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Joseph Riggio

Life Is Not Meant To Be A Struggle …

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How great would it be if you could leap beyond the things that limiit you in a single bound … like SuperMan or WonderWoman … just by engaging in a powerful dialogue designed to do just that?

 

Imagine this …

 

You are perfectly aligned internally and externally so that everything becomes effortless for you … like this manifesting your creativity becomes your natural way of operating … and you perform at the peak of your potential without striving.

 

What you might be doing with your life and in your life if it were like this for you every day?

 

But right now it just doesn’t feel like that … things AREN’T COMING TOGETHER EFFORTLESSLY FOR YOU … and some days it may even feel like everything is a struggle.

What you need is a way beyond all that, a way to go beyond the striving to make things happen, to begin operating in a way where the things you most want and need to happen for you just do.

 

Maybe This Is You … Or At Least Familiar To You

You’ve read all the books …

  • “The Insider’s Guid To Self Help”
  • “Seven Steps To Success” 
  • “The Secret To This, That And The Other Thing”
  • “Financial Independence In Four Hours Or Less”
  • “I Can Make You Thin, Young, Rich & Happy”

… whatever.

 

You’ve attended enough classes, workshops, seminars and training programs to earn at least two Ph.D.s …

  • “Fire Walking To Power”
  • “Getting Over Your Stuff”
  • “Being A Success On Your Own Terms”
  • “Coming To Terms With Terminal Failure”

… once again … whatever.

 

You hired personal development coaches and business consultants … you’ve worked with trainers and therapists out the gazoo … you’ve done the rounds with NLP, hypnosis, EFT, TFT, EMT … whatever, whatever, whatever.

 

You even spent weeks, months or years doing Yoga, Zen, Tai Chi, Orgonic Dynamic Prana Breathing Meditation … and the bits and pieces of your life aren’t lined up the way you hoped they would be by now … and you’re still not yet getting the results you want, with the  satisfaction you desire … and you’re about at your wits end with it all.

 

A Bit Of My Own Story

Let me share something deeply personal with you … I get it because I’ve been there too. Back when I was in my late twenties I thought I had it all, but I couldn’t shake the sense that something vital and even urgent was missing.

I was successful, doing work that I liked, was good at and earning a great income. I was married with a two year old son who I absolutely adored, and a loving wife who was a great mother to our son as well. I was healthy, I had a nice home where we lived in a great community … BUT something profound was missing. Instead of being deeply happy about all this, I was deeply unsatisfied with my life and myself. Nothing major enough to call depression or even melancholy … more like a funk that just lingered.

I simply didn’t knowhow to organize myself to feel great about what I was doing or how to change things.

So I began searching. I did everything … the lists I wrote about things you might have tried so far could have been my own.

I sometimes felt like “this is it” that the thing I had found would be the one that would make all the difference. At other times I felt like I’d never get it. What was consistent was that nothing really seemed to make the difference I was hoping for, and I never gave up.

One day, I stumbled into meeting a man who would change my life, Roye Fraser. For the next seven years I apprenticed with him studying and learning NLP, hypnosis and his own brand of amazing transformational work, the Generative Imprint model.

It was truly an epic journey of heroic proportions, a personal “Odyessy” all my own. Along the way there were ups and downs of course, but I always had a sense of moving towards the horizon … I knew where I was aiming, and I knew I’d achieve the outcomes I’d set for myself. More than anything else I knew this was a path with heart for me and I made the commitment to stay the course.

What I found out that was the most profound thing of all was that transformation can and does happen in an instant when someone is ready for it, and when someone is skillful enough all it takes is the right word spoken in the right way at the right time.

 

Why I Designed My Performance Design Workshop

Performance Design workshop are for folks like you, who know there’s something more that you want and need in life, even if you’re not sure exactly what that is yet.

By engaging in simple, straightforward … and sometimes not so straightforward (remember I’m a master hypnotist) … dialogue I want to help you get unstuck – no matter where you are right now – and make leaps forward in your life. The most amazing thing about my Performance Design workshops are how simple it will all seem after the fact, when you’re living life completely on your own terms.

