainability & Value of Work

Pt. 4: Strategic Conceptualize & Organizational Ability

Pt. 5: Problem-Solving Styles

Beware: changing your pauses can change the tempo and direction of your life. Proceed with caution. :)

Intro

The pause is the place where something new can happen. It’s the space when we can say yes or no. Might be the daily choices that add up over the weeks, months, and years. Might be the single yes or no that changes the rest of our life.

The Problem-Solving Style indicators show us how quickly and intentionally we move through these pauses in our life and how well it’s working for us. 

The Recap

In the sample reports below, you can see that the Problem-Solving Style indicators follow the first four indicators that we talked about.

We started by talking about the clarity of the windshield we see the world through and the attention we give to our internal dashboard signals. Then we talked about the three different types of information we tend to notice, both through the windshield out in the world and on our internal dashboard.

The Problem-Solving styles are like summaries to these first indicators. They say something like, so all that said, here’s how this is working out for you.

About Our Pauses

On the external World-side, The Problem-Solving Style gives us information about the length of our pauses. There’s a range here, and this indicator helps us see where we land on it.

We might routinely make snappy decisions, with little need for thinking or deliberation. We might tend to sit with our decisions for awhile or really step back and take days or weeks before circling around with our final choice.

These pauses happen in the space between when someone asks us a question and when we answer.

They happen in the time between when we are offered opportunities and when we accept or decline.

They happen between other people’s choices and our own response.

The pauses also happen in the rhythms of our daily life. A commute between work and homelife (I do the sit-in-car-for-a-moment move when I pull in the driveway). A sabbath. A stroll.  

Some of us do work that really requires fast decisions, and some of us do work that requires us to resist the pressure to move quickly so we can make deeply deliberate and thoughtful choices.

If we’re bleeding out in the emergency room, we want our triage nurse to make split second choices. If we’re preparing for brain surgery, we want a doctor who takes time to sift through all of the information, consult with peers, and make very deliberate decisions. You get my drift.

Part of this reflects how easily we adjust our pauses to the size and impact of the choice.

Part of this is about seeing our personal primary style, since we tend to default to a response time that we’re most comfortable with.

In the sample report above, this indicator reflects an individual who tends to take time to step back to think through long-term implications before making a more deliberate decision. Now if we want to look at how well this is working out for this individual, we can look at the internal side of this indicator.

How It’s Working Out

On the internal Self-side, the Problem-Solving Style gives us information about the result of our current problem-solving style and tendencies.

This indicator reflects how well our current decision making process is working for us—smooth and efficiently or if there’s more of a built-up backlog of choices we’re rushing through.

This indicator also gives us our first glimpse into how comfortably we can tolerate the unknown, relax in pressure, and pause before “knowing” the answer or result.

In the sample report above, this indicator reflects an individual who has the space and bandwidth to make the decisions at a tempo that works well for them. The low number reflects that while their problem-solving style might be more slow and deliberate (as we see on the World-side), it’s ultimately quite effective and efficient for this person.

The Problem-Solving Style gives us the opportunity to understand the connection between our best decision making style and the impact it makes in our entire life.

In Real Life

This pair of indicators give us information about how comfortable we feel with our pauses and how our current decision tempo is working out for us. Once we can see what we’re doing and how it’s working, we get to go out and discover what works better for us.

We can look at other parts of our HVP report for specific clues, but at the end of the day, we take these new insights into the world and get to know ourselves more deeply. 

We can get to know more about how we make our best decisions–do we follow our gut, navigate by emotional instinct, or use logic and information?

How can we tell when we’re rushing through these pauses or dragging them out?

What is it like when we are intentional and calm in our pauses?

The power in the pause is that these are the moments that direct our life. Intention in the pause becomes an intentional life.

Subscribe now

NOTE: If you are new here–so glad to have you! This is the fifth part in a 21-part series about the specific information that is available through a Hartman Value Profile report. The purpose is to create an HVP indicator index for anyone to use, whether you have your own HVP report or not.

If you don’t have a report, this series is designed so that you can use each article as a starting point to notice how you think and make decisions in your daily life. HVP reports reflect very specific information that is often challenging to see in ourselves, but it isn’t necessary to see yourself more clearly.

Indicator Series:

Terms & Definitions

About the 21-Part Indicator Index

Pt. 1: Noticing & Self-Regard

Pt. 2: Tolerance & Meaningfulness of Work

Pt. 3: Trainability & Value of Work

Pt. 4: HVP Indicators: Strategic Conceptualize & Organizational Ability

For everyone who is new here–so glad to have you! This is the fourth part in a 21-part series about the specific information that is available through a Hartman Value Profile report. The purpose is to create an HVP indicator index for anyone to use, whether you have your own HVP report or not.

If you don’t have a report, this series is designed so that you can use each article as a starting point to notice how you think and make decisions in your daily life. HVP reports reflect very specific information that is often challenging to see in ourselves, but it isn’t necessary to see yourself more clearly.

If you want more info on this series, there’s a quick reference list of previous articles at the end. That’s all for housekeeping—let’s get to the nerdy stuff!

Intro to Strategic Conceptualize & Organizational Ability Indicators

Previously, we talked about information relating to people, intrinsic value, and interpersonal connection. We also talked about information relating to extrinsically valued things, like roles, work, tasks, and material stuff.

Now, Strategic Conceptualize and Organizational Ability is about how clearly we see through the “ideas and strategic concept” lens. This includes abstract ideas and concepts, structures and frameworks. It also includes our clarity of understanding potential long-term results or consequences to current decisions.

Each of the HVP indicators reflect information about who we are, what we do, and why we do it. 

