Living Mythically

January 18, 2021 by Joseph Riggio Leave a Comment

Living Mythically … Taking Control Of Your Story

From the beginning of my professional practice I referred to what I do with clients as “a piece of work” and suggest to my clients do their work. There’s a bit of danger phrasing thing in this way, in that “work” is often heard and thought of as negative, something that’s hard or difficult, or as something in opposition to fun and play, something that’s not enjoyable. And, yet I think that to be a very small minded and limited point of view, that only applied to work you should never be doing in the first place.

My “work” is aiming my clients to live and perform in their lives mythically. By living mythically I mean taking control of their autobiographical narrative, or writing the scripts they live by, their own life story. There’s nothing I find more playful, enjoyable and worthwhile than doing this work, yet it can be challenging and sometimes downright daunting, and even then it remains completely playful, engaging and fun for me to do.

Establishing A New Profession …

Another way I speak of what I do professionally in my practice with clients is that I am a “Clinical Mythologist.” I guide my clients mythologically to discover the stories they have been living from, the story they are living, and the story they are living into. Once we uncover these stories we take it further to begin to take control of the narrative these stories create collectively … the continuity of past, present and future as a singular way of understanding who you are fundamentally. This is an “ontological/ aesthetic” way of knowing yourself … as a being experience life sensually, contained in the iconic, symbolic representations you form about yourself and your life. One way we do this is in the form of language, the language we use with and about ourselves, and the language we use to describe reality as we know it, including others and our relationships with them.

A “piece of work” then refers to uncovering an aspect of revealing the autobiographical narrative someone is living from, and the affect of that narrative in their life as a mythic form. Of course this also means we’re revealing them to themselves. The revelations we uncover are both ill-formed and well-formed.

Ill-Formed Or Well-Formed Personal Mythology?

Ill-formed myths are fundamentally distortions of reality, not real in some way. Ill-formed myths disconnect you from your life, especially in regard to your purpose, passion and power, and away from living playfully. The ill-formedness creates cognitive dissonance, meaning that when you are operating from ill-formedness what you experience doesn’t make sense, the pieces don’t fit and you cannot form a coherent narrative, or mythic form through time.

Ill-formedness in your personal mythology … the autobiographical narrative your living from that describes reality as you know it and the way you relate to it … leads to what I call mythological distress and ultimately mythological crisis … the story your living doesn’t fit you.

Eventually, an ill-formed personal mythology will lead to ill-formed behaviors, that cannot and will not create the outcomes you desired, or produce the life you intend to be living, the relationships you want to be having, the accomplishments you want to be realizing.

Well-formed myths on the other hand are those that match you intrinsically, the arise from deep within you, before any traumas or comprises of yourself were experienced or occurred. A well-formed personal mythology contains and describes reality as you know it to be as free of distortions as you are capable of achieving. This view of reality leads to coherence that led to a a natural sense of awe and wonder, and a way of being in the world that is playful, childlike but not childish.

Wellformedness in your personal mythology opens you to the possibility of living a life of joy and splendor, experiencing yourself and others in enchanted and enchanting ways … you begin to experience the epiphany or what it means to be fully human and fully alive … life becomes meaningful play, filled with purpose, passion and power without struggle, effort or compromise.

Taking Control Of Your Story, And Your Life

What I’ve found in working with thousands of clients individually, in groups and within organizations and institutions has been that doing the work of living mythologically requires simultaneously becoming aware of your autobiographical narrative and taking control of it. The way this happens begins with choosing to be the author of the scripts you are living from, and rejecting the scripts that others have imposed upon you … often without any conscious awareness that that has happened, or that the script you are running is not your own.

The “writing” of your story, and the scripts you run, rests on the ways in which you perceive and make sense of the experiences you have, the meaning you apply to those experiences, and the decisions you make that lead to the action you take … and, this of course leads to the outcomes your create, as well as those you don’t.

As one of the huge benefits of “doing your work” of uncovering, revealing and taking control of your personal mythology you’ll free yourself from the ways you found yourself stuck in the past … procrastinating, hesitating to act, acting poorly, running in circles and finding yourself trying everything and anything you can think of to move forward, and yet still finding your stuck either not moving or moving and winding up where you began.

I’ve worked often and intensely with clients helping them to get unstuck in many ways and places in their lives, including extremely often in the ways they relate to others in their personal and professional relationships. When you reset your personal mythology it frees you from conflict, resentment, envy, shame, guilt and all the other things that so many people struggle with … without ever needing to wade through the suffering of revisiting those emotional sinkholes.

I find another thing that comes up almost as often can be the way that you relate to your sense of discovering real purpose and meaning in your life and career. Knowing you personal mythology makes how what you do professionally evident to you, the meaning it has in your life, and in relation to others too. Passion come from knowing why you are doing what you do, regardless whether we’re talking about actions you take personally for yourself and with others, or professionally. One of the most powerful things this does for you will be a natural reset of your relationship with money … earning it, accumulating it, spending it and sharing it as well.

