Belief Makers

Wow, we've had a lot of discussion both on and off the blog regarding the basics of Option. Thank you everyone for your comments, emails and phone calls. I thought it might be useful to look at several of the topics we've discussed.

What's the Point
One of the things that I learned from Paul Weichselbaum was to always be asking myself, "So, what?" I think that "So, what?" has become my greatest weapon in my arsenal of productivity. It keeps me from wasting time on activities that are irrelevant to what I'm trying to accomplish, it helps keep meetings on track and productive, and it lets me avoid endless hours of explanation and argument by jumping to the end and asking, "Let's say that everything you're about to explain is true; how would that change what we're doing?"

In a comment on Back to Basics, Ari offered:

I thought this might be relevant...

Bruce Di Marsico, From "Beliefs are not a problem"

"Now the only judgment and beliefs that are really going to affect your happiness are judgments and beliefs that have to do with your happiness. It might not make much of a difference to your happiness for you to make a prediction about where the stock market is going to go, as long as your money, or your lack of it, is not going to be something that you’re going to make a judgment that you’ll be happy about or not.

A person who is really being happy might not make judgments or beliefs about their happiness, but they might make them about anything else, knowing that they are only just judgments, they are only just guesses, they’re only just beliefs, which they’re doing in order to get something or to conduct some business or to negotiate or to relate to someone."

The essence of what Bruce wrote is, "So, what?" We could spend years debating the nuances of judgments versus assessments versus fact-observation, but it all comes down to the question, "why are we looking at these in the first place?"

The basis of the discussion is not the question of 'what is a judgment', it's the question of 'what beliefs have the greatest impact on our happiness' (note, happiness is another term we want to clarify in a bit).

[You might also note that whereas Bears might talk about judgments being an important subset of beliefs, in the text above, Bruce presents them as parallel concepts (i.e., judgments and beliefs), not as super set and sub-set.]

Facts, Beliefs, Assessment and Judgments
Many of us who have learned about the Dialogue as a method of self-exploration or facilitated self-exploration have come to distinguish two basic forms of statement regarding stimuli: Fact/Observation and Belief. Those of us who learned about the Dialogue at the Option Institute^TM and Fellowship have further learned to segment beliefs into Assessments and Judgments.

Let's start with statements regarding the temperature of the air outside. Within the context I've described above:

1. "It's -1 degrees" would be an example of fact/observation.
2. "It's cold outside" would be an example of assessment.
3. "Shit, it's friggin cold outside!" would be an example of judgment.

In all three cases, we're talking about beliefs. We don't know it's -1 degrees; we just believe it is. Still, one can see that the three statements regarding the temperature vary significantly.

Forget What You Know
Since they seem to cause so much confusion, I'm going to suggest that we abandon the terms: fact/observation, judgment and assessment, and instead look at the process in the following way. (Don't worry, we can resurrect these terms later.)


Please note that the following explanation by way of introduction presents what is ultimately a cyclical process linearly. Also, please note that the above diagram is not to scale; however, beliefs actually are green.

Our world is crowed with gazillions of stimuli which are illustrated in the diagram above in orange. Of the gazillions of stimuli only a small number fall into our awareness (we'll talk about that process later.) Our minds are crowded with zillions of beliefs (represented in green); these beliefs vary in emotional charge. Some are quite positively charged (happiness fueling beliefs), some are negatively charged (unhappiness fueling beliefs), and some don't have much charge one way or the other.

As various stimuli enter our awareness, we engage a subset of our beliefs that we consider relevant to the stimuli. For most of us, this process happens so quickly that we would call it automatic. However, I would suggest that we simply view it as really fast thinking.

As we engage relevant beliefs, they form a filter through which we experience the stimuli that have entered our awareness. It's the beliefs that actually lead to our emotional responses. If we engage happiness-fueling beliefs, then we respond happily. If we engage unhappiness fueling beliefs, then we respond unhappily. In fact, one might say that our happiness is directly proportional to the net sum of the charges on the beliefs we engage.

For example, let's say that you encounter someone you're quite fond of. Your Happiness Quotient might be computed based on several (oversimplified for the sake of illustration) beliefs illustrated below.

Belief	Charge
He's wonderful	+6
I need him	-3
He's not going to want to be with me	-5
Happiness Quotient	-2

So What?
In the end, whether or not a statement is fact/observation or belief, whether or not a belief is a judgment or an assessment is not particularly useful; I would go so far as to say it was simply intellectual masturbation.

What actually matters is what beliefs you engage and the degree to which each of them fuels either happiness or unhappiness.

Both factors are important as the same belief experienced by two different people can have completely opposite happiness fueling effects.

