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Inventing The Future …

Inventing The Future …

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Private Work℠ Coaching with Joseph: Is It Coaching Or Something Else Entirely?

I get asked a question a lot that goes something like this …

“Hey, Joseph, I get what you do is all about being and not doing, but is it practical … what can I do with it?”

Now first of all I see the immediate contradiction that asking about doing represents, but I also get this …

“When I first meet them, almost everyone I start working with is addicted to doing … they literally feel off, or out of balance, when they aren’t doing something, they don’t know how to do nothing.”

“Yet, the first step in achieving greatness in anything begins in nothing, doing nothing first.”

Now that’s the first significant distinction. Coaching virtually always begins from, and organizes around, what to be doing … usually how to be doing something you don’t yet do, or doing something differently than you currently do it.

Changing what you do will be really, really important if you want to get something different than what you’re getting now … bigger, better or different results, outcomes that have eluded you from getting them at all, more wealth, improved health, a fantastic relationship, a vast range of human what humans aspire to and desire can be linked to what they do, and what they do not do.

Many of my clients are engaged in building and running businesses, often leading teams of people that they depend on for the results they want and need to create. To realize the outcomes they set for themselves, and their business, they need to do things that produce those results, they are all about making it happen.

BUT despite how obvious it seems, starting with a focus on doing almost guarantees they will continue to get results very similar to or the same as you’re currently getting, possibly with a minimal incremental increase, usually paid for with extraordinary effort in doing even more than you’ve been doing.

Yet, the conundrum of coaching, the way most people experience it and engage in it, resides in the failure to connect how when you are organized in this way, seeing doing as the driver of getting outcomes, it by default organizes perception driven by behavior.

When you consider what to be doing, or what you can do, i.e.: what it would be possible to do, as the starting point, that by definition determines and limits the outcomes you will even consider, and therefore what you will attempt.

“When you are driven by doing, doing sets the limits of your positive expectation, and positive expectation determines what you will achieve and won’t achieve, because it in turn limits and determines what you will and won’t do.”

And, this also sets the limits of coaching based in doing … updating doing, refining doing, improving doing, adding in new doing … it doesn’t matter the focus of the doing, any focus on doing will create these ripples of limitation in the system.

Now, when you want to improve you’re doing, the behaviors you express in relation to producing outcomes, coaching can be a brilliant way to do this … improve what you do and how you do it.

And, yet when you want to expand the boundaries of the possible, coaching may very well entrench you further in the limits of the boundaries you are operating in relation to now.

The Solution:

To quote my mentor, Roye Fraser …

“You have to go to where the problem is NOT.”

This means going to where you experience the world outside of, or beyond, the problem state.

The pragmatic linguist Paul Watzlawick says that there are two conditions for a problem to exist, 1) the way things are, are not the way you want them to be … or, to put it another way, you want things to be different then the way they currently exist, and 2) you have to believe that you need to do something for the situation to change, something that may be beyond your control or ability.

Taken to another level the analytic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggests that problems are nothing but “puzzles of language” or a perception that we encase in the way we express it in language … furthering the suggestion that when we change our way of expressing our perceptions the problem dissolves as the language we use to express cannot sustain the problem as we experienced in the problem state.

Roye also said something else that guides what I call doing Private Work with clients,

“The problem as they express it contains the solution to the problem.”

This took me a few years to grasp completely, because it requires unpacking and deciphering the language of the client inside their perceptual experience, while simultaneously remaining outside of and beyond the perceptual framework of the client.

So taking these two things together, to go where the problem is NOT, an accepting that, the problem as they express it contains the solution to the problem, we can begin to build a framework to guide the client beyond the limits of the language that contains the problem that exists outside of their frame of consideration as they know it.

This new framework begins in nothing, as in no projecting of the past into the future in a way that limits it, and no fixed expectation about the future that defines how to perceive the present in terms of what to notice and what we perceive to be important to us, or containing opportunities that exist that we might choose to pursue instead of and beyond what we considered from where we’ve already been.

“The concept of “Blue Ocean” thinking can almost be defined by starting from nothing, meaning that we consider anything as possible, and then begin to organize ourselves in relation to what has to be true to achieve what we’ve imagined from a position of pure desire and positive expectation … Private Work exists to expose the boundaries of Blue Ocean thinking, and position us to operate in relation to, and within it.”

Maybe we can point to this distinction as the primary difference between coaching and Private Work, i.e.: giving up the desire to achieve the results and outcomes a client arrives with, and moving from that and the limitations suggested, to a position that exists beyond limitation. In this way before anything else happens the problems the client arrives with are swept away by releasing the desires and aspirations that contain them.

In Private Work we begin from a position of pure possibility, starting from a clean state where anything becomes possible. We begin by accessing a familiar position where the state of possibility has already been experienced and revivifying that experience fully, in body and mind, and when possible spirit as well. Then we stabilize the state of possibility, and only then begin to explore what, you as a client, want.

We employ the trick of revivifying the embodiment of possibility as a fully realized experience in the moment, here and now. Using this position we can then project to a point in the future where a deeply desired outcome has been realized, and explore what it will be like to have that as a fully embodied experience. The emphasis on the embodiment of experience sets Private Work apart from coaching, as it both contains and exists beyond language, where almost all coaching exists in relation to and within the limits of language.

In a Private Work session we establish the desired outcome position as an embodied realized experience, and then track the language that emerges from that position … versus trying to embody an outcome position by creating it in language. We call the embodiment I’m referring to as a “felt sense of self,” which by definition transcends language, from which language emerges. This distinction provides a critical point of difference in how many coaches work, and what most coaches seek to do, in a way that forces us to claim that Private Work and Coaching are in two different domains of consideration.

  • COACHING seeks to get to something based on a pre-existing frame of reference, that always must include any limitations present in that frame of reference.
  • PRIVATE WORK seeks to get to a position where we begin from nothing, without pre-determined or expected outcomes, so that a completely new way of perceiving possibility emerges, and from there establish the means to achieve whatever emerges as a desired outcome, including Blue Ocean possibilities.

A Little About The Mechanism:

Working in the paradigm of Private Work we begin from an essential presumption, you have a Best State, a way of operating so essential, innate and native to who you are, that when you are acting from this state virtually anything you do seems effortless for you.

