3.
Head/Intellectual Generativity
The answers you gave suggest that your generative archetype is Intellectual. Your center of intelligence is your head. You perceive, know, and take action primarily by thinking. This does not mean you have no access to your heart or your gut. It just means you tend to rely on your brain first. Fortunately, they are all connected. The vagus nerve is how we cultivate head, heart, and gut harmony. The head center has a powerful generative capacity. People with a head-oriented archetype tend to experience fear or anxiety as their core negative emotion. This doesn’t mean you feel afraid or anxious all the time. And it may not be around a particular circumstance. You might not even notice until it rushes to the surface and surprises you. You might be aware of fear and translate it into planning for security or fun for you and your community. Or you may suppress your fear and redirect it into learning and accumulating knowledge. In any case, it is there and needs to be acknowledged. The way you find healing and strength is through the contemplative stance of silence. You may find that silence reveals a busy brain and breaking through to true quiet is quite difficult. This is where anxiety dissipates and the power of your intellectual strength and intelligence grows into its fullest capacity. Hawkeye from the Avengers illustrates the Head/Intelligence Centered Generative Archetype.EPIK’s Generative Belief At the EPIK Project, we believe all men are not only capable of but responsible for the health of their communities. All the ways we engage with each other as friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers have either generative or toxic effects that ripple out and change the fabric of our culture. Since we want to create a world where belonging replaces exploitation, we need to tap into our innate strengths and maximize their impact.Our strength, our generative capacity, comes from our true identity, what is most real about us. This quiz is designed to be part of the guide role that EPIK offers men as they seek to discover, test, and strengthen the value of their true selves. Your generative archetype tells you something about your identity, how you collaborate best with others, and what you might offer to and need from your community. It is the first step in the process of increasing generativity in a culture of belonging. K.N.O.T.S.: The Generative ProcessKnow your own storyYou are an individual character in a larger story. Before you can be as generative as you are capable of being, you have to know who you are. This is because who you are, your identity, is the source of your individual generativity - your output. Knowing your story requires some introspection and some attention to your history, your present experience, and your potential future. What kind of influence did your parents, family, and friends have on you? How about other significant relationships and events in your life? What do you believe about yourself, other people, and how the world works? What is the shame you need to forgive yourself for and the latent power you need to unleash? What do you want to do and be in your community? What experience do you have and what skills have you developed? What have you learned and absorbed deep into your mind and heart? What are you passionate about, angry about, or worried about? Your generative archetype is a big clue as you think about these answers. If you want to dig a little deeper, visit Connect Ed’s website and take the Essential Enneagram Test developed by David Daniels and Virginia Price. It is a scientifically validated test that will further expand your understanding of your generative archetype. Notice the story of your community As men in a hyper-independent culture, we are taught to be strong and capable on our own. This is a misunderstanding of how healthy humans function. We are meant to be connected and to care for one another as we live, work, and play in the world we are responsible for. Who are you already in community with? Think about and identify the people you interact positively with on a regular basis. As we work to shift our cultural norms from exploitation to belonging, these may be the people you collaborate with. Belonging is built in small groups and it spreads from there. Consider who these people are and how you might influence them to be more intentional about connecting. Offer what you have and Take what you needTo further dismantle the misunderstanding of independence, we need to recognize that each of us has much to offer as a character in the larger story - we also need to take what others offer. In fact, we have to receive from others in order to fully offer what we have to share. We are not alone in our dependence and it is not weakness. We are interdependent. It is how the human system works. It is how every system in the universe works. A collaborative exchange of resources - each one offering and taking in a symbiotic relationship that honors who we are, gives us strength to make a valuable impact, heals us when we are damaged and grows us into the best version of ourselves. The small group of people you noticed is where we practice this most poignantly. If you are deciding to participate in cultivating a generative culture, consider how you might initiate a more collaborative story with those around you. Start the conversation, share your stories, and decide to invest in your community together. Share the shared storyThe more we know ourselves, notice our community, and participate in a mutual exchange of offering and taking, the more we will change and improve the story we are in. Our small story will change us and begin to reveal the power of our generative capacity in the world. This is where we begin to commit to our particular role as a generative group. What is the story we want to live in together and how do we bring it to life? When we answer this question and commit to it, we will see the identity of our group come into focus and we will experience growth in our own identities. This is the foundation of generative change. Next StepsKnowing your generative archetype and deciding to enter into the shared story of generativity is clearly not something to do alone. The EPIK Project is a national group of guys who have built a network to learn, support, and celebrate together. Please share your story. We want to know what you have taken from this exchange and what you might have to offer. We want to know how we can guide, support, and encourage you with resources. It’s a big story, let us share it with you!K.N.O.T.S. was developed by Connect Ed