All the above only matters insofar as it helps us achieve our goals, which in this case are generally to become happier and specifically to guide our self-exploration in a way that helps us ask the most meaningful questions.

Working Backwards
A great way to keep yourself on track with what's most important (i.e., most relevant to accomplish your goals) is to work backwards from the goal.

If our goal is to become happier (however you want to define happier), then let's start there. Working backwards from a goal of being happier, we fundamentally have two choices, we can look at situations where we're already happy and make our happiness bigger; or, we can look at situations where we're unhappy and turn them around. Option is particularly good at the latter, and not particularly good at the former (I'll explain more about this in another article.)

Working backwards as we apply option to modify our unhappiness works something like this.

1. We look at situations in which we manifest the specific unhappiness we'd like to change
2. Once we've identified a situation, we dig into it looking for specific stimuli that result in our unhappiness.
3. Having isolated those stimuli, we then look at our beliefs regarding them.
   
4. As we look at those beliefs, we identify ones that have particularly strong charge
5. We then dig into the beliefs with the strongest charges becoming more and more specific
6. As we become specific in our understanding of our beliefs, we identify gaps or flaws in our logic and/or potential faults in our assumptions
7. As we identify these gaps and faults we can choose to keep them, fill them, change them etc.
8. Changing the beliefs changes the charges associated with them which in turn changes our response.

Stimulus->Belief->Response or Response->Stimulus->Belief
As Iris and I talked about all this yesterday, we realized that the structured presentation of concepts and techniques as a sequence can be misleading when it comes to applying them to the real world. For example, we can talk about the process of stimulus-belief-response. Stimuli pass through beliefs that yield responses. This is a great conceptual model, but the sequence is not particularly useful in discovering why we do what we do.

The application of stimulus-belief-response in conducting self-exploration is most effective when done in the sequence: response then stimulus then belief. We start with the response that we want to change (e.g., what would you like to explore today), we identify the stimuli that seem to trigger the response (e.g., what's an example of a time when you responded that way), and then we look at our beliefs regarding those stimuli (why do you belief that...)

That's it for this morning: much more to come.

An Invitation
As you know, the Belief Makers blog is completely open to your commentary. Please let me know if you agree, disagree, see something totally off or something that's really working for you. Also, if you would like to contribute and article on this or any other relevant topic, please let Iris know via the FaceBook group and we'll get you in there.

Happy Sunday, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, option, philosophy

Every Friday until November 7, 2010 you will find entries from a series written by Iris about her training to run the New York marathon in 2010. It is something she never aspired to do; she has never run a distance of more than 2 kilometers in her life. In this series she describes her adventures and how she works on her beliefs to transform her challenges and successes into one great experience.

This Saturday morning I am clear that Marathon training comes down to a 'mind' game. I've come to believe that most of us are capable of running a marathon (after training) as long as we are willing to work on our beliefs and uncover what we say to ourselves to motivate ourselves and create sustainable beliefs that motivate us to go on for long intervals of challenging exercise.

Tuesday
On Tuesday I covered a distance of 5.174 KM (including my 5 minutes of walking warm-up), which was my furthest distance up to then and even though there was nothing else to do but feel proud, I instead felt disappointed and tired.

My goal was to run 30 minutes without stopping, but a little faster then the day before. I started at a higher speed, and after a couple of minutes my body started to give feedback to my brain: this is too fast, slow down! I tried to ignore it, but I know now that ignoring it doesn’t work. You have to counteract with strong positive beliefs otherwise the “slow down” comes back to you faster than you can imagine!

That morning I was not creating positive beliefs. I was working out on a day that I had planned to take off and I seemed to have in my head that working out may be overdoing it. Still, because of my schedule working out that day was the more sensible thing to do. So while working out, every time my body sent a signal, “hmm getting warm; hmm, need some water; hmm, muscles feeling tight” I translated it to "see, you should be resting today. You're too tired to run!”

Labels: iris tuomenoksa; marathon; beliefs

Based on a bunch of discussions I've had of late as well as some of the comments I seen on various blogs and discussion groups dedicated to the Option philosophy, I thought it might be good to get back to basics.

Before starting, I want to be clear that I have absolutely no credentials to speak of; I'm not certified in any way in regard to the Option philosophy. I imagine that I'm the last person on the planet that Bears would want talking to anyone about Option. Also, I would note that if you're someone who actually looks at credentials to validate what someone is saying, well... please stop now.

Clarifying Terms
Once upon a time (in the early 70's or late 60's), a man named Bruce Di Marsico invented something that he called the Option Method (and at times, Option Therapy or the Option Process). I would note that under the threat of severe saber rattling, I feel compelled to let you know that the latter is a registered trademark of the Option Institute which is itself an unregistered trademark of Barry Neil Kaufman. I know, it's silly and perhaps unbelievable, but people literally get all sorts of nasty-grams for not appropriately referencing the Option Institute and its founders. Sigh...

