What The Single Most Important Decision You Must Make?
Almost every day I ask myself a single question (amongst others of course … but this one I ask myself almost every single day …).
“What is the contribution that I will make today?”
And, almost every day I come up with the same way to answer it too:
How can I help people make better decisions … that are their own, and not the ones they’ve been taught to believe are their own?
Now from there on out things begin taking on a life of their own!
There are all kinds of reasons I can point to as to “why” things at this point begin to spiral … but suffice it to say it’s complex ‘`~>
However I do want to share with you some ideas about how I specifically go about answering that question.
[Now remember I am a developer, designer, creator, broker and peddler of information … so these questions are always asked and answered by me within this framing.]
I think that the most amazing thing we do … dang, maybe the most amazing thing about being human … is that, we are capable of making decisions. But it ain’t as easy as all that …
Son of Nobel Prize winner, and himself a Pulitzer Prize winner for his non-fiction, best seller, “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Braid” (GEB), academic Douglas Hofstadter who is the Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition wrote about this in his book, “I Am A Strange Loop“ …
In the end we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.
– Douglas Hofstadter, “I Am A Strange Loop, pg. 363
Now … here’s a question for you … AND I WANT YOU TO BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF …
- “Were you, even a little bit, impressed by this guy’s credentials before you read the quote I posted above?”
And, depending on your answer …
- “How do you think that influenced your expectations and perception of what he would have to say?”
Then go one more step (or league …) down the rabbit hole and answer for yourself this question,
- “How do you think what I did in framing this way set you up for what I’m presenting to you now?”
I’m bringing all this to the forefront and putting your attention on it, however, how much would you have considered those points if I hadn’t ? (… and I know the answer will vary depending on the person reading that last question and all the preceding ones too.)
BUT … you want to get that this is obvious … or at least as obvious as it’s likely to get!
So, as a practicing, applied cognitive scientist – who did his doctoral research on decision-making, specifically decision-making in contexts where the information required to make decisions was incomplete and implicit – where my personal attention is focused, is on how we are all influenced in making what we believe to be “our own decisions” … about anything and everything?
Now take this question way beyond language, and directly perceived, explicitly available information … and ask it through the lens of my focus … in relation to the implicit contextual data relative to the way all information is perceived.
Here’s what I think is the single most important decision you can make …
“Is the decision your making (or about to make)
truly your own?”
Now add in a further piece of data, relative to my life’s work …
How do you know you’ll be able to make decisions that are truly in your best interests (including those that impact the folks you most care about and love) in critical moments and situations, e.g.: crisis and chaos?
These are the moments where it most counts … when time is limited and data is even more limited … AND you’re least likely to take into account the incomplete and implicit data that significantly impacts the quality of the decisions you’re making.
So this is where I live in answering my own daily question …
How can I help the folks I work with day in and day out run their brains like they actually own them … and live lives worth living.
I hope I’ve given you some things to ponder …
All the best,
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics
PS – There are more clips and posts in this blog that take these ideas further and in difference directions, including the audio and video posts “we’ve” begun making (yes, there really is a team of folks who help me get my messages out there …)
PPS – If you really want to take a HUGE step forward in training your brain to make decisions that are your own … I recommend you seriously read and consider this: Getting Started … [NOTE: It’s a long piece to read, but when you’re down you’ll know more about how to bring yourself to peace than when you began, I PROMISE! … “cross my heart and hope to live”]
What Limits People From Achieving The Outcomes They Want
How To Super Charge Your Brain
Stepping Forward: A Hero’s Journey
Stepping Foward: A Hero’s Journey
[The animation of Joseph’s presentation at TEDx Academy, Athens, Greece 10 October 2011]
““You All Have Brilliant Brains … And Bad Educations.”
– Dr. Joseph Riggio
In this video, Dr. Joseph Riggio explores the topic of how our stories shape the worlds we live in, as individual and collectively. He speaks to the way our education influences our ability to shape the stories we are living, what’s missing from our schools – and how we can add back in what most essential to reshape the future we’re creating.
Bringing the System to Rest …
I’ve been “dark” –as they say in the world of advertising– on this blog for sometime now. BUT I’ve got some new things to share and I’m about to start right now!
There were a couple of reasons for going dark, including:
- We’ve been working really hard at putting the new design for this website together (my programmer, my designer, myself …)
- That included migrating Blognostra to the new site, and I think it will be worth it
- I’ve put up three new blogs that address some pretty specific niches of my work
- I’ve been busy developing new programs and a new program schedule for 2012
- My entire business model has been in flux for more than a year …
Now things seem to be coming more towards center … more to rest.