These two indicators give us insights about the clarity we have about why we do it, the deeper purpose that drives our daily choices.

The Strategic Conceptualize indicator provides information about how clearly we see strategic ideas, concepts, and information around us as we move through life.

The Organizational Ability indicator gives us information about how comfortable we feel with ideas and concepts, as well as how we organize our thoughts, lives, and the space around us.

Solving Puzzles

The Strategic - Conceptualize indicator is the external, World-side part of this pair. It reflects our bandwidth and even enjoyment for solving the complex, multi-dimensional and long-game puzzles in life.

When we need to run a series of errands around town at the end of the day, we make a mental map in our head to determine how we can get to each location, and the order, to complete all of our tasks before each place closes–it’s this strategic concept map.

Creating a retirement plan involves working with strategic concepts. So does investing, building a business, budgeting, taking care of our health, and raising children.

The Strategic - Conceptualize indicator reflects information about our comfort with mentally flying up to the 30,000 foot view to consider the big-picture, long-term consequences of current choices and decisions. It’s the perspective we use when considering various options available to accomplish goals and bring our visions to life.

Creating Order

On the internal Self-side, the Organizational Ability indicator reflects information about how we organize our thinking, our preferences for organization in our surroundings, and the sense of orderliness we bring to each area of our life.

When we take time to “organize our thoughts” before we talk, we’re using this strategic thinking. When we clean our desk because we “can’t get anything done in this mess,” we’re experiencing too much clutter in this part of our thinking to focus on meaningful work.

We use this strategic thinking when we look at the predicted temperatures to decide how to dress for the day. When we pause before reacting to a conflict or heated conversation and consider the long-term implications of what we want to say, we are also practicing this strategic thinking.

The Organizational Ability indicator gives us information about how we notice and pay attention to the ideas, processes, flows, and frameworks throughout our lives, work, and home.

In Real Life

Practically, when we pay attention to our thinking around strategic concepts and our sense of organization, we have the opportunity to see how open we are to strategic information in and around us.

The more clearly we see signals and symptoms, the sooner we can respond before they grow into larger issues. 

We save money, time, energy, and relationships when we have a sense of understanding about the long-term results of the actions we choose today.

Indicator Series:

Terms & Definitions

About the 21-Part Indicator Index

Pt. 1: Noticing & Self-Regard

Pt. 2: Tolerance & Meaningfulness of Work

Pt. 3: Trainability & Value of Work

Who We Are is the foundation for developing a solid sense of self and identify, but What We Do can be a gateway into knowing ourselves more clearly and enjoying the ordinary experiences of daily life.

The indicators relating to What We Do reflect how we think and make decisions around the work we do—from our careers, jobs, and daily tasks, to how we use resources, and how we show up in our various roles.

What we do throughout our days has the potential to be the path that moves us into knowing ourselves more deeply, connecting with others, and doing more of the work we love doing.

The Recap

We started with Noticing and Self-Regard, the two indicators that reflect how clearly we take in information from the outside world and our internal world.

Tolerance & Meaningfulness of Work are about the clarity of information we can take in regarding people, intrinsic value, and interpersonal communication and connection. It’s the first part about how clear we are about who we are.

Each indicator of the HVP assessment reflects information about ourselves, which we can use in countless ways to make intentional choices about our life, thinking, and decision making. 

The Intro

The Trainability and Value of Work indicators are about things that are more replaceable and concrete—roles, titles, things we do, stuff we have, materials we work with, the stuff we call the “material world.”

These indicators tell us something about our bandwidth for noticing and paying attention to information relating to how we get stuff done—how we use resources, complete projects and tasks, and accomplish any work.

One of the gifts in this information is the opportunity to gauge how we feel about our work, our bandwidth for the work and responsibilities we have on our plate, and how much we feel like we’re contributing to others.

These reflect how much fulfillment we experience through what we’re doing in our lives.

How Comfortable We Are in Our Work & Roles

Trainability is about our bandwidth to see and understand how processes work. It reflects how comfortable we feel in our responsibilities and roles and how quickly we connect dots and put pieces of information together.

The more comfortable and relaxed we are in our work, in every area of life, the more bandwidth we have for picking up information quickly and for learning skills and implementing them.

Trainability is about how clearly we can see and make decisions about work that we need to get done, our responsibilities through our roles, and how quickly we learn and digest new skills.

The Value We Contribute to Others

The Value of Work indicator reflects something about how much value and contribution we see that we provide to others through all of the things we do.

The sense of enjoyment we experience through our work.

The clarity we have about what kind of work really makes us come alive.

The sense of value and contribution we see that our work provides to others.

The clearer we can see who we are, the clearer we can see the work we were designed to do best. The more we do the work we love doing, the more we get to know who we are.

In Real Life

I’ll give you my opinion on the front end, because I have some clear bias going on here.

I freaking love all of the extrinsic What You Do stuff. It’s like my gateway drug into the deep personal work.

It’s in the midst of projects and daily tasks that I have the most opportunities to learn about myself.

My deepest “internal” work happens while my hands are busy. My most interesting ideas come up while I’m doing the most ordinary chores. The most real opportunities to see myself come up in the relationships with the people around me. I feel most alive when I’m doing the kind of work that I just know I was made to be doing.

It is in the work we do daily that we have the opportunities to see ourselves in action, shift what we’re doing, choose something new, and create something better in our lives.

Note: These two indicators fall under the umbrella of the Noticing and Self-Regard indictors so refer to that article if more info is helpful.

These two indicators are subsets of the first two we started with: Noticing and Self-Regard, which reflect our bandwidth for clearly noticing and paying attention to information in and around us.

