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Your Life Story – Coming Full Circle

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Your Life Story and Self-Leadership … Uncovering the Path to the Results and Outcomes You Really Want

I’ve been at something for the last twenty five years or so that I think is wonderful … a model that’s literally life changing.

For twenty of those twenty five years I’ve been engaged in spreading the word formally in terms of my professional pursuits and passions. Yet I’ve remain troubled by how challenging it has been for people to catch the essential, profound value in their Life Story without struggling through trying to understand it first. For quite some time it’s been clear to me what the challenge has been, but that hadn’t necessarily made it any clearer regarding what to do about it.

But, I’ve begun to get it – I think …

Let me jump ahead for a moment, and then I’ll step back to basics.

The advantage of the model is that once you have internalized it and own it everything in your life becomes easier, if not easy.

  • Your relationships become more alive; i.e.: instead of dealing with a sense of distance and aloneness that can be present in even the most intimate relationships there is a continual sense of being connected, instead of dealing with conflict there is a growing sense of harmony and good will, instead of wondering where the initial spark went in your relationships there is a renewed kindling of the energy that sustains relationships and keeps them sparkling.

  • You pursue your passions and live your purpose; you naturally uncover what fascinates you and pulls you forward into your own life, rather than chasing some external definition of success you begin building momentum towards experiencing intense satisfaction, you begin to measure success by your contributions and the rewards associated with creating rather than consuming

  • You experience the wealth of pervasive well being; you begin to express a renewed sense of self esteem, you gain confidence in yourself and your ability to act, you release the limitations that hold you back, you know without question what it is to act in your own self interest in a way that doesn’t impose your wants and needs on others, you live every day to the fullest, you are happy without needing a reason to be or doing anything about it

  • Your performances become extraordinary; you make high-quality decisions without hesitation or doubt, you take action immediately in the direction where you intend to produce results, you are able to evaluate the results you are getting and reset without attachment to limiting beliefs or dogma, you gain a clarity that makes situations and interactions transparent to you, it becomes obvious to you what to be doing next without worry or concern about what you don’t know or what will happen beyond what to be doing in this moment

When most people read this list of bullet points they typically think that it sounds too good to be true … then they think, “What if my life could really be that way?”

What I can tell you is that I began learning about living within and from this model formally in the late 1980s. Before then I’d read many books about various spiritual and philosophic traditions that suggested a life that included the kinds of things I’ve written about above, but failed to experience any of it fully. However, after becoming immersed in the essence of the model I’m referring to as I apprenticed with my mentor Roye Fraser it become evident what I’d missed and what was missing from all the various studying I had done in the past.

Of course the answer was simple, it always is …

But simple isn’t necessarily easy!

Now I’m not going to bore you with twenty five years of learning that it took me to get to the point I’m at in my life today. I can sum up where I am in my life today by offering you this …

My life today IS simple … and living it IS easy, because I got “IT” … “the one trick.”

In the interest of full disclosure it took me a good seven years to get “IT” – the one trick I called out above. Yes – it was a long time, but the journey was enticing, engaging and exciting all the way. There were moments of pure wonder and joy along the way. There were challenges as well, but with a sense that they were just steps on the path. What I started out looking for and thinking I would be pursuing and gaining turned out to be utterly wrong. What I found turned out to be unexpected and delightful … and as I approached the end of that phase on my journey I realized that I’d gained mastery of a body of knowledge and skills, and just as importantly I’d realized more than I’d hoped for regarding the life I found myself living.

Then I went from maintaining my primary focus on being an apprentice to stepping beyond learning to living the life of a journeyman.

In this new phase of my life as a journeyman an entirely new set of challenges confronted me …

Again, in the interest of respecting your time I won’t go into details. Where I found myself most limited was in conveying the essential life changing concept that I had internalized and was operating from in an ongoing way easily to others. I didn’t want others to struggle for seven years to get “IT.” This became my new question, i.e.: how to convey this simple idea and make it easy for others to *incorporate.

*(Incorporate In*cor”po*rate, a. [L. incorporatus, p. p. of incorporare to incorporate; pref. in- in + corporare to make into a body. See Corporate.] Corporate; incorporated; made one body, or united in one body; associated; mixed together; combined; embodied. [1913 Webster])

 

Facing the Dilemma

It took me many years to figure out what the dilemma was … i.e.: making something that was essentially simple easy. The dilemma was that I had been taught it technically so that I could eventually master the form and replicate it with others.

Facilitating the model is NOT the same thing as living the model! Wow, what a concept!!!

While my knowledge and skills were significant after a formal seven year apprenticeship at the knee of the master … the ability to translate what I now knew and could do was based in a technical model, Oy! … that made it so much more complex than necessary. So I went back to the drawing board (architect speak, old habits die hard as they say …).

For the next ten years I was consistently refining and revising the way I worked with and presented the essential model, which by now I had named the MythoSelf Process. During this decade of refinement I realized a few things and had to build an integrated set of tools for the work I was now doing with clients, a toolset I called Soma-Semantics, referring to the singularity of the body-mind experience and the way that’s represented. The body is experienced and expressed somatically, and the mind is experienced and expressed semantically. Anyone wanting to do the work I was now doing would have to master the knowledge and skills to read the signals and interact effectively at both the somatic and semantic levels. This part of what I do had to remain technical, but to get the outcome I intended … to make the simple, easy … all the rest need to become as non-technical as possible.

The question that remained was, “How?” … how do I make the simple, easy?

I needed a simple structure that was completely non-technical if possible … and then I found it right there under my nose! For years I had been calling the work I was doing the MythoSelf Process, in part based on the influence of Joseph Campbell’s work on mythology. I understood the nature of mythological form, and the way we are neurologically organized to respond to it. I got how we encapsulate our experience into autobiographical narratives that become for us our Life Story, the all and everything we believe to be what is, how things are and reality itself. Our stories are more real to us than the sensory evidence we experience … dang it, there it was right in front of me!!!

Now I had it … a way to make the simple easy! K.I.S.S.

