Elephants are big and strong. They form deep family bounds, are extremely intelligent animals and have memories that span many years, display signs of grief, joy, anger and play. I think this is why it is used in the elephant and the rider metaphor for the unconscious part of the mind. Here is a nice presentation of this model:
One way to know more about your elephant, are the personality tests, because your unconscious mind manifests itself trough your personality ( = patterns of behavior, thinking, values, habits, etc. All things that are 'automatic' are slowly moving into the unconscious part of our mind)
Because I am not an expert in psychology and it is only a hobby for me I will not get into a lot of details, I will list here only a few things based on my current knowledge:
- one of the most complete is the Myers-Briggs type indicator. A nice description is here. A nice visual map is here.
- a more "simplified" one is the DISC model. There are many descriptions on the web, but this TED talk is a really good intro:
Now that we are aware of our elephants, the question remains how did we end up with them ?
They are the result of our education by the environment where we were grown up and living, even today. There are many factors that are part of the environment.
One of the factors is the global world, since your elephant is shaped /educated by by the generational factors. If you like it or not you are part of a generational stereotype and your elephant is shaped by the big/global changes in your environment. Here is a table that compares them:
A list with even more details is here. You should be aware of this because of your parents, co-workers, and even your children. (really nice info-graphic).
Another even more important factor might be the order of birth. Here is a good description (the nice part is how it affects relationships ) and this is a good intro:
The autopilot metaphor is so powerful..(I think it is even better than the elephant..). The most important elephant education time is everything that happens till you are ~8 years old.
If you like to try out things, here are some links to free personality tests:
- https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
- https://discpersonalitytesting.com/free-disc-test/
At the end do not forget that You and your Elephant are a great team if you work together. Make sure you know and understand it (or somebody else is directing your Elephant and it might not go to the places you want to be, since elephants are predictable...). Did you know that if elephants are afraid (ex from mice) they do not listen or completely ignore the rider ? Fear is a powerful tool used to direct entire herds of elephants.