Talking about “information” in the world is pretty broad. Most everything in the world fits into one of three categories—People, Work/Things and Ideas/Systems.

These three categories can be used to clarify types of information, and also types of thinking, areas of integrity, and strengths that people bring to a group.

The People category includes the intrinsic value of humans, qualities that make each person irreplaceably unique, and connection with ourselves and other people.

When we put that together, the Tolerance and Meaningfulness of Work indicators are about our bandwidth to specifically take in the People-category of information. (The next two pairs focus on the Work and Ideas categories.)

The gift in these two indicators is that they reflect how we are cruising through life in regard to our relationships with others and connection with ourselves.

Seeing the Unique Value of Others

Tolerance is the external World-side indicator in this pair. It reflects our bandwidth to clearly notice and pay attention to information relating to people, relationships, and interpersonal communication. It’s about the clarity of the lens that we see other people through, the way we notice and interpret non-verbal cues, our appreciation of the unique qualities of other people.

When you think of the people in your life who you love, you know the qualities that make them completely irreplaceable to you. That’s the difference between seeing people for who they are, rather than for what they do, the roles or titles they hold, or stuff they own.

Tolerance is about how clearly we see and value others for who they are as unique humans.

Experiencing The Unique Value of Ourselves

On the internal Self-side, Meaningfulness of Work is about our bandwidth to see and experience our personal uniqueness in our own life. So this indicator reflects how much meaningfulness we experience in our own life, based on our ability to see and know ourselves.

Practically, this is knowing things about our preferences, likes and dislikes, what makes us laugh. It’s also knowing our shadows and what we know we cannot sacrifice to maintain our integrity.

Meaningfulness of Work—which really could be thought of as Meaningfulness of Self—is about our bandwidth to see and know ourself deeply, for who we are as unique human beings.

In Real Life

In a nutshell, this information reflects the clarity of the lens we see others and ourselves through as we move through life.

There are a million distractions that serve to muck up the lens we see people through, but we can notice it’s happening when our brain is too busy with thoughts, reactions, and emotions to be present to the other person.

Signals that our lens or windshield might not be clear are things like:

• Feeling too rushed to really engage in a conversation.

• Feeling too emotional or angry to understand what the other person means, or to clarify what they are saying.

• Bracing for conflict or for emotional reactions about differences.

When we feel that relaxed and solid openness that makes it feel like we can listen, feel calm, and ask questions to make sure that we’re understanding correctly, we’re dealing with a pretty clear lens. Even when the situation is uncomfortable, the ability to be this way in it feels pretty dang good.

On the internal Self-side, we can learn our personal signals that we aren’t appreciating our own qualities in the same way we value the people around us. As a result, we’re not getting to experience our life as meaningful as it could be if we were seeing and appreciating more of our intrinsic value.

For me, being resentful or bitter is one of my tip-offs that I’m dismissing important things about myself. It’s like a little nudge to pause and figure out what’s going on down in the basement.

Signals can be things like finding yourself frustrated, angry, disappointed, or bitter.

In my own experience, this was a pretty challenging indicator for me. I had the idea that focusing on the things that made other people special and interesting, while downplaying these same qualities in myself, was the way to be other-oriented.

But here’s the funny thing that happened to me. The more I grow to respect my own unique strengths, the more open and comfortable I am seeing and respecting, and even liking, different strengths, perspectives, and choices in others.

Becoming clear about who you are opens the door to see others for who they are.

First, a chat about how we use information.

The first time I took the Hartman Value Profile and reviewed my report, I was overwhelmed by all of the information I learned about myself in that two hour conversation. But it was nothing compared to what I did next. Before I understood what this new information about me meant, I used it to, well, beat myself up.

I jumped to a lot of stories and assumptions about what it all meant about who I was and what a cruddy human I must be. 

With time, I came to respect and even love what I learned about myself and the opportunities this information opened up for me. But it took a lot longer and the process was much more messy than it had to be.

Here’s some things I’ve learned that make getting to know myself a less jarring experience:

• Information about myself is just information. It’s not right or wrong, good or bad. It just is.

• The more uncomfortable I am while facing new information about myself, the more I need to slow down and be kind to myself. If I feel emotional, there’s probably a lot of deep stuff under there. Heaping criticism hasn’t helped, so far.

• I always have this choice: I can use the information to determine what is working for me and what I want to change, or I can use it to criticize, belittle or disparage myself. I can create or destroy, but I can’t move in both directions at the same time.

Before we get into information that helps us see ourselves more clearly, it’s helpful to go ahead and decide to use the information to create something good.

The Info

That said, the first two indicators on the HVP report Noticing and Self-Regard are reflections of how much we notice around us and inside of ourselves.

So basically, the first piece of information we learn about ourselves is…how much bandwidth we have for noticing information in the world around us and the private world inside of us.

The gift here is that these indicators reflect information about how we are currently cruising through life.

Noticing Information in the World Around Us

On the World-side, the Noticing indicator provides information about the clarity of the lens we are viewing the world through.

For example, when our car windshield is really clean, we can drive slowly through a neighborhood and notice the details and intricacies of each home. We can drive around town running errands or take a roadtrip across the country through unfamiliar territories and we have clear information about our surroundings to use for navigating routes and challenges.

But if our windshield is covered with bugs, it’s harder to see our surroundings clearly. We might have some blind spots or we might miss some details.

If our windshield is caked with mud, it’s going to take a lot of effort to not hit other cars or run off the road.

In the sample above, the Noticing indicator reflects that the person taking the report has a pretty clear windshield with a couple of bugs and dust. There is an opportunity to clean up the windshield a bit. As a result, they’ll have better information, better options, and they can make better decisions.