Keep it simple stories! That was the key … it was already all there laid out in the work I was already doing for the past twenty years! The stories are the key, I already knew that. Specifically, the stories that people tell themselves and others are for them the reality they live – change your story and you change your life. What remained was to find the way to move someone from the story they were currently living from to a new and more powerful story … the essential Life Story that was theirs and theirs alone.

The essence of what I’d learned from Roye, in addition to a massive set of powerful changework skills, was how to help someone shift from what he called “the inhibitory state” to “the excitatory state.” One of his ways of referring to the excitatory state was as the Ready State, a state from which anything is possible and you are ready to act. Using the model and skills I’d learned working with Roye that became easy, i.e.: getting someone to the Ready State. When they were working with me it was even easy for them as well. The challenges was stabilizing it over time.

When someone experiences the Ready State they are blown away … literally in that moment their life changes completely. There is no sense of limitation or inhibition. There are no problems. Opportunities seem abundant and the way forward becomes clear. A sense of pervasive well being radiates through you and from you. Everything and anything seems possible from the Ready State, and yet there is no sense of stress or urgency surrounding what needs to be done, or what you want to be doing.

Over time I began referring to the pattern that people operated from when they had accessed and were living from the Ready State as their Success Blueprint. This resonated for many people and it made what could be a complex idea simpler and more accessible. That was a start …

The challenge that still remained however was that it took people days, weeks, months or even years to get “IT” sometimes. There are so many potential inhibitions to address if you think you are supposed to be living from some kind of extraordinary, superhuman state … whether you call it the Ready State, or Being At Your Best (as some folks still inaccurately like to refer to this state of being) … enlightened or whatever. Believing that there’s anything you need to change about who you are so that you can live a life worth living, and accomplish the things you desire, isn’t only foolish it’s foolhardy.

Thinking you first need to become someone other than who you are right now, right here in this moment without changing a thing about yourself is foolhardy because A) it cannot get you what you want (you can’t have to be someone else before you begin because using that logic you can never begin), and B) the cost is just too damn high (you will spend years chastising yourself for what you are not, for what you haven’t accomplished, for all your faults … and then you’ll blame others for being in collusion with you in your faults, eventually you’ll even pay the price of ill-health and emotional distress or complete breakdown).

The evidence of the cost of holding a negative self image has been mounting for years. The sources of perennial wisdom have touted it for millenia, and now medical science is catching up and confirming the high cost on our physical well-being. As we continue to unfold how human neuropsychology works we are finding out that a negative self image literally inhibits us from functioning fully.

It is essential to shift our perceptions, beginning with our self image, if we intend to achieve anything like the levels of health, well-being and elite performance we’re capable of … and the fundamental key to making this shift is held in our Life Story.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

 

How To Shift Your Life Story

This part of this posting could be a book unto itself … but I’ll skip over all the parts about how you get your Life Story, how it’s initially imposed upon you, how you compromise the essential and unique story that is your own, how you get stuck in believing your less and less capable than you are, how you begin pursing a path that has nothing to do with who you are, how you learn to measure yourself by arbitrary and external markers of success. (If you want to read all about that, and the way out from under it too, get my new book is coming out next month … “The State of Perfection: Your Hidden Code to Unleashing Personal Mastery”)

I’ll jump right to what I found out when I resolved the dilemma of making the simple, easy.

There are really two parts to this, i.e.: making the simple, easy.

The first part has to do with how to do it. I’ve already begun to make it clear that the key is in the stories we tell that are collectively our Life Story. Your Life Story is the wholeform gestalt worldview you possess, i.e.: how you see yourself and the world, including people you interact with … what all that means to you.

  • You are limited in what you perceive by your Life Story, and from what gets through you create meaning.

  • The meaning you create … about yourself, about the world, about others … determines what you will do, i.e.: your behaviors that form your acts.

  • These acts are what create the results and outcomes you produce in the world, and these become the life you live.

  • Your experience of the life you live, i.e.: the results and outcomes you produce by your acts, starts the cycle all over again feeding your perception and sustaining your Life Story.

The recursive loop that follows from your Life Story is a powerful mechanism keeping you in the life you are living. If you want to have different experiences in any part of your life, or your life overall you have to begin with your Life Story.

The second part has to do with the primary distinction I learned working with Roye, i.e.: the shift from the inhibitory bias to the excitatory bias. This distinction is remarkably precise, but for most people confusing or even meaningless. Before someone can make meaning of what I mean when I say, “Shifting from the inhibitory bias to the excitatory bias.” they need to be educated in the terminology I’m using.

Technical terminology, or jargon, makes something that’s essentially simple and potentially easy, unnecessarily challenging.

The way out of that conundrum of jargon is finding the way to express the essential concept in common terms. That was the breakthrough I needed!

Let me start again with the essential concept of shift the Life Story from an inhibitory bias to an excitatory bias. Instead of getting lost in what that means or might mean think of it this way …

You can either be in an open frame of mind or a closed frame of mind.

In an open frame of mind you are seeking information and withholding judgement until you have all the evidence you need to reach a reasonable and useful conclusion about what to be doing, if anything needs to be done at all. This applies to information about people, places, things, activities and even information itself. Rather than working from pre-existing frameworks and old evidence to generate meaning in the moment, you remain open to what is actually happening and create meaning on a situation by situation basis, allowing yourself to update the story you are acting on in real time.

This is a really powerful way to move through the world. Imagine how different your relationships would be if you literally dropped all your preconceptions and began tracking for the evidence about who someone is and how they are being in real time. For instance, how would your relationships be different if you didn’t blame others, hold them responsible for your experience, or place a burden of your expectations on them? This doesn’t mean that you don’t hold people accountable for their actions, you do … and at a level that’s probably higher than you ever have before. What it does mean is that you don’t burden them with the past and you allow them to move forward with you. It also gives you the personal freedom to exit from relationships or interactions that don’t work for you without needing to blame others or have explanations beyond what’s not working, i.e.: you don’t need for them to be bad so you can be good.

