Attention Composition

Consider the foreground carefully.

Shiny spider silk or
an airplane's glint.

The constant river rush or
traffic's ever-exhaling breath.

A breeze blows your hair across your forehead --
the trees, too, or
that dry, cool air conditioner air.

Choose what's less important.
Let it go for now.

What you want more of -- go to it.
Bring it in close.
Bother with the angles.
Wait for the light to shift.
Let another leaf fall.

Consider the foreground carefully.

Many thanks to Austin Hikes for Creative Types and organizer/nature hike leader extraordinaire Joe Lapp for taking me on a great adventure and inspiring this poem.

Criteria Meta-Program Sort

Meta-program sorts describe different ways that people delete, distort, and generalize about what they perceive. You can calibrate someone's meta-program sorts through the words they use. You can also use meta-program sorts to calibrate when certain changes have taken place.

One of the most interesting meta-program sorts, to me, is Criteria. Whose criteria is being used where? I came up with a simple way to think about these, and thought it might be useful to others.

. Name Whose criteria is applied to self? Whose criteria is applied to others? . Self Self Self . Shift -- Self . Simultaneous Self Other . Switch Other --

James Brown Story

This story has been moved to the new blog: http://katieraver.com/2011/james-brown/ Hope to see ya there! ~Katie

How to Write Fast... And Get Even Faster

I've written the shortest possible guide to writing fast. Well, shorter than, "write every day for five minutes; repeat." Let me know what you think.

General Guidelines:

• Timebox the following steps. Set a time for each one and stick to it. When your time limit is up, you're finished with that step.
• You'll improve the quickest if you stop when your time limit is up and move onto the next step.
  
• When you're starting out, just do one or two steps a day for 5-10 minutes each.
• IMPORTANT: Take time to feel really good after accomplishing each step!
  
• You must write badly before you write goodly.
• If you do this process and repeat it, your writing will get faster and more clear.

The Steps

1. Brainstorm. Write your topic and all the related ideas down. Don't edit.
2. Outline topics. Organize your ideas into an outline, like this list. Incomplete sentences, quick blurbs, imprecise grammar are great.
   
3. Outline subtopics of ONE topic. Choose an item from your outline, preferably the one you know the most about or are the most excited about. Break it down into subtopics that will create less than one page of text. Estimate as best you know how.
4. Write one subtopic. Write the content for one outline item, starting with the broadest information and filling in the details.
   
5. Revise the subtopic for clarity.
   
6. Revise the subtopic for grammar, punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
7. Revise again. Do this on another day.

The Rainbow Seed Story

I received my first huayruro seed in 2003, after I’d told the story of seeing a lunar eclipse at Lake Conchas, New Mexico. I was in a deep trance when I told the story. But that's a story for another day! I didn’t know what the seed was, really, but I felt deeply happy when I received it.

Huayruro seeds come from a Peruvian jungle plant. Wikipedia tells me that they’re considered lucky. And inedible. They probably won’t turn into an actual plant if you plant them in most places – they would require just the right amount of relentlessly humid heat, found in few places other than the Amazonian jungle. If you'd like to see a picture of these red and black seeds, go here.

Rainbow Seeds are a tradition created by Tom and Bobbi Best. How many Rainbow Seeds have been given away over the last 20 years? Hundreds? Thousands? I’m not sure.

So, if you’re the recipient of a Rainbow Seed, you’re part of a global matrix of people who have participated in the following way, or some way like it.

Here’s what to do with your seeds.

First, carry them with you. Whenever you feel a strong feeling of love or connection, imagine sending that love and connection into the seed, filling it with that love.

Second, plant the seeds in the following way. While you’re carrying around the seeds, you may come upon a place so beautiful and full of love that you want to honor it with your love: you can plant the seed there. You can also plant the seed in a place that’s devastated and lacking love. And you can gift a seed to a person that’s full of love or that’s devastated, too.

When you plant your seed, imagine a rainbow leaping out of the seed, imbuing the recipient with your love and connecting the recipient person or place with the matrix of rainbow lights that now covers the planet.

Happy planting!

You Stopped Loving Yourself

You stopped loving yourself.
Was it at breakfast, or when you were five?
Who knows when?