Paying Attention to the Signals From Our Internal World

The Self-Regard indicator is similar to the first one. It is information about how clearly we are attuned to our personal internal experiences. This includes everything from the emotions we experience, our needs and desires, and senses like gut feelings and our intuition.

Where the Noticing indicator is about how clearly we can see the outside world through our windshield, the Self-Regard indicator tells us how clearly we see and respond to the lights on our dashboard, all of the signals about our internal workings.

The Self-Regard indicator above mentions two extremes,  “Self-care” to “Neglect of Self,” which doesn’t mean exactly how we use the term self-care now. While we could use self-care practices to slow down or relax, this is more about the care and attention we give to our own internal signals, or the degree that we tend to disregard the information coming from within.

Intuitive signals like gut feelings, emotions, or a nagging feeling that we can’t quite put our finger on.

Physical signals like hunger, being sleepy, knowing when our body is telling us to slow down to pay careful attention to the situation in front of us.

In the example above, this person has more dust on the car dashboard and sees more clearly through the windshield. The information from the report reflects that they have more bandwidth for noticing details outside the vehicle than they do for noticing the check engine and tire pressure lights, which signal what is going on internally.

As someone who has driven vehicles with at least one rogue dashboard light for most of my adult life, I get that. #relatable

Practically, the good stuff in all of this information is that it shows us where we’re cruising through life with clear information and where we might be trying to navigate situations, challenges or directions without clear information to start with.

As a rule of thumb, where we feel relaxed, calm, and solid, we are probably looking through a pretty clear windshield or dashboard. 

Where we feel rushed, tunneled vision, distracted or exhausted, we have opportunities to clear up the stuff that’s blocking our view.

As we take care of the blinking lights, bugs and grime, uncomfortable signals, and untrue stories that keep us stuck in ruts, the view gets clearer and we start noticing options we didn’t notice before.

For those of you using your personal HVP report, you are working with information that is specific to you. If you haven’t taken it, you can still do the same work, it just requires a little more attention and patience. If you want specific info about how you are cruising through life right now, along with a conversation about where it’s specifically showing up in your life, you can grab that here.

I ended the last article with the riveting notice that coming up next, you could expect the “nitty-gritty details of People, Work and Strategy judgment on the World-side.”

That sounded so blahhhh that I immediately put off writing it for the next five months. The truth is that I only write consistently when I am really having fun with the process.

So while I respect the complexity and seriousness of the material that I am writing about, I am making adjustments and shifts to my process so that I enjoy writing it. As a result, I think you’ll enjoy reading the stuff more, too.

Over the next 21 days, I’m going to break down each of the 42 measurements on the Hartman Value Profile. My goal is to keep it simple and straightforward while providing the information you need to decide how the HVP would help you most.

The amount of information available in a report is both amazing and overwhelming. We’re going for a tip-of-the iceberg tour with a side of practical ideas for real life.

With this information available to you, you will know better than anyone else how it’s most helpful to you, with or without a personal report.

A quick recap, because it’s been a hot second.

• The HVP measures the individual parts of our insanely complex decision making process, based on what we consider most important and valuable.

• The term “judgment” when we’re talking about good judgment is about how you make decisions, solve problems, and practice discernment and wisdom. It’s not about morals–it’s about strong thinking.

• Within a HVP report, there are three types of thinking. They’re sort of like modes of thinking. People mode, work mode, and strategy mode.

• There are two parts to the report. The internal Self-side and the external World-side. For example, there is an indicator that measures how much information you take in from the outside world and a measurement for how much information you notice about your internal world.

The Hartman Value Profile is a tool that measures different aspects of how we think. With this information, we can use it in the specific way that is needed in our own, very unique lives.

We can use it to dislodge ourselves from the ruts where we feel stuck, where we are going in circles and doing the same thing over and over again, without really moving forward.

We can use it to create sustainable changes, in small steps, over the next year. Steps that feel doable daily but shift the tectonic plates of our thinking so that this time next year, we almost forget what it was like to deal with some of the challenges we’re dealing with today.

We can use the HVP to determine, in real time, where we are in alignment around how we think and make decisions, and where we might be off course.

We can also use it to look honestly at what we are doing, day after day, to participate in creating the life we’re currently living.

Obviously, using it as a tool to face ourselves isn't for the faint of heart. It’s challenging. For me, it’s the most difficult work I do, but also the most rewarding. It keeps me becoming more of someone I like being.

On my end, I’ve been using the foundational ideas from the HVP in everything from client work to website updates to my home reno projects and fermented hot sauce experiments and it’s been really fun. 

Laying out the HVP indicators as a resource feels really important but when it’s finished in the next few weeks, I’m already thinking about how to share more of the everyday projects I’m doing, and how I’m using the ideas in the HVP to make the processes really fun, even when they’re also challenging.

Thanks for being here for it all!

It provides information about deeply-rooted belief patterns that impact and dictate our everyday choices and decision making. Since our values dictate thousands of decisions that we make daily, looking into what we think and how we perceive the world (and ourselves) is part of what makes the HVP such a powerful tool for change.

This series is a walk through of a sample HVP report, and we touch on the information in the report that can show us where we are stuck in our thinking and choices. The information creates awareness. With awareness, we can make new choices from a place of greater integrity.

Sometimes just seeing what is true is enough to shift, or start shifting, what we choose to do.

About Value Judgments

Value judgments are the set of beliefs, our individual hierarchy, of what we rank most important to least important, so that as we’re faced with thousands of choices each day, we can make them without spending much time on each decision. Sometimes we don’t think about the decision at all. It’s automatic.

