Integrate!

For some people, the weekend is a chance to escape from work: for some it might be a chance to escape into work. The weekend is not synonymous with time off or time to relax. Families often do more in a weekend than they do in the other five days of the week put together! There is no necessary value in taking two days away from work each week. There is some value in noticing that weeks (unlike days, or lunar months) are made for people, and require that people make use of them. Whether or not you notice, one day ends and another begins. Whether or not you notice, the moon will go through its phases and the seasons will change. Weeks only change when we allow them to change. We sometimes work "for weeks on end" and we all remember the endless summers of childhood, when there was no school "for weeks on end." Life flows differently when there is no difference from one day to the next, when weeks don't end and begin but blend into one another in a steady stream. A...

Trying to understand a situation while you're in the middle of it is like trying to navigate in the heart of the city. There's no place that gives you the perspective to understand where you are in terms of where you want to be. There's no place that gives you the perspective to see who you are in terms of the system in which you find yourself. In the city, you head for a map, or for higher ground. Anyone who has navigated an unfamiliar city with a map will tell you that it is better than trying to find your way around without a map and it is still far from a sure thing. There is something especially satisfying about climbing to higher ground and suddenly seeing relationships that were invisible from ground level. Often our personal "higher" ground reflects a moral, ethical or disciplined perspective from which to view the particulars of who and where we are. This higher ground can look complicated to other people; to us, it as absolutely clear and complex as a m...

Stephanie at idealawg recently posted on debunking myths about the value of goal-setting (http://westallen.typepad.com/idealawg/2007/03/debunking_anoth.html). It's easy to debunk a specific study that seems to have been apocryphal - it's easy to debunk almost any formula or convention. It's harder to ask questions like: why has this myth been so popular? What good has been done by this belief, whether or not it is true? Have you worked with people who can't set goals because they are frozen or stuck or lost? Have you experienced a time in your ife when you could not look forward and see anything at all? Imagine what it means to someone to have given up on wanting, to have given up on expectation. To some people, it sounds very zen, very higher consciousness. To others, it sounds like giving up on life. Goals do not always call people into connection and relationship and productivity. Sometimes, under some conditions, they do. It is one of the challenges of people who th...

Today, I listened to a student give a presentation on writing correspondence to customers. He struggled through the formats suggested by his textbook, clearly having little experience on which to hang the information he was presenting to a small group. Afterwards we talked, and I asked questions. He knew that customers want to know you are listening, to feel respected, and to know what you have to say. You want, in return, for them to understand that your decisions (or product offerings) don't come out of thin air. All business is primarily a dialogue between individuals or entities with something to trade. Why is this a difficult concept? It's quite likely that at some point today you had a business interaction where it was absolutely clear that no one was listening to you. It's quite likely that you said something that went unheard, in part because you yourself were not listening. You wanted to get the message out quickly, and you thought that meant skipping a step. W...

I just finished reading a book on Milton Erickson called "An American Healer." As much as hypnosis pervades the book, it is never central to it. No one says, "Erickson is important because he was really, really good at putting people into trances. Really deep powerful trances." Everyone says some version of 'Erickson believed people were deep and powerful and capable.' Everyone says, Erickson was a genius at working with what was given, whether that meant learning through polio or using the way a client entered the room to draw conclusions about his/her state or experience. What if hypnosis was not the point, just a tool that Erickson happened to use? What if Erickson is remembered more for the influence he had on a legion of students and thinkers than for the impact of his therapeutic practice? Would that make his work less magical or more influential? It is as hard for someone who has been influenced by trance to see trance as a tool as it is difficult f...

"I would never again accept anyone's word about anything having to do with my life unless, having examined it from every angle, matched it aginst how it felt in my heart, my gut, my head, I knew it fit my own real feelings, how I viewed life and my own real experiences. I, and nobody else, would determine what my own real experiences were and had been." Sharon Butala, The Perfection of the Morning The Perfection of the Morning is one of those works that has lingered in the periphery of my attention. There was a time when I studied Canadian literature avidly, and felt the need to read everything, and yet this book waited for me until now. It is not so much about nature, although nature is often used to categorize it. It is a book about discovering that interest resides not in the quality of the thing observed, but in the quality with which we pay attention to it. It is no stranger that I should end up teaching NLP than that Sharon Butala should be taught to pay attention ...

Last night we ran a networking event in which people practiced being in agreement on multiple levels. There was a lot of laughter. People who normally dread speaking found themselves having a really good time. They discovered that interactions based on agreement are naturally energizing. Within an event, everyone wants to play. The secret to agreement is that most people want to play. Almost everyone you meet will be more comfortable when connected and will be willing to stay connected given the opportunity to connect without violating their outcomes, beliefs or values. Almost everyone is willing to find common ground. A few people will want you to do all the work. They will tolerate interchanges only as long as they do not have to make any effort to find common ground. They will let you know that your agreement can never be precise enough to meet their criteria. They are in hiding - from you, and probably from themselves. Outside the training room, just one person can make agreem...