You don’t make choices. You make trades.
Every yes costs you something: an evening, an opinion, a little of your health, a lot of your attention. What are you trading your life for, and is it worth the price?
Is it worth the price?
Often trades
Everyone carries all nine patterns. Your signature names the two you reach for first.
What are you trading your life for?
Take the late night at the office. It looks like a choice. Underneath, it is a trade: your evening for the feeling of being needed, or safe, or a step ahead. Saying yes to one more committee is a trade. So is the argument you let slide to keep dinner quiet, and the hour you lose to your phone after a hard day.
Human Trade Theory keeps these deals in a ledger. One column holds what you pay: your time, your health, your money, your honesty. The other holds what you get back, and it has two layers. There is the practical return, like the paycheck or the quiet evening. Beneath it is the emotional one, the thing you were really after: love, approval, belonging, safety, control. Most of us never read the ledger, so we go on paying prices we would never agree to out loud.
Some entries go back a long way, to the house you grew up in and the rules you learned there. Others began with a first job, a marriage or a loss. Wherever they started, a ledger you can see is a ledger you can change.
On the surface the trade is practical: time for money, health for productivity. Underneath, you are almost always buying something you feel. That is why the trade is so hard to stop.
Every day comes with a receipt. Most of us never read it.
Nothing on this list looks like a big decision. That is the point. The biggest trades in a life are made a few minutes at a time, on days that feel like any other.
Add them up over a year, or twenty, and they become the life you are living.
KEEP THIS RECEIPT
How many weekends do you have left?
What are you trading them for?
Each dot is one weekend. A full row is one year. Nothing you enter here leaves your device.
What could you be getting in return?
You will never stop trading, and you will never stop needing love, safety and a place to belong. The point is to pay for them on purpose, with trades that give you the real thing back.
Your time
Now it buysLate nights for the boss’s approval
It could buyEvenings that belong to you and the people you love
Your honesty
Now it buysKeeping the peace, to stay loved
It could buyRelationships strong enough to hold the truth
Your energy
Now it buysDoing it all yourself, to feel safe
It could buyRoom to rest, and to let other people carry some of the load
Your attention
Now it buysA screen, for relief from what hurts
It could buyBeing there for the life right in front of you
Roots, trunk and branches
Your trades run through you as well as between you and other people. They connect the life you were handed, the life you are living and the life you want.
Who you want to become
The person you are reaching toward. The distance between trunk and branches is what the Alignment Check measures.
Who you are now
The life you are actually living, and the trades you make every day to keep it standing.
Who you were raised to be
The rules, roles and expectations you inherited. Some still feed you. Some you have outgrown and still obey.
When life gets uncomfortable, which way do you move?
Under pressure, everyone reaches for a favorite trade. Some of us move toward people, some push against them and some step away. Each pattern spends your life to buy one currency above the others.
When life gets hard, you move.
Everyone moves in all three directions. Most of us have a favorite, and it shapes the trades we make.
Buying love and belonging
You pay with pieces of yourself to stay close.
- PerformerApproval
- PleaserLove
- PeacemakerBelonging
Left unchecked: the Hostage Trade.
Buying safety and control
You take charge so nothing can catch you off guard.
- ProtectorSafety
- ControllerControl
- AchieverPower
Left unchecked: the Debt Collector Trade.
Buying freedom from pain
You keep your distance so nothing can reach you.
- EscaperAutonomy
- ObserverCertainty
- RebelIdentity
Left unchecked: the Addict Trade.
What you will see when you finish
Your Trade Signature
Named for your two strongest patterns, with the currency each one buys and what it costs you.
All nine patterns
How your trades divide across the nine patterns and three directions, as percentages that add to 100.
Your ledger story
A plain account of how your patterns work together, what they are costing you and where they tend to lead.
Your place on the cross
A map of how much of your life runs on inherited trades versus chosen ones. Mark where you want to be and retake it to watch your point move.
The Alignment Check
How far the life you are living is from the life you want, across twelve currencies and ten qualities, with a 90-day plan to close the gap.
Your board of directors
Meet the younger selves who still vote on your decisions, and see how their rules show up in your life today.
“We never stop trading. The only question is whether we do it awake.”
Human Trade Theory
The quiz shows you what your trades are. The book shows you why, and how to make new ones.
Be the first to know when Human Trade Theory is out, and get early notes from the book along the way.
Take the work further
Coaching
One-on-one sessions that start from your Trade Signature and work through your ledger, one trade at a time.
Speaking
Talks and workshops for teams and organizations on the trades that quietly shape how people work and lead.
The podcast
Conversations about the deals we make with ourselves and each other, and what it takes to rewrite them.
Dan Holbrook
Dan Holbrook is the creator of Human Trade Theory, a way of seeing the unspoken deals we make with our time, our energy and our lives, and the author of the forthcoming book of the same name. He coaches, speaks and hosts conversations about how people can notice the trades they make and choose better ones.
Before you begin
Is this a personality test?
It is a reflection tool, not a clinical assessment or a diagnosis. It draws on long-standing ideas in psychology, including Karen Horney’s three movements toward, against and away from people, attachment theory and schema therapy, and puts them in the language of trades and ledgers.
How long does it take?
The main quiz is 65 statements and takes about twelve minutes. The Alignment Check and the board of directors are optional and take about twelve minutes each.
What happens to my answers?
Your answers stay in your own browser. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to email yourself your results, and even then only your summary scores are sent. Your written notes and your board of directors never leave your device.
Can I stop and come back?
Yes. The quiz remembers where you left off on the same device and browser.
Should I retake it?
Yes. Your trades change as your life changes. Retake it in a few months and the cross will show how far your point has moved.
What if it brings up something hard?
Go gently, and stop whenever you need to. Talk with someone you trust or a counselor. In the US you can call or text 988 at any hour.