We call what I refer to above as your Best State, your State of Perfection.

You embody your State of Perfection as an integrated wholeform position in body and mind, where what you perceive as internal experience matches what you express externally. You don’t experience any difference between the way you perceive the world, yourself or yourself in relation to it, and the way you respond and take action in the world, for you they are one and the same things.

This allows you to form a perfect loop between your perceptions and your actions, including eliminating any hesitation or procrastination between perception, decision making and action taking, and noticing the outcome you create as feedback you can use to refine your action taking, leading you ever closer to realizing your desired outcomes. When you perfect the loop between perception and action you experience uninhibited positive expectation, releasing you to act freely in relation to getting whatever outcome you’ve decided upon, and have projected as your future experience.

In this way positive expectation and your desired outcomes, i.e.: what you intend, determine how you perceive what’s present and what you notice for, becoming the drivers of your responses and behaviors. When you can collapse expectation and desire in this way, you can choose outcomes that are impossible from within the pre-existing frame of reference. You can invent possibilities that aren’t present in the pre-existing frame of reference, but you can nonetheless project as fully realized outcomes in a future position you intend to occupy. As you master this skill you can also begin to collapse the time frame within which you create the results and outcomes you’ve projected, drastically shortening the distance between where you begin and getting what you want.

We can simplify the way we express this as an algorithm we follow …

  1. RE-Discover Yourself – this refers to your State of Perfection
  2. RE-Connect With Yourself – this aligns you with your State of Perfection
  3. RE-Invent Yourself – this allows you project yourself through your State of Perfection into your future where you have already realized your intention

Where each step moves you in time and space in such a way that as you complete the algorithm from one stage to the next, you become more and more skillful and manipulating your sense of moving through time, until it becomes effortless to position yourself in time where you need to be to create any outcome you intend.

So, if you want to redefine and refine how you do what your doing it may be that coaching will be your best bet.

If you want to go beyond anything you’ve considered before, and create the possibility for things you’ve never considered, or believed possible before, then it may be that engaging with me in Private Work℠ Coaching will give you the breakthrough you actually desire, that goes beyond the way you currently create and contain the problems that limit you, permanently.

If this intrigues you, you can make arrangements to schedule a complimentary strategy call with me here … Private Work ℠ Coaching with Joseph (https://abti.learnworlds.com/mytho-magic)

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Sarasota, FL

P.S.: I’d love to read your thoughts after you’ve read through this one … I think it’s profound in it’s implications, and I’d love to know if you agree.

A New Take On Trauma

A New Take On Trauma

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I believe some of the greatest successes we’ve observed in the history of the world come from some trauma the individuals who realized these successes experienced at sometime in their life.

TRAUMA = LEARNING

I’d argue that individuals as renowned as Alexander the Great or Napoleon were in part responding out of trauma induced learning, as well as more modern figures we associate with high achievement like Steven Jobs and, many famous athletes and entertainers.

Most of my professional clients, including some of the world-class executives and entrepreneurs I work with, come to me because of the effect of unresolved, unrealized and unconscious trauma they’ve experienced in their lives … both part of what drives their success … as well as what’s hidden from them, that limits them.

The traditional take on trauma is that it has three forms:

Acute – trauma induced from a single incident

Chronic – trauma from repeated and prolonged abuse

Complex – trauma caused by multiple, varied events, often of the kind that are invasive

Furthermore trauma is most often defined as an intense emotional response to a “terrible event.” While this definition works well in a psychological or psychiatric setting, or use, it doesn’t define the absolute boundary of how we can consider what trauma is, it’s lingering effects, or how we might choose to approach addressing it.

I want to propose that trauma may be something entirely different, …

TRAUMA: a massive, intense learning experience … or, to be more specific, a massive, intense learning experience that imprints on the neurocognitive processing pathways, that often occurs beneath the level of fully conscious awareness, and leaves a neurocognitive response that remains out of conscious awareness.

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D. – 2022

Assuming trauma creates an imprint in the emotional response that occurs in response to a “terrible event” it becomes acceptable to view it as something to be eliminated, removed, overcome or resolved – in other words, ‘fixing’ the emotional response system that has been somehow overwhelmed and/or damaged.

Abuse and trauma almost always leave a few generalized responses in the individuals who experience them, some are less life disturbing, others are more interruptive, and others still can be fully debilitating, depending on experience of the abuse, the trauma that’s induced and the individual response to it.

At the very least we can probably say that trauma will leave “emotional triggers” behind, some completely beyond the awareness of the individual experiencing them, except in the response that manifests as a result. Some of these triggers and responses are subtle, some are more significant.

Here are some examples of what trauma responses might manifest as, including those that go unrecognized as trauma responses by the person experiencing them:

  • Unexplainable procrastination or hesitation to act, feeling stuck
  • Low energy, low motivation, low or no ability to follow through
  • Fears and phobias, risk avoidance and/or avoidance of the unfamiliar
  • Eating disorders including obesity, bulimia and anorexia
  • Physical discomfort, headaches and/or body pain, profound fatigue
  • Anxiety, or panic with more acute or extreme trauma
  • Irritation, inability to connect with others easily or effectively
  • Lack of clarity, fuzzy thinking, inability to focus, and/or confusion
  • Inability to sleep or experience restful sleep
  • Feeling of isolation, disconnection or dissociation
  • Unreasonable lack of trust, relationship breakdowns
  • Low self-esteem, confidence and possible depressive episodes

Almost anyone who experiences any of these residual effects of trauma wants to get beyond the sense of “stuck-ness” that comes with them. Those who are thinking about trauma in a more traditional way may seek traditional psychological or medical intervention, because that has become the most familiar approach to take.

However, if trauma represents a learning experience, we might choose to begin by asking, “What learning happened as a result of the exposure to the event, or events, that induced the trauma?” This could take us to approaching radically differently than simply intending to ‘fix’ it in one way or another.

None of this means to suggest that trauma doesn’t leave emotional effects, and possibly emotional damage. It almost surely leaves neurocognitive effects, and shapes perception in particular ways. How the perceptual shaping manifests from trauma as response varies from individual to individual, from life changing to trivial, depending on many factors (too many to be discussed in this article).