It’s also extremely interesting to observe how my clients experience a positive change in their health, physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually, when the take back control of their autobiographical narrative. When you choose to be the author of the stories of your life … what they are, what they mean, and how they organize you to experience your life as it unfolds and you move forward through it … everything becomes clear to you and you have choices about it all, including how those experiences affect your health and wellbeing.

You cannot not live in relation to your life’s story, the autobiographical narrative that shapes and forms you, your experiences, your relationships and the life you are living. Either you choose to take control of your personal mythology, the story you are living, or you are controlled by it.

What’s Next …

As I shared with you at the beginning I love “doing my work” … shaping the story I’m living and sharing my client’s stories, because by keeping my attention here I can help you “do your work” too, and become the author of your life. Let’s get together sometime and tell some stories, eh?

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Sarasota, Florida

P.S. – WHEN YOU’RE READY … you can always set up a time to arrange a complimentary call with me when you’re ready to begin again … YES, Joseph I’m Ready, let’s get together to explore my personal mythology and the life story I’m living.

P.P.S. – Get my book “Experiencing the Hero’s Journey” and go a bit deeper into the journey of your story by reading a bit about mine … in it I reveal the deep structure of ill-formedness, well-formedness and how to discover your own personal mythology and story.

“I”Am A Narrative

December 23, 2020 by Joseph Riggio 5 Comments

Searching for the Self …

Probably since we first became self-aware humans have been exploring and attempting to make sense of the concept of the self, or the “I.”

Maybe these times more than any other in recent history demand that we achieve the self awareness necessary to process reality as it is … and not as we hope for it to be …

Modern cognitive neuroscience suggests that the “I” must be a function of neurological interactions happening deep in the brain, most of which are occurring at a pre-conscious level of awareness. These interactions are a function of neuronal functions and synaptic connections that happen as a result of what can generally be called learning.*

Exposure and interaction with the external world form patterns that become imprinted in the brain in a process called myelination. These interactions include the sense of self that arises as physical awareness of one’s being, largely experienced and organized in the cerebellum. My sense of this process is that “rear brain” cerebellar processing interacts with “front brain” neocortical processing to create an awareness that forms the self we know ourselves to be.

A neuroscientist, Dr. Masao Ito at the Riken Brain Science Institute in Japan, suggests that it is the cerebellar processing that forms what he referred to as the “implicit sense of self.” In fact, these particular interactions that form the implicit sense of self, or the awareness of the “I” are a kind of recursive, infinite loop that regress upon itself, until only the representation of the “I” remains on the internal screen of our mind as an absolute representation that seems immutable. Yet we also know at another level that this “sense of self’ changes through time.

Essentially I interpret this thinking about the “I” that I know myself to be as a set of neurological interactions as a pattern held intact around a central conception that has many representations that have varied over time. The “I” I know myself to have been at say 7 or 8 years old, doesn’t not correlate in a one to one, isomorphic way with the “I” I know myself to be today. Yet that earlier “I” of 7 or 8 I do know to be a representation of myself from another time.

The kind of variation of my sense of myself as “I” has many forms that are equally me, at points in time that can vary by years or decades, or for that matter minutes or maybe even seconds, as when a particularly strong emotion overtakes me and changes my sense of myself seemingly instantaneously. Yet, some core sense of self, i.e.: “this is me,” remains throughout the varied representations I have as I experience them through time.

The Narrative Of The Self

This “sense of self” as I’m referring to it is contained in narrative, where narrative is the sequencing of events within events as they unfold, e.g.: this happens then that happens … and so on. It could also be languaged as, “this happened, then that happened” or “this happened, then this is happening” or even, “this happened, now this is happening, and then that will happen” so time becomes flexible within narrative.

Also, time isn’t limited to progressing from past to future in narrative, e.g.: because I know that this will happen, I remember that happening, and now this is happening, where the placement in time can be freely moved between moments, in the past, present or future, in any ordering so chosen by the narrator/author. Entire events can disregard any point in time in narrative such that every that has occurred, is occurring or will occur, is the only time referenced.

For each consideration of time, events also need some place to occur as well, e.g.: that happened there, this is happening here, and what will happen will be felt both here and there. This confluence of space and time, is a space-time moment, which I’ll call a “moment” for simplicity, meaning that a “moment” is a reference to a specific space-time where the event in a narrative happened, is happening or will happen.

In any moment each of us has a sense of self that we reference as our “I”… the “I” … or more concisely, simply “I.” Each of the “I”s I experience is considered within the context of the narrative that I hold about the event and the moment within which it occurs. Let me make this clear about the universality of what I am saying to include the event of just thinking about my “I” … for example, who “I” am, or who am “I” … such that there is no experience of self that does not happen as a moment in the narrative.