Now you can extend the idea of operating with an open frame of mind to any other consideration as well. In the work I do with business and organizational clients teaching them to operate with this kind of clear thinking provokes creativity and a remarkable focus on getting results. There is no wasted energy on the ordinary “people problems” that often interfere with getting the outcomes everyone claims to want. Entire groups or people begin to self-organize to create extraordinary outcomes. And you can begin to play with where else and how else operating with an open frame of mind would show up in your life.

The excitatory bias is a reference to the underlying neurological state that someone has when they are in an open frame of mind, but its not necessary to understand the neurology to live from this powerful position yourself. What is important is learning to recognize how to lead yourself to an open frame of mind when and where you need and want to get results and outcomes that are meaningful for you. This has become the basis of the work I do and the way I now do it with clients, individually … in groups … and in organizations.

What shifted most significantly from the way I was working ten years ago to today has been the level of non-technical, conversational process I now use. What I’ve found has been that there’s no need whatsoever for the process to be technical in any way whatsoever … unless I’m engaged in teaching others to facilitate the process, and even that has become far less technical in the way I approach it today.

Literally the best way is the most conversational way in my opinion. I’m finding that the old ways, work the best. Like sitting around the fire, sharing stories, after a long day with family and friends … the process I now work from allows my clients to experience the shift they want without even necessarily knowing how or what has happened, but knowing without question that something dramatic has occurred by the results and outcomes they get, and the way life has become for them.

What I’ve found over these many years of pursing what I call my passion and purpose is that to make something simple is only the first step, despite the enormity of that step. Making the simple, easy can be another thing entirely. In my case this quest has been more than two decades long to date … and worth every minute. What I’ve learned in these years is that what I thought of as mastery before is only the beginning in many ways … making the simple, easy is worthy of a lifetime’s investment.

It’s often amazing to me how life is so much like a wheel coming full circle …

 

Mentoring, Magical Thinking & Myth

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The Danger of Magical Thinking In The Hands Of Would-Be Mentors Cannot Be Overemphasized If Your Serious About Your Success!

Every couple of days I drop my my Facebook page to see who’s posted what – and today what came up for me is the foolishness of magical thinking, especially when it’s presented by someone who’s out there mentoring people.

Today  I began writing a long response to someone on Facebook who is a well known trainer running mentoring programs and offering mentoring to individuals about magical thinking based on a post he put up. I decided after about three minutes of writing to delete it not to embarrass a colleague in a public forum, however the bitter taste of his folly still lingers and I need to spit it out.

While I don’t spend hours a day doing “social media” there are a couple of groups there I participate in on occasion. Most of these are about NLP, hypnosis, changework, performance or transformation … and posting in the last category often get my goat, because they so often wander into the land of magical thinking.

However, before you think this is going to be a posting about Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social networking site in the interest of full disclosure you need to know I’m far from being the “social networking maven.” Despite my familiarity and knowledge of the medium, it’s just too time consuming to be everywhere all the time – and make no mistake about it that’s what it takes to be a social networking maven … huge commitments of time, energy and effort.

I’m reminded of my own rejoinder to folks about how to create outstanding results where you want them …

“Where you put your attention, is where you’ll get your results.”

This in turn reminds me of another idea a colleague and friend of mine, Matt Furey, first introducted me to:

The Law of Practice

“The Law of Practice” is Matt’s companion to the “Law of Attraction” that makes a magical idea practical IMO.If you want to get more of how Matt thinks about this I recommend his book, “Expect to Win, Hate to Lose” it’s incredibly inspiring, informational and entertaining as hell too, if you haven’t read it yet, go and buy it now.

I’ve been on about the idea of putting your attention where you want your results for over ten years now. To me this is akin to the law of practice at an attentional level, i.e.: keeping your focus where you want to see the results and outcomes of your life happening. Matt’s idea of The Law of Practice takes this another step forward IMO.

To sum up Matt’s idea briefly it’s that while there are a ton of people who are talking about The Law of Attraction, and the The Secret that it supposedly holds, almost no one is revealing that you only get your results when you add in The Law of Practice, i.e.: you have to take action. The practice Matt refers to is two-fold, practice as in the continual refinement and honing of your knowledge and skills, and practice as in taking continual action as in a disciplined way of acting in the world. I couldn’t agree with Matt more on this one … I think he’s not only right on, but without The Law of Practice, The Law of Attraction isn’t only ineffective, it’s downright dangerous!

But I’m probably a bit ahead of myself here … so I’ll slow down a bit and take it step-by-step with you.

 

Magical Thinking:

Magical thinking often goes something like this …

“In the beginning there was a unified singularity smaller than a grape. Then something shifted in that singularity – badda bing, badda boom – and the Universe as we know it began at what is now known as the Big Bang!

From that single event and that grape sized mass  all of the known Universe emerged, speeding away from the place where it all began at incredible speeds. First the debris from the Big Bang began to collect in clouds, and under the force of gravity those clouds began to collect and become stars. Because those stars where packed in a space much smaller than the Universe occupies today they collided and from those collisions new stars were born, some smaller and some larger … and those stars spawned other forms of matter … denser than the matter of stars. From this more dense matter planets, moons, asteroids, comets … were formed as well.

Over billions of years as the Universe expanded it cooled. Some of the stars collected systems of denser matter around them by the force of their enormous gravitational field. These became solar systems, and in even larger collections of stars and solar systems loosely knitted together by forces both known and unknown, galaxies formed as well. Yet everything there ever was and ever will be was contained in that single grape-sized mass at the beginning. Here on Earth some of that matter spawned life, and again over more billions of years life evolved to become humankind, made of the same stuff as the stars. So you can say you are made of stardust … and that would be accurate.

Well we also know that at the quantum level all matter is connected. When you split an atom and observe the separate particles racing away from one another you can measure their spin as positive or negative, a clockwise or counter-clockwise spin. However, what’s amazing is that when you act on one particle and change it’s spin by forcing it to pass through a strong magnetic field the other particle that was paired with it instantly changes its spin as well. Despite begin separated by vast distances, the two particles remain entangled with one another energetically.

