4 Instincts That Drive You

Kathy Kolbe’s conative theory, with Glop

This is me, after applying knowledge of my instincts to reorganize my life. In the videos below, you’ll see images of me before I understood my instincts. One of the improvements I made was losing over 50lbs. You may want to read more in What Does 23% Body Fat Look Like? and Fear to Fitness because understanding what I can and cannot change about myself has been the key to redesigning my life.

The ancient philosophers theorized that there were three aspects of the mind: cognitive, affective, and conative.

The cognitive refers to those things that you know, or things that you think. Although everyone has an innate aptitude for cognitive reasoning, it is certainly true that reasoning skills can be improved with education. It is already widely acknowledged that when building effective teams, it is necessary to have people with cognitive skills that match the task(s) at hand.

The affective refers to those things that you feel and things that you value. According to some affective personality assessment instruments (such as Myers-Briggs), everyone has affective dispositions, such as introversion or extroversion. However, these are not necessarily stable over time. Certainly feelings and values can change, and so can other aspects of personality. Although Universities typically focus on developing the cognitive aspects of the mind, sometimes higher education will also address the affective. Unfortunately, when working in teams, feelings become much more important than most people are trained to understand, especially when confronting obstacles to interpersonal communication, conflicting motives, or what are sometimes called personality conflicts.