Since the “I” remains malleable in regard to the moment in which the “I” engages in action in the world, the question of which “I” has the experience comes up as a natural consequence of this understanding. Furthermore, the “I” that has the experience also determines the actions that I take, and the outcomes I produce (including of course not producing an outcome that I intend).

Given all of this, it makes it essential to have some sense of the “I” that would be most likely to haven the experience I want to be having, as well as the “I” most likely to produce the outcomes I intend. Or stated differently, what narrative most likely supports my having the experience I want to be having, and producing the outcomes I intend?

Another, maybe more direct and simple way to consider all of this could be stated as …

The narrative I am holding and operating from determines the experiences I have as well as the outcomes I produce, so in taking control of my self narrative I can direct both the experiences I want to be having and the outcomes I want to be producing.

Fortunately for us we are organized innately to understand narrative, and we posses an innate skill in both responding to and creating narrative on the fly. This of course doesn’t mean we all do this as well as any other, any more than suggesting that we all walk, run or swim as effectively as any other person, but yet possess the innate ability to do these things naturally given the opportunity to do so.

Also, like walking, running and swimming we possess the ability to increase and improve our knowledge, skill and performace in responding to and creating narrative. This suggests that we have an ability to notice for what narrative we are experiencing and responding to with greater facility and effectiveness in regard to producing our intended outcomes, and the ability to increase our facility and effectiveness at creating narratives that are better suited to allowing us to have the experiences we most desire and, those we use in producing our intended outcomes.

Another way to refer to the self narrative form is by the phase “autobiographical narrative,” in this case this refers to the self narrative told by you, about you, to yourself, and to others as you choose. The autobiographical narrative is your “life story” … the way you represent who you have been, who you are and who you will become in narrative form.

If we accept these premises as true for us, then the ability to know you life story can be seen as critical to your self awareness, and more importantly to how you are directing yourself to have your experiences and, how you will respond to events and create the outcomes you do, or fail to do.

Building The Critical Narrative

The narrative you hold as your life story, the autobiographical narrative, is the key to organizing what I call the Ladder of Perception …

Perception
Sense Making
Meaning Making
Decision Making
ACTION! –> Results/Outcomes

We know the world, and our experience of the events that occur, as a function of who we know ourselves to be in relation to them. This begins with whether or not we even perceive them to begin with, i.e.: we have awareness of the event/s past the threshold of our sensory system processing them for sense making and meaning making.

There are perceptions that occur below the threshold of awareness … i.e.: we are present to the sensorial data, but what we perceive sensorially never reach the level of stimulation necessary for us to become consciously aware that we are perceiving the sensorial stimuli. Yet this transformation from simple impressions in our sensory system, to which we may be responding in a reflexive ways, never make it to the level of conscious processing, i.e.: they remain out of our conscious awareness.

For example many of our phyisological homeostasis responses operate in relation to external, environmental stimuli that we never become aware consciously until they exceed our thresholds of familiarity, comfort, priming , or targeting. Specifically, we can use the sense of temperature changes that we respond to almost instantly via our internal regulation system, keeping our core temperature steady, yet until the range of temperature change exceeds the threshold of comfort we remain largely unaware of these changes happening.

Familiarity and comfort remain largely out of our conscious awareness until these thresholds are breached, e.g.: how salty our food actually is when served and tasted. Yet both priming and targeting can influence the threshold levels we experience. For instance if we are specifically tasting food for the level of salt it contains we become much more sensitive to the taste impression of saltiness. The same is true if we are testing the ambient temperature, say with an intention to dress appropriately.

These threshold conditions are primed in part by the autobiographical narrative we hold, i.e.: how we know ourselves to be in relation to the events we experience. This tends to be especially true in regard to how we experience the “other” … those people we interact with in our lives.

We can build the experience of others into our life story in one way by categorizing people we know as well as those we don’t … e.g.: family, intimate/close friends, casual friends, acquaintances, strangers … enemies. As soon as we fit someone into a category our sense of them (in relation to ourselves, as well as who they are independently of us) becomes influenced by the category into which we’ve placed them.

This example of categorizing people as a reflection of our life story then runs into our ability to make sense of someone immediately upon recognizing them (perception –> sense making), and then almost as immediately making decisions about how to respond to their presence (sense making –> decision making). This in turn determines our response to them (ACTION!) and their response to our response (results/outcomes).

These loops then reinforce or diminish our sense of the validity of our life story as an accurate representation of reality. So for us, reality and the story we tell ourselves and others about it are the same. This remains true for us even when the evidence we’re confronted with presents a contrary view.