Since we are made of the same stuff that the particles are made of then it is reasonable to acknowledge that once we’ve connected with someone we remain energetically entangled with them as well. This is the miracle of quantum entanglement and energy. It’s what the mystics have said throughout the ages and now science is giving us proof that they were right all along. In fact when we look at the world at a quantum level we realize there’s nothing there, literally … there’s just potentiality until we observe it, at which point the potential becomes manifest depending on what we’re looking for in it.

The mystics and sages have been telling us this as well, that the entire Universe is a projection of our consciousness … that we create reality with our minds. Before we project our consciousness into the Universe it’s just random potentially, and only when we do does it become manifest and real. We have the potential to create our realities at the quantum level by learning to project our consciousness in specific and concentrated ways to manifest anything we desire. This is the essence of The Law of Attraction that the mystics and the sages have known all along …”

Of course I could make the story longer and more complex, but that covers at least the basics … and a good hypnotic tale it is too! It presumes a hermetic, tautological reality. It uses logical chaining and cognitive inertia to pull the reader/listener along. It presents seemingly convincing science to support the argument being made. It’s emotionally compelling, i.e.: most people want to believe it. These are all sound hypnotic storytelling techniques, and there are more, but that’s not what the point of this post is about today – let’s leave it at saying that to/for an untrained, non-critical reader this is very believable story on the surface.

The problem with this story and all others like it is that it’s pure bunk wrapped up in pseudo-scientific speak. Sure some of the facts are true enough based on our current state of cosmological understanding, e.g. the Big Bang theory, basic quantum physics ideas like entanglement … but they are presented out of context and used to support a spurious argument at best.

The most significant aspect of this kind of telling is that it satisfies our G-d quest, i.e.: the desire to have the mysteries of the Universe explained. This may or may not be a result of a G-d gene that programs us to seek a metaphysical answer to the realities of the Universe that we confront as humans, but regardless of the cause the quest persistently remains a part of our longing. I refer to this as an ontological longing, a desire to know what and who we are … and to fit that into an understanding of our place in the Cosmos.

However as soon as we begin to apply even the most basic scientific analysis to the “science” used in magical thinking it begins to fall apart rapidly. Here are two simple examples …

Claim: “We are made of stardust.”

Analysis: Yes, we are formed of the same atomic and sub-atomic particles at the physical level as stars. However stars are made up of elements all much lighter than iron when they are living and active. As soon as iron begins to form in stars as a result of the process of nuclear fission occurring within them, they begin to rapidly collapse, die off and go nova. The physical world we live in, are constructed from and contain within us, is comprised of elements much denser than iron that are stable and required for life as we know it in human terms. No star could survive in a “human condition.”

Claim: “We are energetically entangled.”

Analysis: Even particles that display quantum entanglement show no evidence of being entangled energetically. There is no transfer of energy that is discernible, nor is there any time that can be discerned for this transfer of energy to occur in the instantaneous response of the entangled particles to the state change in the other. This can only be accounted for as informational, not energetic. The brilliant quantum physicist, David Bohm, makes this clear in his seminal work, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”  about the role of information at the quantum level and the hidden variables required to create a satisfactory explanation of quantum behavior at a macroscopic level. David Bohm uses the representation of a holographic universe to make sense of the role of information as enfolded or unfolded in physical reality, a much better way to explain entanglement than energetically.

Now here’s the major problem with all of this … people are pre-disposed to believing magical thinking, they want to believe it and they will believe it despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary – in matters where the evidence matters. For instance there is no escaping that we are a superstitious species, most likely the only superstitious species that ever evolved on the planet. Yet most people can discern the difference from superstition and what’s real, e.g.: breaking a mirror is not really going to create a seven-year bad luck streak. But when presented with magical thinking, the same impulse that gives rise to superstition, i.e.: spurious cause-and-effect linkages, rushes up and takes over … because, unlike with much superstition, the suggested result is so desirable in so many instances of magical thinking.

When someone who is a trusted source, e.g.: a mentor, is added into the mix, the potential for being misled by magical thinking mantras becomes wildly exaggerated. There are thousands of people who have been under the sway of husksters selling false belief to the tune of millions or maybe even billions of dollars fueling this fire of misinformation.

Magical thinking satisfies the ontological longing in the same way meth-amphetamine releases the rush of dopamine that produces extraordinary sensations of satisfaction and pleasure in the brains of addicts.

In the world of modernity or post-modernity, where as Nietzsche put it “G-d is dead.” (German: “Gott isht tot.”), there is a innate compulsion to experience the satisfaction of having the answers to unanswerable mysteries of the Cosmos, the understanding that comes with having those answers and the sense of profound relief and pleasure at having something to look to for the explanation that satisfies our ontological longings and desire … and magical thinking fulfills that desire brilliantly.

 

Myth, Mythos and the Mythosphere

In the work I do mythological form plays an extremely important role, allowing me perceive, access and modify the narratives that my clients are operating from, both individual and organizational clients. I normally refer to this as the semantic structure, meaning the entire representational form of the gestalt worldview of the client. This is how the client perceives, represents and relates to what they think of as “real” or “reality” in a conscious, i.e.: representational, way.

The reason I refer to it as mythological has to do with the structure of conscious, representational awareness. The renowned comparative mythological scholar, Joseph Campbell, gave a form to the structure of mythology when he published his seminal work, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.” Rather than present myths as stories that were told, he used those stories to unveil the structure beneath them. This structure is form of what he referred to as “becoming human” … the journey from birth and immaturity to adulthood and maturity. Within that journey he speaks of the phases of human experience moving from dependence, to independence, to interdependence – thus becoming fully human. What’s interesting of course is that not everyone becomes fully human according to this model, with some people never moving beyond dependence to independence, and many people finding themselves stuck at independence, and others stuck in the transitions between phases, e.g.: dependence-independence or independence-interdependence.

The relative position – from dependence, to independence, to interdependence – that someone occupies within the structure of the “Hero’s Journey” is revealed in the Life Story they hold and operate from in their life.

