[Well known mantra of some marketers ...]
IAMS (It’s All Marketing Stupid)
Before we get off too far into abstractions and absurdities let me share that this post is actually all about learning … Your Learning Strategy … to be specific.
The way you learned to learn determines your fundamental success in virtually every aspect of your life … business, career, finance, relationships … you name it.
However, I should really begin at the beginning again. First, if you haven’t read my post from yesterday, Marketing Truths 101 … (The Heretic File), I expect that this post will make a little less sense to you.
Now assuming you’ve read that post you know that I ranted in it about how I’m supposed to be marketing to you based on the sage advice of some of the marketing gurus out there. You also know I laid down the law (so to speak) that I’m refusing to do that in the way it has been suggested to me to move onwards and upwards towards “increasing my readership.” F–K ‘EM ALL!!!
Well now that I’ve gotten that out of my system (again) let me return to my main points. The headline above, IAMS (It’s All Marketing Stupid), is a play for me on a topic much more familiar to me … HYPNOSIS. In that world (the world of hypnosis) some folks like to say, “Everything is hypnosis.”, and depending on your point of view they could be correct.
I assume that from a particular point of view, e.g.: a marketers point of view, everything could be marketing as well. However there’s a caveat here; the idea that “anything” could be “everything,” depends on a flawed notion that one thing is somehow like another thing, when it simply ain’t.
I’ve been known to rant on and on about how …
“THIS ISN’T THAT!”
Now the idea that “THIS COULD BE THAT” is an example of a flawed learning strategy … one that’s been foisted on you and installed in you before you even knew that you were learning it. But I’d bet dollars to donuts that you believe that there are things that are “like” other things. I’d bet double or nothing on my winnings from that bet that you often explain what something is by making references to what it is “like” … perpetuating the bad learning strategy of “THIS IS LIKE THAT” thinking. PHOOEY … TOTAL B.S.!!!!
BUT WAIT … it’s not totally your fault (note the “totally” in this sentence and take some responsibility, huh?) …
Here’s how it probably happened (the installation of your bad learning strategy): When you were being schooled, formally and informally, and you didn’t know what something was someone tried to explain it to you by making a comparison using a “THIS IS LIKE THAT” formula, e.g.: a zebra is “LIKE” a horse with stripes.
Now when you read the example above you may have even thought, “Well yeah … a zebra IS LIKE a horse with stripes.” And if you stopped there you’d be okay … maybe. To the extent that zebras and horses share some common traits, they are alike, e.g.: they both have four legs ending in hooves, they have similarly shaped heads and bodies, they both have manes on the back of their necks, they both have tails …
Now some of that is unique to zebras and horses, e.g.: they both have four legs ending in hooves, they have similarly shaped heads and bodies. And some of that isn’t, e.g.: they both have manes on the back of their necks, they both have tails. For instance male lions also, have manes on the back of their necks and tails, and lions aren’t much “like” horses at all.
Sure, sure … you probably get all that, I know …
BUT (and it’s a big, stanky BUTT):
ZEBRAS AREN’T HORSES
You see this is the leap that begins when you use “THIS IS LIKE THAT” thinking embedded in this type of learning strategy. You begin to forget the “like” part and make them equivalents at some pre-conscious level of thinking, i.e.: zebras are horses with stripes. While they do share the same family and genus in the scientific literature, Equidae and Equus, that doesn’t make them the same:
Zebras and horses both belong to the family Equidae, and the genus Equus. However, they are different species – horses being E. caballus, and zebras E. burchelli (Burchell’s or plains zebra), E. grevyi (Grevy’s zebra), and E. zebra (mountain zebra). They are related closely enough that they are able to interbreed, producing a ‘zorse’ – however, like most hybrids, zorses are usually sterile. Zebras can also interbreed with donkeys (E. asinus), producing a ‘zeedonk’, and, of course, horses and donkeys can interbreed and produce mules (offspring of a male donkey and female horse) or hinnies (offspring of a male horse and female donkey).