Today is not for when.

Dust off the box and unwrap it.
Let the shining ribbon fall away.
Remove the tape at the seams, carefully,
or rip the paper to shreds.
Peer inside and don't flinch away.

Start with the self that tried to
murder your living. Love that one.
Listen to the self that kept you from
your dreams. Remember to hear the words,
and nod, and refrain from giving advice.
Go on a long walk in the forest together,
you and yourself.
Feel the cool dew on your faces.
Share a knowing look.

Whenever you're ready,
take yourself on extravagant picnics
with pickles and edible flowers.
Watch the sunset to the full on,
black, night sky.

Date a while. No need to rush.
Only when the time is right, move in together.
You'll tie the knot. You'll walk on the beach,
holding hands, saying nothing. When you
disagree, cradle the argument like a newborn
in your arms. Stroke its face and coo.
And the two of you, let your make up be sweet,
and long.

I Hate Positive Thinking

A new pandemic of positive thinking has certainly arrived, at least here in Austin, the wuwu capital of Texas. Everyone has seen the Secret by now (OK, except you -- my one friend who hasn't seen it), and even my dad has heard of Thich Nhat Hanh.

"Pandemic?" you ask. "But Katie, I thought you love and ooze positive thinking?"

It's true.... I do adore positive thinking when used effectively. I love going to Maui in my mind -- and I highly recommend it, too, by the way. I'm a huge fan or the word wuwu, and I use Thich Nhat Hanh's work every day. Part of the NLP outcome frame is to formulate our outcomes in positive terms -- another useful thing to do.

But what if you're afraid of the negative? Some people avoid it at all costs, lurking out of the room whenever something uncomfortable or negative surfaces. Others are angry if you say something negative to them, because they believe it could change the course of their life in a harmful way. They know that language shapes our reality, our possibility, and our beliefs.

More about other people's language later.

I propose that when are afraid of the negative, we miss out on several things.

First, we're missing out on what is. In NLP, we have to start with someone's present state, which contains all sorts of information about the limitations of someone's map of the world. And, if you know how to help the client find it, that present state also contains information about how to transform that limitation into something even more useful for the client -- perhaps even into manifesting their heart's desire. If you skip what is, you miss out on the problem and the solution.

Deleting or refusing to see "negative" things also means that you will very likely miss out on some very important news of difference. If you only look at your own map of the world, there's no road map for other states of consciousness, other ways to reach your goal, other ways to transcend your limitations. And you will need other perspectives, at some point! My friend Spider Joe uses negative or argumentative statements as a reminder to step out of his own ego and into another person's (often contradictory) perspective. From there, he sees some pretty amazing new things!

But Spider Joe is a story for a different day. Back to being afraid of the negative.

Insisting that others edit their speech to delete what you consider negative also means refusing to acknowledge your own role in your experience of reality. Yes, language influences what we think is possible and therefore it influences what we can perceive. But reality doesn't just happen to you. You choose the meaning you're making of "reality." Wouldn't you like to have more flexibility in how you respond to reality? Becoming a creator of reality instead of just a recipient of it means you're actively involved in shifting your own meaning-making towards what's better, lighter, easier.

Learning to respond to what is with increasing flexibility is real positive thinking. It requires acknowledging what is and then, consciously or otherwise, choosing what to make of it.

Here's the thing about positive thinking: Positive thinking is not enough. Action is required, sometimes very challenging action. Just ask Thich Nhat Hahn.

I Want to Be a Vampire

First, a confession.

I want to run my hands through some of that beautifully wonderful vampire hair, my own or someone else's.

I want to wear beautiful clothes and have wisdom beyond my apparent age and know all about classical music.

I want to hang around in the top-most crown of a coastal redwood on a clear day, overlooking the ancient forest canopy and the glinting valley river below, having climbed there by my own, super-strong, vampiric self.

And to have my own sonorous, instantly-persuasive voice. Like a vampire.

I thought you should know.

For the past three weeks, I've been obsessed with the vampire movie and book Twilight. Now that we've established that, onto the story.