Dealing With The Cost Of “Truth”

When confronted with evidence contrary to our life story we typically experience extreme cognitive dissonance, leading to immediate rejection and avoidance in most people. I’d argue that only those who have specifically trained for dealing with cognitive dissonance when it arises in any other way fall into the trap of rejection and avoidance that allows them to keep their pre-existing life story intact.

You pay the cost of failing to produce the results and outcomes you expect, intend and desire … acting insanely, i.e.: being incapable of any action related to what is real beyond your projections of self … when you are living from, and operating in relation to, a life story that rejects and avoids contrary evidence.

Philosophers call this way of thinking and acting “solipsism” …

sol·ip·sism/ˈsäləpˌsizəm/ noun

the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

Psychologically a solipsistic personality exhibits Solipsism Syndrome …

Solipsism syndrome refers to a psychological state in which a person feels that reality is not external to their mind. Periods of extended isolation may predispose people to this condition.

In my experience a large portion of my clients experience either periods of solipsism or respond solipsistically to events in their lives that are contextually driven. I’ve especially seen this when people are going through periods of personal and/or social transition. This prevents them from exiting the loop they find themselves in, where they seem unable to move beyond what limits them, often despite previous success (even in the same domain of consideration).

These folks seem categorically unable to process that “This isn’t That” … or the need to frame what they are experiencing in relation to their pre-existing life story, and the contextual framing represented by it. Their life story has become impenetrable in relation to whatever they are confronting that limits them.

Making the shift that allows your life story to be more porous and permeable in regard to what you confront that leads to a sense of cognitive dissonance provides both relief to the discomfort that leads ordinary folks to rejection and avoidance, and also a way to update your life story to encompass a greater range of possibilities in regard to creating results and outcomes … on your own and with others.

Helping clients make this shift is the primary thing I do … in my webinars and programs, in my 1-to-1 Private Work work with clients, in MythoSelf Process training and mentoring … essentially, I’m all (and to some degree “only” about) helping people to become aware of their life story, how it drives them, and showing them how to modify and update it.

While there may be a million and one ways to tap into the power of your life story, and what could be possible when you update it to more closely reflect reality “as it is” and not “how you want it to be” my singular approach aims at developing profound cognitive adaptability and maturity as personal developmental evolution to achieve new levels of awareness and personal performance. I call this approach the MythoSelf Process, and now you know a bit more about it too.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designed of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics
Sarasota, Florida

P.S. – If you’d like to arrange a time to explore and discuss working with me privately or joining one of my programs, including the upcoming 2021 MythoSelf Certification programs let’s chat about it …

Schedule A Complimentary Call With Joseph Here

If you’d prefer you can start by requesting more information about the upcoming 2021 MythoSelf Professional Training and Certification Programs …

2021 MythoSelf Professional Training and Certification Programs Info HERE

*NOTE: I dealt extensively with explaining the process of learning, presented as the concept of “wholeform learning” … what others might prefer to refer to as “natural learning” … in my book, “Experiencing The Hero’s Journey” available at Amazon and other booksellers.

Outlaw Thinking: Part 3

November 9, 2020 by Joseph Riggio 1 Comment

grok

grok/ɡräk/Learn to pronounceverbINFORMAL•US

understand (something) intuitively or by empathy. “because of all the commercials, children grok things immediately”
- empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport. “nestling earth couple would like to find water brothers to grok with in peace”

Grok/ˈɡrɒk/ is a neologism coined by American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. While the Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the meaning of grok as “to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with” and “to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment”, Heinlein’s concept is far more nuanced, with critic Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. observing that “the book’s major theme can be seen as an extended definition of the term”.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok)

“Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.”

It’s what I do … I grok.

I am a Master Grokker.

I grok professionally with and for others.

SO …

I , Joseph Riggio, grok the MythoSelf Process, and within that universe of understanding, the underlying developmental modeling principals that the building of worldviews, and the narratives that form and inform them, ultimately rests upon.

Now, if you’ll stick with me for a short bit longer I’ll get to how and why this may be of critical important to you too.

Hackers also grok, as in “I hack reality, because I grok it.”

The word was later woven into hacker culture, appearing in the earliest editions of the Jargon File from the early 80s, which was later edited and republished by famous programmer Eric S. Raymond under the title The New Hacker’s Dictionary.

The primary definition given there is consistent with Heinlein’s, but the more religious and mystical connotations have been dropped:

To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When you claim to ‘grok’ some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you “know” LISP is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary — but to say you “grok” LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash.

Here’s an especially interesting bit for me:

When you claim to ‘grok’ some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity.

I am quite literally asserting that after thirty plus years of immersing myself in the work I do, i.e.: the MythoSelf Process, and all the bits and pieces that it contains and it built up from and in relation to, I grok this stuff like nobody’s business!

NOW onto why this is all important, maybe critical, for and to you …

I’ve been laying out a premise for what I’ve playfully been calling Outlaw Thinking in my last couple of posts.