In response to your first answerer, I must point out that humans and chimps are actually more closely related than many animals in the same genus. For example, lions and tigers are both placed in the genus Panthera, and are capable of interbreeding, but they are more distantly related than humans and chimps. Genetically speaking, we should be in the same genus as chimps – placing ourselves in a separate genus to all other animals is more to do with human arrogance than genetics. Chimps share around 98% of their genetic material with us.
From: “Are Zebras Horses?”
(http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081123235747AAupGxd)
NOTE: Bold in the quote above for emphasis is mine, JSR
Zebras are as much “like” horses as a jaguar or a tiger is “like” a lion (they all share the same family and genus classification). Thinking like this you can begin to make the leap that your tabby is like a lion too based on visual similarities when you adjust for scale … and the next step is that lions are “like” horses (they both have manes and tails) … so your tabby is “like” a horse!!! (I told you abstractions and absurdities would be coming along …)
Remember, this is just an example to make the point, the point being:
You “learned” to think in terms of complex equivalents before you even knew you were learning to do that by virtue of the way you were begin taught to learn … NOT based on what you were learning at the time … so you learned to apply this kind of thinking to everything, until everything becomes “like” something else … that it isn’t!
Let’s make the next big leap, and leave it at that for now …
Using the embedded learning strategy of “THIS IS LIKE THAT” (that ultimately morphs for most people into “THIS IS THAT” thinking … at least some of the time) a classic error that people make is, “Work is “like” School.” when work most clearly isn’t school, and are seldom very much “like” one another.
In the “old days” this was obvious and less of an issue. Farmers implicitly and explicitly get that “work” (i.e.: farming) is NOT like “school” without having to think much about it. Carpenters and plumbers probably get it equally as well too. However, financial planners, bankers, management consultants … and marketers seldom do. Most white collar types act as though their work is just “like” school.
In most white collar jobs you show up at a specific time to a specific place with planned breaks in the day and work with paper (or it’s electronic equivalent) and information (facts and figures) … just like in school.
For most people in white collar work the similarities are close enough to ignore the distinctions BECAUSE THEY LEARNED TO LEARN BASED ON GENERALIZING COMPLEX EQUIVALENTS! For most blue collar workers the distinctions are apparent enough, and yet …
Some of the more subtle distinctions cross over from one domain to the other (school to work). For example in school you have a hierarchy, i.e.: in the class room the teacher is the “boss” and the teacher’s “boss” is the principal, and the principal’s “boss” is the superintendent of schools, and the superintendent’s “boss” is the Board (of Education).
For about 99% of the working world that hierarchy is also present “at work,” e.g.: the employee has a “boss” who typically has a “boss” all the way up to the “top boss” who reports to the Board, just like in school … and by the time you enter that world you’ve learned to respond to the hierarchy of authority based on years and years of pre-conscious conditioning you had in your schooling.
You want proof, I’ll give you proof … when you want to speak in a group setting that’s being led by someone else what do you do? I’ll double my winnings from my double or nothing bet above again that if you resemble the vast majority of adults trained in the traditional western schooling system 99% of the time you raise your hand. Where’d you learn to that, huh????
I know this is true because I run groups with a couple of hundred people a year, and often lecture to groups that bring that number into the thousands, and in virtually every one of them when someone wants to speak they raise their hand and wait for me to call on them … excellent training and cross-mapping from years of schooling.
This isn’t surprising, BUT when you add in the fact that in every group I run that’s intimate … say 80% of the work I do … I tell people that they don’t need to raise their hand, just to wait for an appropriate pause and speak … like an adult with something to say. BUT THEY CAN’T DO IT … they can’t NOT RAISE THEIR HAND, they raise their hand anyway, until I get tired of telling them they don’t have to and just accept the depth of their conditioning that they won’t/can’t overcome … yet.
Here’s the last point for now …
99% of what you learned in school you didn’t know you were learning, nor do you know you learned it now, because it was contextual learning and not content learning where you were told to place your attention (on the content learning, not on the contextual learning) …
BUT contextual learning has much more of an impact in your life now … because it was the “Learning to Learn” that happened to you while you thought you were learning other stuff (facts and figures …)!