Anyway, as far as I can tell, all the core principles of Option such as stimulus-belief-response and the method of talk therapy referred to as the Dialogue all originated with Bruce.

Among the small group of people to whom Bruce taught the Option Method was Barry Neil ("Bears") Kaufman. Bears subsequently wrote several books about the Option Method, renaming it the Option Process® which he trademarked. He also established a really wonderful place called The Option Institute and Fellowship, which is a 5013c n0n-profit religious organization that among other things offers workshops that facilitate experiential learning the Option Process. The tag line for The Option Institute^TM (trademark of Barry Neil Kaufman) is "A place for miracles", and I must say that, in my experience, it is.

All this is to say that, when I refer to Option, I'm referring to the core system of philosophy that originated with Bruce. I'm not referring to Bruce's specific instantiation (The Option Method) nor Bears' trademarked version of the same (The Option Process) nor the non-registered trademarked place that Bears established called The Option Institute; I'm just talking about the philosophical core.

The Foundation
Bruce's critical insight that forms the basis for everything else is simple: our emotions are voluntary actions, not involuntary reactions. Everything we feel is something we do, not something that happens to us. Being something that we voluntarily do, every emotion, every feeling is a choice. In particular, for Bruce and Bears, happiness is a choice.

Labels: mark tuomenoksa, option, philosophy

I had a fascinating conversation with a friend, an educator of Math educators,who is getting frustrated with the educators she is educating, and would like to bypass them, and go straight to the point, the mathematics students!  We started talking about big ideas in mathematics: those that give the most bang for the buck, the most benefit for the effort.  She feels that there are relatively few, and when they are mastered and expanded upon, bring enjoyment and satisfaction in most mathematics education. Unfortunately, she says, most teachers and students spend much of their time focused on the smaller ideas, which,by themselves can seem quite irritating and irrelevant.  This leads to math frustration and many people,  faced with some differentiation or imaginary numbers, decide that mathematics is just not for them.

I was pretty excited at this insight.  What are these big ideas in mathematics?  I certainly didn't know them and I taught math grades 7-12 and first year college level algebra and probability theory.  I can be really good at following an algorithm, no understanding necessary (I spent many years thinking about whether computers can demonstrate intelligence, the Turing Test and ELIZA).

 Now that I'm doing second and third grade math with Simonne, I'm really fascinated by how much I'm learning!  Now, if I could get a handle on what these big ideas are....  I asked my friend,and she rattled off a few.  I only caught one.  She said that if a child becomes comfortable with the concept of complements, large chunks of mathematical processing become easier.

For example, the complements in 10 are 9 and 1, 8 and 2,7 and 3 and all the other pairs of numbers that add to 10.  The picture shows how a very small child would become comfortable with this idea by building a wall with cuisenaire rods such that every row has only 2 rods, except for the first row,which has the orange rod (the orange rod represents something 10 units long).  Even before a child knows that 7+3 = 10, he understands that the orange rod is the same as the black rod and the light green rod put together.

One possible expansion of the idea of complements is in finding change from $1 (or $10 or $100...any other) can be done easily by knowing the complements in 10 for the rightmost digit,and the complements in 9 for all the others!  Try it.  What change would you give me if I gave you $100 for a $67 item?

Ok,what has this to do with the 20%?  It's from that guy Parento and his notion that 20% of causes lead to 80% of the effects.  I'm already doing this in a few areas:

• In Jay's home program, I decided that being able to relate and communicate was the 20% that I was going to make really big.  I decided that the other skills, like being able to write his name, though useful,would fall into the 80% that wouldn't really go far in getting me what I wanted for Jay.
• In business, I decided that being able to connect with people and be helpful is my continuously expanding 20%,vs the 80% of product specific knowledge
• In my relationship with Isaiah, I notice we experience the jet stream when we pay attention to the big things that are so big,they seem invisible, like the things we enjoy experiencing, our common passions and visions.  I try out hyper focussing on the small stuff that I allow to take up space, but don't add value.  I haven't found that useful.
• I'm on a quest to figure out what the 20%  is in Mathematics, so my kids can really learn something, instead of fronting,the way I did for so many years.  

Labels: big ideas, cuisenaire rods, faith clarke, pareto

I've been noticing that there seem to be only four numbers that people use when trying to make decisions: 1, 2, 3 and ∞. Remarkably, all four tend to lead to bad decisions or no decisions (although no decision is an oxymoron).