The television series, Lie to Me, can be seen as a great example of how trauma can be viewed through a lens of learning. The premise of the show is that main character, Dr. Kal Lightman, played by Tim Roth, is a ‘deception scientist’ someone who’s studied the non-verbal signals of emotional response, and specifically micro-expressions, which are preconscious indicators of emotion. At multiple times in the show Kal refers to his protégé, Maria Torres, played by Monica Raymund, as a “natural.”

LIE TO ME, Tim Roth, Monica Raymund, Better Half , Season 1, ep. 110, aired April 22, 2009 photo: Isabella Vosmikova / TM and Copyright 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved, Courtesy: Everett Collection 20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

In the television program Dr. Lightman make it clear that first and foremost he’s a scientist, and his ability to do what he does comes from long and deep study, based in scientific research. As his consultancy grows he expands his staff to include Torres, who he’s discovered working security in an airport, a “natural” – i.e.: someone who has never studied the science and has never been trained in reading micro-expressions or signals, but who “naturally” learned to read deception and emotions at an elite level of skill.

We learn she’s become a “natural” as a response to both abuse, and the threat of abuse, experienced by her as a child in her home, presumably from her father. This would be an example of ‘chronic trauma’ and yet despite the damage that may have been inflicted as a result of that trauma she’s also learned to read people, and their intentions, at an incredibly astute level. Her exposure to trauma in this case created a profound learning as well.

We don’t see so much of Torres’ negative response to the trauma in the series, i.e.: the emotional damage it may have caused, although in the show it’s alluded to indirectly. Instead of the emotional damage caused by the exposure to trauma, we are presented with the residual effect of the learning she experienced because of it, i.e.: her elite skill at reading subtle emotional responses in people … she’s become a “natural” as a result of the trauma.

Okay, let’s restate where this has lead us …

TRAUMA =
EMOTIONAL-SOMASEMANTIC LEARNING

We can state with a fair degree of certainty from what many experts working with trauma have shared, including many medical researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists and others working in the field that trauma stores at some level in the body, and shows up in preconscious body responses (including the obvious ones in the list above) like sweating, heart pounding, shallow breathing, hyperventilating, tremors, the inability to move freely, and the opposite, explosive behaviors associated with anger and rage.

These traumatic responses are also all responses associated with the autonomic nervous system sympathetic response (ANS-S) to danger, threat, fear and/or stress. We know the ANS-S responses in the more familiar, fight, flight, freeze sequence.

Acknowledging that trauma may be even more associated with the autonomic nervous system responses than emotional ones, although they are intimately and inextricably connected, allows us to reconsider both what trauma is, how it’s experienced, and what we can do with it … including taking advantage of the learning it offers us.

The approach I take with clients that experience any of the symptoms of trauma that are below the level of acute debilitation, often not even acknowledged as signs of trauma at all, begins with eliciting the intention of the neurocognitive patterning that has been learned as a result.

For example, if someone comes to me and complains about issues like procrastination, or low motivation, or the inability to change some habit that interferes with their life in some way, I start by assuming that this behavior served them at some point in their life in response to some event or context they experienced. Only by understanding what the trauma response intends to offer can it be reshaped to provide the benefit without the debilitating effects.

Once we’ve uncovered the hidden intention of the learning that’s been experienced we can then update both the way to use that learning, and the deeply ingrained patterns associated with the trauma response that are parasitic and no longer beneficial or useful. I’ve done this work effectively with clients who display simply irritating, intermittent flutters of distraction, to clients who are experiencing full-blown cases of the effects of PTSD, sometimes working alongside their medical caregivers.

One distinction of the approach I take resides in the assumption that most of what my clients experience remains below any conscious level of awareness beyond the behavioral responses that are the after-effect of the neurocognitive patterns induced by the trauma, everything from overeating to hysterical responses to insignificant comments, and everything else in between.

Another distinction of my approach, using the MythoSelf Process and Somasemantic Modeling, can be seen in the direct somatic elicitation, calibration and intervention that forms the basis of the transformational changework that MythoSelf Facilitators and Trainers, including myself, use when working with clients.

This way of approaching transformation can be so effective that at times the change has happened before the client is even aware that anything has happened, yet when the same stimulus that had prompted the traumatic response is represented they don’t experience or display any of the previous trauma affects. While I expect this to work like this when doing this work with clients, I am still in awe at how effective viewing trauma as learning instead of damage can be, as are most of the clients I’ve worked with who experience it with me or another MythoSelf trained professional.

Within the model of work I refer to here as MythoSelf Process facilitation and Somasemantic model we define this kind of work as “structural” meaning a redesign and repatterning of the neurocognitive experience and expression. Ideally we seek to create what we call “Structural Wellformedness” meaning that they experience and expression matches the sensory data present in the the environment, and creates a desired and appropriate outcome for the person expressing their behavior response to what they are experiencing.

Structural Wellformedness is why thinking about trauma as learning is so valuable. specifically because the learning that comes via trauma remains, with none of the inappropriate or undesirable affects that can linger long after the event that induced the original trauma. This is often because, while the learning was useful and appropriate to the context that the trauma was induced in, cross-mapping that response to contexts that are similar, but essentially different, becomes somewhere between interruptive to debilitating.

Yet, when the learning remains, without the damaging affects of induced trauma, we often see the “natural” patterns that form the core responses of extraordinary success and behavioral fluency emerge effortlessly.

I’d love to read your comments to this article … thanks!

Best,

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

1000 Days of Training …

1000 Days of Training …

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My journey to becoming a Master NLP™ Trainer … and, the Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

“Uchi-deshi” … that’s probably a meaningless phrase to you, unless you are a dedicated martial artist, and have hung around the martial arts world for some time, especially the Japanese arts, like Judo or Aikido.

The phrase, Uchi-deshi, closely translated into English would be “inside student,” referring to a dedicated student of the martial arts who lives in the dojo, commits to a full-time practice in the art they are studying, and takes on responsibilities to the dojo’s master teacher and to service in the upkeep and care of the dojo too.

