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Seeing Ahead …

Posted by Joseph Riggio on Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The evolutionary continuum of acuity ... critical skills for everyone!

Good Morning All!

I'm on a roll it seems (well ... at least to me it seems that way!). I'm referring to the direction I've taken with my blog entries lately, which I see as all about the very most basic distinctions about how we form relationships. For me this would include those relationships that run all the way from the most intimate to those that are the most remote ... i.e.: life partners/lovers/children all the way to the guy/gal at the grocery store check-out. In all cases where we encounter and engage others we are primarily defaulting to patterns that run largely out of awareness about how we make distinctions and decisions about others.

Yesterday I offered the example from Seed Magazine about in-vitro development and the effects on behavior, and even basic neurological development it would seem. Then I took up this idea of how we "notice for" certain information ... I referred to a three-step evolution of acuity - calibration, tracking and adumbration. Today I'd like to briefly explain these and then give a bit about why I think attending to the evolution of your acuity is so critical.

First there is calibration - simply put, noticing what's going on around you in "snapshot" or "soundbite" form. Calibration is the skill of noticing the specifics about what has happened - especially in terms of calibrating change. This is the fundamental skillset required in developing your acuity. The ability to notice what has happened - i.e.: calibrating change against the "baseline" - or fixing the originating conditions in your perception - and then noticing for what changes in relation to the "baseline" conditions is calibration, as I'm using and defining the term here.

Then when you have skill at gathering information in this way - i.e.: as snapshots and/or soundbites of information, calibration - you are ready to begin developing the skills of tracking. Tracking differs from calibration in that it is more dynamic and occurs in 'real-time' as the baseline change is occurring - the significant difference being that you notice for what's happening, not just what's happened. This constant noticing for what's different or changing is the essential art of tracking, again as I'm using and defining these terms here.

Finally, as I'm delineating this continuum in the evolution of acuity is the art of adumbration. Adumbration is the skill of projecting where a system is going based upon where it has been and what's occurred to generate the current condition it is in, as you continue to notice for what's changing. Adumbration requires a skill at prediction based upon evidence. This is completely unlike pseudo-science of magical-thinking!!! Adumbration demands attending to what has happened as well as what is happening - and only them using the direction that is apparent in the system as a result making a calculated prediction of where the system is headed.

When you've developed this skill - the skill of adumbration - you are significantly more well prepared to move through life elegantly and effortlessly. This may be especially true of making choices about relationships and our interactions within relationships. Imagine knowing what the outcome of our relationships and the interactions that occur within them will be - BEFORE THEY EVEN OCCUR! How valuable would that be to you?!?!??!

For instance imagine being able to predict, with even a moderately improved degree of skill, how someone you intend to hire will workout in the position you're hiring them for - before they begin. Or, imagine being able to predict, again with even a moderately improved degree of accuracy, how a relationship you're entering into will work out. These are the kinds of things that become possible with a significant degree of skill at adumbration. However, the most basic application of adumbration applies to simply being able to predict with some degree of skill and/or accuracy what will happen in the interaction you are currently engaged in over the next few moments - before the events themselves actually unfold and become manifest.

What's interesting to me about this has to do with how this would allow you to make significantly different choices about what to be doing - and how that will in turn allow you to create your outcomes, both on your own and with others, with much, much less friction (NO STRESS!) in your life ... and in your relationships.

I'll spend a bit of time over the next few days giving some examples ...

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

PS - These are the kind of topics I’ll be taking up in my monthly audio newsletter that’s part of my “UnconventialAdvice™ Private Access™” group membership ... check it out for 90 Days Risk Free on me: UnconventionalAdvice - and you can listen to Free Sample right now!

(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Joseph, great post! My question is: calibration/tracking/adumbration is the three step evolution of acuity, as you describe it. It is clearly a brilliant skill for understanding others and engaging with them. I would like to know your opinion zabout understanding ourselves, our self awareness processes, so to speak. How does one go about it without staying too much in the head, and without too much irrelevant self talk, reading our own somatic signals with increasing acuity? Thank you. Agnes

Agnes Mariakaki on Wednesday, August 09, 2006

If adumbration is the skill in predicting what is likely to happen based on previous calibration and tracking, how does that fit with what we want to happen as a future outcome, unfolding back to the present? It seems to me that the point where these two intersect is our intervention, but also a ‘wild point’ where anything could happen, where we must most acutely attune to the resonant signal which might arrive perpendicular to that crux. Does this make sense?

red on Sunday, August 13, 2006

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