The Four Life Positions — Your Basic Stance Toward Yourself and Others, and Finding Your Place on the OK Corral

Why do I always check the other person’s mood first? Why do I keep looking down on people? Why does the whole world sometimes feel pointless? There is a reason for these places the mind keeps returning to. A life position is the basic conclusion you reached in childhood about two questions — “Am I OK?” and “Are you OK?” — and it is the basic stance from which you then look at every relationship. Eric Berne, the psychiatrist who created Transactional Analysis, explained in his 1972 book What Do You Say After You Say Hello? that this position is the ground on which the life script is built. In 1971 his colleague Franklin Ernst set the two questions on a vertical and a horizontal axis and drew a grid of four squares. This is the “OK Corral.”

A life position is not a diagnosis that passes judgment on your character. It is not the name of an illness, and it is not a grade. It is a mirror that shows where you set out from when you meet people and the world. Once you know its name, it is no longer a fate that controls you. It becomes something you can look at.

The OK Corral — a map with four squares

The grid Ernst drew is simple. A vertical axis, “I am OK / I am not OK,” meets a horizontal axis, “You are OK / You are not OK,” and four places appear.

• I’m OK, You’re OK (I+U+) — “I’m fine, and you’re fine too.” This is the stance of solving things together. Ernst called it the place of “get-on-with.”
• I’m OK, You’re not OK (I+U-) — “I’m fine. The problem is you.” This is the stance of pushing the other person away and getting rid of them (get-rid-of).
• I’m not OK, You’re OK (I-U+) — “You’re fine. I’m the one who falls short.” This is the stance of running away from the other person or putting yourself down (get-away-from).
• I’m not OK, You’re not OK (I-U-) — “I’m no good, and neither are you.” This is the stance of futility, in which nothing gets anywhere (get-nowhere-with).

Berne held that this position is usually “decided” very early in life, in experiences from before the child has even learned to speak. Using the care and the responses it was given as material, the child reaches a conclusion — “Am I worth loving? Can the world be trusted?” — and builds the story called the life script on top of that conclusion.

How the four positions look in everyday life

I’m not OK, You’re OK (I-U+) — the person with “I’m sorry” always on their lips

When a good idea comes to them in a meeting, they put “It’s nothing much, but…” in front of it. When they are praised it feels awkward, so they change the subject. They cannot refuse a request, and they stay late into the night doing other people’s work. From the outside they look modest and devoted, but inside, the sentence “I knew it, I’m not good enough” gets stamped as confirmed several times a day. It is a place that easily tilts toward low mood and self-deprecation.

I’m OK, You’re not OK (I+U-) — the person of “I have to do it all myself”

When things go wrong, they always look for the cause outside. “If only that person had done it properly.” They cannot stand the way their staff or their family do things, so in the end they take it all on themselves, and then they confirm, “There is nobody I can rely on.” From the outside they look capable and confident, but it is also a lonely place: the closer the relationship, the more the other person gets worn out and leaves. Blame, control and sometimes projection are the language of this place.

I’m not OK, You’re not OK (I-U-) — the person of “It’s all no use”

It seems that trying will not work, and that asking for help will be no use either. They put off appointments, cut off contact, and let go of both the world and themselves. From the outside they look indifferent, but inside it is the most painful place of all. If you stay here long, the will to live itself grows dim. So if you feel you are in this place, what matters more than anything is to take one step toward other people instead of bearing it alone.

I’m OK, You’re OK (I+U+) — the person of “Let’s find a way together”

When they make a mistake they say, “I missed that. Next time let’s do it this way.” When the other person makes a mistake, they still separate the person from the behavior. When conflict arises, they sit down face to face instead of winning or running away. Berne said that this is the only healthy position, and that unlike the other three, you do not get here by simply living out a childhood decision. You arrive here again by the conscious choice of an adult. That means it is not a place you are born into. It is a place you return to through practice.

Under stress, your position moves

Here is one important fact. A life position is not a fixed label like a blood type. We move among these four squares many times a day. Even a person who usually stays in I+U+ will shift to I+U- and blame a colleague when deadlines pile up, and in the face of a big failure will slide into I-U+ and keep repeating, “I knew I couldn’t do it.” But each of us has a “home base” that we return to automatically, the greater the pressure. Stewart and Joines (1987) explain that although we move among several positions from moment to moment, in the stressful situations where the script is set off we go back to the place we decided on as children.

So the best way to learn your life position is not to look at yourself on a calm day. It is to look back at yourself in the moments when you were worn out, cornered and hurt. Who did you blame then — yourself, the other person, or the whole world?

Practicing the move toward I+U+

Fortunately, a position is something that was decided, not something you were born with, so it can be decided again. Small repetitions move you more than grand resolutions do.

• Noticing — “I’ve just sat down in I-U+.” The moment self-blame or blaming others comes up, try putting a name to that sentence. Noticing is the first switch that turns off the autopilot.
• Separating the person from the behavior — Instead of “That person is hopeless,” say “The way this was handled was disappointing.” Instead of “I’m useless,” say “This time I missed it.” What is OK is the person’s being. What can be fixed is the behavior.
• Giving and receiving positive strokes — Once a day, give someone a sincere word of recognition (a stroke), and when praise comes to you, do not push it away. Receive it with “Thank you.”
• Going back over a moment of stress — Pick one scene in which you were badly shaken, and write down which square you were in and which old sentence you heard. If you see a sentence that repeats, that is the voice of your script.

This practice is not a spell that says “Just think positive, no matter what.” It means giving back to yourself and to the other person the OK that belongs to their being, while building the strength to deal with a problem as a problem. Only from that place does cooperation become possible.

If you want to check your own home base

As you read, you may already have a guess about which square your mind stopped at the longest. But guessing and checking are different. In particular, the home base you return to automatically under stress shows up far more clearly when you go through questions about specific scenes.

The free life position test on Lifescript is based on Ernst’s OK Corral and shows you your place both in everyday life and under stress. A few minutes are enough. To say it once more, this is not a medical diagnosis. It is one mirror in which to look at yourself. The moment your basic stance has a name, that stance is no longer fate. It becomes one option among others. We hope you will find that first name today.