What’s amazing is that these students not only work in the dojo, cleaning, doing minor chores, maintenance, acting as an assistant to the master, and often taking on some of the teaching role for other more junior students as well … they often pay for the privilege of being an Uchi-deshi, and must be able to support themselves financially and independently while in such an apprentice relationship.

I bring this all up because it’s the closest I can come to the apprentice model I experienced with Roye, my mentor and master, while studying the arts of NLP and Roye’s “Generative Imprint” model with him. For seven years I spent the better part of 40 weeks a year attending training programs with Roye, or assisting him when he was working with clients, and often picking him up at the airport or running to the bank to take care of something for him. It was a grueling schedule because my cost for this much training was in the range of $100K/year, plus travel and housing (there wasn’t any live in dojo to stay in, so lots of hotel rooms in addition to the few times I stayed on a sofa in Roye’s home), so I had to work full time, while also studying 8+ hours a day when I wasn’t actually in the consulting or training room with Roye.

Truth is … I wouldn’t trade day of those seven years for seven extra years of life.

There’s just no way I could be who I am today without having spent those seven years apprenticing in the manner in which I did … it was indeed grueling, often uncomfortable and discouraging, and there were many days I thought would be my last, but it was a privilege every day for those seven years.

I remember a particular moment about three months after meeting Roye for the first time, I had asked him to help me with something and he promised he would. I was confident that if Roye promised me that he could help me get something I wanted from training with him I would get it, but after weeks and weeks of waiting, and asking for it over and over, it seemed I wasn’t getting any closer to having it. So I waited some more.

This went on for months, and finally I decided if he wasn’t going to help me I would just get on with it and figure it out for myself, in fact I decided I was done with Roye, and after I completed the commitment to getting my NLP™ Master Facilitator certification with him I was out of there. So I kept at it, showing up, doing the homework, reading prodigiously in NLP, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and cognitive science, averaging a least a book a week, and in some weeks three books. I spend hours every day writing and reviewing my notes too. And, Roye would hand out what he referred to as “hypno-hymnals,” hypnotic scripts that he work on personalizing for me, with me, going back and forth using fax machines to share what I’d written and then incorporating his hand written notes in the margins back into the script that he’d send me back. I must have done this with hundreds of pages of these ‘hymnals’ over just that first year with Roye.

Suddenly, on a Sunday afternoon or a three-day workshop with Roye, sitting in the circle with him, I asked my question again, after Roye ran his typical routine of going around to everyone in the room and asking, “What do you want?” focusing us to think about why we were there that day, and what we wanted from it. When it came to me, I once again asked for the same thing I’d been asking for over the past few months, not expecting anything different than what I’d already gotten in regard to this request … nothing!

Roye did nothing to disappoint me either, because he simply acknowledged my request as he had every other time I made it, and then moved on to the next person. As expected there wasn’t any lightening from the heavens, nor some internal seismic event, just another day in the “hypnotorium” … Roye’s term for the space he set up to doing training in with his students and clients. Yet, sometime later that day, after lunch, Roye was working with a client in front of the room and did something that made what I’d been asking for over the many months since I began studying with him become crystalline clear and obvious … and, I swear to this day he subtly glanced in my direction to see if I’d picked it up. I was dazed and in awe, one of the very few times in my life I was truly speechless, because I realized in that moment that he’d shown me that very thing probably hundreds of times since I’d first asked!

Roye wasn’t holding back at all … I was just incapable of getting what he was offering until I’d seen it again and again, and again. When I finally saw it, it was as though dark scales blinding me had dropped from my eyes, and for the first time I could see the world clearly. Not only did I see what Roye had done, exactly and precisely what I had been asking him to demonstrate for me, but a thousand other things he’d been doing over those same months I’d been waiting for this moment became clear to me as well.

That was the beginning of my humbling. I have to admit prior to that moment I pretty much acted like an arrogant asshole, thinking I knew much more than I did, feeling somehow better than my peers who were so slow in picking this stuff up from my short-sighted observations. In that moment of revelation I realized how little I knew, and for the first time grasped some idea of how deep the rabbit hole I climbed into when I entered the hypnotorium went … a lot further down than I could see from where I was standing was about the only thing I was sure of that day.

Well, obviously, since I’m telling you this story, I didn’t quit, in fact that’s when I doubled down and committed to being available for every weekend, every workshop and anything that Roye would open up to me. I also began making time to join training with Richard Bandler whenever I could, and other famous (to me) NLP™ Trainers like John Grinder and Robert Dilts … I went everywhere and saw everyone, including some of the most famous hypnotists I could catch up with whenever possible. Not a week went by where I wasn’t reading two or three books simultaneously and spending hours on bulletin boards in the early Internet days. I was in … hook, line and sinker, a fish out of water, determined to master the art of swimming … even if that meant upstream and against the current until I got it.

As I said already, that was the start of a seven year apprenticeship with Roye, one I’m eternally grateful to him making available to me … even though I believed I earned every opportunity given to me, with my sweat, blood and tears offered up as payment in full. That was in the late 1980s, and my the early 1990s I was working full time as an NLP™ Trainer and Consulting, working with sales teams internationally, and eventually working my way up to the C-Suite doing leadership development workshops and coaching senior executives for multinational corporate clients.

There was a famous SNL (Saturday Night Live) skit in the early days of that television show, where the comedian Garrett Morris played the baseball player Chico Escuela. In that skit Chico would say, “Baseball been berry, berry good to me.” mimicking the real live MLB player, Sammy Sosa’s Dominican accent. It was a funny skit that stuck with me, and I often think in the privacy of my own mind, “NLP been berry, berry good to me.”

I liken my journey so far to a kid who began playing sandlot baseball, one of millions, who makes it onto a Little League team, maybe one of ten to make that transition from the sandlot successfully. And, then moving along getting on a high school team and then a college team, leaving behind may as many as 10,000 of the kids who all began throwing baseball around with their friends, or if they were lucky enough, playing catch with a father who showed them how throw a baseball properly. Finally, one of a 1000 of those college players makes it through the minor leagues and into MLB, getting drafted by a team who give them a shot, and if they are good enough they then get the honor of entering baseball’s Hall of Fame, maybe one of a million or more.