So let’s leave all that for now, and get onto to what I want to share first …
As I said above “my entire business model has been in flux“ — which has been at least semi-deliberate on my part. The deliberateness was making a decision to shift my awareness even further to center (my center). The shifting business model just naturally followed that decision.
Now I hate flux as much as the next guy (or gal). It’s not that I’m opposed to it, it’s just that flux is generally uncomfortable … like and unsettled stomach after a meal with too many options partaken of all at once.
I don’t mind change … in fact I think change is not only a good thing, but necessary as well. Heck, change is the rule of life. The ability to make changes … and make them well, i.e.: elegantly … is the mark of a successful organism – “the law of requisite variety.”
I won’t bore into you too much about the law of requisite variety (there’s plenty about it floating around the web that you can find for yourself – and you can start with the link I’ve provided above if you’re interested). IMO what’s important from a human stance is the idea of ‘resiliency’ – how resilient are we, i.e.: how able are we to re-center ourselves after we’ve been perturbed?
This idea of using perturbation to increase resiliency has been a mainstay of my practice for many years now. One of the primary models I developed in the early 90s was the Satisfaction Cycle®, and I built a major training program around that model for major account sales professionals called Persuasion Technology®. Over the next few years Persuasion Technology® morphed into programs for organizational leaders, and also for private individuals wanting to learn much more about influence and persuasion for their own benefit … all based on the material I developed in the Satisfaction Cycle®.
At the heart of the Satisfaction Cycle® model is the idea of resiliency, and the entire Persuasion Technology® program was premised on developing an ability to deal with permutation in the system in real time, i.e.: developing extraordinary requisite variety.
I got the idea of doing it this way from training and working with Special Forces commandos, and discerning something about how they are able to perform so well in extreme conditions – literally under fire. While there is no doubt in my mind that these folks share a natural propensity and talent for operating this way, to some extent – and I’d say a great extent – it’s also a function of the training they undergo.
Training for resiliency requires at least three specific and critical characteristics to create the intended outcome, all of which tend to push the participants beyond their comfort zone:
- Much of what’s happening must reside outside of or beyond the ordinary conscious awareness of the trainees (if they can process things in ordinary conscious awareness then latent and peripheral processing will fail to emerge fully)
- The quantity and quality of the permutations introduced must exceed the current capabilities of the trainees (this is enough to disqualify most folks from the training process – when confronted with more then they are capable of handling they will simply drop out)
- The trainer must be aware of the non-ordinary aspects of cognitive-behavioral processing, AND able to manage them within the context of the training program, i.e.: the trainer must have at least the level of requisite variety that the training is intended to stimulate
Well in the case of my business model revamping I played both the parts of the trainer and the trainee at times (with lots of input from trusted advisors and sources along the way – I never step too far away from the circle of support I’ve built up along the way, part of my secret to success so to speak). It wasn’t always fun, and it was seldom easy (even when it was goat butt simple). Mostly I had to give up being comfortable and doing what had become most familiar.
Here’s another way to say it … for many years now I’ve been living a particular myth. For that specific mythic form I know the sources from whence it came, the structure that sustained it and the stories that supported it. For the new myth I’ve begun living these are much less sure or definitive … and some have yet to be invented.
This doesn’t mean there are no sources, structures or stories – just that I don’t necessarily have them or know where to find them yet … and some, like I said, I know I’ll have to invent myself (something I’m used to, i.e.: making things up as I go …).
In other words, to make the change I desired I had to leap into the unknown without a net …
I mentioned to one of my closest advisors that this has been a ten year journey of putting the platform in place just to jump off into the abyss.
Well here I am at the end of the first part of that next journey … and the new website design for JosephRiggio.com is a large part of it for me.
The front page of the site really resets things for me … putting it out there without any makeup or clothing … like the emperor with his new clothes intentionally walking in front of all those who allow themselves to be deluded, while winking at those childlike enough to see the truth that always resides beneath the masquerade and pretense of civility — what I’ve come to is much more primal.
Now I know this ain’t gonna be for everyone … but what I do never has been that.
But, here’s a small secret I’ve uncovered as I continue falling to earth …
The real trick to being incredibly resilient is becoming incredibly simple … i.e.: letting it all go … again.
