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Tendency, we all share a desire for autonomy. If our feeling of being controlled by others becomes too strong, it can trigger the phenomenon of “reactance,” a resistance to something that’s experienced as a threat to our freedom or our ability to choose. If we’re ordered to do something, we may resist it—even it’s something that we might otherwise want to do. I’ve watched this happen with my daughter Eliza. If I say, “Why don’t you finish your homework, get it out of the way?” she says, “I need a break, I’ve got to stop.” If I say, “You’ve been working so hard, why don’t you take a break?” she says, “I want to finish.” It’s easy to see why this impulse creates problems—for health-care professionals, for parents, for teachers, for office managers. The more we push, the more a person may resist.
    After I gave a talk about the Four Tendencies, a man asked me, “Which Tendency makes people the happiest?” I was startled, because that obvious question had never crossed my mind. “Also,” he continued, with an equally obvious follow-up question, “which Tendency is the most successful?”
    I didn’t have a good response, because I’d been so focused on understanding the Tendencies that I’d never considered them in comparison to each other. After much reflection, however, I realized that the answer—as it usually is, which I sometimes find annoying—is “ It depends .” It depends on how a particular person deals with the upside and downside of a Tendency. The happiest and most successful people are those who have figured out ways to exploit their Tendency to their benefit and, just as important, found ways to counterbalance its limitations.
    In an interview in the Paris Review , novelist and Rebel John Gardner made an observation that I’ve never forgotten: “Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay.” Every action, every habit, has its consequences. Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels, all must grapple with the consequences of fitting in that Tendency. I get up at 6:00 every morning, and I pay for that; I get more work done, but I also have to go to sleep early.
    We all must pay; but we can choose that for which we pay.

Different Solutions for Different People

Distinctions
    Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But … like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation.
    â€”Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox
    T he Four Tendencies framework had given me a crucial insight into human nature, but there was much that it didn’t illuminate. I couldn’t yet turn to the more concrete, action-oriented strategies that I was eager to investigate because I hadn’t yet exhausted the possibilities of self-knowledge.
    As one of the exercises for the happiness project I undertook a few years ago, I’d identified my twelve “Personal Commandments,” which are the overarching principles by which I want to live my life. My first commandment is to “Be Gretchen”—yet it’s very hard to know myself. I get so distracted by the way I wish I were, or the way I assume I am, that I lose sight of what’s actually true.
    I was slow to understand some of the most basic things about myself. I don’t love music. I’m not a big fan of travel. I don’t like games, I don’t like to shop, I’m not very interested in animals, I like plain food. Why didn’t I recognize these aspects of my nature? Partly because I never thought much about it—doesn’t everyone love music?—and partly because I expected, based on nothing, that one day I’d outgrow my