Our set of value judgments are like our decision-making filter system. We take the assessment by ranking a series of statements most positive to least positive–none are right or wrong–that reflect our value judgments. 

The report is the result of the information that can be gleaned from our current value judgments, which determine how we perceive and notice information, problem solve, and implement effective solutions. 

Since judgment is often used to describe negative behaviors, let’s touch on the definition here. It’s a core part of what we are talking about. The HVP is measuring our potential for good judgment, after all.

About the term “Judgment”

Judgment is our ability to discern wisely and think well. Since it’s normal to use the word judgment to talk about “being judgy” or other negative connotation, discernment can be used in place of the word judgment, if that’s helpful for you.

Judgment is considered in three parts: 

1. Our ability to notice and perceive the information in the world around us

2. Our ability to be innovative and creative in thinking up solutions and ideas with the information we’ve noticed. Creative problem solving at its finest.

3. And then our ability to implement the solutions that we consider best.

In the most basic way, our judgment is our ability to be aware of information, to think and problem solve and then to implement the best solutions.

About the Compass Report

In the same way that we might go to a lab and have blood work drawn, and then get different reports back, depending on what kind of testing we’re having done, there’s one HVP assessment, but different types of reports available, depending on what kind of information we want to look at.

The report we’re looking at here is called a Compass Report. It’s created by Dr. Steve Byrum, who studied with Dr. Robert S. Hartman and expanded on Dr. Hartman’s original work to create The Byrum Method. This sample was provided by Renee Wood and Gladwood.

The Report - Overall Judgment Scores

The first part of this report looks at our overall judgment scores. Our strength of judgment directed toward the outside world and our strength of judgment directed internally, toward ourselves. The first part of the report looks like this:

Part 1 Overall Work (or World-side) Judgment:

The first set of measurements, below, measures our strength of judgment in the outside world. 

The first bar is the overall measurement for People judgement. It’s about how we think and relate to other people. In the report, it’s formally called Intrinsic judgment.

The second is Work judgment. It’s not just about a career or specific ‘work,’ but about anything we do, from roles and  responsibilities, to tasks, to goal-oriented projects. It’s also called Extrinsic judgment on the report.

The third is called Systemic or Strategic judgment. It’s all about understanding the big picture, how we strategically carry out long term goals, and our own clarity about how we live and what drives our decisions and choices.

In the measurements above, the first three bars measure the overall scores for three frameworks–how we think regarding other people, our work and tasks, and our big picture thinking. 

It’s helpful to remember – the lower the number of the score, the stronger that score is. 

So in the example above, this person’s strongest area of judgment is in thinking about Work and Tasks (the blue bar with a score of 7). The next strongest area is People judgment (the green bar with the score of 8) and the third strongest type of thinking framework is Strategy (the brown bar with the score of 19).

By looking at this part of this sample report, we can tell that this person probably sees most situations, first, from the perspective of Work, asking the question: what needs to be done here? 

Scores lower than 20 are considered to be really strong, and reflect good judgment. So in this case, this person is probably quite excellent at figuring out how to clarify the end goal and get the work done. 

It could also be helpful for this person to see that the Work and People judgment scores are close together, indicating that they move easily between these mental frameworks. There’s a gap between the first two scores and the third score, which might help them understand that it takes more effort or intention to switch into thinking about long-term planning.

Part 2 - Overall Self-side Judgment:

The second set of bars called Part 2 - Self is almost a repeat of the first set over overall judgment scores, with a twist. These three indicators of People, Work, and Strategy judgment measure our strengths of judgment toward ourselves.

The ability to have good judgment around people, work, and strategy is measured in two parts:

• World-side: the way we feel, think, and see the entire world and

• Self-side: the way we feel, think, and see ourselves.

Rather than capitulate to our human tendency to compare our report scores to others, the measurements between the World and Self scores provide a more helpful comparison that can point to patterns of integrity or lack of congruence where we may value the outside world differently than we value ourselves.

Noticing where we lack congruence between our inside world and how we think and act in the outside world creates the opportunity to confront our own issues of integrity. With this deeper awareness, we now have the opportunity to step into greater integrity, take ownership for our actions, and create new outcomes in our lives.

On the Self-side:

• People judgment is about your sense of knowing yourself–who you are as a unique human being.

• Work judgment is about how you see yourself through your roles and responsibilities–what you do in the world.

• Strategy judgment is about why you do what you do, and how you fit into the world around you.

Overall, we can see that this person’s strongest sense of himself is who he is in his roles, responsibilities, and work. Next, he knows himself for how he fits into the bigger picture of the world around him, and last, he sees and knows himself for his unique values as an individual.

We can look at these two sets of overall judgment scores and see some tidbits of information that might be helpful:

• This person has a strong framework for thinking about getting things done in the world, and a similar sense of seeing themselves through the lens of his roles and responsibilities. There’s a high level of congruence between what he thinks and does internally and what he does in the world.

• This person has a really strong sense of valuing other people in the outside world as unique individuals and does not seem to value himself in the same way. This might indicate a lack of congruence between how he relates to others and how he relates to himself. An interesting piece of information in how he thinks, and therefore makes decisions, in his life.

These two sets of overall judgment scores can be used to dive into so many things about how we think–from core leadership styles, to creating teams that are truly diverse in thinking and perspectives, to working with spouses and partners who have different strengths of judgment and styles for thinking about life.

The next three pages of the report dive into each individual measurement of these overall judgment scores. Before we move on to that, here’s an example of how People, Work, and Strategy judgment all fit together and how we move between these frameworks for thinking throughout our day.