The autobiographical narrative is held and told with very unique and specific characteristics, depending on where a person resides in their journey to becoming fully human. The story someone is living is their gestalt worldview, and one way it can be interpreted is using the filter of Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” model leading from dependence to interdependence. Along the trajectory of this journey the desire to satisfy the ontological yearning to know who we are is encapsulated in the narrative that is a person’s Life Story in any given moment. To what extent the ontological yearning is satisfied will be revealed by the structure of the story someone holds, i.e.: their gestalt worldview in terms of their autobiographical narrative.

The advantage of using mythological structure to analyze the autobiographical narrative someone reveals in the way they express their Life Story is that it offers clues about what to be doing to help them move along the trajectory to becoming fully human as Campbell put it, and also to relieve the pressure of the ontological longing. Unlike magical thinking, mythological form is fully vetted over many millennia of human history. Rather than working with magical thoughts that are perceived to be representative of extant reality, mythology treats the stories we hold as metaphorical. The distinction that myths suggest possibilities and pathways versus absolute truths or cosmic laws of some kind is overwhelmingly significant from the point of view of the mentoring process. Mythology, again according to Joseph Campbell, should be treated as connotative rather than denotative.

In the mentor’s role using mythological form creates access to the autobiographical narrative … the gestalt worldview … and an elegant means of shifting it to a more mature and useful position. This is the entry point to creating transformational change at the conscious level of what I’ve referred to as representational reality … the way we perceive the world to be, and the way we represent it to ourselves and others. This is the structure we use to make sense of the world. Changing the structure of the autobiographical narrative changes what things mean to us, and how we experience the events of our lives. However the most powerful aspect of working mythologically is that it takes the control out of the hands of the mentor and gives back the control to the client. This distinguishes working mythologically from magical thinking in a radical way … rather than being subject to the whims and winds of the Universe, the individual who possess mythological knowledge takes control of their life.

Maybe this is most clearly presented in Joseph Campbell’s stated four functions of mythology:

1) To explain the mystery and awe of the Cosmos

2) To present the cosmology of the times according to the latest scientific and technological understanding of the times

3) To inculcate and teach the social mores and rules of the culture and society

4) To reveal the path of self-knowledge to uncover one’s essential identity, relieving the ontological yearning to know oneself

The wonder is that when working mythologically a mentor can walk with a client sharing all four of these steps on their journey to becoming fully human.

While not every mentor is mythologically trained or capable, those that are stand apart in their ability to expose the magnificence often lying dormant in their clients waiting only for the fresh breath of inspiration to awaken and be realized. Owning and applying this knowledge, skill and ability as a mentor could be called applied wisdom … because after all the first Mentor was Athena in disguise … another role familiar to the best mentors, the trickster provocateur.

 

P.S. – Check out my newest workshops: Experiencing Transformational Performance, 2 Extraordinary Days  with Dr. Joseph Riggio: Experiencing Transformational Performance (http://tiny.cc/hs5rbw)

How Modern Business Models Developed

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It Isn’t Always Obvious How Modern Business Models Limit Entrepreneurship … Or What To Do About It … But There’s A Postmodern Eject Option That Will Set You Free

 

[This particular post is dedicated to the real and aspiring entrepreneurs out there,
especially my brethren who are the creators, compilers and consorts of information ...
and it's distribution to the people.]

 As Always, I like to start near the beginning …

In the case of looking at modern business models we need to look to the great monarchies and empires that grew out of the dawn of the Agricultural Era. There were a number of forces that shaped societies at this time, including the ever present economic forces driving the behaviors of men (Author’s Note: assume the term “men” is used here and throughout for convenience sake referring to all of humankind, i.e.: children, women and men).

By economic forces we can begin with the fundamental necessities required for sustaining and nurturing life, including creating a context appropriate to successful procreation. Prior to the Agricultural Era the evidence we have uncovered points to at least two previous phases of evolutionary development in human systems, a “Hunter/Gatherer” phase and a “Hunter/Horticulturist” phase. Sometime during these phases of human development basis social tenants were being programmed into the basic biological machinery as well as the social machinery. Essential remnants of the developmental process that imprinted itself on the human species remain in place today, e.g.: competition and altruism.

The primary social evolution mechanism during this phase transition from “Hunter/Gather” to “Hunter/Horticulturist” to “Agriculturalist” included the ability to create larger groupings leading to the first of many city-states and subsequently empires. The primary driver of this development was the ability to create wealth in the form of excess food resources, freeing individuals for specialization beyond food production in the population. From this consideration we can make the argument that the first rudimentary elements of what we think of today as business began to evolve within the social fabric.

It would be a reasonable conjecture to presume that the first elements of business in early societies took the form of services and craft, production of products, access and acquisition to goods,  and distribution of goods. While it would also be reasonable to presume that services and craft, along with the production of products came first, the access and acquisition of goods, and the distribution of those goods was unlikely to be far behind. We can place the last of these two elements of business under the heading “trade” for simplicities sake. This model of the fundamental elements of early business models can then be presented simply as a triad of services/craft … production … and trade …

 

At this time there were only a few ways business of any kind to be conducted …

In a very local model, e.g.: craftspeople serving their local communities … carpenters, potters, healers …

Creating goods to be traded directly, i.e.: barter … or later for the exchange of payment in coin made of valuable metals representing fixed value, typically in direct association with the value of the metal in which the coin was minted, e.g.: copper, bronze, silver, gold …

Trade between kingdoms for precious resources and goods … this trade was the sole privy of monarchs, even when conducted on their behalf by merchants of their choosing.

Back to Basics  For A Moment …

However, behind this model was the constant of food production as the basis of all “real” wealth – and in an Agricultural society that meant land upon which the Agriculture depended for the growing of grains, vegetables and fruits, the raising of livestock, or the hunting of game. This was the driving force behind the concept of “real estate” … of the “King’s Estate” … the land is owned by the monarch, and all others have use as decreed by the monarch with taxes applied to the rights of use, i.e.: “real estate taxation” … the “owner” of the land is NOT the one who occupies and or uses the land, the “owner” of the land is the one who can claim taxes for the right of occupation and use. The owner can also always reclaim the land for a higher use, e.g.: eminent domain.

