Becoming the  Best Version of Yourself Through
Spiral Dynamics

I am still in the early stages of my exploration of Spiral Dynamics. Unlike my deeper dive into the Enneagram, I have not yet found actionable lessons in Spiral Dynamics. I think that this is because it is harder to answer the question: “what do I do with it?” Also, it is a bit wonky. I include it here, because it has allowed me to put the world (generally) and people (specifically) into a context that allows for a greater level of empathy and understanding.

When you have a full understanding of Spiral Dynamics, you will not have an action plan to implement. What you will have is a better understanding of why the world is the way it is and why people are the way they are. And that can be helpful.

Spiral Dynamics is a relatively new thing. The earliest ideas that later came to be known as Spiral Dynamics originated from Clare W. Graves. He was a professor of psychology who developed what he called emergent cyclical theory. Grave’s writings were discovered by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan who developed the idea more fully into what is now called Spiral Dynamics.

They added a color-coding system to emergent cyclical theory that allows the concepts to be more easily understood. This color-coding adds labels to the memes and value systems that Graves described. In this discussion, we will refer to these value systems by these color labels.

In short, the theory states that human beings, societies, countries, as well as any large grouping of people are on a continuum of development. Where they are on that continuum can be described with one of eight specific colors, divided into two tiers.