The essence of the idea is that A) I think (and therefore communicate) differently … other than as folks normally associate what thinking is or how it should be done, i.e.: in a straight linear way, from point A to point B, as efficiently and directly as possible … and, B) I help others to think and communicate like an outlaw too, meaning that I help them build new and more complex worldviews and narratives, that give them unique perspectives, options, choices and opportunities, because they develop significant adaptability in the way they think and communicate.

Okay here that is again …

B) I help others to think and communicate like an outlaw too, meaning that I help them build new and more complex worldviews and narratives, that give them unique perspectives, options, choices and opportunities, because they develop significant adaptability in the way they think and communicate.

SIMPLY … I train people to grok their world, their work, their own lives, and the other folks they engage and interact with … and I also train folks to do this work I do with others, so they can help their clients grok too.

Now you have what you need to decide if this is important, or even critical, to where you find yourself in your life today.

If getting to this kind of thinking and communication in your life and work means something to you, you’re in the right place … YOU’VE FOUND IT!

OUTLAW THINKING REVISITED:

So what do I do again, and why is it important, or critical, for you:

Applying the MythoSelf Process model with my clients helps them to unwind sticky, or wicked, problems and situations in their lives, relationships, work and businesses.

“Grokking” the MythoSelf Process model gives me a kind of genius superpower … because it makes it obvious what level of thinking someone is operating from, and where the limitation in their cognitive process exists, and then points the way to resolve that so that my clients can literally upgrade their mind.

The “genius” in the model is available to anyone who groks it, and that’s ultimately the effect of working with someone deeply versed in the MythoSelf Process.

All perspectives, or worldviews, rest on narratives that describe what is real for the individual, or organization, that is living within and in relation to the narrative … the stories they tell about themselves, others and the world as we know it to be.

The MythoSelf Process model uncovers the existing narrative, as well as the “primal narrative” — the origin narrative that contains the uncorrupted and uncompromised form of the individual or organization, before any attempts where made to reshape them to fit into what society wants them to become.

The primal narrative is the pure mythic form of the individual or organization, and provides access to a teleological trajectory the pulls them into the most desirable future possible for them. In some models of transformational work this would be referred to as becoming authentic, or operating authentically.

The advantage of accessing the primal narrative, or mythic form, that working within the MythoSelf Process provides any user, is that decision making becomes unclouded, and action taking become virtually automatic in relation to creating the outcomes you intend … the effect is that taking effective action, and creating results, feels effortless.

Solving wicked problems is especially important to what we’re discussing here, what I’ve call Outlaw Thinking.

The MythoSelf Process allows you to process complexity that gives rise to wicked problems, and develop effective strategies that unravel the complex issues that have tentacles in multiple directions, having multiple consequences that are overlapped, intertwined and potentially costly if you fail to resolve them, and when they are resolved well are highly rewarding.

Doing this requires operating from a different mind and elevating your performance in relation to the world we now live in today.

The deep challenges we face include:

A brain that evolved somewhere between 500,000 and 50,000 years ago, not in the complex and interrelated global world we now move in
Cultural learning and impositions designed hundreds of years ago, imposing explicit laws and implicit rules that order our lives today, that no longer effectively represent the world we are living in now

Only by upgrading your worldview, i.e.: effectively upgrading your mind, can you hope to effectively deal with the actual levels of complexity and circumstances we live in relation to on a daily basis today.

The MythoSelf Process is a method for working with someone who will guide you through the specific things you need to do to shift how you are experiencing yourself and your life, usually in relation to a specific situation or circumstance you are currently facing, that then generalized the upgraded pattern of thinking throughout your life.

Beyond the MythoSelf Process work with a facilitator or trainer of the Process, there is an opportunity to learn more about the foundational principals that form and inform the Process.

These principals used with the MythoSelf Process model are built on a developmental model of cognitive maturity, and will dramatically shift the way you think and the way you communicate (because quite literally communication is thinking — as you raise the level of your cognitive maturity communication, and language use in particular, become a controlling mechanism for thought).

If you’re ready to take the next steps in exploring how you can make this kind of leap in advancing yourself, your thinking and your communication have a look here now:

Mastering Cognitive Maturity

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Developer of A.C.T. | Adaptive Cognitive Training and the Cognitive Maturity Model

P.S.: If you’re interested in working with me in one of my small coaching groups or 1:1, there’s no need to wait any longer, reach out to me directly at: joseph@josephriggio.com, and we’ll come back to you about how to find out more about taking the next steps to do that …

Outlaw Thinking: Part 2

November 8, 2020 by Joseph Riggio Leave a Comment

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes.” – Steve Jobs

That’s a nice summation in a neatly wrapped up, memorable quote of “Outlaw Thinking.”

What it isn’t is a good description of what I mean by “Outlaw Thinking.”

