Hello again,
It's now tomorrow and the biggest key in getting something done is getting started. I said that I might not be writing daily, but I also said I'd be writing consistently and often. Knowing what I know, I know that the trick in building a muscle is using it ... and if there's going to be a significant output here it's going to be like building a muscle ... using this forum as a point of outreach and contact.
While it may be a little off-topic (re: Social Ontology) I want to spend just another minute or so of your time here ... on building the "muscles" you want to develop ... or better put the "muscle and skin memories" that will get you what you want as you move through your life. Many, many, many people I meet tell me about what they want ... then they do nothing about it (or at least nothing different from what they've done so far that hasn't gotten them that) or if they are especially ambitious they begin planning. Some of course endlessly realize that they need more input BEFORE they can begin so they read more books, buy more CDs and DVDs about it, attend training programs ... all in the attempt to ready themselves to begin. And they are continuously surprised at remaining stuck where they found themselves to begin with and find themselves now ... NO SURPRISE TO ME!
Yet this is definitively NOT the strategy that people who are successful use in moving themselves forward. (Someday ask me the answer Roye gave me to the question, "How does a leopard change it's spots?) What the most successful people I've met do is to begin ... regardless. Not foolishly ... but definitely courageously. Let me give you an example I'm close to ...
About six years or so ago a very bright, very talented, already accomplished young man attended an early MythoSelf(tm) Process training program Nancy and I were running in Leichester, England. He was a graduate, practicing physician who was trained as a plastic surgeon. At the time he was doing locum work, or temporary work filling in as needed in hospitals around the U.K. He was doing this because he wanted to find a way to leave medicine and to be studying NLP and hypnosis. He was studying with the two folks who sponsored Nancy and I for the program in Leichester and that's how I met him. Let's take a jump forward for the sake of brevity ...
It occurred to him that he wanted to learn the process I was using in the program he attended and made it his business to learn with me. He was tenacious in attending programs I ran, and learning from and with me. Fast forward again to the meat of this story and he's now learned a tremendous amount. He's used it consistently in his own life, and he's used it in working with others ... but what he wants is to be in front of the room and training this material himself. He's not yet ready ... this is of course completely different from being competent or able ... he's not ready is all. And, yet to his credit he realizes something magnificent ... he will never be ready ... until after he's done what he's not ready for. He realized that he had to get up in front of the room BEFORE HE WAS READY FOR IT so that he could get ready. This is true of all those who have developed exquisite skills ... they put themselves in the arena.
Have you ever seen early movies, or even better commercials that some well-known, well-respected actors appeared in? Typically they are not very good, some are joke, and others are just bloody awful. But, they are persistent if they are to make it. They do the most magical thing imaginable ... they show up! And this is what this young doctor began to do as well ... he was showing up, not just attending programs.
So here it is, he's in front of the room, and he's presenting ... first just a few minutes in the morning of a program opening up the day. Then a small piece about a topic he's prepared later on during the program. Eventually I'm asking him to do this or do that with me up front. Then he's presenting whole sections from the front of the room - getting better with every presentation. Finally, I ask him to cover for me while I step away. This is the big time ... up in front, all alone ... and having to find a way to make it work. Of course he does, and to some extent brilliantly. This is the realization of a magnificent idea ... a dream become manifest.
We could recognize that he'd already proven he could stay the course as he'd graduated from medical school. We could say that he's exceptionally bright. We could say a lot of things about him ... and yet none of these things is really unique. There are a lot of people who have learned to be disciplined in getting what they want, in a controlled arena, playing by the rules set up by others - e.g.: school, there are a lot of bright people around, there are lot of talented people around ... and there's a damned sight fewer than there are successful people doing exactly what they want to be doing because they set a path and stuck it out ... hacking their way through the jungle of both obstacles and opportunities as they showed up. Yet this particular young doctor did exactly that.
Of course those who know him know that I'm talking about Dr. David McDermott, MythoSelf(tm) Master Trainer. They also know that he's as good as I'm portraying him to be. They've seen him in front of the room, they sat with him during an exercise, they had his attention in a one-to-one format explaining and demonstrating this work and experienced what it's like to be opposite of him when he's doing his magnificent work. Yet what they may not realize is how many times he stepped up to the plate BEFORE HE WAS READY so that he could learn to be ready all the time.
What's interesting is that regardless of how many I tell this story, or how many times David tells this story ... there will be more people who remain waiting to be ready than get "IT" and begin. Yet this is exactly the strategy of success ... BEGIN.
Best regards,
Joseph
2 comments:
Joseph -
I want to go a little deeper with your premises re: social ontology.
You wrote:
"...in order to have a discussion or better yet a dialogue we have to have some agreement about what we talking about. That in essence begins to define what social ontology might be - a shared/collective agreement about what something means and for all intents and purposes "is." As we operate in our shared collective social environment we create meaning together. This meaning as we perceive it to be is our reality - and we co-create it collectively. That's as good a definition of social ontology as we need to begin with."
I found this quote on a blog I track in my RSS feed...
http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/
"Social Cognitive (SC) is the property of systems whereby the collective behaviors of entities interacting locally with their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge. SC provides a basis with which it is possible to explore collective and distributed decision making without centralized control or the provision of a global model. To tackle the formation of a coherent social collective intelligence from individual behaviors, it must consider concepts related to self-organization, and the social bounds. It also includes the role played not only by the environmental media as a driving force for societal learning, but also by positive and negative feedback produced by the interactions among agents. The results will be the collective adaptation of a social community to its dynamic cultural environment."
This is a complicated way of saying what the real focus is...
http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/archives/000299.html
You descibed that piece this way:
"The question is how are our expectations about what hasn’t happened yet creating our expressions that in turn create what hasn’t happened yet?"
As in the nascent science of doyletics (www.doyletics.com),
what you're suggesting is that
our preconscious experience has
built in a template of bodily experiences that become the raw material for our post operational
expression later in life. When we
effectively 'fight ourselves', we are attempting to overcome the
distortions we experienced/adapted to way upstream.
So if our past is rooted in a social realm we are only thinly aware of and our future relies on developing a coherent level of intent to explore novelty without the aid of pure kinesthetic competence, does this mean the heart of your application of social ontology resides in making distinctions about the present (whatever social reality we're in)
and the ontological experience of now (that unshareable realm)to determine the most compelling path?
In effect, what I'm taking away from what you're suggesting is that the *outer*/shared or social world 'presents' a distillation of our other-than-conscious past and the *inner*/unshared or personal world 'manifests' a distillation of our other-than-conscious future, based largely on our intent/openness to novelty...
If so, does the practical use of
the Mytho tools provide an AQAL access to both sides of this coin?
Tacitly, MRF 07.31
I used to think there were 2 kinds of people: those who basically see what needs to be done and do it (or "begin" as you said) and those that don't.
Following the Reverend Awdry, I called them "useful" and "not useful" people. That's how they seemed, on a team.
My view has softened. It's not now "useful" or "not". It's a question of scope. How big a scope can a person deal with and begin? There are those that can begin with a very small task, and those that can begin to change the world. In many areas I count myself as useful. Then sometimes I find myself being not.
Mike G
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