First, we meet Bella, a high school junior who has just moved to Forks, Washington to live with her quiet, police chief dad. She looks kind of like a vampire, but she isn't one. She's clumsy, smart, responsible for her age, and feels like a misfit. Bella can flawlessly read people's emotions through their facial gestures and voice tones.

Edward Cullen, her love/hate interest, is part of a family of benevolent-to-human vampires who live outside of Forks and who attend the same high school. The vampire thing is a secret. Edward's super powers include lightning-fast reflexes, the ability to read human minds (except Bella's), and apparent immortality.

Bella has a super power of her own, when it comes to her relationship with Edward: she regularly saves Edward from his own self-hatred. Apparently, vampires can experience a lot of self-hatred because they walk around wanting to destroy humans in order to survive.

So, other than the whole "he's lived a hundred years and she's lived only 17," there's a nice symmetry in the two main characters.

The conflicts:

• Edward wants to both devour and fall in love with Bella (awesome!)
• Bella and Edward miscommunicate often because Bella doesn't know he's a vampire at first and because Edward can't read her mind like he can read everyone else's mind (boring -- miscommunication is my least favorite conflict)
• Some people who know that the Cullens are vampires really hate them (hate has really been overdone lately, but whatever)
• Bella is constantly tripping/ falling/ getting followed by would-be rapists, so Edward follows her around and saves her a lot (kind of fun, other than his occasional annoyed remonstrances for her carelessness)

My favorite detail about these vampires is that they can't show themselves in sunlight because they sparkle like diamonds. If anyone saw a vampire's skin in the sunlight, they would know for sure that these folks are different. And we all know where "different" leads....

Speaking of differences, there are some differences between the book and movie.

In short, the movie is better.

The longer answer: the movie is well-paced and does an artful job of using the symbols of the forest versus the city to establish the animalistic versus the cultivated sides of the vampires. The Edward in the movie doesn't need to control Bella's movements or turn his persuasive vampire gaze on her to get her to comply with his wishes -- those (very creepy!) characteristics are emphasized in the book. And the book is filled with repetitive warnings about Bella's need to "be safe" and the hero's unfounded fears for her safety. Thankfully, the movie only replays these conversations a few times.

I do like that the book lets itself be a teen novel. It's told from Bella's point of view, with a teenage girl's voice. So we get to see very realistic, perfectly paced teen angst, with a vampiric twist:

Of course he wasn't interested in me, I thought angrily, my eyes stinging -- a delayed reaction to the onions. I wasn't interesting. And he was. Interesting...and brilliant...and mysterious...and perfect...and beautiful...and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand.

I find passages like this one simply delightful! The movie doesn't focus on the fact that Bella is a seventeen-year-old girls -- it's the only thing noticeably missing from the movie, for me. Perhaps it plays to a wider range of ages.

A note on teenagers, as a group: they are reliably fierce film critics. They will not put up with anything boring, overly philosophical, riddled with inside jokes (other than their own), or anything that is not mythically and visually stunning. And some teenage girls do indeed seem to cling to this movie -- a lofty endorsement. Every time I've been to see the movie, there's been at least one group of girls that are clearly serial fans of the film. One girl whispered, with perfect timing, every word of the film. One of her friends audibly caught her breath and moaned every time Edward came on the screen.

It's fun to be swept away with passion, even if you're not a teenage girl. It's delightful to go on the rollercoaster ride of emotional yeses and nos. It's pleasurable to feel that archetypal conflict running through your own body.

Ultimately, that archetypal conflict is what makes well-done vampire stories like this one so compelling. Sure, the vampires are cool. Who doesn't want to be passionately desired by someone stunningly beautiful with long, slender, ice-cold hands and perfect teeth? But the draw is more than that -- it's alluring to enter the world of conflicting desires because it's a world we're intimately familiar with, or at least wish we were familiar with. Creation and destruction, gentleness and violence -- we audience members experience the pull of both forces every day. Someone cuts us off in traffic, and we want to kill the guy. Our favorite team wins, and we love everyone. We sit in our gray grid of cubicles wishing for some lofty emotion -- any emotion -- to replace our apathy and dull self-disdain.