I’m one of those lucky guys who’s been given the opportunity to do what so many others who picked up a book and read about hypnosis or NLP or coaching, and then found someone to take a class with, and maybe finished a certification program of some kind and even started a part-time practice, hoped to achieve. I’ve traveled around the world training some of the very top, elite performers in every field of excellence, and I’ve been paid very well to do it … enjoying what I so often refer to as a magical life. I know it all began when I stumbled across an ad to go to a single 3-day training on the old Blue Dell Farm, in Pemberton, NJ, where Roye had set up his hypnotorium, and I made that first phone call to find up more about it.

Ever since then I’ve been saying that life has been “… berry, berry good to me.”

All the best,

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

P.S. – I’ve trained just a handful of folks in my version of taking on apprentices like Roye invited me to be with him, at least two of them picked up their roots and moved to live close to where I was living at the time to have that kind of access, another couple I can think of just came to anything and everything I was doing until they absorbed enough of what was going on to claim mastery themselves, and at least one of these folks lived with me as a housemate for a while literally pestering me in daily conversations and dialogue, and picking up everything … almost by osmosis you could say.

I don’t really have a formal program for Uchi-deshi, nor can you come and live me, but I am opening a very limited and small window for anyone who thinks they might want to explore engaging in an intimate mentoring relationship to master the art of transformational change with me. I have “graduated” the last of the group I’d been working with in this way, and I’m ready to work with a few more folks who are up to the commitment to becoming one of the best there’s ever been … because not only do I think of the folks who have studied with me this way, but their reputations now precede them as the master’s they’ve become (if you are interested I’m happy to set it up for you to speak with a few of them to help you decide after we speak and agree that it might make sense for you to drink the potion Alice found, and enter the warren for a while …

Just go here to arrange an appointment … https://live.vcita.com/site/josephriggio/online-scheduling?service=k1zlmegpqkoykvri

NOTE: This link will only be available for a limited time, so if you’re interested schedule a time now. I reserve the right to cancel this opportunity at any time without notice, but I trust if the student is ready …

Living Mythically

Living Mythically

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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.

Outlaw Thinking: Part 3

Outlaw Thinking: Part 3

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grok

grok/ɡräk/Learn to pronounceverbINFORMAL•US

  1. 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.

Hackers Dictionary

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

  1. 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 …

Changing Minds …

Changing Minds …

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Escaping The Matrix

“Remember … there is no spoon.”

(Author’s Note: This one is going to go deep fast, and then loop around a bit, all requiring some commitment, probably demanding a few readings, but I bet it will be worth many readings after you’ve read it once … ENJOY!)

Take A Walk With Me On The Wild Side of POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE

For thirty years I’ve been working with clients personally and professionally helping them become more:

  • Powerful in their lives, i.e.: able to take the action that leads to the results and outcomes they intend
  • Creative in how they approach thinking and decision-making, with an aim at helping them become more adaptable and artful in acting strategically
  • Influential in their interactions, becoming masterful at communicating authentically and persuasively to engage, enroll and empower others

This is ultimately about how you can develop deep personal mastery so you can create the life you want to be living … a life lived on your own terms, without compromise.

So if you’re ready walk with me for a bit and we’ll explore the journey I’ve take to where I am today in the work I do.

A Little Background:

In the early 1980s I began developing a model of thinking about thinking, or more specifically thinking about how to improve thinking, that I called “Transformational Applied Philosophy” … T.A.P.

I named what I was working on Transformational Applied Philosophy because I was focused on building a phenomenologically grounded model of transformational ontological change, designed around the work of a few philosophers I was reading deeply at the time.

The philosophers I was reading at the time included: Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel (post-kantian logic and phenomenology), Edmund Husserl (existential phenomenology), Arthur Schopenhauer (aesthetic existentialism), Martin Heidegger (existential ontology), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (embodied ontological existentialism), Ludwig Wittgenstein (metaphysics and analytic philosophy of language), and John Searle (analytic and linguistic philosophy/philosophy of mind).

Then I went on and found a few more philosophers who I added to the mix of my reading, social ontologists like Gilles Deleuze, a couple of the hermeneutic philosophers like Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and those in the domain of philosphy of mind, neurophilosophy, cognition and embodiment like Patricia Churchland and, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

All of that reading was significant because philosophy has been informing people about how to live their lives well, to find a path of authenticity and purpose. Reading philosophy can be challenging, it dense and sometimes very dry too. And, one thing literally leads to another … and another, and another … ad infinitum, until you’ve read the entire canon of Western Philosophy at least (which of course I haven’t, and neither has anyone I know of, but some professional philosophers sure seem to have read 90% of it!).

I still read philosophy actively, more of the later kind … philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neurophilosophy … and this forms a great deal of my background, and current focus, about how I think about thinking, and help others to think better … i.e.: with greater clarity and more precision, leading to a dramatic increase in the ability to think with passion and strategically.

My realization was that while approaching my work with clients philosophically had great and deep value, what I am aiming at required something more than what staying just in the domain of philosophy offers me and my clients.

Going Beyond The Basics

When I found them I fell in love with informal logic and embodiment. This was especially true as the embodiment movement led through the extended mind phase led by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s work (following Gregory Bateson), and evolved to an understanding enactivism/enactment, where the premise is that the mind exists in the interaction with the environment. Quite literally the environment, and the objects in it, the total context, is as much a part of the mind of the individual as the individual’s neural processing and physical/sensory experience.

So I began to look more and more into the domain of somatics and folks from F.M. Alexander to Moshe Feldenkrais to Thomas Hanna. That took me deep for many years, way into anatomy, physiology, and eventually into neuroscience too. But, because I was led there by an interest in the idea of undifferentiated body-mind singularity my focus for about five years centered on studying cerebellar response where movement predominates thinking, proprioception and vestibulation.

HEY, PLEASE STAY WITH ME … WE’RE GETTING THERE …

Somehow this stuff made sense to me as a set of intertwined connections linking and weaving it all together, especially when I began looking at it through the lens of narrative and mythology, and the structure of storytelling.