Putting People, Work, and Strategy Judgment Together

The experience of flying for travel is an analogy that can be used to understand how we move between types of judgment.

Imagine you arrive at the airport early because you anticipate a long line through security and baggage. You prepare your ticket and ID and as you move through the line and approach the metal detectors, you mentally go through each item in your carry-on, making mental note of what needs to be removed from your luggage when you go through security.

You check the time and make sure you still have a comfortable margin to make it to your gate. This is a Work judgment framework. There’s a task or goal and you’re mentally checking off the steps needed to complete it successfully.

Once you’re through security and your shoes are back on, you decide you have time to grab a coffee and sandwich. As you order, you chat briefly with the individual taking your order, and maybe with the others waiting for coffee, too. You are in People mode.

You have your coffee and now you move back into Work mode. You find your gate, find your priority line, and once you board, find your seat. You know the drill. Carry-on stowed away. Seat up. Buckle fastened. Work mode again.

As the aircraft takes off and gains elevation, your view out of the window begins to change. You see the top of trees, you are eye level with birds. You can see the road that you took to the airport earlier, the garage where you left your car, and even the airport looks small below. You’re in the clouds, and then above them at 30,000 feet. 

You can see the big picture, and your perspective might shift to big picture thinking, also. You may dream, mentally zooming to 30,000 feet above your life and considering where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are heading in the future. This 30,000 foot view is the big picture, big vision mode.

When you land, you’re back in Work mode. You need to catch your next flight, and you mentally assess how long you have for your layover and estimate the distance to your gate.

We move through these modes or frameworks for thinking throughout our days. We all use each type of judgment, but usually find one or two most comfortable and assessable.

Understanding our own strengths of judgment can help us appreciate others who approach situations from a different strength of judgment than our own. This also give us the opportunity to determine where we might strengthen our own sense of judgment or collaborate with others who approach situations from a different perspective.

Next Up

We will get into the second page of this report, which dives into the nitty-gritty details of  People, Work and Strategy judgment on the World-side.

Interrupting my story writing to share some figuring-it-out-as-I-go things with you.

The stories I’m writing out—and the two stories I shared here so far—are about projects I worked on over the last two or three years. The Hartman Value Profile was a tool that helped me navigate these projects and, specifically, helped me see how I was growing through the process of working on the projects. 

This is why my first step here is writing about my personal experience in applying HVP reports to my everyday life…so for now, these posts are about the projects and my life and the Hartman Value Profile.

Another thought. As I write, I am noticing more and more that it is difficult to talk about how I used the Hartman Value Profile without giving you an idea or visual of how the HVP works and what it looks like. 

I’m planning to pop in an overview of what a HVP report looks like and how it works before resuming story time. I hope that will clarify more about what I’m sharing and writing about.

Once I’ve offloaded whatever stories about projects that I have to share from the last few years, the stuff I share on here will shift to new things. If you’re wondering where it will go, well, me too. We’ll discover what is next together.

Wherever it goes, it will likely be around the Hartman Value Profile, because that’s where I’m going with my work. 

On the note of work, here’s the direction I’m heading with my work around the HVP. The profile is a judgment assessment. Basically, it is a measurement for the way someone thinks.

I think it’s cool as hell, and I have a whole lot of ideas about how professionals who already work with people and teams can use it to do the work they're doing even better.

My long term goal is to make the profile more usable and learnable for professionals who can use it in their own fields and areas of work.

If you’d like to take the HVP at any point, I’d be happy to make that happen with you. Maybe you can even get some ideas about how to use it in your own life from the stories I scratch out here.

If you aren’t interested in the HVP and never care to take it (but still stick around!),  hope that my stories of trial-and-error will inspire you to continue taking interesting risks in your own life. 

So next up, you can expect a sneak peak into a Hartman Value Profile report, with a breakdown of how it can be used.

Thanks for being here!

Subscribe now

The first two times I took the HVP, I found it most helpful as a tool to see myself more accurately. Next, I experienced it as a tool to navigate change in my life.

At the beginning of last year, I was on the edge of entering my 30’s and I finally had my dream job. It was an ideal opportunity that eventually unfolded into everything I wanted in a career. I was told to write my own job description with specific instructions to “make it a list of only the things you wake up every day excited to do.”

This was a big, fat win after 18 years of work that I largely hadn’t loved. I found my “career” and now I could finally relax and put my energy into work that really mattered. 

But less than a month into the new dream title, I realized there simply wasn’t time for relaxing, and I barely had much energy. Like an old iPhone, my battery drained quickly and I lived on 10 percent. I was behind a computer—what felt like—all the time, and on track for a future of more time behind a computer.

Each time I finished a project, the main thing I experienced was a sense of relief that it was over and I could now start the next. I’d also failed to notice that after years of considering after-dark hours the best time to do focused work, I was starting to prefer being asleep at 1 am, not sitting at my computer getting a head start on the next project.

I was running on grit and grind. My work wasn’t sustainable, and neither was my life.

When I first realized this, I sensed it was my first glimpse of a long path that could end in a crash and cause a lot of burns. I closed my computer for an hour that afternoon and went for a walk on the mile-long trail that looped through the woods behind my house. 

I walked a few loops and wondered, What would it be like to enjoy the process, not simply wishing for it to be over already?

I made the loop daily. I started asking questions like, Could I create a more regenerative way of living my daily life, so that I am re-energized through the same things I pour effort and energy into?

A month of this and my questions led to something like, Can I find a way to live and work that builds my resilience in each season, rather than leaving me short, on edge, and depleted?