This movie asks us to notice the passion and the archetypal tension that we carry around in ourselves every day, just by being human. Will we love or devour the people around us? Will we love or devour the parts of ourselves that are perfect, and imperfect? However enlightened we audience members wish to be in the face of so-called over-dramatized, over-simplified fairy tales like this one, when they're told artfully, we become captive, willingly compliant, and thirsty for more.

Outcomes

In NLP, we talk about a establishing a well-formed outcome with a client before proceeding with change work. A well-formed outcome is a goal that contains specific elements that make achieving it possible and much more likely than a goal that doesn't have those elements.

Bothering with a WFO does several things: the simple process of making sure you've met all the "well-formedness" conditions (yes, they really call it that!) helps to fill in missing information. Filing in the blanks is sometimes enough for the client to experience more alignment with their outcome right away. Establishing a well-formed outcome also brings to light blocks, obstacles, and limiting beliefs that might need attention.

Like many techniques in NLP, the well-formed outcome conditions seem like they should be simple to elicit. They're usually taught to beginners using a series of questions, like "What do you want?" and "What would that do for you?" Because of the apparent simplicity, some people assume that they should be able to complete a worksheet on their goal and move on.

For a very few people, the worksheet approach is completely adequate. And the worksheet approach is a great way to begin to learn the well-formedness conditions. But watch a masterful demonstration of how to use those questions, and you'll see that the practitioner is doing a lot more than asking that list of questions!

Most people discover stuck places and incomplete information even in their answers to these questions. The questions themselves don't contain the full model of everything required for a well-formed outcome. But that's a story for another day.

Back to what getting a well-formed outcome does, beyond filling in the blanks of someone's goal and revealing obstacles.

Taking the time to establish a well-formed outcome also gives the practitioner the chance to listen, watch, and get a sense of the client. A classic NLP beginners' mistake (and, unfortunately, a common mistake of the legion forces of "coaches" that many internet coach universities are currently spewing out) is to move too early to problem solving or running the client through a process. Doing a recipe process by the book is great for some things when you're learning NLP, but as soon as you're ready to work with people outside the classroom, it's time to start looking, listening, and getting a sense of the person in front of you -- well before you decide which process to use or help with brainstorming solutions.

Love Poem

This love has made me crazy.
I keep forgetting to rise up, to worry,
and I’m dancing around in meadows,
silly and stupid with your ecstasy.

Where were all these meadows before?

Next to you in the car,
the discord of lights and smog
becomes Spring itself.
All of humanity is on the same path, at the same time,
red lights guiding the way.

I only bother to sleep to hold
your hand in those unconscious moments.
Butterflies and moths fly out of my eyes.
Two trees use me as their telephone line.
I try to tell the man watering red hibiscus plants.
He gives me a round stone.

How can I explain this insanity?
I just follow the owl flying overhead,
downtown, at midday. Your eyes glisten,
you hold me close. I’m late again
for another meeting.

More States of Attention

For the last 6 months, I’ve been working with Nelson Zink’s 12 States of Attention.

Mary Ann Reynolds taught them to me at the September Austin NLP Meetup, and she had been talking about them for some time before that. You can read previous blog entries about Mary Ann’s presentation or how the 12 States have made parts of my life much more rich, especially in settings like the black sand beach in Maui, where I wanted to expand my awareness of the place. You can also read an excerpt from Nelson's Zink's The Structure of Delight and his explanation of the 12 States of Attention.

There are several parts of this model that I’ve wanted to refine, especially about the kinesthetic sense. Broad-External-Kinesthetic is supposed to be what I can feel right now on the surface of my skin (and maybe a few inches out, depending on how you want to do it). But there’s no distinction to describe me remembering a Broad-External-Kinesthetic sensation or planning one. The same thing applies to Narrow-External-Kinesthetic, Broad-Internal-Kinesthetic, and Narrow-Internal-Kinesthetic.

Also, what about one’s sense of where the body is in space, sometimes called the proprioceptive sense? And what about olfactory and gustatory senses?