Here’s what you can expect when you join me and a small, intimate group for a Performance Design workshop:

  • Attain great clarity about where you are in the moment, what’s limiting you, what you need to be doing next and how to take the essential first steps to begin.
  • Learn how you are when you are unstoppable, a force of nature so to speak … and how to make decisions and take powerful action from this way of being
  • Connect or reconnect with your deep intution, a way of knowing absolutely what is most true for you and the way forward to live you life on your own terms without compromise.
  • Uncover or discover the myth you’ve been living and the story of your life … i.e.: your Life Story that is uniquely your own … then make that the basis for everything else.

 

What’s A Performance Design Workshop Like?

Maybe what I’m about to tell you about the Performance Design workshop will seem like conflicting ideas to you, but I want to share a little bit about what it will be like …

I’m fairly certain there will be moments where what we’re doing together will be challenging for you because I ask and even insist that you confront what limits you, or because you don’t understand what I’m doing and why I’m doing it … there will almost surely be other moments where you’re intrigued, interested and excited by what’s going on … moments in which it seems to all come together for you and it makes perfect sense.

In the course of our dialogue I can assure you that you will experience a change, you’ll begin to see yourself in a new light … and a pathway to move forward based on what is possible will open for you so you can begin taking the next steps for yourself.

The way we’ll work together in the Performance Design workshop may be the most human experience you have ever had or ever will have. The entire process I’ve built is designed to be purely conversational. Literally, just by engaging dialogue with me and the others who participate in the group you will find yourself opening up to new possibilities and outcomes in your life. You’ll feel old limiting beliefs and baggage drop away as you begin to feel new energy and motivation becoming available to you.

While you are unlikely to be able to explain exactly what happened, or how it happened, as a result of participating in the Performance Design workshop … what you, and others around you, will begin to notice is that something has inexplicably changed for you …

  • You’ll begin producing results that had eluded you, maybe for years …
  • You’ll start and complete projects that are filled with meaning for you and bring you a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction …
  • Your relationships wil change too in subtle ways that you’ll nonetheless recognize as significant.
  • Maybe most of all you’ll become aware of accessing your intuition in ways that you may have never had access to before … and you’ll trust what comes up as being right on target for you.

 

Who Benefits The Most From Participating In Performance Design Workshops:

  • Someone driven to move beyond the status quo and wants to manifest meaningful outcomes on their own and with others
  • People who are in a process of questioning where they are in their life and what’s next for them on their life’s journey
  • Anyone who has a sense that there’s something important or special to be doing, but has had some trouble figuring out and defining exactly what that is for them
  • Executive, entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals who are feeling a bit burnt out and looking to renew their motivation and become inspired again
  • Folks who are willing to be challenged and to challenge themselves to leave behind what  isn’t working and explore a personal path, that doesn’t depend on a step-by-step process

 

How To Make It Happen

There are three packages and ways to join a Performance Design workshop …

  • SILVER – Day One of Performance Design with a month of POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE telementoring included, this is enough to kick-start anyone into gear.
  • GOLD – Day One and Day Two of the Performance Design Workshop, where you’ll establish your direction on Day One and build a strategy for it on Day Two, plus you’ll also get access to a full month of POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE too
  • PLATINUM – Day One and Two of the Performance Design Workshop, a full month of UA Ruby telementoring including POWER | CREATIVITY | INFLUENCE and $1MM Business Building telementoring and two months of 1-to-1 Individual Tailored Mentoring

 

Get All The Specific Details About Performance Design HERE …

 

I Know Enough Already …
Take Me Right To The Enrollment Application!

What The Single Most Important Decision You Must Make?

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Almost every day I ask myself a single question (amongst others of course … but this one I ask myself almost every single day …).

“What is the contribution that I will make today?” 

And, almost every day I come up with the same way to answer it too:

How can I help people make better decisions … that are their own, and not the ones they’ve been taught to believe are their own?

Now from there on out things begin taking on a life of their own!

There are all kinds of reasons I can point to as to “why” things at this point begin to spiral … but suffice it to say it’s complex ‘`~>

 

However I do want to share with you some ideas about how I specifically go about answering that question.