This phase of my work was deeply grounded in studying the work of Joseph Campbell, the renowned mythologist, and his “Hero’s Journey” model. There’s no way you can do this and avoid looking at the work of many other folks in related fields from psychology (e.g.: Carl Jung) to ethology (Konrad Lorenz) and anthropology (e.g.: Gregory Bateson), linking what I call the biological imperative with the creative imperative, leading to an aesthetic orientation.

Sometime in the late 1990s I was introduced to the work of Clare W. Graves, the developmental social pyschologist. Dr. Graves work impacted my thinking on many levels and shifted the framework of the model I been developing for almost ten years by that point. For the next ten years I would study the work of the post-autonomous, post-conventional developmentalists including Jane Loevinger, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and William Torbert.

OKAY, WE’RE THERE!!! (WELL ALMOST THIS TIME, REALLY …)

Mythological Expressions

By the early 1990s I’d begun referring to my model as “The Mythogenic Self Process” which became the “MythoSelf Process” by around 1994.

That was because of the impact of Joseph Campbell on my work. Adding up all the pieces led me to take a mythological turn, or what I think of equally as a narrative turn. I began to realize that our entire relationship to reality is structured like story, i.e.: in narrative or mythic form.

I’d moved well beyond the limited philosophical approach I’d begun thinking was the way to achieve significant transformational change with clients.

The way I approached transformation early on was based on a premise that the way we hold and process information in our brains as the manipulation of representations, both sensory memories and/or abstractions. That’s why I became (and to some extent remain) so fascinated with a philosophical approach. This approach has great validity when dealing with the cognitive process of making sense of and manipulating information, e.g.: language.

What was missing were the two elements that have become the signature pieces of the MythoSelf Process, sensorial cognition and dynamic movement. When I added these to using a narrative approach to uncovering the mythic form of the frame of reference that holds reality intact for an individual or organization, i.e.: the externalized temporally organized markers that are then internalized and acted upon, it all came together … finally!

(FWIW, I know this all very technical sounding, but I warned you up front this was going to take some commitment, but that it would be worth it, right? BTW, you can ask me about anything you want me to clarify in the comments section below.)

By 1999 I’d already begun training and certifying others to use the model and process I’d designed with great success.

For the next twenty years I’d continue to develop and refine the work I’d designed, and extended the reach of applications from sales and leadership training, to executive coaching, to team development, to intensive individual coaching, to mentoring coaches and consultants to use the model and process with client groups in virtually every specialization imaginable and with clients from eight to over eighty years of age.

What I had in hand was …

An aesthetically oriented, phenomenologically grounded and embodied model of transformational ontological changework that took into account developmental levels of awareness engaging the mythological form that supported the fundamental autobiographical narrative from which individuals and groups define reality as they know it to be in any given moment, operating it enactively.

WOW!!!

That’s surely a mouthful (and why I just refer to it simply as the MythoSelf Process model).

To get what it really is we’re dealing with all of that is actually essential. What makes this so strange to consider however is the typical orientation to reductionism, silos and linear thinking versus synthesis, integration and systemic thinking.

BUT … you can’t deal with dynamic complex systems, e.g.: human systems, without addressing the reality of that they are in fact dynamic complex systems!

The model of transformational changework I built, the MythoSelf Model, then is a model that shifts the fundamental way you perceive, think about and act in the world.

What’s at the center of the model is the shift in thinking from linear to systemic, and from fuzzy to precise. This requires a whole new way of using your brain than most people have ever experienced, one that is both more integrated and, far more embodied and wholeform than your education has ever made available for you to access.

Two other aspects of using your brain in this way is how embodied the experience becomes as you being thinking through and with body-based processing (somatically organized) as well as mentally-based processing (semantically organized) as an enfolded and entwined processing model of thought … and, how sensual and aesthetic this way of thinking is organized. When using the MythoSelf Process model as the basis of how you experience, perceive, process and act in the world aiming for beauty and elegance in form becomes a most sought for characteristic. Essentially this drives sensuality into decision making and performance (strategic action aimed at an intended outcome), making them beautiful as well.

Storytelling & Narrative Communication As A Control System

Way back when … virtually at the same time I began this journey from my study of the philosophers I’ve already mentioned, I also was beginning to read in the field of cybernetics, and cybernetic control systems based in communication.

I felt from the start that there was a direct correlation between what I was reading in cybernetic theory and the work I wanted to master in helping individuals and organizations make transformational changes. What I couldn’t put together was the mathematical orientation of many of the cybernetic thinkers I was studying at the time and how to apply them directly to helping people make the changes they desired.

The idea of systems that provided and operated on feedback made perfect sense, yet the mechanism of how to apply this directly with my clients eluded me for many years. It took the connection between mythological form/narrative and developmental theory to make sense of it as I now have and apply in my work with clients.

While the idea of a primary cybernetically organized mechanism to assist clients to make change made perfect sense, the specific methodology was a bit trickier to fully explicate and define.

When I brought together all of the systemic work I had been doing with individuals and organizations, as well as the mechanism of mythological form/narrative applied within a developmentally organized approach, it all became very clear that what I knew was working could be codified.

Stories are intrinsically cybernetic in the sense that they are self-contained systems. In stories language “controls” the movement of the narrative in terms of content, space as place, and temporality.

Where someone perceives themselves in space and time relative to the content in consideration determines what the content represents to and for them, and what’s possible as a result.

Narrative structure is based in organizing temporally, and placing actors and agents in relation to one another relatively in space, i.e.: who’s affected by the events that happen and how, where the events are happening, as well as when the events happen, are all part of narrative structure.

Organizing the stories we tell ourselves and others, as well as the stories others tell … especially those they tell about us … are all part of the mythic form of our life that organizes who we know ourselves to be in relation to reality as we know it to be.

Therefore the most powerful skill we can possess may be our ability to design, craft and tell potent stories … in storytelling we contain POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE simultaneously. When we tell stories intentionally, to ourselves or others, we shape and reshape reality as we know it, and in regard to how we relate to it.

Transformational storytelling sits at the heart and soul of the MythoSelf Process model. Storytelling is the essential and central skill that allows someone to create a future possibility that doesn’t exist for them as they are today. Using stories also opens up the possibility of shifting away from those things that limit an individual or organization.