So, I’ve been playing around with several different ways of organizing these senses to accommodate that. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Broad / Narrow (stays the same)
Sensed / Constructed (much like the original Internal / External, but this accommodates for the fact that you might construct a kinesthetic feeling, be it internal (on the skin) or external (inside the body).
Visual / Auditory / Kinesthetic – Skin / Kinesthetic – Viscera / Kinesthetic – Proprioception / Olfactory / Gustatory

That makes for 28 States of Attention! I have to admit, I like the simplicity of Nelson’s original model. Are the extra distinctions really worth it?

As I’ve experimented with this expanded model, here’s what I’ve learned. The last 3 types of perception (Kinesthetic – Proprioception, Olfactory, and Gustatory) are “bonus” states. Because they are often far beyond conscious awareness, sometimes they contain very interesting information. Sometimes, they are so secondary to the other states of attention, they provide less useful information.

I’ll probably continue to teach my friends Nelson’s original model, or my expanded model without the bonus states.

Spider Joe's Spirituality of Wonder

He threw his arms around the tree trunk, gently bit off a small piece of bark and ate it, passionately kissed the tree, and ran off laughing.

My nephew is two years old.

Why did he do this? His world is a mystery to me. There seems to be no future and no past. Things from the past -- learnings, beliefs he's already formed, fears, expectations -- do influence his life. But he doesn't live there.

That's what the Spirituality of Wonder (my new favorite term, coined by my friend Spider Joe) is all about, at least in my current interpretation: flinging yourself into the present moment so thoroughly that you shake off the past and the future, and you look up to see a hawk flying overhead. For that moment, only the hawk exists. And that present moment is full of causes-and-effects that may or may not make sense, but they arise from somewhere most of us long to visit. And some of us long to live.

We use the word "spirituality" because it's hard to find a word that expresses what we're talking about. Think about the last time you were pleasantly surprised. Maybe someone actually planned a surprise for you. Or maybe you were given a gift you didn't expect. Perhaps something random happened, which turned out to be good for you.

Let yourself be absorbed in the feelings of being pleasantly surprised. It's a nice time to linger, isn't it? What were you seeing and hearing? Where were you? Seeing the events through your own eyes, notice the people around you. What were you feeling?

That's the spirituality of wonder, too. It's being completely absorbed, however briefly, in something that brings you wonder, awe, and curiosity.

When do you experience the spirituality of wonder?

Spatial Relations Changework (SRC) and Fanning

Kathleen Radebaugh’s Spatial Relations Changework (SRC) is a way to finally get your Conscious and Unconscious Minds talking… and sometimes even collaborating.

First, some background. In NLP, we talk about the Conscious and Unconscious Minds. The Conscious Mind is in charge of setting conscious goals and thinking through problems, issues, memories, etc. The Unconscious Mind (or other-than-conscious mind) is in charge of interpreting the myriad details that your Conscious Mind can’t process, and focusing the attention of the Conscious Mind on what’s important. The Unconscious Mind seems to have its own goals and also processes problems, issues, memories, etc.

Many people have had the experience of setting a goal (Conscious Mind) but not being able to get started for some reason, often for an unknown, seemingly unsolvable, or indefinable reason (Unconscious Mind). Many different modalities, hypnosis and NLP included, aim to help the Conscious and Unconscious Minds to work together. SRC does this in a unique way, and I’ll describe my experience of it in a moment.

Second, some information about a recent class on SRC and Fanning that Kathleen facilitated and I attended. There were 11 attendees. SRC is the set of tools that Kathleen uses to help people create new worlds for themselves, and it includes her own renderings of David Grove’s Clean Space, Clean Language, and Emergent Knowledge work, along with some NLP and some of Stephen Gilligan's Self Relations work. Fanning is a shamanic breathing practice that helps to disconnect inappropriate connections you have with a person, place, or thing. Fanning is very much like an NLP technique, and you do not have to believe in shamanic principles (or NLP, for that matter) for it to produce results for you.

First, Kathleen guided us to represent what we wanted to work on. I used a piece of paper, some glitter pens, and some crayons to make a drawing. Then, we started interacting with the paper with Kathleen guiding us through a series of Clean Space questions, reviewing it from 6 different places. Throughout the entire process, we never reported any content to Kathleen nor did we tell her our responses to her questions. We wrote down notes and insights. Then, she asked us to take what we knew from that series of interactions and use it to “fan” something. We repeated this process several times.