One is for Victims
Most often, we seem to use the number one when making decisions. We'll use phrases such as, "There's nothing else I can do" or "I simply had no other choice" or "Things like this just happen" or "People like me just..." or "You tell me what the alternative is!"

Now, when we use the number one in making decisions, we tell ourselves that it's really zero, that we're not making a decision, that the decision is out of our control, that it's been made for us. We're victims.

However, this never really is the case. When we use the number one, it simply means that we don't like what we see behind door number two or door number three. Rather than simply saying that we don't like the choices we've been presented, we say that we have no choice.

So, one (or none) is a lie. We always have at least two options.

Too Much of Two
The more sophisticated among us who know that whether or not we admit it, whether or not we acknowledge our options, we're always making decisions. We know that whether or not we like it, there's always at least one alternative. So, we adopt two as our favorite number.

Whereas the one-ers would say, "I can't just quit my job!", the two-types would acknowledge that they can always quit, but that they don't necessarily like the consequences of doing so. Two is a great step forward.

There are many decisions that practically come down to A or B. Should I stay or should I go? Should I be with Tommy or should I be with Jane? Should I take that drink or not? Should I steal the money or not?

However, as appealing as two is (I mean, it's twice as good as one), two is an artificial construct we use to avoid hurting ourselves by thinking too much; in the real world of decisions, two doesn't exist.

Getting to Two
There are several ways we get to two.

One is to ignore micro-decisions along the way. The alcoholic two-type sitting at the bar in front of a glass of vodka contemplating what to do next, is only there because he's denied or avoided all the decisions along the way that could have kept him out of the bar in the first place.

A second is to clump and contrast. We take a great variety of alternatives and begin to group them. We group 16 options into 8 groups of 2, then 8 groups of 2 into 4 groups of 4, and then 4 groups of 4 into 2 groups of 8. Once we have two clumps, in order to keep any of our clumpies from escaping and confusing us, we turn up the contrast moving from high definition color to shades of gray to black and white. Rather than 5 or 6 political candidates representing a spectrum of perspectives and plans, we end up with liberals and conservatives. We get to traditional and modern, radical and orthodox, smart and stupid, good and bad... We clump and we contrast.

A third way that we get to two is the ultimatum, being told that you absolutely have to choose between A and B, or else. (Those of you paying attention will note that I just slipped in a third option.) Many of us fall for ultimatums, especially when they come in the form of passionate appeal or threat. Rather than simply asking, "What's up with the ultimatum?", we fall for it and begin debating the merits of A and B.

The Horns of a Trilemma
Although rarely used, three is a great advancement in decision making technology. You'll often hear three emerge after a long debate among two-types or as a clever response to an ultimatum. It will often take the form, "Hey, why couldn't we just do..."

Indeed, three is a great number and whereas two is 100% bigger than one, three is just 50% bigger than two. Unfortunately three gets no respect. It's kind of the relief pitcher replacing two only after two is completely exhausted and the game is all but lost. However, when applied properly, three can stop an ultimatum dead in its tracks. You know, "or what?"

Still, in the end, three is no less artificial than one or two. It's just a vast improvement.

Infinitely Better
I'm not sure how decision making has evolved to this, but as you move beyond three, numbers show up less and less frequently. You'll see the occasional four, the rare five and... well, they all but disappear until you get to infinity (∞).

Although infinitely many options is actually the only thing we ever really have, we seem incapable of grokking infinity. Just the thought of infinitely many choices gets some people completely catatonic. Unfortunately, rather than taking a deep breath and clumping and contrasting our way to say a million choices or a thousand choices or a hundred or even ten choices, we seem to respond to infinity with one.

Granted, there are some practical implications to processing infinitely many options, but nonetheless it can be really useful to at least remember that you always have infinitely many options available to you when feeling like your down to one (synonymous with none) or facing an ultimatum or on the horns of a trilemma.

Grokking Infinity
The nice thing about infinity is that you don't have to understand it to use it. If you find infinity a bit overwhelming, then I recommend thinking about infinity like salt or pepper or garlic (mmm... garlic); use it to add a little flavor to your decisions. When you feel like you have only one option just sprinkle a little infinity on it and see how it morphs.

If you feel stuck in a job that you don't like and that you can't leave, then just add a little infinity and voila, you'll start to see how many ways there are to stay in a job and make it better.

If you're being pressed to decide between your friendship with Mary and your friendship with Susie, add a little infinity and you'll quickly get to, "What's all this got to do with me? Go work it out!"

A little infinity goes a long way.

Infinitely yours,
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Over the last year, many people have suggested that I see a psychiatrist and to check out if I have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

My first reaction was, "WHY?"

I didn't question whether or not I had ADHD; my knowledge was limited, but the few things they told me about ADHD sounded like me. No, the WHY was more of, "How could it possibly help me to get diagnosed?"