Outlaw Thinking is about two things that the interplay between them, disruption and adaptability.

In the world of business a disruptive paradigm upsets and replaces what came before it, usually with the intention or actuality of making a system more effective and efficient, improving performance, and thereby increasing the results achieved within it. Usually in the world of business this translates into more market share and profit.

When we apply this same concept of outlaw thinking to our personal lives the same two functions of disruption and adaptability come together. The distinction within the personal sphere, when you apply outlaw thinking, is that it allows you to see past the cultural norms, impositions and installations that shape so many people’s worldview.

When you can see beyond the cultural norms that are familiar and contain you, new perspectives become available to you, and new opportunities become open for you … in your relationships, in your work, in your health and mental well being.

You become more free to decide and act outside of what is considered “proper” according to the accepted socio-cultural agreements, thereby creating a new, more authentic, and freeing worldview.

When you think and act outside of the “proper” worldview that you had been sharing with others, there are usually repercussions and push back from those who had counted on you to go along.

Yet, almost always those who have realized that installing and operating from an outlaw thinking worldview have come to realize how worth it making the investment and shift had been for them.

The key begins with upgrading your mind so you can elevate your performance, and this will not be the familiar way you probably think about thinking today, nor will it be comfortable initially to let go of that familiarity.

Most people have a worldview that is dramatically shaped by the cultural norms they’ve been exposed to that’s generally one dimensional. This leads to thinking linearly about cause and effect, i.e.: “this happened because that happened,” as though the Universe unfolds in a straight continuous, unbroken line. Philosophers call this deterministic thinking.

I call linear, cause and effect thinking, “First Order Thinking” in the model I’ve been developing, “Cognitive Maturity.” Current research suggests that 80% of the population falls into this first order of thinking.

10% of the population have not fully mastered even First Order Thinking, leaving 10% that operate beyond First Order Thinking. I’ve developed descriptions of two further orders of thinking in the Cognitive Maturity model.

Second Order Thinking takes into account a teleological consideration, where the present is organized in relation to the desired future outcome, independent of and transcending historical limitations.

Third Order Thinking adds the recursive aspect of being able to recognize the effect of the actions you take in the systems you operate in relation to as having the consequence of changing you as well as bringing about outcomes outside of yourself.

Here’s a short list of these three levels of Cognitive Maturity:

1st Order Cognitive Maturity: Linear Tactical Cognition
Recognizing That You Are Thinking About Achieving A Specific Outcome And The Specific Action You Plan On Taking To Create The Outcome
2nd Order Cognitive Maturity: Consequential Strategic Cognition
Thinking About And Recognizing That The Action You Are About To Take Has Consequences And Factoring Them Into Your Decision-Making Process
3rd Order Cognitive Maturity: Cybernetic Systemic Cognition
Knowing Achieving Your Outcome Happens Within A System That Contains You, And That The Action You Take Will Have An Effect On You As Well As On Whatever Or Whomever Is Also Effected By It In The System

What I’m talking about here is called developmental modeling, and the folks who do this work, developmentalists. I think of myself as a neurocognitive developmentalist in terms of the models I’ve designed and specifically in relation to the body of work I’m engaged in that I’m calling “Cognitive Maturity.”

One of the major developmental researchers suggests ten total levels of potential development that she’s demarcated. Within her model, that she’s been studying and refining for more than twenty years, there are four levels above what she refers to as the “conventional” and what I’m calling First Order Thinking.

The developmental model continues beyond “conventional” to postconventional levels, and I’ve broken these down into Second and Third Order Thinking as I’ve described above. In her model, two of the postconventional levels, 7 & 8, would fit into my Second Order Thinking level, and the last two, 9 & 10, would fit into my Third Order Thinking.

Here’s what she says about the postconventional levels 7 – 10:

“Stage 7, the Individualistic stage, represents the first of several postconventional stages. To grow beyond Conscientious, Stage 6, a person must become more inner-directed and more tolerant of themselves and others. The self-established standards of the previous stage must become more contextualized and flexible. Persons at the Individualistic stage become aware of contradictions, such as the conflict between their need for autonomy and their need for emotional connection. They are willing to live with emotional and cognitive complexities that may not be resolvable, and they become more psychologically minded. The Autonomous Stage, Stage 8, and the subsequent Stage 9, Integrated, describe about 10% of the U.S. adult population. Autonomous individuals are able to accept conflict as part of the human condition. They tolerate contradictions and ambiguities well and demonstrate cognitive sophistication. The Autonomous person respects the autonomy of others and values close personal relationships. Self-fulfillment and self-expression gain increasing importance in this person’s life. High social ideals of justice are also typical of this stage.

