Table of Contents Introduction A Brief History of Civilization Four Dimensions and Four Portals of Perception Contracting, Consulting, and the Personality Traits that Support Success The Mixture of our Dimensional Perceptions Summary: Contracting and Consulting as influenced by our Dimensional Perceptions Who are you? Thinking Through Your Dimensional Perceptions How Personality Relates to Stress in our Careers Should I or shouldn't I … the Final Analysis

Four Dimensions and Four Portals of Perception

As we look into our history, we can see four discrete dimensions at work. Not the dimensions of height, width, depth and time that we learned in school. We can redefine the dimensions as

  1. Physical Reality
  2. the Past
  3. the Present, and
  4. the Future

After all, our senses really show us the physical world as one "chunk" of information. It's time that we have to divide into pieces in order to understand it.

Our personality sees reality through four portals of perception. Each of us possesses these four "windows" into the four dimensions. For most of us, one of these windows provides a very clear view into one dimension of reality. Another of the four dimensions will not appear clearly at all, and we will tend to avoid using that dimension because we instinctively know that we don't excel there. The remaining two windows into reality will allow us to see and use the remaining two dimensions, but generally not as well as our best, and not as poor as our worst. The mixture of these windows into the four dimensions of reality tend to support different behaviors and talents. It governs how we most effectively influence our environment to support our survival and "thrival."

Imagine that the mind and body represent a channel between the "soul" and reality. Our "soul," or whatever you want to call the core of our being, will only be able to work with the information provided through this passageway. To that end, we work with the information provided to us, to live as well as we can.

I find it important to mention at this point, that the theories I discuss herein are not my own. I draw from the work of such pioneering psychological personalities as Carl Jung and William Mouton Marston, who in turn drew on previous psychological explorers as well as the philosophers of the ages. From their collective works, various psychometric systems and instruments have evolved, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the DISC language, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the Strong Inventory and many others. I draw my observations from my experiences with these tools.