My guess was that even with a diagnosis, I would still have a problem with clutter, disorganization and mess; I would still feel an urge to interrupt people and to finish their sentences; I would still...

So, why would it be in my interest to get diagnosed rather than simply addressing what seemed to be obvious challenges?

A Little Research
Just before Christmas, I decided to look more into ADHD. My first reaction to the information I found was a sense of confirmation; my second was grief.

I realized how much I have identified with being a messy person and how many self-judgments I've held. (Yes, Benevolent Warrior, even a Mentor certified at the Option Institute^TM can still hold self-judgments; just not while facilitating a dialogue.)

I realized how good it would feel to tell my friends and family that my habitual messiness came from not knowing how to be neat and from becoming extremely tired every time I looked at the clutter.

Imagine if, in preparing for her marathon, Iris' legs got extremely heavy every time she looked at her running shoes. It would be a loooooong way from where she is to finishing that marathon.

Well, that's how I feel about organizing stuff. Every time I look at the clutter, I get tired. Then I get confused as I try to stop myself from being tired, but can't figure out how to do that either. My confusion makes me even more tired and voila, it's a loooooooong way to a neat apartment.

Diagnosis for Whom?
I quickly realized that it was not my family I needed to tell this to; I needed to tell it to myself. As soon as I gave myself the diagnosis of ADHD, I started to let go of my self-judgments. For years I've tried an endless variety of approaches to cleaning based on my judgments that I should be able to clean my apartment. Now, having ADHD, I decided to just make it really easy: do 5-10 minutes and then take a break.

After taking some tests on the Internet, my next step was to get an appointment with a psychologist specialized in ADHD. She confirmed the diagnoses (it's still not official since only a psychiatrist can diagnose you with ADHD) and she gave me the name of a psychiatrist so I could try some medications.

So Now What?
What I did since the meeting with the psychologist (other than looking forward to trying some meds that might show me what peace of mind can be like), was to determine:

1. which of my symptoms pose the biggest problems for me,
2. what characterizes times in my life when I seem to have more problems,
3. what characterizes times in my life when I seem to have fewer problems.
4. what research is available on ADHD that could be useful to me.

What I have come up with so far is:

1. I don't work well in noise such as sitting next to someone who is always on the phone
2. I can do anything for five minutes
3. I thrive in workshops and brainstorming sessions where multiple ideas are on the table at the same time
4. Having my skin touched calms me down
5. There doesn't seem to be connection with food and ADHD other than what is good for everyone
6. Vitamin D might have a positive influence on ADHD symptoms (I want to learn more about this)
7. Low estrogen increases ADHD symptoms
8. Strenuous workouts can be effective in helping with ADHD; however, I'm not sure if this is only true for men, since I believe that it might also lower your estrogen level

It's Nice to have a Diagnosis

Labels: ADHD, all blogs, awareness, diagnosis, joy vigh strand

I'm a systems guy. I've made a career of taking large masses of seemingly chaotic and unrelated stuff, finding the patterns and relationships, and then creating simple systems that make them manageable.

There are a few things that I've found characteristic to systems guys (and gals). First, systems guys are inherently lazy. We're always looking for ways to do more with less, ways to take ten tasks and reduce them to one, ways to simplify and make things easier.

Second, systems guys don't like to remember details; we prefer to derive information based on the system. As Richard Feynmen put it, "Why spend time memorizing something that you can simply look up."

Third, systems guys always believe that they can make their system better. As a software guy building systems I've designed, I almost never finish what I've started before I start looking at what I've done and say to myself, "Hmmm... I should really redo this part."

Fourth, systems guys tend not to be that interested in the business aspects of marketing and selling their systems. They prefer to be off working on the next chaotic mound.

What's A System
A system is simply a way of organizing a bunch of stuff into something that can be explained and understood simply and succinctly.



For example, western music is built on the twelve tone equal-tempered scale, an organization of sound into a set of 12 distinct notes from which all music is derived. The notes (A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G and G#) are each assigned a frequency. Each time the frequency doubles, the sequence starts again. For example, there's A 110, A 220, A 440, A 880 and so on. Each of the notes relates to each of the others via a constant ratio, the 12th root of 2 (1.05946309). To get to A# from A, you simply multiply A by the 1.05946309. To get from A# you get to B, you multiply A# by the same ratio. The 12th root of 2 multiplied by itself 12 times gives you 2, or double the original frequency. Simple.

You might say, "why does this matter?"

The equal-tempered scale matters because it makes it possible to have one instrument (e.g., a piano or a clarinet) that can play in any of the 12 keys. Prior to the equal-tempered scale, scales were defined by harmonic series. The harmonic series is the naturally occurring set of resonant frequencies for any given tone: twice the frequency, three times the frequency, four times, and so on.