— The Postconventional Personality: Assessing, Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development by Angela H. Pfaffenberger, Paul W. Marko, et al.
https://a.co/b1ERrw0

Then the postconventional levels, 9 & 10, are further described in her model as following after what she called Stage 8:

“She emphasized a cognitive shift that takes place at the Autonomous level, Stage 8, describing it as the embracing of systemic and dialectical modes of reasoning. Such individuals can hold multiple viewpoints and are interested in how knowledge is arrived at. In the language of the post-Piagetians such as Richards and Commons (1990) this constitutes a postformal way of reasoning. Individuals are aware of subjectivity in the construction of reality, accepting interpretation as the basis for the creation of meaning. Cook-Greuter constructed two postautonomous stages to replace Loevinger’s final Stage 9, and suggested that about 1% of the population reach this level of development. The ninth stage in her system is called Construct-aware. At this level, individuals become conscious of how language shapes the perception of reality. Language is experienced as a form of cultural conditioning that people usually remain unaware of throughout their lives. According to Cook-Greuter (1999) individuals can subsequently progress to an understanding that their egos are actually constructed from memory and maintained through an ongoing internal dialogue. As their self-awareness increases, they become interested in alternative ways of knowing. Transpersonal episodes, such as peak experiences, become increasingly common and people become drawn to meditation, alternate ways of knowing, and the witnessing of the internal process. At this stage, the individual experiences conflict between ordinary consensual reality and transpersonal awareness. This may be evident in the ego’s ownership and evaluation of transpersonal episodes, or in seeming paradoxes such as attachment to nonattachment. Only at Stage 10, the Unitive stage, can individuals sustain an ongoing openness to experience that is fluid and without struggle. They are now able to make use of transpersonal experiences free from ego clinging. Individuals have been tested who are found to be functioning at the Unitive stage, ranging upward from 26 years of age (S. Cook-Greuter, personal communication, December 3, 2003).”

— The Postconventional Personality: Assessing, Researching, and Theorizing Higher Development by Angela H. Pfaffenberger, Paul W. Marko, et al.
https://a.co/6RcNDGc

From these descriptions, if we follow Cook-Grueter’s developmental modeling, only 1% of the population ever reach levels 9 or 10 as they are detailed here by her, with this being the focus of the work I’m aiming at with my clients:

The ninth stage in her system is called Construct-aware. At this level, individuals become conscious of how language shapes the perception of reality. Language is experienced as a form of cultural conditioning that people usually remain unaware of throughout their lives. According to Cook-Greuter (1999) individuals can subsequently progress to an understanding that their egos are actually constructed from memory and maintained through an ongoing internal dialogue.

And it continues …

As their self-awareness increases, they become interested in alternative ways of knowing. Transpersonal episodes, such as peak experiences, become increasingly common and people become drawn to meditation, alternate ways of knowing, and the witnessing of the internal process. At this stage, the individual experiences conflict between ordinary consensual reality and transpersonal awareness. This may be evident in the ego’s ownership and evaluation of transpersonal episodes, or in seeming paradoxes such as attachment to nonattachment.

The model I began designing almost thirty years ago, the MythoSelf Process was specifically designed to raise the level of awareness of the clients I work with to achieve this 9th level of cognitive maturation. This is virtually unheard of, even by the developmentalists who I’ve studied for the past twenty plus years.

The developmentalists tend to believe and operate from two “certainties” … 1) the levels must be progressed though sequentially, and 2) you cannot therefore jump levels, you must progress sequentially. Everything I’ve done in the past twenty years suggests that it is indeed possible to attain a level 9/Third Order Thinking awareness regardless of the level of cognitive maturity you are operating from today.

That’s now become my mission, to make this kind of advance in cognitive maturity to the higher postconventional levels of awareness, available to as many people as I can, who get the value in making the personal investments required to attain it, and to reap the rewards that accrue when it has been attained.

I’ll be back again with a bit more in Part Three … if you’re ready to take the next steps in exploring how you can make this kind of leap yourself have a look here now:

Mastering Cognitive Maturity

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Developer of A.C.T. | Adaptive Cognitive Training and the Cognitive Maturity Model

Mission: OUTLAW THINKING! -Part 1

November 7, 2020 by Joseph Riggio Leave a Comment

We are certainly living in interesting times … (the foundation)

The most obvious aspect of this seems to be the speed at which things are happening and changing, as well as the level of complexity we are forced to deal with in our daily lives … in our relationships, or work, our heath, in politics and the economy, and in terms of the cultural values that we are most familiar with that are we can no longer expect to remain “as is” or stable for very long.

Why is this important?

Putting it as simply as possible, the mind you are currently using to think with isn’t going to get you the outcomes it could have just ten years ago, and will likely be totally outdated before the next ten are over

We’re seeing signs of this everyday. Consider for a moment people who you know who made it through most or all of their working careers never using or needing to use a smart phone or computer, or even a “dumb” mobile phone for that matter. That is becoming harder to do with every passing year, and will likely be virtually impossible for a vast majority of people in the next ten years.