I’ve designed the MythoSelf Process to allow facilitators of the Process to help clients make significant shifts towards what they want, as they simultaneously reset their relationship to what had been limiting them in the past, using narrative form as a means of updating their personal mythology.

Using a wholeform approach that takes into account sensorial and dynamic movement processing, as well as content driven sense-making, meaning-making and decision-making, defines the MythoSelf Process more than just a narrative or storytelling methodology as they are normally approached.

The MythoSelf Process creates a new wholeform reality by blending somatic and semantic modeling within a narrative, storytelling process that resets the temporal and spatial relationship of a client to the future-based position they intend to achieve.

Holding The Space For Clients Until They Can Hold It For Themselves

The new wholeform reality created by combining somatic and semantic modeling using a narrative, storytelling approach shifts the filters of perception and the sorting patterns that lead to sense-making, meaning-making and decision-making that precede taking action that produced the results that lead to achieving outcomes.

Only when an individual’s or organization’s filters and sorting patterns are fully organized and aligned with the outcome that’s intended, will the trajectory of action create the results needed to achieve the outcome that’s desired.

By shifting the filters and sorting patterns to align with a newly intended future, the individual or organization shifts the way they are paying attention, what they notice for, and how they notice for it, as well as what it means, needed to create that future intended outcome. This amounts to stepping into and living a new story that forecasts and leads to a new emergent reality.

Like this, what to do becomes obvious, even when it requires significant work to accomplish. In this way, operating from within the new story structure, moving towards the new emergent reality becomes effortless … regardless of how challenging it may be to do what’s necessary.

As the agent of change, “I” was the primary mechanism I had been seeking, and the specific way I could organize myself in relation to my clients to assist them in bringing about the change they sought when they engaged me became instantly clear as well (although it’s taken me another ten years to document and codify it fully).

There are two aspects to applying the MythoSelf Process in the way I have been building up to and describing … first by establishing the stories that need to be told and re-told, and second by holding a position in relation to your client that demands they operate from the position they’ll be in when they achieve their outcome. Doing this requires understanding all the “science” part of what I’ve been laying out here, as well as the “art” of knowing how to step into and adopt the position of choice.

In this way bits and pieces of what your clients need to be aware of starts becoming obvious to them. As the become aware of what they need, they simultaneously become more able to hold the position they need for themselves where noticing in this way is automatic and natural for them (without needing you to provide the structure and stimulus to prompt them to hold this position).

Over time the new position, actually a new reality for them, becomes how they are without effort or trying, it’s quite literally who they become (with your help of course, until you don’t need to help anymore).

This is a radical departure from how most processes, approaches, methodologies and models of transformational change operate. In virtually every other way of prompting transformational change it’s what the change artist does with or to the client that makes the difference. In the MythoSelf Process model the way you are as you do what you do with or to the client is what makes all the difference.

“Holding the position” is a cybernetic process, and personal communication … including the art of storytelling … is the ultimate control function in the system.

Stories form the mechanism to provide the intervention, or interventions, required to shift the system so the individual can find a way to permanently occupy the new position of choice, opening the pathway to a new possibility, a new future, beyond what would have been possible before resetting the system to the new position created in the relationship between the client and the facilitator.

In the end becoming that person, the one who can hold the position necessary makes it all worthwhile to have done all the reading, study and the thousands of hours of client work required to know how to discover what to do and how to do it, and then to do it.

Best,

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

Sarasota, FL

P.S.: – If you would like to discuss the MythoSelf Process more, either as a coach or consultant … or, with the intention of exploring how experiencing the MythoSelf Work might help you personally … let’s talk, set up a complimentary consultation at your convenience: Schedule Time To Talk With Joseph Now

The State of the Practice: ABTI | Joseph Riggio International

The State of the Practice: ABTI | Joseph Riggio International

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Entering A New Decade – 2020 Update

Howdy …

 

Here’s a little sandwich I’m building for those of you who have some interest in working with me professionally at some point, as well as those who have worked with me in the past or are working with me now.

NOTE: This meal is for anyone who’s been paying attention, and wants to kick ass, take names and get on with having YOUR life … 

First the bottom slice of bread, that the rest of our meal together today will be built up from …
(we’ll add condiments later on):

Okay let’s start with some self revelation … it’s my 6th decade here on Planet Earth, or Gaia as some folks prefer to think of her (yes, I think she’s a she because she is fertile and fecund).

That little tidbit ain’t so meaningful by itself, but very few little tidbits are meaningful outside of context, so let’s add some context.

This is all about where I’ve been (very little actually about that) and where I’m aiming (almost everything else here is about that) as a professional expert advisor, mentor, coach, consultant and trainer.

So now little juicy tidbits won’t be here about my personal life behind closed doors (sorry if you might have wanted or even expected that from me … maybe another time, with photos).

Of course all this is only meaningful to the extent that you care, and more to the point — in the way it may impact or effect you personally.

So I’m aiming this update at those folks who have worked with me before and who’s life/business I’ve impacted, those who are working with me now and are hoping for a positive impact and effect in the work we’re doing together, and also to those who may consider working with me in the future as well.

Now that we’ve covered the preamble and framing stuff let’s go to the meat of cheese of it all …

It’s significant that after living on her ample bosom I can happily report that Mother Earth has treated my particularly well, and I am both well satisfied and well positioned to continue with sojourn here for a while longer (Trans.- basically I’m in great health, good spirits and prepared to leap forward from the base of learning and experience I’ve accumulated in the past six decades).

For about three of my six decades I’ve been working at learning and applying stuff about the human condition to various and sundry aspects of creating an extraordinary life. Some folks say I’ve gotten pretty good at it too.