Each note in an enharmonic scale is defined by its naturally occurring frequency within the series. If you've ever heard really good a cappella quartet, it will often sound as though there are more than four people singing. This is because the singers adjust their tuning from equal-tempered to enharmonic. Doing so causes the notes to align with each other sonically. The alignment creates resonance causing other frequencies in the series to become loud enough that they sound as if another voice were there.

The thing about enharmonic tuning is that notes vary slightly in frequency from key to key. An E in the key of C is just a tiny bit sharper than an E in the key of D. As a result, to play enharmoncally, a musician would be required to have an instrument for each key.

With the equal-tempered scale, an A is an A is an A, no matter what the key.

But Wait, There's More!
One of the things that seems to amaze people is that I can hear a song, play it, and then immediately transpose to any other key. People will frequently as how I'm able to do that.

Well, from a systems perspective, there's actually no such thing as keys. You have a major scale which is simple a sequence of notes defined by their relationship to each other. Regardless of what note you start on, what key you're in, the sequence is always the same: 2-2-1-2-2-2-1.

There are 12 notes: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B. A C major scale is C D E F G A B. Start on C. Take two steps to D. Take two steps to E. Take 1 step to F. And so on. By just knowing 2-2-1-2-2-2-1, you've got the whole thing: every single major scale.

The same is the case for other scales (e.g., minor scales, modal scales) and chords. In fact, you could probably fit everything that you need to know to play any pop song you're ever heard onto a 3x5 card and still have room for your grocery list. (The little chart to the left shows you just how complicated people can make 2-2-1-2-2-2-1.)

It Can't Be That Easy!
I've explained this to lots of people who decide that it can't be that easy. If it were that easy, then how come there are these huge books on music and music theory? How come it take years to learn to play or become proficient? What gives here?

Well, there are a couple of reasons that music isn't taught this way. First, most people don't really get systems. I mean, they can use the word, but most of us don't spend our time really thinking about and understanding systems. Instead, we tend to learn 'facts' and 'examples'. We never learn the core.

Second, if you reduced everything to a simple system that anyone could learn easily and quickly, then you'd put a lot of people out of business. There's a lot of money to be made in shrouding systems in complexity and mystery.

For example, if you understand music at a systems level, there's never a need to purchase a sheet of music, ever. You can learn to figure out anything in almost no time. However, if you don't understand the system behind music, you're completely dependent upon sheet music. You can get better at playing more complex sheet music, but you'll never be free of it.

Systems and the Dialogue
Over the past week or so, we've had lots of discussions regarding judgments and the difference between judgments and assessments. Some of the discussion has served as a great example of the difference between systems-thinking and non-systems-thinking.

When you create a list of words that represent judgments and a list of words that represent assessments, you are firmly in the camp of non-systems thinking. From the list, you get a sense of what a judgment is and what an assessment is, but in the end, you don't actually understand the difference at its core.

If on the other hand you were to create a system or formula that distinguishes judgments from assessment (such as that Sree offered), then you don't have to know any words to discern judgment from assessment. The system frees you from the list.

Good and Bad Systems
Most people are not good at systems thinking. Even fewer are capable of designing systems. Designing systems requires much more than organizing a bunch of disparate stuff into a reasonably structured set of categories and steps. It involves developing an underlying theory of all the stuff in the first place; one that holds true independent of situation and circumstance. One that doesn't require the stuff to understand the stuff.

I have a friend who, in response to a fellow researcher's attempt at system development, once said, "10,000 spare parts hurtling through space in close formation does not an airplane make!" Yet, oftentimes what people offer up as systems are merely a structured collection of related or semi-related things without a cohesive, applicable theory as to how everything actually works.

To be sure, this type of organization into an approach or method can be quite useful. However, for systems people they're still akin to being bound to sheet music rather than simply understanding music.

Autism Treatment and Systems
Over the past months working with Kat, I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about Autism and Autism Treatment. Although her background is not in systems, Kat demonstrates solid systems-thinking and it's been fun to look at many sundry approaches to Autism from a systems perspective. From the perspective of a systems guy, there are lots of great ideas, approaches and techniques out there for helping kids with Autism, but there are not any great systems per se. It's been heartening to see that as the understanding of autism, sensory systems, child development and other related areas improves, many of what would previously have been considered to be treatment alternatives are on a convergence path.

Still, from a pure systems perspective, it's apparent to me that any one of the methods out there could use some solid systems work. From my perspective, there are still too many lists to be learned, to many techniques to be developed, too many names for what appear to be fundamentally the same thing. (To be clear, I'm a systems guy, not an Autism guy.)