What’s happening on the inside for each individual is magnificent. My experience was that SRC is, over and over, requesting that the Unconscious Mind deliver information to the Conscious Mind about what’s going on. The Conscious Mind makes meaning and takes note of this, and the process is repeated. When you add Fanning into the picture, it gives the Conscious Mind the chance to practice taking a small, meaningful action right away (by Fanning) to provide for and honor the Unconscious Mind. For me, the process solidified into an interaction like this:

Conscious Mind: What do you want? What is going on for you? (Clean Space and Clean Language questions from facilitator.)
Unconscious Mind: I want a pony! (Participant’s response to questions.)
Conscious Mind: OK, here’s a pony. (Participant using Fanning based on response to questions.)

Conscious Mind: What do you want? What is going on for you?
Unconscious Mind: I want less traffic in my life
Conscious Mind: OK, here’s less traffic in my life.

Conscious Mind: What do you want? What is going on for you?
Unconscious Mind: I want perfect attendance in 3rd grade.
Conscious Mind: OK, here’s perfect attendance in 3rd grade.

It’s quite wonderful to practice listening to and responding to the Unconscious Mind. Kathleen closed the session by having us write down a series of Action Steps that we could complete soon to further this process.

I left with a lot of insights.

Fanning continues to surprise me because it is such an effortless process that only requires that I do it. Things shift if I do it, and they often shift in unanticipated, unexpected ways that are more ecological and immediate that other solutions I was considering. I also like SRC because it’s so personal, and in a group session, that content mostly stays with each individual. I was in a room full of people doing deep work on their most personal issues, and it was very private. Finally, Kathleen brings her work with Steven Gilligan and his notion of the Field into how she conducts sessions. That means that she “holds the space” for the group and acts to make sure that whatever comes up is given full permissions to express and explore. That makes for a very accepting environment in which to do deep, personal change work.

Advanced Calibration Exercise by Keith Fail

While we're getting ready to have a great time at the Best Resources NLP Practitioner kickoff in Austin tomorrow, please enjoy this most excellent advanced calibration exercise that my husband Keith created.

Happy calibrating!

Why My Life is So Great

In my government training job, we were asked to watch a 25-minute video about emergency situations that could affect the entire state, such as a possible global flu epidemic.

That is not why my life is so great, by the way.

I surfed to the video website. I closed my door and put an “in training” sign up. I got my headphones all ready.

And I pushed play.

That’s when something unusual happened.

The spoken audio track was exactly what you’d expect: a dry, unexcited voice reading statistics about death and suffering in monotone.

But the background music was something else.

My teacher Tom Best sometimes puts together beautiful movies of the footage he takes on his international adventures, particularly his extended shamanism explorations. If you’ve ever been the recipient of one of his videos, you know how powerful it is to receive video of the sights, sounds, people, and teachings of a life-changing experience. It’s a strong anchor for the feelings and new states of consciousness you experienced on the trip.

For a particular Peru trip video that I’ve seen many times, he used a unique, upbeat acoustic piece of music for the background to a series of photos. That music is indelibly linked, in my mind, to this series of heartfelt snapshots of happy, contemplative trip participants and the people of a particular Peruvian village. The colors are bright and vivid, the people peering directly at you through the movie. I’ve seen the video many times.

Whenever I watch this segment of the movie and hear that piece of music, I feel very open and happy and full of life.

Here’s the unusual thing: the global flu epidemic movie had that same piece of music in the background.

So when I clicked “play,” that familiar upbeat, acoustic music started. Before I could even make sense of the familiar music, I noticed that the background of the global flu epidemic movie looked a lot like the “filaments of light” that Tom talks about connecting us all.

I heard the flu movie monologue, too, for sure. But I couldn’t help but imagine the smiling, full-of-life faces of the children from those portraits, superimposed over the bulleted slides.

I felt open and happy and full of life… while I was listening to the death statistics from the early 20th century flew epidemic.

I felt my breathing deepen and slow like it would during deep meditation, while I was watching the required supplies for an emergency kit fly across the screen.

This had a strange affect on me. Somehow, I was able to make room for these grim facts along with feeling really good.