Professions where being computer savvy wasn’t even a consideration, for example for many craftsmen ten years ago, is now becoming a necessity from communicating with customers to ordering materials, in addition to dozens of other professional uses that show up day to day. These examples are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg however.

Imagine for a moment a roofer who simply needs to point a laser measuring device at the edge of a roof as he or she walks along the perimeter, and the AI software he or she is using doing all the calculations of materials and labor, preparing all the materials purchase orders, work schedules, and cost estimates for the customer by the time the contractor has “walked the building.”

Now imagine a year from then when the contractor simply responds with a drone “fly over” the customer’s home, has all the information taken care of, and the customer receives the project estimate in real time with the contractor. That’s all possible today.

These kinds of considerations change things at many levels, including what the “work” of a roofing contractor becomes, and whether roofing contractors even exist in the near future, or if the home owner simply uses the drone-based AI system to do what a contractor would do today running the project themselves via the integrated software systems connected to materials suppliers and labor pools from their computer or smart phone.

Once again, this is at least theoretically possible right now … let’s call it “Uber Workforce” for kicks, imagining that it wouldn’t be too difficult for Uber to expand it’s operation to provide this kind of service as a mobile phone app. This will become the “new normal” very soon … for many, much soon than they are prepared for or will like when it happens.

So the question becomes, how do you deal with this kind of fast changing world using your current sense of normal and the kind of thinking you’ve been conditioned to believe will suffice in getting the outcomes in a world that no longer conforms to what’s been normal for decades, and in many cases, centuries.?

I’m all about this mission now … i.e.: helping those who “GET IT” and are ready to update their thinking, to radically update what they think about thinking so they can upgrade and install a whole new mind.

And, I get for most folks that leads to a second question, how … how do I make the adjustments and update my mind so I can deal with what’s already happened, and what’s going to continue happening that will requires ways and types of thinking I don’t currently have access to, but will very quickly become the new normal?

I’ve literally been thinking about these questions and how to answer them for decades. I’ve been building models and working with individual and corporate clients internationally to train them to become more effective in they ways they think and communicate.

My clients know they can count on me to help them navigate complexity, the sticky and wicked problems they face and must deal with that exceed ordinary ways of thinking and approaching “problem solving” as most professionals, including most consultants, do it today.

The folks who hire me count on me to think outside the box, and to bring my “outlaw thinking” to the problems they face. In it’s simplest form I bring a counterintuitive approach that turns problems on their head, and I look at them through a lens of possibility making them into windows of opportunity.

More specifically I’m looking at my clients problems from a completely different, higher order of thinking and level of complexity then they are presently capable of themselves. At the higher orders of thinking, and levels of complexity, more information becomes available, and the patterns that connect various sources of information within the context become obvious, because you begin to deal with what’s in front of you and obvious, as well as the underlying and hidden interconnections.

When I take into account the higher order of thinking that’s possible what’s emergent in the systems I’m dealing with also becomes obvious to me. Once I’ve done the calculus to analyze the data in the system, both what’s evident and emergent, I am able to make higher quality decisions about what action to take. This includes calculating the potential positive and negative consequences of the action, and factoring it into best and worse case scenarios, and then preparing for either as the actual outcome.

This is a cybernetic process of thinking that is iterative, recursive and systemic, generating self-referencing and self-organizing update loops. Working this way is the basis of generative learning, and this is what I train my clients to do when they hire me, or attend training with me. I refer to this kind of modeling as “wholeform learning” where the entirety of system, including connections through space and time, is considered in the functional analysis leading to a strategy to be implemented and refined through time as more data emerges and becomes present.

Almost always the greatest complexity in the systems I deal with, and train my clients to deal with, involve others as actors and agents within them. These actors and agents bring agendas of their own, and the ability to recognize the interactivity of these agendas in creating the outcomes achieved, even when the agenda are competing or conflicting, is where a kind of generative magic emerges from approaching the resolution of problems and the realization of solutions in the way I train my clients to do.

To recognize the overt agendas that people bring is easy and most people can do that innately. Recognizing hidden agendas and the secondary gains that remain unspoken and largely unseen requires very specialized thinking. This means significantly upgrading the order of thinking you apply to the analysis of any system you’re operating within and/or in relation to, if you want to achieve your outcomes effectively and effortlessly.

I’ll be back again soon with Part 2 of this mission statement, if you’re ready to learn a bit more now check this out today:

Mastering Cognitive Maturity

(As always, feel free to leave me your comments below, I love reading them and responding too.)

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

Developer of A.C.T. | Adaptive Cognitive Training and the Cognitive Maturity Model

P.S.: If you’re interested in working with me in one of my small coaching groups or 1:1 reach out to me directly at joseph@josephriggio.com and we’ll come back to you about how to find out more about taking the next steps to do that …