Now, if you don’t unlearn that kind of learning, and re-learn how to learn again you’ll never have the opportunity to build the life you actually desire … and could be yours for the taking!
This is my real mission … to undermine the bad learning you and others have had at the hands of a corrupt schooling system.
In fact, what I’ve been doing for the last twenty odd years is designing a disruptive technology to dismantle the subtle brainwashing that is what we subject our children to and call schooling in the name of education. I call this technology the MythoSelf Process (the best resource out there, other than live training or facilitation in the process, is my book “The State of Perfection” so read it if you haven’t yet).
NOTE: I’M NOT SAYING THAT SCHOOLS, OR TEACHERS, ARE CORRUPT … BUT THAT THE SYSTEM AT WORK IS CORRUPT.
I’m confident that 99% of the teachers out there don’t think of schooling as corrupt … in fact just the opposite, they are more likely to think of it as a blessing, e.g.: “Education is the great equalizer.”… but, that’s because they were conned themselves on the way to becoming teachers and part of the system. (AND … now they still have a responsibility and obligation to become informed … the information is out there, like here in this post.)
The system (schooling/education) is systematically designed to dumb down students (and most teachers) and prepare them to fit into a larger system that contains what is often referred to as “the job market.”
The newest push here in the U.S. in education is S.T.E.M., Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This is purportedly intended to “prepare the next generation for the jobs that will make America strong again” or something “like’ that … underwritten in large part by corporations like Exxon (proper use of “like” here).
How much do you believe that Exxon has first and foremost the welfare of your children in mind by underwriting this initiative? Or, how much do you believe they have first and foremost in mind the welfare of the United States of American and it’s people? Think!!!
There are messages in plain sight … THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL … and you’ve learned to read along with all the other stuff that was happening to you in school.
Of course I guess that the kind of “writing” I’m referring to extends beyond what can be seen in black and white, much more grey or in technicolor typically.
However, once you’ve unlearned the bad learning strategies that keep you trapped the kind of “writing” I’m referring to … what I often call “Signals in the System” becomes readily apparent … and from that you can take meaningful action in your life.
Virtually all the work I do today is based on undermining the bad learning strategies people who engage me to do private work with them have, freeing them to update their learning and response potential to a much higher, much more astute level. This shift opens the possibility to take action in entirely new ways, creating possibilities that were simply not present for them before the shift they experience in their private work with me.
It really doesn’t matter BTW if the forum is one-to-one or group, face-to-face or virtual … the song remains the same (ta L.Z.) …
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interrupt the essential response pattern in place that’s based on past learning
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create a space for a new possibility to become present
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orient the new possibility in relation to the excitatory bias
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link the orientation to the excitatory bias to the larger context/system they individual/group is operating in relation to that contains them (e.g.: intimate relationship, family, business, community … Universe)
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extend the new operating position through time into the future relative to the INTENT of the individual/group
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and … install this pattern as the “new song of learning” and map it across the board for how to interact and respond in the world, i.e.: based on possibility and in relation to the larger context
This newly installed pattern results in maximizing positive consequences while minimizing negative consequences in the decision-making/action-taking sequence … within the MythoSelf Process model this is also know as the “Scope of Decision” … and is the basis for much of the group work I do in programs like the Performance Design workshop and when I’m facilitation private groups like teams in the organizations I work with internationally … the result:
DRAMATICALLY INCREASED PERFORMANCE!
So … as always the choice is yours …
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, N.J.
PS – There’s still time to join me next weekend for the next Performance Design program in Princeton, NJ … and this is the last program that I’m offering at the Summer 2012 Discount
NOTE: Now’s your chance to save hundreds or thousands … after this program offer is over I’m returning to the regular investment schedule … if you sign up now and can’t attend the September program I’ll hold a space for you at any Performance Design Workshop in the world through the end of 2013 … you can attend when you want, where you want (NJ, California, Europe, China) anytime from now until December of 2013 at the Fully Discounted rates available now:
Here’s the info you need to
Take The NEXT STEP:
PERFORMANCE DESIGN IN PRINCETON, NJ
8/9 SEPTEMBER 2012