Since the ownership and control of land, the right to occupy and use it, as well as access to the resources contained on or below it … e.g.: fauna, flora and minerals …  was (and to a great extent remains) the most essential economic driver another source of economic growth for the monarchies was conquest. As the need to expand the ownership and control of land became more dominant, to sustain the less productive inhabitants of the cities for essential resources, the monarchs were forced to expand their armies and seek new lands for these essential resources to bring back to the cities, with their aristocrats and elites, if they themselves desired to remain in control. This new necessity of supporting a growing elite class placed a new kind of pressure on the system to become more effective and efficient in the arts of war, e.g.: the Roman Legions.

Now a new economic entity sprang into existence as well. The knowledge associated with the building of war machinery and of the conduct of war. New technologies evolved to support the enterprise of war and conquest, including sophisticated communication technologies for the delivery and security of critical messages to and from afar – in this endeavor speed and utmost secrecy could mean the difference between ultimate success and utter failure. Yet, at the core of the massive campaigns conducted by the armies the issues of supplies, especially food, clothing and weapons, remained critical.

 

Supply Chains and Distribution As An Economic Cornerstone

Once again we can look to the Romans and their feats of engineering, specifically their roads. To a great extent the success of Rome can be directly traced back to its ability to build roads to distribute goods throughout the Empire.

This had two significant functions …

  1. Keeping the armies of Rome supplied so they could conquer and rule in foreign lands
  2. Providing the access to Rome necessary to bring back essential goods required to keep the Roman citizens pacified 

In the world of the Roman Empire, Rome was the first mega-city with over a million people occupying it. This population was largely comprised of aristocrats and elites, their servants and slaves, the service providers catering to them, the craftspeople providing skilled labor, and the producers and traders providing them with the goods they desired. This population created far less wealth than they consumed, yet through the control of the surrounding lands they continued to refill their coffers and exert control on the ever deepening maw of Rome’s own resource hunger. This made for a very unstable position for a Caesar unable to keep the provisions coming … so the constant need for conquest and the drain on the essential resources from the conquered to feed the Romans.

Without the technologically advanced engineering required to build the roads that led to and from Rome, and the aqueducts that kept her supplied with clean water and water to wash away the waste of millions Rome would have never survived to build such an edifice to herself. In some ways Rome in her unsatiable hunger for goods created the basis for the modern age of business that depends on the movement of goods as its lifeblood today.

 

Mid-Course Conclusions And Corrections

Once this fundamental structure was established, i.e.: the acceptance of an elite ruling class, the blueprint for modern society, modern economic structures and modern business was firmly grounded. When we look through the lens of history at a particular angle what we see is that the elite, ruling class was built on the labor of the peasant class who accepted their rule in exchange for the illusion of safety, security, freedom and the potential to pursue a life of liberty and wealth themselves. What the peasant class never realized was the extent of the bargain they were making, or the reality that they were always playing by different rules than the aristocrats and the elites.

The lessons contained in history continue to show that only those who were able to exploit the limitations, weaknesses and gaps in the ruling class’s position were ever able to become part of that class themselves. Before they crossed the chasm of becoming aristocrats and elites, many of those working the chinks in the system to their own ends would have been by definition at best outside the borders of lawfulness and at worst criminals. Staying with this same lens what we can learn is that the most efficient way to cross the chasm from commoner to elite is to do the dirty work of the elites for them, earning you passage beyond the gates yourself.

 

Modern Banking And The Fleecing Of The Common Man

We can look at the modern banking system as an example in quick review. Beginning with the Medici’s who devised a way for the Kings and Queens of a Catholic European Empire to circumvent the rule of usury to the modern age of centralized banks and fiat money the bankers have aligned themselves with the ruling class to concentrate the wealth of the system at the top. The recent activity we’ve seen throughout South and Central America beginning in the postwar era of 1950’s  through the 1980’s and on, in North America in the 1980s, 90s and most recently in the last five years leading up to a massive reformation of the banking industry with massive bailouts based on taxpayer indebtedness bloating the bottom-line of the failed banking institutions that fundamentally corrupted the system, and now the debacle threatening all of Europe with the same re-distribution of wealth upwards are perfect constructs of the mechanisms I’m pointing to here.

Essentially in a central banking environment, like those in most industrialized Western countries, and in the U.S. via the Federal Reserve System (which is neither Federal, holding any reserves, or a system in any real sense of the word), fiat money is created at the demand of a government (in the U.S. via Congressional request for increased funding outside of the requirement of raising it through direct taxation or tariffs), then the “banks” loan that money out at a ratio of many times the funding they hold in reserve (in the U.S. the ratio is about 10:1, i.e.: for every dollar a bank holds they can make a “loan” of ten dollars) and they are allowed by law to charge interest on the loan amount that is payable by debtor.

The “trick” in the system is that they are collecting interest on money they don’t have, so any interest rate is exhorbitant, creating windfall profits. A further insult on injury is that those furthest away from the lending source pay the most for the money they borrow, so the wealthiest borrow as the best rates. When you add in inflation to the sequence it immediately becomes apparent that holding as much debt as possible, borrowed at the best rates possible, becomes a pathway to increasing wealth at an accelerated rate, i.e.: you are borrowing money at a cost that’s lower than the value of the money you will pay the loan back with, and if you are close enough to the lending source you will borrow at preferential rates and your costs can be passed onto those who have to borrow further down the line. In the meantime if you purchased real assets with borrowed money they appreciate while you are paying back the borrowed money with devalued currency … a nice little spiral of wealth creation if you can “get in on it” early enough. One of the best way to “get in on it” is to become a borrower and a lender, borrowing inexpensively and lending expensively, i.e.: become the bank. (Thank you for the examples Mr. Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Rothschild …)

 

The Modern Entrepreneur

Now we come to the crux of my tirade (you did realize this was a tirade didn’t you?). The story that continues to get sold about modern entrepreneurial success is that it is a function of insight, courage, wisdom, brilliance … and maybe some hard work. We also “know” that it’s being in the right place at the right time, and who you know as much as what you know. FWIW I agree with much of this … to a great extent it’s true … until you get to the point where you have to work the system. At some point in the equation you have to find the chinks in the armor of the ruling class and use them to your benefit.