The ideas and questions were both rattling and exciting, but not enough to move me to do anything about it. Friends asked if this was really still the dream, but I couldn’t imagine anything better. From my perspective, I finally could give a nice answer to people who asked what I did for work. I found my place in the world, I belonged to the world of work-that-matters, and I wasn’t about to let that feeling go.

The real rub happened when I noticed that, despite telling myself I was keeping this pace to be helpful to others, I was more a burden than a gift when running on fumes. My preaching wasn’t lining up with my path. A few months of walking laps with this reality was uncomfortable, and finally I quit my job.

I didn’t have much of a plan. It was something like this:

1. Find a reason or purpose for lasting well through hard things and hard seasons. 

2. Create a more regenerative way of living my everyday life. 

3. Figure out a new process that would help me become more resilient through life, rather than more depleted.

To figure out what is worth lasting well through hard things, I started doing hard things. I got ready to hike up and down a section of the Appalachian Trail and then to ride a hundred miles on a bicycle in an event called Hotter N Hell.

I decided to plant some herbs in my backyard, get a few laying hens, and learn how to grow things in a “regenerative” way. I figured if I learned to work with nature the way it was designed to work, I could take those same principles and live my life in a more natural way.

For the resilient part, I started the only place I knew to start. I upped the temperature in my sauna and added a few more ice bath sessions to the schedule.

(I also added in a quick parasite-virus-chemical-fungal cleanse that I thought would take 12 weeks and ended up taking 13 months, but, frankly, that’s not a story I want to tell on the internet.)

All to say, a few months later when I took the HVP for the third time, I was somewhere in the middle of icing my toes that went numb while hiking, cleaning chicken poop off the deck, recruiting my sister to help dig garden plots in the backyard, and trying to drink enough electrolytes while I cycled through Mississippi summer afternoons.

The action I took to create more balance in my life resulted in a more balanced sense of self-perspective. The score measuring self-esteem, which was sliding off the deep end last time, was now in the balanced range.  

*Whuuut?* (That’s the sound of my gears turning in my mind while dots connect and neurons fire.)

Other scores indicated that while I’d been chasing chickens in the backyard, crying up and over mountains somewhere in a national park, and wondering if I was becoming a loser, things were actually shifting and changing under the surface. Like roots going down deeper in the dark.

I was also given a second report called the Resilience Assets Inventory™. It was a deep dive into mental resilience, measuring an individual's capability and capacity for 20 different qualities that resilient people can cash in on during challenging situations.

These qualities range from the capacity to deal with change, frustration, and difficult people, to the ability to learn and adapt, to be creative with resources, and to hold hope for a vision.

It includes measurements like:

The capability and capacity to "internalize the values of hard work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity."

The capability and capacity for openness and tolerance toward that which is new and "different" in comparison to past, known precedents.

I was mildly obsessed with this report. It gave me a framework to better understand resilience, and a tool to identify gaps and weak links in my own thinking when the going got tough.

In this report, the measurements around resilience are divided into four parts. The first is all about the qualities that create a stronger capacity for resilience. The second is about qualities that inhibit resilience and limit an individual's bandwidth to navigate unexpected stress. The next two parts are about leadership qualities—of others and self—under difficult circumstances.  

In my report, the results of the second area–inhibitors of resilience–caught my attention. The scores indicating stress and mental clutter or overwhelm were lit up like a car dashboard with every single warning light on.

It made sense that living in perpetual stress made it difficult to navigate more stress. Clearing up mental clutter and whatever was bogging me down seemed like a good first step.

I started with a spreadsheet. I made a list of every stress, project, overhanging task or problem I could identify on a Google sheet. A list of stresses that I created, a list of situations that others created. Things that needed to be done to finish my never-ending home remodel. There were several pages, multiple categories, and a list of 94 tasks.

I took some of my list to therapy. I made some of it into goals, and other parts of it into a giant todo list that worked like my own twelve-step program. A step at a time, a little each day. 

While I worked my way through this spreadsheet list, life kept happening. We also purchased two houses to renovate. I alternated between painting, sanding, and staining, and then chiseling down my list of outstanding projects.

In the meantime, my career work situation was unclear, and the pressure to figure it out was building. It’s hard to pivot when you don’t know where in the world you’re pivoting toward. I wondered if I was crazy. Others did, too, and they told me so.

I wasn’t living a lone wolf tale—by any stretch of the imagination. I was encouraged and supported and championed. At the same time, in the moments I was the most unsure about what I was doing and where I was going, I really wanted to grovel in self-doubt around my choices. I wanted the people closest to me to assure me that I was amazing and everything would be okay.

If they reallyyyyyy loved me, you know, they would give me their complete and total undying support. I wanted a few extra heaps of encouragement with the validation, too, please.

Well, I could dream on but that wasn’t happening. My process was grating against their process and where I demanded support and encouragement, there were mostly sparks (and opinions) flying.

On the subject of life and growth, Dr. David Schnarch said something to the effect that we think the people closest to us should never pressure us into anything uncomfortable, especially if they really care. Yet, the reality of life is that it is the pressure from the people closest to us that often push us to get clear about who we really are, to stand up when the stakes are highest, and to fight for what we value most. 

The pressure from the people closest creates that differentiation process I was learning about. The pressure built, and then pushed me to stop demanding the validation of others, especially the people who were most important to me. It taught me to not react, to take care of my own emotions and not offload them to others, and to hold myself up rather than looking to others to prop me up, under the name of love or support.

Around the time I could have sworn the pressure would eventually cause me to implode, I took the profile again.

In the same way that new information can create a shift in perspective and change everything, my report didn’t change the pressure I was experiencing, but it made it all tolerable. Weirdly exciting, even.