Joseph
Princeton, NJ
P.S. – I’ll be back with more of less soon … doing my best to keep my grandest promise to deliver as much of nothing as I possibly can …
Moving Beneath The Meta in NLP
Meta- (from Greek: μετά = "after", "beyond", "with", "adjacent", "self") The prefix comes from the Greek preposition and prefix meta- (μετά-), from "μετά",[1] which meant "after", "beside", "with", "among" (with respect to the preposition, some of these meanings were distinguished by case marking).
In Greek, the prefix meta- is generally less esoteric than in English; Greek meta- is equivalent to the Latin words post- or ad-.In epistemology, the prefix meta is used to mean about (its own category). For example, metadata is data about data (who has produced them, when, what format the data are in and so on).
Howdy,
It’s about time to rethink the “meta” position in NLP …
I could have said … “moving before the meta in NLP” in the title of this post just as easily, and it many ways it would be more correct to state it that way. But either way the idea is pretty straightforward IMO.
The idea of a “meta-position” is just as firmly fixed in the language of cognitive science, psychotherapy, linguistics and other domains of human inquiry into self-awareness, consciousness and mental functioning as it is in the world of NLP … and each of these fields applies the idea of a meta-position in virtually the same way too.
The “meta” position in NLP is all about commenting on something that is at least one step removed from direct sensory data … e.g.: the meta-model as a commentary about language usage in terms of what’s not there and/or the implications of what is there. But this is not the same as directly attending to what is present, in language or otherwise.
Within the NLP model, the use of the “meta” position organizes the consideration to in some way stand apart from the direct sensory data that is present and being experienced. Using the meta position, or a meta-state, in this way creates a powerful observer position … BUT AT THE COST OF LIVING THE POSITION EXPERIENTIALLY … it literally forces a position that’s at least one step removed from direct experience.
Yet …
THERE MUST FIRST BE SENSORY DATA THAT IS PRESENT IN THE DIRECT EXPERIENCE OF THE PERCEIVER.
IMO this is a really significant idea in at least one profound way …
When I’m working with my clients I make a critical distinction between helping them to make decisions (strategies) and helping them to make changes (transformation).
I’ve worked with many, many NLPers, and I’ve been in many, many NLP training programs internationally – and I find that very few NLPers or NLP trainers make this distinction with clarity. In fact most of the NLPers and NLP trainers I’ve met apply NLP techniques (what John Grinder refers to as NLPApplications vesus NLPModeling) as though developing strategies and doing transformational work are the same thing.
FWIW this is true of probably 90% of the current crop of “changeworkers” … i.e.: psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, coaches, hypnotists … you name it.
Now I could be kind and say it’s not their fault … and to the extent that they are ignorant that’s true.
The primary distinction is “where” the intervention is being aimed. Most of these folks “aim” their interventions at the brain processing locations of “ordinary cognition” – language-based and representational cognition.
Ordinary cognition has a couple of aspects that are profoundly important when considering the distinction between developing new strategies and doing fundamental transformational work with a client.
1) The first aspect is that ordinary cognition is symbolically organized NOT sensorially organized … DESPITE THE NLP CLAPTRAP TO THE CONTRARY.
What you are dealing with in ordinary cognition are symbolic representations of sensory experience. As soon as you put language to something … anything … you are in the domain of symbolic representation, i.e.: abstraction, NOT direct sensory experience.
The singular exception might be when you are skillfully using language to create, or point to, direct sensory experience, e.g.: speaking to create and experience of hearing, or using hypnotic protocol to focus the attention on direct somatic experience.
2) Ordinary cognition is largely a cortical process, occurring primarily in the left hemisphere of the neo-cortex, including the frontal and pre-frontal lobes.
While other brain modules and mechanisms may and do come into play to process ordinary cognition, the primary experience of explicit processing of ordinary cognition is limited to left hemispherical cortical processes. These processes are exemplified by being primarily linguistically, linearly and logically/analytically organized.
Direct sensory experience is seldom or never linguistic, linear or logical, tending to be beyond the constraints of language and much more whole-form and aesthetic, then linear or logical/analytical.
The Default of Working with Ordinary Cognition
All meta positions are by default operated in ordinary cognition, with the greatest default of meta cognitive-processing occurring in the frontal and pre-frontal lobes. So by default most operators who are working in the domain of ordinary cognition are working with and/or on the frontal and pre-frontal lobes.
The challenge with this premise (of working with or on the frontal and pre-frontal lobes) is that the information they process is always “made-up” … a series of abstractions that are at least one step removed from direct sensory experience.
