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The “Cool” Factor - Part One

Posted by Joseph Riggio on Sunday, January 14, 2007

Howdy all,

Happy New Year! - I know it's been a while since I've posted a blog entry ... so much has been going on. But, it seems time again to offer up some of my thoughts ... so here goes.

I've been working at 're-coordinating' my thinking about thinking and things. Specifically I've been hard at work pruning away what distracts me from where I want my focus to be in my work. This has proven time and again to be the most difficult thing for me to be doing. A combination of so many interesting things to pursue and so much information that easily accessible makes it challenging not to follow the siren's call. For me this call has been the lure that the most important piece of information I don't yet have waits just around the next corner ... a book I haven't yet read, or a speaker I haven't yet listened to, or a seminar I haven't yet attended. I could list another dozen ways to be pulled off-track, and most of them would be eminently valid - yet that wouldn't serve our purpose here.

Simply - the lure of "What's Missing" remains ever present and waiting to take me away if I were to let it. So instead what I've done has been to decide to use the time I could have spent searching for what I don't yet know, have or do to organizing around the core of what I already know, have and do. This has made a significant difference in my ability to pare down to the core what I want to be presenting and spending my time on and around.

Returning to the Core

What I find most interesting has to do with the return to the core - the essential "what" that I do. At its most basic what I do can be summed up in terms of human performance. I've said many times:

For all intents and purposes what goes on inside people's heads - in their minds - must remain for anyone else a "Black Box" ... and unknown. We can never know what others are thinking ... except in terms of the behaviors they express ... these observed behaviors are for all intents and purposes who others are known by us to be. And, our response to the behavior of others becomes who we are known to be by them.

While I regard thinking as a behavior, from the outside looking in, only the actual expression of 'acts in the world' become available to observers. These acts are the basis of performance - and we are known both to others and ultimately to ourselves in regard to our performance in the world. Our acts define our performance, and in turn our performance defines who we become.

So there we have it ... after three months of soul searching and burning away everything that I can't lose and not lose the essence of what I do what remained was 'performance'.

The Return of "Cool"

As I began to more and more consider the idea of the "Black Box" theory I've outlined above I began to realize again that all behaviors must begin somewhere. In other words there will be a structure that any given person will follow that results in the behavior/s they display. And, this structure will most likely have a sequence to it as well. For instance a typical sequence might look like this:

  • Stimulus
  • Perception (Sensory Awareness)
  • Cognition (Thinking/Consideration)
  • Meaning (-Making)
  • Response (Behavior)

    • Then of course the "Response" at the end of the sequence above could be the behavioral signal (Stimulus) for someone else to to be responding to creating a loop between them. Another possibility would be that the Response (Behavior) at the end of the sequence above creates a result that becomes the Stimulus for others.

    Yet I've realized for quite some time that there a component precedes the sequence indicated above. The person already exists before the Stimulus can be perceived, considered, and/or responded to in any way. More importantly how you are before you become aware of the stimulus will to a great extent determine your ability to perceive it (the stimulus) at all and then what will happen as a result.

    The most important consideration for me in the work that I do has become HOW a person holds themselves in the world - the ground of their BEING.

    In many contexts people will reference the idea of being cool - usually meaning they are in control ... in control of themselves, in control of the situation, even to some extent in control of how others perceive them and the situation. We refer to people keeping their cool, again usually referring to them keeping their wits about them, acting elegantly in a situation, remaining calm and in control. However, we seldom speak of people getting their cool.

    Yet for me this has become a topic of great interest - "How do you get your COOL?" On one level this can be thought of as a state of mind, or more accurately a state of being. But for all intents and purposes what becomes more significant in the study of COOL will be the behaviors of COOL.

    So to bring this around to the end for now what I've noticed revolves around how people who do COOL really well do what they do. First they begin from establishing the State of COOL in themselves, next they project operating from this state out to others who engage and interact with them, and those that do this particularly well can even build Contexts of COOL so that the COOL they've built extend to others around them. Cool, eh???

    What I've been playing at for many years now has to do with the ability to assist my clients in developing their own State of COOL and to install the mechanism for this to become their default state - the ground of their BEING so to speak. Then at the next level I work with them on developing the ability to build Contexts of COOL so that they can engage others from this way of being and bring them along into it as well. I'll share a bit more about this next time ...

    Until next time then ... and in the meantime I'd love to hear your comments and questions ... and most of all if you agree or disagree with the concept of COOL

    Best regards,

    Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
    Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    (5) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

    That’s a cool start to the year Joseph… wink
    Looking forward to more of this ‘Cool-Mytho Flavour’.

    Paul Burger on Monday, January 15, 2007

    I know very well that Mythoself process stems from the ontological and existential point of view, where you have to start off from a particular intentional state of being to filter through it and create through it all the decisions/manifestations that prove the individual’s individuation and singularity. So in many ways it treads/traverses an opposite path to that of NLP in its very famous well formed outcome model. And as a consequence, one should be open in an intentional teleological way to what the universe brings about in his path that would serve him in building/actualizing his own mythology. My question is: How can one really forbade and halt this lure for every and each single discovery/adventures/seminar/lecture/speaker/book/guild..etc, to concentrate on these discoveries, seminars, lectures, creations that do align with his intention and do bring results without much waste of time or effort? Could you elaborate on how did you do this process of selection and refinement for yourself in the last three month?

    With respect and appreciation,

    Bob

    Ihab on Thursday, January 18, 2007

    I’d be interested in your answer to Bob’s question too....

    Mike

    Mike Gray on Friday, January 19, 2007

    YES! You’re blogging again - so very COOL! I’m excited!

    Allison

    abriggs on Wednesday, January 24, 2007

    Great to have you blogging again, look forward to “part 2 “

    Per Rehné on Saturday, January 27, 2007

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