In this life, it seems that we will always have our own feelings and states of mind to contend with, and we will always be surrounded by others who have their own maps of what to say when and what makes them feel happy.

When we can choose exactly how we feel and take in the information that is presented by others, we’re doing something worth doing. We’re doing the work of making peace in the world by holding two different possibilities in consciousness at the same time.

To start, all we need to know to begin this work is that it’s possible to hold two opposites in mind at the same time.

To continue, it requires practicing these internal, positive states so much that they become as easy as doing something from the external world, something as simple as pushing the play button.

NLP Class in Austin -- Begins January 17-18!

Best Resources is once again teaching the NLP Practitioner training in Austin!

Take one weekend , two weekends, or the entire 8 weekend class from trainers who have mastery, integrity, and heart. My husband Keith Fail is part of the training team this year, too.

I'm delighted to be a part of their classes, and I know of no better way for you to heal, transform, grow, and revivify your life than to take Tom and Bobbi Best's classes.

Growing Your Organization

At the core of every religion, business, family, audience, non-profit organization, spiritual path, board of directors, professional association, and group of people, there's a bright, burning core.

Let's call this the territory.

The territory is where all the experience happens. It's where the members of the group live. It's their prayers, daily work, meditations, playing catch in the backyard, dancing together, listening in awe to a piece of music.

Surrounding that core is a bunch of other stuff: beliefs, perceived repetitive behaviors, stories about why this and that is so, perceptual filters, theories, agreement and argument, mission statements, expected capabilities, financial statements, holy texts, rules of order.

Let's call this stuff the map. It refers back to the territory, but it's somehow different. It's about the territory. It's about the experience. But it's not that experience itself.

NLP has taught me that I can change my map. On good days, I remember this and it's mostly easy now.

On bad days,... well, that's a story for another day!

So, your organization wants to grow? Great. There's only two thing you really need to do. If you accomplish these two things, people will overlook huge administrative errors and typos and weird furniture and sloppy clothes and accents and bad manners.

Help people get to the territory. And then, any time you enter the map to discuss the territory, talk about it in a way that makes the people feel better than they usually feel.

That's it. You do not need a new sanctuary, better-dressed members, more snacks, glossy brochures, a bus plan to bring in people, a class to teach members how to interact with new people, more closet space, leather bound books.... unless those things help people get to the territory and talk about the territory in a way that makes them feel better than they usually feel.

If you miss these two things, your organization may grow a little, if you're lucky. But there is not enough new carpet in the world to compete with direct experience in the territory and feeling good in the map. People are drawn to places that bring them to the territory and have a great time talking about it.

More to come about my own map of how to do this.

What are you thoughts? I'd love to know them. Drop me a line or leave a comment.

Edward T. Hall and Congruence

Do you know who Edward T. Hall is?

My husband Keith is re-reading a book of his, The Silent Language.

Hall is an anthropologist who originated the concept of proximics (personal space) and was an early writer on cross-cultural differences and non-verbal communication. He's written about westerners doing business in Japan. He did research with the Navajo and Hopi. He's also one of the people who greatly influenced early NLP developers like John Grinder, Richard Bandler, Judith Delozier, and Leslie Cameron-Bandler.

Hall was born in 1914 in Missouri and is still alive. He's been retired since 1977. He remarried in 2004, according to the timeline on his website!

According to Keith, Hall was saying things like this in 1959: "If a person really wants to introduce change, find out what is happening unconsciously and make it conscious." That's an interesting definition of modeling -- in this case, modeling of the problem to illuminate it and notice possibilities for change.

He also coined the term "congruence," which is now a standard part of the NLP lexicon. Today, in NLP circles, congruence refers to a person and all their "parts" being aligned. When we are congruent, our speech, non-verbal communication, and actions all match up.

If you remember your high school geometry class, you might observe that Hall borrowed this term from mathematics. Here's a one page refresher on congruence in math: http://www.mathopenref.com/congruent.html

On a side note: according to Keith, Hall also laid the groundwork for timelines, writing about the distinctions of "in time" (polychronic time, in Hall's terms) versus "through time" (monochronic time for Hall).