Instead of attending to “real” data in “real-time” processing in the frontal and pre-frontal lobes can only attend to data that’s gone through multiple transforms from the direct sensory experience. In terms of brain processing this is as far from direct sensory experience as you can get. Even the imaginal constructs of frontal and pre-frontal processing are at best abstractions about sensory experience.
From the point of view of creating possibilities the frontal and pre-frontal lobes are exquisitely organized to do just that … speculate about possibilities.
However, when it comes to implementing the plans created in by frontal or pre-frontal cortical processing there is no way to connect them to “reality” except to leave cortical processing behind and move into non-cortical processing to collect direct sensory data and take action in regard to it.
[NOTE: An exception might be when working with data limited to pure abstract, symbolic representation, i.e.: any symbolic, linguistic or language form, including maths.]
Non-Ordinary Cognition
I propose that we can refer to other kinds of cognitive processes that occur in other parts of the brain and CNS as “non-ordinary cognition”
Much of my attention these days is on non-ordinary cognition, especially in how it applies to transformational processes.
An old and outdated psychotherapeutic reference that’s carried over into current psychology and popular thought is “the Unconscious.” The Unconscious of psychotherapy is a reference to a parallel processing mechanism that operates outside ordinary cognition, and beyond the access or purvey of the individual who’s Unconscious is in question.
I’m suggesting that we update our thinking (and references) about the “Unconscious” based on more current knowledge of brain anatomy and function. It seems to me to be more correct to refer to non-ordinary cognition, and to the specific parts of the brain and their processes responsible for non-ordinary cognition, than an amorphous and unknowable “Unconscious.”
Beyond cortical thinking, and more specifically, left hemispherical cortical processing of language, the other parts of the brain involved in cognition have no ordinary means of communicating linguistically or even symbolically. The right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex does process symbolically, but to our current state of knowledge all of our other brain modules, e.g.: limbic system, brain stem, cerebral cortex, have no access to symbolic or linguistic representation.
The brain parts, other than the neo-cortex, operate on direct sensory data and create immediate somatic response. These other brain parts are more somatic than they are semantic in nature with regard to their processing mechanisms. We can refer to a “language” of sorts that these non-cortical brain modules (and the CNS) can use if we are willing to refer to somatic processing and direct sensory data in terms of languaging.
One of the most powerful kinds of languaging that the non-cortical brain modules and CNS respond to is rhythm. For example, by establishing a rhythmic form these other brain modules will either sync up and entrain moving towards systemic resonance, or reject the rhythmic form and experience dissonance. The non-cortical brain and CNS also seem to respond in a similar way to other direct sensory signals like scents, using them as systemic markers to entrain the system and create a systemic resonance, or to reject and avoid creating sensory dissonance. We can apply any direct sensory inputs using this general formula and the results will be similar, e.g.: touch, temperature, movement …
One of the least studied and least understood brain modules to date is the cerebellum. This is rapidly changing with more current research into the structure, function and role of the cerebellum. For years I’ve been speculating that the cerebellum is the seat of the implicit self, what had been IMO incorrectly referred to as the “Unconscious.” We are now getting closer to uncovering the true relationship of the cerebellum to the creating and sustaining our implicit selves with current research.
The Meso-Position
We are now moving beneath (or before if you prefer) the “meta-position” to a “meso-position” – a position in the middle of, or at the center of, direct sensory experience.
IMO the cerebellum is literally the heart of the meso-position, as well as being the seat of the implicit self. We experience the world sensorially in direct conjunction with cerebellar processing. Yet it is rare to non-existent to hear anyone in the field of human transformation refer to working at this level, or in this way, with their clients.
Instead of operating in relation to using, or at least integrating, cerebellar functioning in their intervention strategies, most professional clinicians focus exclusively on cortical change. There are more and more clinicians who have begun to seriously consider the role of the limbic system in the process of doing changework with clients, yet even these folks seem blind, deaf and dumb to cerebellar processing or function.
I even heard some of the folks who are considered to be among the most cutting-edge in their thinking about the brain and changework, i.e.: psychotherapeutic intervention, talk about the “three-part brain” referring to the neo-cortex, the limbic system and the brain stem … completely leaving out and disregarding the cerebellum!
Here’s the most critical findings I have gathered in my most recent work with clients regarding transformational change (versus decision-making/strategy development) …
What I found in working with clients based on this thinking is that the use of rhytimic, resonant interventions is the basis for creating transformational change at the level of the implicit self and implicit processing.
I’m going to leave it there for now … but I’d love to read your thoughts and comments.
Best,
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect and Designer of the MythoSelf® Process & Soma-Semantics®