[Now remember I am a developer, designer, creator, broker and peddler of information … so these questions are always asked and answered by me within this framing.]

 

I think that the most amazing thing we do … dang, maybe the most amazing thing about being human … is that, we are capable of making decisions. But it ain’t as easy as all that … 

Son of Nobel Prize winner, and himself a Pulitzer Prize winner for his non-fiction, best seller, “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Braid” (GEB), academic Douglas Hofstadter who is the Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition wrote about this in his book, “I Am A Strange Loop“ …

In the end we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.

– Douglas Hofstadter, “I Am A Strange Loop, pg. 363

 

 

 


Now … here’s a question for you … AND I WANT YOU TO BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF …

  • “Were you, even a little bit, impressed by this guy’s credentials before you read the quote I posted above?”

And, depending on your answer …

  • “How do you think that influenced your expectations and perception of what he would have to say?”

Then go one more step (or league …) down the rabbit hole and answer for yourself this question,

  • “How do you think what I did in framing this way set you up for what I’m presenting to you now?” 

 

I’m bringing all this to the forefront and putting your attention on it, however, how much would you have considered those points if I hadn’t ? (… and I know the answer will vary depending on the person reading that last question and all the preceding ones too.)

BUT … you want to get that this is obvious … or at least as obvious as it’s likely to get!

 

So, as a practicing, applied cognitive scientist – who did his doctoral research on decision-making, specifically decision-making in contexts where the information required to make decisions was incomplete and implicit – where my personal attention is focused, is on how we are all influenced in making what we believe to be “our own decisions” … about anything and everything?

 

Now take this question way beyond language, and directly perceived, explicitly available information … and ask it through the lens of my focus … in relation to the implicit contextual data relative to the way all information is perceived.

 

Here’s what I think is the single most important decision you can make …

 

“Is the decision your making (or about to make)
truly your own?”

 

Now add in a further piece of data, relative to my life’s work …

How do you know you’ll be able to make decisions that are truly in your best interests (including those that impact the folks you most care about and love) in critical moments and situations, e.g.: crisis and chaos?

These are the moments where it most counts … when time is limited and data is even more limited … AND you’re least likely to take into account the incomplete and implicit data that significantly impacts the quality of the decisions you’re making.

 

So this is where I live in answering my own daily question …

How can I help the folks I work with day in and day out run their brains like they actually own them … and live lives worth living.

 

I hope I’ve given you some things to ponder …

 

All the best,

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics

 

PS – There are more clips and posts in this blog that take these ideas further and in difference directions, including the audio and video posts “we’ve” begun making (yes, there really is a team of folks who help me get my messages out there …)

PPS – If you really want to take a HUGE step forward in training your brain to make decisions that are your own … I recommend you seriously read and consider this: Getting Started … [NOTE: It’s a long piece to read, but when you’re down you’ll know more about how to bring yourself to peace than when you began, I PROMISE! … “cross my heart and hope to live”]

Stepping Forward: A Hero’s Journey

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Stepping Foward: A Hero’s Journey

[The animation of Joseph’s presentation at TEDx Academy, Athens, Greece 10 October 2011]

““You All Have Brilliant Brains … And Bad Educations.”
– Dr. Joseph Riggio

In this video, Dr. Joseph Riggio explores the topic of how our stories shape the worlds we live in, as individual and collectively. He speaks to the way our education influences our ability to shape the stories we are living, what’s missing from our schools – and how we can add back in what most essential to reshape the future we’re creating.

Bringing the System to Rest …

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I’ve been “dark” –as they say in the world of advertising– on this blog for sometime now. BUT I’ve got some new things to share and I’m about to start right now!

There were a couple of reasons for going dark, including:

Now things seem to be coming more towards center … more to rest.

So let’s leave all that for now, and get onto to what I want to share first …

As I said above “my entire business model has been in flux“ —  which has been at least semi-deliberate on my part. The deliberateness was making a decision to shift my awareness even further to center (my center). The shifting business model just naturally followed that decision.