Rather than reinventing what's already out there, Kat and I have been developing systems that could be applied to virtually any approach to Autism treatment to fill gaps, to impose better organization and structure, and to better track what's working and what's not, Kat providing the Autism expertise and me the systems expertise. In doing so, we don't replace what's there, we just provide parents a better framework for understanding what they're already doing and why they're doing it so that they can operate more effectively and more independently. So far, it seems to be really helping and I'm hoping that various organizations out there will see the benefit to both themselves and to their clients.

Not for Everyone
Of course, as is often the case when various methods and approaches start down a path towards convergence, rather than embracing their similarities, many players try to distinguish themselves in their ever diminishing differences. Things such as taking credit, maintaining brand and holding on to market share can get in the way of embracing like-minded people who are all have the same mission of helping families of kids with Autism.

Kat and I ran into this a bit with some of the folks at the Option Institute^TM who at first saw what she was doing as taking their ideas and now I believe see what she's doing as either competitive or not beneficial to families who are implementing the Son-Rise Program^® approach. I'm hoping that they'll come around because I see the Son-Rise Program^® as a wonderful approach that just needs a bit of help from a systems perspective. But, you never know.

Systems Thinking and You
Learning systems thinking is really powerful. It enables you to move quickly past the dependency on the guidance of experts into a zone where you can do more and more on your own, where you can derive answers rather than looking them up.

You can apply systems thinking to anything from cooking to running to playing music to driving to work. It starts simply by becoming aware of what you already know and what you can figure out based on what you already know. It then requires just a bit of confidence to make assertions and start testing them. It's not about getting your assertions right, it's about learning how to make assertions, what works and what doesn't. The getting right part will come.

What's nice about systems thinking is that's content independent. You can learn it doing anything. I recently discovered an online course in piano that teaches piano quite similarly to the way I would. If you're interested, check out Play Piano Today.

Also, if anything that I've written about today makes sense to you, I was thinking we could set up a little side discussion on systems-thinking, what it means and how to do it.

Happy thinking!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

A while back I introduced you to the competition being held between my friends Mark Kaufman and Jonathan Harwood for World's Dumbest Smart Guy. Well, outside the occasional contribution from my dad who is kind of World's Dumbest Smart Guy Emeritus, Jonathan and Mark have been consistently breaking records and raising the bar in what I can only describe as a leap-frog competition of epic proportions. If only they were to have focused their ingenuity on curing cancer or solving world hunger... But alas, they seem to be destined for another kind of greatness.

Until recently, I thought that these two represented the best the planet had to offer, but all that's changed.

Smart as a Verb
Now, any one of us is contender for World's Dumbest Smart Guy. The first step simply involves being really smart. If you've never considered yourself really smart, it's quite easy to do. Being smart has nothing to do with innate ability or the mythical Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Being smart is something that can be learned, practiced and developed over time.

In fact, the phrase being smart is a bit of a misnomer. What I'm talking about would be more accurately described with a verb, not a state of being. So, instead of talking about being smart, let's talk about doing smart (like playing piano) or smarting (like running).

Now, if each of us were to take up playing piano or running, we would probably start at different levels based upon any number of factors such as our experiences, genetics, skills and attitudes. Over time, as we practiced and developed our skills, we would get better. In fact, depending on a bunch of factors such as attitude, focus, effort, insight and passion, the one of us who seemed to have the most talent (another mythological construct) at the beginning might not be the best player six months later.

Taking up doing smart is no different. Each of us starts at a certain level, but that has nothing to do with our potential or capacity for change.

At Least He Has His Music
As a kid, music always came really easy for me. I could hear things and play them. I could spend an hour or two with a new instrument and start playing it. At fourteen, when I learned notation, I began writing scores for musicals and big bands. Easy.

As a kid, other things were impossible for me. I was overweight, uncoordinated and last picked for any athletic team. I drove my dad to the brinks of insanity with my math skills. I couldn't organize my thoughts or cogently communicate them. I took remedial reading classes all the way through high school. Impossible.

Learning to Run
When I was thirty-two, I decided that I wanted to be athletic. A man named John Sheehan, one of the executives at work had taken a bunch of us on week-long team building and personal development course that involved everything from diet and exercise to high-ropes courses to learning how to become more aware and better at listening. The teachers were experts in what they taught. For example, the people who talked about diet and exercise were coaches who'd worked with professional sports teams. I soaked up everything and came home inspired to put into practice all that I'd learned.

