It’s Just My Nature!

Is it possible that an Artist-Creator intentionally included hints of our personality on our faces?  That is the kindest, gentlest, and most theologically correct way for me to introduce the idea that Carol Tuttle (proponent of “The Law of Attraction” and other extra-biblical spiritual teachings) may have produced a helpful wardrobing tool in her system  Energy Profiling.

Her premise is not unlike DISC, in that she divides everyone into four groups. Based on the “movement” of a person’s energy, her Types are noted by:

1. light, upward movement
2. fluid, flowing movement
3. active, reactive movement
4. constant, still movement

(I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not those correspond roughly to disc designations or not.)  The part that’s hard for me to buy is this:  under the resulting Dressing Your Truth system, literally everything is suggested by one’s primary energy movement.  Fabrics, prints, colors, career choices, all depend on the which of the four Types of energy expression predominates in you.

A paranthetical word about four division systems:  when Carole Jackson came out with Color Me Beautiful, it worked for enough people to become a phenomenon.  But it didn’t really work for me, or many others, until the twelve division system was introduced, adding chroma (color saturation) to temperature and value.  With Carol Tuttle’s Energy Profiling system, I look forward to seeing further refinements.  Will she describe how to incorporate a second-strongest “energy movement”?  Can the four groups be somehow subdivided to be more specific?

The creepiest thing about this system is the assertion that one’s “energy type” is visible in one’s facial features.  (What if my face doesn’t look like what I know I’m like on the inside?  See this post’s opening question.)  For the purpose of this review, the Dressing Your Truth professionals invited me to send in a photograph.  Lo and behold!  They agreed with my assessment of myself as a Type 1.

Applying the principles:

• over and over, the point is made:  it’s okay to be yourself.  How much of my wardrobe trauma could be done away with if the only voice I listened to in my head was my own?
• most of the specific recommendations for my “energy type” I could have worked out “longhand”, applying the principles taught in The Triumph of Individual Style : A Guide to Dressing Your Body, Your Beauty, Your Self. But it’s nice to have it in “big picture”.
• the color system just doesn’t work universally the way it’s layed out.  However, for the person who’s truly had it wrong, it may present an improvement.
• the big, BIG deal:  HAIR CUT AND STYLE!  I truly have not found anything better at suggesting hair-style, hair-style which has such a profound impact on one’s appearance.

Now, go back to the list of descriptive words for the four types.  Most of the “types” suggest hair-style in the two-word description.  Does one of those appeal to you?  Personally, I am going to specifically instruct my stylist to make sure my hair never looks neat and tidy, ahem, that is, constant and still.   And I’m planning on going a little shorter.  Or upward and light. 🙂