Personal, provocative, and practical information from real people with real-life stories to tell.

Meet Crystal My Styles Are Changing Life-Purpose: To personify intuitive creativity and change more than minds through work contributions. Evokateur changes futures. Philosopher /Evokateur/ Philosopher Profile boss: Evokateur

She started at Sentinel, then moved through Idealist to Visionary. Today, it's Philosopher. And with those changes has come a new awareness about relationships. One that may end her marriage but save her sanity in having realized that she doesn't have to live the life of her parents who were "stuck together by fear." The one constant throughout Crystal's Ansir experience has been Evokateur in the middle. She's always worked Evokateur and found solace and escape therein as a child. Crystal grew up an adventurer. Her father worked missile contracts for the military, and she moved every six months. "We were like gypsies," she said. "Actually, with the dogs and cats and horses, we were more like a circus moving from town to town." Crystal has lived in "all but 6" of the 50 states, and her parents made sure she experienced what each had to offer. "I never had time to miss having lifelong friends.

Moving around gave me the skills to meet other people and realize the world is a whole lot more than what any one place can offer." From the beaches of California to the mountains of Colorado to the sleigh rides in Connecticut, Crystal experienced a life few of us can imagine. Her family raised Arabian horses. Her father took her on trips in his Piper Cub airplane.

But the diversity came with a price. Her peers thought her "too experienced." She changed elementary schools eight times in the middle of the school year, bringing with her knowledge the other children would never possess. "I was a threat," she confesses. "Add to that problems between my mom and dad, and you can understand why I studied Dale Carnegie in grade school." She took shop classes in 8th grade and was the first girl at her high school to letter in football. She served as one of the team's managers.

She went away to college to become a lawyer and dropped out due to boredom before trying another school. Then she met her husband. "I started settling when I met him," she interjects. "It was too much effort to maintain the adventure, and I was tired. I wanted emotional stability." She has since learned that the emotional stability was short-lived.

From the beginning, Crystal felt out of place with her husband's family. She compromised for the sake of peace and, in so doing, tried to close the lid on her energetic mind. "I was expected to fit in," she recalled. "They had rules, social rules, and I had to live by them. No one in his family had ever moved, and my adventurous life bothered them, threatened them, I think."

"I wanted to fit in. I wanted to belong. I wanted to play by their rules. But it didn't suit me and ultimately wasn't good for them either."

After years of unhappiness and in what she calls "a giant spring fever funk," Crystal found the courage to admit that she was not living up to what she knew she could be, and she began a period of intense self-examination. Her sister-in-law referred her to the Ansir Web site, where she found something she wasn't expecting. "It was so startling that I actually had to step back for a minute. There I was, clearly pegged, especially in the Working realm. When the going got rough, I would escape into my own little world, and the Profiles showed me that was actually normal for my personality style." She bought the book and devoured every word.

"I decided I'd put aside the things that were uniquely me, and I wasn't going to do that anymore." 

She met a film director shortly thereafter and an old love affair with photography was rekindled. "I was always a visual person, but I'd given up on that." She picked up a camera and began travelling again, this time taking pictures. 3 trips to California. A trip to Ireland. The mountains. Chicago. Suddenly, she was in demand. "It was the overnight success thing," she cautiously admits. A Calvin Klein model she photographed got a contract through Crystal's pictures. She's doing the photo layout for a jazz band and had 4 photos selected for an Internet article.

But Crystal's newfound freedom caused even greater stress among her family. After her last testing turned up Philosopher /Evokateur /Philosopher, she deciding that, in living with an Emoting Diligent, she'd sacrificed emotional fulfillment for emotional stability. She'd settled for an unfulfilling relationship like her mother, an Eccentrik /Healer /Empath, married to an Idealist /Realist /Sentinel. She made up her mind that, whatever the cost, she would stand up for herself.

She's philosophical about the likelihood of the relationship with her husband ending. "At least I'm aware I'm going through something. How many people go through things and don't even know it's happening? I'm not open to being 'stuck out of fear.' I won't compromise like my parents did. The point of living is to live and make choices."

"To me, Ansir has been a tool of awareness. It's allowed me to understand how I'm relating to myself in light of relationships to others."

And she views her drifting through the different personality styles as evolutionary, moving from one energy level to the next. She admits to now and at long last being the same person she was as a child. The difference is a living awareness of that.

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