We are seeing a lot of analysis of this week's presidential vote based on certain key demographics:
- by level of education
- by race
- by where we live
- by religion
- by gender
etc.
And while those things can be interesting, they only tell us such a tiny fraction of the story of who we are and why we make certain choices. The other 99.9% comes from our respective personal histories and, in my opinion, how consciously we’ve processed those histories and actually know who we are and why we hold the values that we do.
I wish data existed that gets more to the heart of the why behind our vote and our view of the world. Imagine if we knew how America voted:
- by Myers-Briggs type
- by your top five traits according to Tom Rath’s Strengths Finder assessment
- by whether you’ve had three or more sessions with a qualified therapist to finally process all that messed up stuff from your childhood so you can stop letting it subconsciously run your life.
- by how strongly you identify with the statement “I feel angry every day.”
- by how strongly you identify with the statement “I feel all humans are connected.”
- by whether you lean towards the scarcity or abundance mindset
etc.
Obviously we will never have this information. It is deeply personal and too many people think it is a bunch of psycho-babble anyway. But regardless of politics, we need to elevate the value of self-awareness and emotional maturity in our culture.
I think that has been the scariest part of the past 18 months for me - that we so clearly don’t recognize or care to what degree someone has done the hardest and most important work there is - of understanding who they are and why they act/feel/think the way they do.
Oh and for kicks, I’d love to see the vote by whether you’ve ever travelled outside North America. Because I stand by my long held belief that travel changes how you see the world and the rest of the humans in it in profound ways.
It can get messy in there.