Visualizing my vulnerability

I promised to experiment and share those experiments here.

In previous posts I would add "together with the inevitable failures", but not anymore. I'm now convinced that whatever the outcome, each experiment is valuable to me in some way. 

Dixit cards

This time I want to talk about an experiment I did with Dixit cards. I've come across these weird, colourful cards on several occassions. Cards like this were used for example by Lyssa Adkins during one of the ICAgile classes I took, and by Stanislava Potupchik at Scrum Day Europe 2019. Inspired by this I bought some Dixit cards for myself.

Recently, a close friend of mine went through my collection of Dixit cards. She was strongly drawn to one card. We talked about that one card the same day. Our talk quickly turned into a coaching session as she started to explore what the drawing on the card meant for her at a deep, personal level.

I was surprised that a drawing could have such a big impact. I longed for a similar revelation, and immediately decided to try something similar. That evening, I pulled out all the cards and went through them one by one, picking out any card that resonated with me. After going through them all, I had picked out 12 cards.

Getting to the core

Not long ago I did an experiment in which I had to reduce a long list of values to the two most important ones. It was hard, but brought me focus and clarity. With that in mind (and with my buddy spurring me on), I decided to reduce the number of Dixit cards. Without trying to understand or explain any card, I went through them again and removed half. I tried to do this purely on gut feeling. Then I removed another three, leaving me with 3 Dixit cards.

Now I finally started to interpret the cards, trying to figure out why they resonated. I spent just a few minutes on this, enough to have some idea. I arranged to share my interpretation with my close friend the next day.

The outcome

We sat down the next day to explore the story of my three Dixit cards. I looked at the cards and started sharing what made them resonate, what story they held for me. This went fine except for 1 card. Totally unexpected, I was overcome by emotions. I needed several minutes (and several attempts) to recover my composure. Eventually I recovered enough to finish my story. I'm very grateful I have a close friend that I trust enough to share this with. It is far too personal to share here, even just sharing the images feels a bit uncomfortable. I decided not to reveal which one caused me to break into tears.

What I've learned

This experiment exceeded my expectations. I guess using weird images triggers different responses than the more common (for me) analytical approaches. Also, talking to another person about personal struggles is more impactful than thinking it through in silence. This once more confirms my belief that having a few close friends is extremely valuable.

I've also learned a bit more about myself. The card revealed something I'm ashamed of, something that I want to change before I die. It will require changing some ingrained behaviours. That's not going to be easy, but I feel a new purpose to take this on.