In a modern entrepreneurial system the ruling class is made up of at least three segments:

  • The political/governmental sector
  • The financial/banking sector
  • The existing commercial sector that you seeks to displace

To do this, and to succeed in a monumental way, you have to work the system … often at the edge of criminality, or downright stepping over that line. There are hundreds or thousands of books that document what I’m referring to here. Some of the favorite targets are mega-companies like Walmart, the mulit-national banks, the fiascos like Enron and World-Com. However, when you study the field you’ll find that there is no large business that isn’t tied in with the political and the financial players required to perpetrate their actions.

HOWEVER … this tirade isn’t about that … it’s about what you can choose instead if you so desire … BUT AT A PRICE!

I’ll lay it down simply … to use an oft quoted comment, “If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem”

If you are making your bed and lying down with the players I’ve been decrying then you are part of the problem, even if you only occasionally suck at the corporate teat. You cannot claim you are only a small little guy/gal trying to make a living off of the leavings of the corporate giants and not be awash in the stench of the garbage they put out. Even if you are selective in your takings, and what you do with them – e.g.: charity and philanthropy, you are insidiously continuing the subjugation by the ruling class. Of course the lunacy is that the subjugation I refer to includes your own (I am assuming that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and even Mark Zuckerberg are not reading this … although some Congressperson, Senator or even the Oval Office itself may have readers who keep an eye on things doing it for them).

So how do you opt out … where the lever to eject???

The way out of the debacle is to stop being part of the problem … become a problem for the problem.

Despite their ill-fated attempt the “Occupy” movement had the right idea fundamentally … what they left out was that they thought they were playing on a level field. What they might not have anticipated was that the folks who are much more “like them” then their masters would turn against them, i.e.: the police, law enforcement officials and legal system jumping through the hoops of the puppet masters on Wall Street and in City Hall.

Remember, once these folks get to City Hall they are no longer one of you! When politicians pass laws that discriminate preferentially for themselves they are declaring that they have entered the hall of the elites and you are not entitled to sit beside the table with them, e.g.: the healthcare bill in the U.S. that excludes Federal politicians … Congresspeople, Senators, Presidents … all get preferential treatment over the citizenry … and that was a Democratic initiative!

So you opt out …

You set up shop for the people directly … and you co-opt the resources of the elites. You use their distribution systems to get your goods to the people, you use their communication tools to spread your message, you take advantage of their financial systems to build your own position … just enough.

This last bit is critical … JUST ENOUGH … because when you cross the line to more than enough it’s very hard or impossible to come back. However, when you realize that JUST ENOUGH is really enough there’s no way to control you anymore. You don’t need or want the bigger house. You don’t need or want the prestige car. You don’t need to display your wealth to prove you possess it .. and you begin playing a different game.

The new game you play is riding the waves of the system rather than being caught by them. You set up and run your own thing. learning how to become a part of and to tap into communities of your own making … by invitation or creation. You decide independently, apart from the system’s approval, certification and licensing process, how you will run your life … and part of that is the kind of business entity you establish.

The whole “lifestyle business” movement is a part of this idea. The most basic expression of it however is a harkening back to the days of old in the marketplace, where you are serving a “local” audience that knows you and your personal credibility and mark mean something to them. Yet in the modern expression of this idea that local market is not confined by geography, but is instead comprised of islands of values, beliefs, philosophies and concepts in common. Like the first traders you become a “global” citizen belonging to many tribes, not just the one defined by and imposed upon you by the ruling elites.

Once you learn to surf the system staying on the boat just doesn’t make sense … maybe it’s time for you to consider what it will take to jump ship and take back the oceans.

 

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D., Princeton, NJ

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics

P.S. – If you want to spend some quality time finding the eject lever, opting out and landing well take a look at my page here, How I Work, check out the links for the practice areas I specialize in, and then let’s talk.

 

Mentoring In The Wild

by ·

 

Getting Advice From A Great Mentor Isn’t Just Useful …
It’s Damn Indispensable If You’re Serious About Discovering What’s Possible On The Path

Mentoring is the process of renting your brain to someone else to use for a while as their own…

– Alan Weiss, Ph.D.
Author of “Million Dollar Consulting”

Mentoring 101:

One of the most significant things that you can do is to allow yourself to receive input from people who have been down the path before you, that you find yourself walking in this moment.

These people know what is on the trail. These are people who understand what is about to come up that you can’t see because it is not visible – and the only reason that they know it is there isn’t because they can see it, but because they have been there before and they know the obstacles, they know the traps on the trail. These people have seen the traps before and they can anticipate from the gleanings in the wind where they’ll be before they see them again. These people also get that even those things that are visible and recognizable to them are sometimes not visible or not available to be seen by someone who hasn’t seen them before.

On the other side of this coin these people also have the ability to sniff out opportunity in the fermentation stage, before it the process finishes and reaches completion where others become aware of it. This gives them the advantage of being where the opportunity will be before it appears. Instead of running with the pack to get to the opportunity after the fact, these people are sitting there waiting for it to appear knowing just where to be and when so by the time the pack reaches them they’re already picking their teeth from the meal they’ve already consumed – and the others are left to dine on left-overs.

Essentially a great mentor has a number of well honed qualities, including but not limited to having “been there and done that” with the t-shirt to prove it. In fact having the t-shirt just indicates the smallest essential part of the puzzle, and by itself alone would never justify adopting someone as a mentor IMO.

Far more essential than just having had the experience would be the learning that was ingested and digested along the way  – the stuff that has become part and parcel of who the mentor has become. This shows up in the skill set they possess, and even more plainly in their day t0 day behavior – especially in who they are off stage.

Finding a mentor who has moved beyond “talk the talk” to “walk the walk” may be the single most valuable thing you can do in finding and walking your own path when it coincides with they one they’ve learned to walk so well.

I want to share a little example of this unique skill set.