The practice of taking steps forward in the midst of uncertainty had been working on that resilience, which I’d originally wanted to develop. The pressure I fought to avoid became the process that made me a little more resilient, and taught me to stay calm and focused in the face of the unknown.

*Whuuut?*

My report reflected the changes that, once again, I hadn’t seen happening while I was caught up in my giant spreadsheet list and the direction of my career. 

The profile didn’t create transformation, and neither did I. The profile is a tool that helped me see some uncomfortable truths about myself. Based on what I saw, I made different choices and took some action. The results unraveled and exposed bigger problems in my life, which were more complicated than what I was capable of figuring out. Yet, Something far bigger seemed to take all of this raw material and use it for the intricate and complex work of doing transformation to me.

I don’t really understand it. I can see that it happened, I got to participate, and I like it.

How freaking elegant.

Subscribe now

I was introduced to the Hartman Value Profile a few years ago when I took it as a precursor to a writing project. As a “gotta experience it myself” kinda person, I often went through the processes or services that the client offered before I wrote about it.

It’s a good thing I experienced it firsthand. Otherwise, I’d never have given it another thought. The description of the profile sounded complicated and didn’t make a lot of sense. I wasn’t sure about how measuring “goodness” and “value” and “judgment” had anything to do with the current state of my life, marriage, and never-ending workload, which was all held together by coffee, therapists, and urgent deadlines.

The process was simple and straightforward. I took the profile. The facilitator sent my report over and asked to schedule a call to go over it. I printed all 22 pages of the document and dramatically tossed the stack of papers across the dining room table while telling my husband, through tears, that it somehow measured everything wrong with me.

I was incorrect. None of it indicated “everything wrong with me.” But before understanding the report, I was convinced that all 22 pages detailed every single problem about who I was.

A few days later in my actual session, we went line-by-line through all 38 indicators. I was surprised to hear how clearly the descriptions of my scores reflected the ways I was trying to juggle my life. I was more surprised to hear that I had “really strong judgment scores” and that it looked like I was the one regularly disregarding my own perspectives.

There were scores that reflected the way I alternately tip-toed around and stormed through conflict, and the differences between how I valued other people and how I valued myself.

The facilitator suggested I practice simply sharing my own perspective each time I was tempted to bite my tongue and say nothing. The hardest work would be learning to trust the things I was good at, and then, ya know, use those strengths.

I was used to thinking about what other people would think about me. Her suggestion was a small step that I could practice daily, each time I found myself biting my tongue or deciding it “wasn’t worth the fight.” This pressured me, in the most elegant way possible, to think about what I thought about myself.

As I continued this simple practice over the next half a year, it was like metaphorically stirring the rocks in the bottom of a fish tank. The water looks clean enough until it’s disrupted, and then there’s fish shit swirling everywhere.

Each time I practiced making these little decisions about what I needed to share in order to have a little self-respect, it seemingly made things more messy. I often thought about leaving that stuff buried in the rocks at the bottom of the tank.

At the same time, I was starting to learn about this idea called differentiation. In a nutshell, I understood differentiation as being capable of staying connected with other people while still being myself.

So far, I usually felt most like I could be myself when I wasn’t too close with other people. When I was connected with anyone who I cared about, I felt like I was being jerked around by their actions or choices. I wanted to be myself and belong with others.

Becoming capable of both caring about people I loved and also being someone I respected at the same time seemed like the most terrifying and exciting possibility.

It seemed I was going to have to rethink some key ideas I had about relationships if I was going to become “more differentiated.”

I’d have to become better at not reacting, even when other people were reacting. That was challenging. I was always uncomfortable with other people reacting. So, I had to start learning to calm myself down rather than spouting off louder than the person across from me.

I had to become more clear about who I was, so I could decide if I liked myself, without looking for someone else to tell me if I was okay.

The more I started controlling myself, the less I tried to control the people around me. I still tried to control others, to manage my own feelings. But sometimes I’d remember in the middle of it, pause, and start thinking about where I could practice self-control. Self-respect felt good and I started developing a taste for it.

After about nine months of this, I started to forget what it had been like to bite my tongue all the time.

I was invited to do another writing project, and I took the HVP again to see the updates that had been made since I first took it. I took the profile for work, similar to the first round, and the results of my report surprised me. Again.

The score that had previously reflected my tendency to bite my tongue and keep quiet had become so strong that she suggested I could relax a little.

Other scores shifted a little, too. Especially one that measured my ability to be clear about what is important to me, and another one that reflected my ability to experience my own worth.

While I was practicing that one little step and stirring up all the dirty fish tank water in my life, change had been happening. I just hadn’t been able to see it.

It wasn’t all better. There’s a section called the “Balance Scores.” And for a hot second, the areas that indicated I was out of balance became even more unbalanced.

One called “Balance of Self-Esteem,” I was sliding off the negative side of this scale, even further than the first time I took it. As I stopped blaming other people as much and started looking at myself, I just redirected my load of contempt and anger toward that face in the mirror and slid even further down the negative side of this indicator.

I was building self-respect and was terribly disappointed in myself, at the same time.

I started to see that the report was a sort of map and pointed out potential pitfalls as much as strengths and gifts. The report was like a mirror, reflecting who I was, how I was making decisions, and where I was going, in real time.

I was getting a feel for my own internal equilibrium, and it was even better than I imagined. The water in my metaphorical fish tank was still murky, but even through the mess, I could start to see that I had a lot of choices around the direction I was heading. I liked that. 

So, after I took the report a second time, I started paying attention to this Hartman Value Profile thing.

Subscribe now