Here’s a short list of some of the sundry things I’ve put my attention on over the years:

  • Teaching NLP and communication skills
  • Learning and using Roye Fraser’s ‘Generative Imprint’ model working with folks and help them discover, access and sustain what it’s like for them to be at their best, and operate from there consistently
  • Working with individual clients and some small groups to provide personal interventions around issues like health and wellbeing, personal and professional relationships, career and business issues … doing what now today might be called coaching, but I still prefer the term I learned with Roye, “doing a piece of work”
  • Architecting and designing the MythoSelf Process model, originally called the Mythogenic Self Process, as an aesthetic model of embodied ontology using somasemantic interventions
  • Developing ways to integrate the NLP model and Roye’s model together building customized sales and leadership development training solutions for business/professional clients
  • Designing positively organized strategic solutions for my business/professional clients and assisting them to integrate and implement them
  • Training, certifying and licensing folks, who were interested and committed, to facilitate and train the MythoSelf Process, the model of work I’ve been at since 1990
  • Developing and delivering online training programs built around the MythoSelf Process model, and integrating that with other things, like business development and communication skills.
  • Training and mentoring coaches and consultants in building their business and deepening their skills
  • Working with high achieving individual clients on personal as well as professional issues like their relationships, business transitions, legacy …

So you can see I’ve been busy … and growing.

But, as I’ve noticed is so often the case, as people get older the circle closes, and they return to their roots. So it is for me.

My love is the MythoSelf Process work, and helping people to develop the fundamental life perspective it fosters … what is best called having a “possibility mindset” … seeing the world through a lens of opportunistic thinking and linking that to taking action.

Now this is a remarkably simplistic way of referring to what I do with people, but it gives us a place to begin and orient from as I go a little deeper.

What’s required to access and sustain a possibility mindset is a new perspective about life, and that perspective is that it’s always working, even when it may seem from a particular place and stance that it is not.

A simple example of having a possibility mindset is the idea that all endings are also new beginnings.

It’s also about recognizing the possibilities or opportunities that abound in the present moment.

So, in part it’s also about developing a specific kind of intuition to notice for what is present but unseen, including the emergent future possibilities — something I refer to as adumbration, or the art of foreseeing the immediate future that’s unfolding in this moment.

I can go on, but the work is complex, deep and profound in so many ways, all of which enhance and create a robust richness in living one’s life, both on own’s own and with others (now you can see why I so love doing this work).

What this means is that I’ll be rolling up a lot of what I’ve done and have been doing, some of it that I’ll only be doing in the future with partners I have built significant relationships with who are peers and colleagues in delivering what I think of as some of the best training, consulting and coaching programs on the planet, but other than that it will disappear from my personal portfolio of work.

The work that will happen only in conjunction with my partners will be everything I’ve done before (as well as stuff I haven’t) that doesn’t specifically fit into what’s below.

I guess the question then becomes — what will I be focused on moving forward …

Simple …

  • One to one, and small group work, with high achieving individuals (and those who are truly aspiring to be high achieving themselves) … i.e.: doing a piece of work

    This is all about personal and professional interventions to develop the kind of intuitions that make living one’s life on one’s own terms effortless, Getting Unstuck, Breaking Through and Creating Results to put it another way — this is all about resolving the ways in which you get in your own way, and freeing yourself to see the world in ways you haven’t before or yet, to open you to the vast range of possibilities to have your life work as you wish and desire … on your own and with others, personally and professionally

  • A major shift to delivering Relationship Coaching and Training as a central theme of what’s coming — for folks who’ve been there and done that, and who are ready to build a relationship that fulfills them completely — what’s intended to be the “Last Chapter” … where you get to live “happily ever after …”

    I’ve been around long enough to know that we are embedded in our relationships, especially those that involve those we love — this work is about resolving what gets in the way of having the kind of relationship that happens in RomComs, Hallmark channel programming and romance novels (especially those with the steamy bedroom and beach scenes) — I’ve been aiming at this work actually for years, and I’ve done a lot of it, and now it will become a major focus on where I’m placing my time and attention on live programs going forward … if you’re on board, get ready for the ride of your life, because that’s the only one you’ll know after you’ve experienced what’s in store for you here

  • Running and delivering MythoSelf Process Training and Certification Programs internationally

    I’ll be running a limited number of MythoSelf Process programs for individuals internationally throughout the upcoming year with folks certified by me to deliver them, and turning over this part of the MythoSelf Process training to them more and more over the next two years (so if you’ve ever wanted to attend a MSE | MythoSelf Experience with me do it this year) … this is at the heart of the work I love, and part of what this means is that I’ll be focused on running and delivering certification programs, and for those who are interested and skilled offering licensing to run MythoSelf training themselves.

  • Working with Coaches, Consultants and Expert Advisors as a mentor and advisor to them

    I’ve been around a long time now and I have something to share with those folks who are interested in what I’ve gathered about this work — this is highly specialized work … and I intend for it to be very intensive and intimate work as well … for a very target group of folks, but where it’s a fit there’s a lot we’ll be doing together — business building, skills development, client insights …

And, that’s all folks!

Now you have the meat and the cheese (the work I’ll be doing with others, as well as a ton of what I intend to give away for free … a new podcast (or two), live video feeds, my ongoing writing (in some new places too) … we can call the condiments, okay?).

If you want the short summary … it’s all gonna be MythoSelf … MythoSelf all the way through and through (the exception being some of the work I do with my partners) … no matter how it’s dressed up, and all the other stuff falling away like a snake shedding it’s skin and revealing itself anew.

So to place the other slice of bread …

(the one that closes a proper sandwich, so you can pick it up and eat it with your hands, not that finicky, prissy shit of using a fork and knife, cutting away little bits to place in your dainty little mouth … my stuff is intended to take big old bites out of … this is stuff that will nourish your soul, as well as improve your life):

Look for some major changes in what I’m putting out in 2020 and beyond, as well as where you’ll find it … and some of the changes will be significant too.

I’m going to hand off or shut down a number of my FB groups, to focus much more on consolidating what I’m saying and to whom.

I’ll have some new places and ways of sharing what I’ve consolidated as parts of a singular message (can you guess what that is … ding, ding, ding right on! … all MythoSelf Process based stuff … stories, applications, examples … all of it).

I’ll be sending out a few emails shortly to invite anyone who’s interested to a few new things I’m setting up, so keep your eyes peeled (and if you’re currently in a program with me, watch especially carefully as we update everything there too … especially for you folks).

Thanks for listening 😉

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect and Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics
December 29, 2019 (the end of an era)

PS – If you’re excited by any of this and want to discuss what’s coming up and how you might work with me, join a program or find out more before we come out with our major release of the new era information you can schedule a call with me here: Talk with Joseph