 

In Addition To The Jersey Devil There’s Another Incredibly Fascinating Character Living In The Pine Barrens Of New Jersey, And His Name Is Tom Brown, Jr.

There is a man in New Jersey here where I live by the name of Tom Brown. He grew up on the edge of the NJ Pine Barrens, and still makes him home there today. Tom is probably the world’s most outstanding tracker.

As a young boy Tom made a decision that he was going to be a tracker. He spent every free minute he had, after school, on weekends, holidays, over the summers … learning how to track from an old Indian scout who was the grandfather of one of his best friends. They went out tracking together from the time he was 15 years old learning how to find animal tracks in the fields, in the woods and along the streams where he lived.

When he graduated high-school, around the age of eighteen, his father confronted him with a choice; “… go to college and get a degree, or get a job and go to work.” Tom choose getting a job … he would be a tracker. The way he tells the story this didn’t necessarily go over so well in his home at the time, but in a few years he proved his ability and was consulting with police, law enforcement and rescue teams around the United States based on his amazing skills as a tracker.

By the time that I met Tom he was in his 50’s, and was incredibly accomplished. He had worked with law enforcement agencies around the world teaching tracking skills. He ran a tracking school in a place called Asbury, NJ on the edge of the Pine Barrens. which is a remote wilderness area near the southern center of state of New Jersey; and he taking executives and put them through a week or two week program where he would teach them wilderness skills. He specifically emphasized the idea of tracking and noticing for information that was present, but to the untrained eye invisible.

I spent a weekend with Tom learning tracking with him and there was a moment in which we walked around a field that surrounded a parking lot. At the edge where the field met the asphalt of the parking lot there was an area about 10 feet or 12 feet wide where the asphalt of the parking lot turned into dirt, the dirt turned into grass, and then the grass entered into the woods. Walking at a normal walking pace, let’s say about 3 mph, Tom was able to walk the perimeter of the parking lot and point out tracks that were present there – squirrel, fox, rabbit. When I looked down what I saw was dirt, dirt, dirt.

Then we slowed down, and Tom took me down to ground level, he put my hand in the track and said, “Feel this. Can you feel that indentation?” Of course it was there and I said I could. He said, “Look at those two little dots. Do you see them near the indentation?” When he pointed them out I could see the two little dots. He told me they were the nails of a squirrel. He could see moving at a walking pace around the perimeter of the parking lot two little dots in the ground that were the nails of a squirrel!

Tom knew that those two little dots he had seen meant that the squirrel that had left those tracks behind was running away from something, because he could see from the length of the squirrel’s stride that it had been running frantically. We then went backwards and he showed me where the fox had been at the edge of the woods, because the grass had been beaten down in a particular way. We went on this way for about 1 ½ hours. It was stunning. Tom could see what had happened in that small portion of the wilderness several hours before like he was looking at in unfolding before him in the moment.

The world that Tom Brown lives in and was obvious to him … inescapably obvious … was completely invisible to me. After two hours with him I was aware that there was a world out there that was still invisible to me, but I was no longer ignorant of its presence. If I chose to spend two, or three, or five years with Tom maybe I could get to the point where I could walk around the perimeter of a parking lot and see the trail, and the markings of the animals that had been there before – but I couldn’t do it that morning.

Despite the fact that I now know there are animal tracks and a story there in the dirt between the parking lot and the grass I still can’t do it. I don’t have the training, or the skills, or the knowledge to even know what to look for in that small space. But if Tom were walking with me on a trail I know there would be so much more present for me in my world than I ever experience as being present for me when I am just walking that trail by myself.

 

Walking Along The Trail With A Mentor Of Your Own

The same thing is true of walking along any mentor who knows the trail they’ve lived as well as Tom knows how to track. That domain of expertise can be mentoring in the area of business development, the area of specific skills development or it can be in the area of building a life that works. It doesn’t matter what area of domain of expertise the mentor possesses, if they are skillful enough they live in a world that the untrained person doesn’t ever see, let alone experience. Yet, it would be possible to experience the world in that way if they had a mentor who knew how to find the tracks, signals and signs, and was pointing them out along the way.

Mentors see things that are there, and obvious to the trained eye, that simply don’t exist for the person who doesn’t have the skill set they possess. They create leverage in the possibility of learning and growing that would be impossible to access without that expertise. Mentors make this kind of advanced learning and acuity available to you, and I know of no substitute for it. At every turn when I’ve wanted to take the next steps on my own life’s journey, first before all else, I’ve found myself a brilliant mentor to walk the path with me. I still surround myself with mentors, young and old as necessary and required, to guide the steps I take as continue moving forward in the adventure.

If  you are really serious and you really intend to make enormous leaps and gains in any area of skill development or improvement in your life … and raise the level of your performance beyond the capacity that you currently possess by performing on your own … find someone who has been there before and to engage them as a mentor doing whatever it takes to allow them to take you to where you aren’t yet, and they have already been.

 

A Small Bit Of Friendly Closing Advice

(NOTE: This Bit Is Only For Those Who Are Serious & Thick Skinned Enough For The Raw Truth … Proceed With Caution)

I’m sure you get that the message here has been that when you decide to make the leap of faith required to commit and engage on a path of your own … one you haven’t yet mastered but sense a compulsion to pursue … start by finding a mentor who can and will guide you in the journey you’re about to undertake. What I’d like to share in closing from what I’ve learned about taking this advice myself would be this …

Start by keeping your mouth shut. I know some of you will find that advice harsh. Many of you reading this have likely grown up in a culture where you’ve been taught that “learning should be a participative activity” and that “you should be a partner in the learning experience” and other such B.S. that doesn’t apply here at all IMO. In the mentoring relationship the mentor has the expertise that you do not yet possess, but desire to own for yourself. The fastest way to build the skills you desire for yourself almost always means doing what your told (AGGGHHHH!!!! I know you hate that one!).

NOW … AFTER YOU’VE DONE IT (unquestioningly) … ask all your questions … make all your comments … have all the disagreements you need or want. Because AFTER you’ve done it you’ll have an experience you can talk about that has depth and value … instead of engaging in mental masturbation about what you think but don’t know yet.