Now I hate flux as much as the next guy (or gal). It’s not that I’m opposed to it, it’s just that flux is generally uncomfortable … like and unsettled stomach after a meal with too many options partaken of all at once.

I don’t mind change … in fact I think change is not only a good thing, but necessary as well. Heck, change is the rule of life. The ability to make changes … and make them well, i.e.: elegantly … is the mark of a successful organism – “the law of requisite variety.”

I won’t bore into you too much about the law of requisite variety (there’s plenty about it floating around the web that you can find for yourself – and you can start with the link I’ve provided above if you’re interested). IMO what’s important from a human stance is the idea of ‘resiliency’ – how resilient are we, i.e.: how able are we to re-center ourselves after we’ve been perturbed?

This idea of using perturbation to increase resiliency has been a mainstay of my practice for many years now. One of the primary models I developed  in the early 90s was the Satisfaction Cycle®, and I built a major training program around that model for major account sales professionals called Persuasion Technology®. Over the next few years Persuasion Technology® morphed into programs for organizational leaders, and also for private individuals wanting to learn much more about influence and persuasion for their own benefit … all based on the material I developed in the Satisfaction Cycle®.

At the heart of the Satisfaction Cycle® model is the idea of resiliency, and the entire Persuasion Technology® program was premised on developing an ability to deal with permutation in the system in real time, i.e.: developing extraordinary requisite variety.

I got the idea of doing it this way from training and working with Special Forces commandos, and discerning something about how they are able to perform so well in extreme conditions – literally under fire. While there is no doubt in my mind that these folks share a natural propensity and talent for operating this way, to some extent – and I’d say a great extent – it’s also a function of the training they undergo.

Training for resiliency requires at least three specific and critical characteristics to create the intended outcome, all of which tend to push the participants beyond their comfort zone:

  • Much of what’s happening must reside outside of or beyond the ordinary conscious awareness of the trainees (if they can process things in ordinary conscious awareness then latent and peripheral processing will fail to emerge fully)
  • The quantity and quality of the permutations introduced must exceed the current capabilities of the trainees (this is enough to disqualify most folks from the training process – when confronted with more then they are capable of handling they will simply drop out)
  • The trainer must be aware of the non-ordinary aspects of cognitive-behavioral processing, AND able to manage them within the context of the training program, i.e.: the trainer must have at least the level of requisite variety that the training is intended to stimulate

Well in the case of my business model revamping I played both the parts of the trainer and the trainee at times (with lots of input from trusted advisors and sources along the way – I never step too far away from the circle of support I’ve built up along the way, part of my secret to success so to speak). It wasn’t always fun, and it was seldom easy (even when it was goat butt simple). Mostly I had to give up being comfortable and doing what had become most familiar.

Here’s another way to say it … for many years now I’ve been living a particular myth. For that specific mythic form I know the sources from whence it came, the structure that sustained it and the stories that supported  it. For the new myth I’ve begun living these are much less sure or definitive … and some have yet to be invented.

This doesn’t mean there are no sources, structures or stories – just that I don’t necessarily have them or know where to find them yet … and some, like I said, I know I’ll have to invent myself (something I’m used to, i.e.: making things up as I go …).

In other words, to make the change I desired I had to leap into the unknown without  a net …

I mentioned to one of my closest advisors that this has been a ten year journey of putting the platform in place just to jump off into the abyss.

Well here I am at the end of the first part of that next journey … and the new website design for JosephRiggio.com is a large part of it for me.

The front page of the site really resets things for me … putting it out there without any makeup or clothing … like the emperor with his new clothes intentionally walking in front of all those who allow themselves to be deluded, while winking at those childlike enough to see the truth that always resides beneath the masquerade and pretense of civility — what I’ve come to is much more primal.

Now I know this ain’t gonna be for everyone … but what I do never has been that.

But, here’s a small secret I’ve uncovered as I continue falling to earth …

The real trick to being incredibly resilient is becoming incredibly simple … i.e.: letting it all go … again.

Joseph
Princeton, NJ

 

P.S. – I’ll be back with more of less soon … doing my best to keep my grandest promise to deliver as much of nothing as I possibly can …