Shaping Ourselves - Part 2 - Childhood

The often-odd methods of strategy come from the mental framework we slap together as little kids. We learn early that our choices are based on our position. At any given time, we are only free to do what our position lets us do. Some choices must be made in a moment. Other decisions take a lifetime. One of those lifelong decisions is, “Who do we choose to be?” We must start from where we are now, the result of all our past choices. These places exist within the constellations of other people we build around us.

Our personalities are one of the five dimensions that define our strategic position. Its technical name is “command.” Sun Tzu described the characterics of command as varying in five dimensions: caring, courage, intelligence, trustworthiness, and discipline. These align surprisingly closely to what is called in modern psychology the Big Five Personality Traits: agreeableness, neuroticism (as the opposite of courage), openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness. In The Art of War, both the lack and excess of these qualities lead to common goof-ups in decision-making. Our question today is: how does our character form? And, more importantly, how can it be improved?