Over the next six months, I ended up dropping about forty pounds going from 180 down to 140. I was able to run ten miles in just under an hour averaging 5:53 per mile and on the road, I could ride my mountain bike twenty nine miles in an hour. I started getting involved in mountain bike racing and even did some extreme rides such as a 185 mile trail ride that we completed in about sixteen hours (that's me in the yellow after 185 mile of mud, rocks and roots).

I was an athlete.

What Changed?
So what changed? First, I was taught that the dichotomy of athletic people versus non-athletic people doesn't exist; there are simply people who do athletics and those that don't.

Second, the most important skills required to learn anything are focus and attention. It's amazing what you can learn without instruction simply by being focused and paying attention to what you're doing. In many cases, everything you need to learn is already in you.

With running, I started paying attention to my stride, what felt good and what didn't, what felt fluid and what felt jerky. I started paying attention to my breathing and then to the correlation between my breathing and my stride. At first, I had no idea what to do with my arms; they seemed to get in the way. So, I experimented. I would let my arms hang loose at my side. I would swing them widely in sync with my legs. I would flap them randomly.

When I got stuck, I would watch others run, focusing so intensely that I would start breathing with them.

And of course, I would run! I ran every day, focused and attentive. And, eventually, I learned how to run.

Learning to Smart
Learning to do smart is no different than learning to run. The keys are focus, attention and practice. The first step is to recognize that there are no smart or dumb people, there are just people who do smart and people who do dumb (most of us being capable of both).

The next step is applying focus and attention to how you think, your process. How do you behave when confronted with a challenge that requires you to be smart? Do you remain present and clear, or do you distract yourself with emotions based on beliefs that you can't handle the challenge. If you do the latter, then work on the beliefs that are keeping you from being comfortable; practice refocusing yourself, becoming present and clear.

Next, practice doing smart. Dive into things that usually leave you feeling dumb. Pay attention to your process, how you respond, where your mind goes; develop a style of doing smart that works for you.

In the end, if you start with the premise of smart being something you do, if you really focus and pay attention to your process, and if you practice, you can be really smart.

Back to the Competition
Now that we know how to be smart, it's easy to understand how to do dumb. Even the most skilled smart guy can render himself completely stupid simply by losing focus and not paying attention.

Of course losing focus and not paying attention are also misnomers; it's not about losing focus, it's about focusing on something other than that which is most pertinent and useful, e.g., focusing on winning rather than running, or focusing on being accepted rather than what you have to say, or focusing on the audience rather than the music.

Mark and Jonathan tend to establish new records when they hyper-focus, i.e., the get so focused on one thing that they lose context and perspective. It's a great technique that leads to really funny breakthroughs in the competition.

Surpassing the Masters
Now I want to assure you that doing smart is not a life sentence. You can always undo it all in just a few moments. When it comes to dumb, Jonathan and Mark have only momentary lapses of greatness. This is due to flawed technique; being hyper focused on a specific element of what you're trying to achieve to the exclusion of all other elements doesn't happen that often. Their greatness is fleeting.

To completely wipe out smart is easy. It requires the engagement of big emotions such as fear, anger, self-righteousness or envy. Moreover, it requires you to engage these emotions in a sustainable manner; scary movies and the occasional argument won't cut it. To eradicate smartness, you must engage yourself in activities like jealousy or holding grudges or revenge. If you do this well and long enough, it can become habitual and you'll never need to worry about being smart ever again.

Alternatively, if you're already engaged in these or like activities and you seem to have lost all capacity for smart, you can restore smart simply by deciding to let go and love.

So, go out there an do smart... or don't.

Happy Sunday,
Teflon

PS ...my continuation of yesterday's blog is still to come.

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Mark told me he wanted to use some extra article space this week, and so you will not see an article from me today.

Labels: books, inspiration, iris tuomenoksa

Preface
I love to write about things that are happening in my life in the moment. There are lots of reasons for this. Writing is easier when all the material is right there, right now. Writing helps me clarify and organize my thoughts. Writing is cathartic and feels really good. Writing is an adventure; I never know where simply pursuing what's going on right now is going to take me.

I love to write about real people, activities and situations, not fictional or hypothetical ones, specially when illustrating concepts. Hypothetical examples tend to be artificial and flimsy. When you use hypothetical examples, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that you've really thought something through when you haven't. Your hypothetical example may miss things that a real one wouldn't. So, I like to keep it real.

Which gets to the third thing. I absolutely believe that learning to live authentically is absolutely and positively the single most transformational thing anyone can do for themselves. By living authentically, I simply mean being consistent inside and out across time and space: just being consistently who you are no matter what the situation is, no matter whom you're with, no matter when.

It's not a righteous or religious thing. It's just makes life a whole lot easier. I would wager that some day, someone is going show empirically that much of what ails us in this modern world can be traced back to living inauthentically, keeping things inside, fearing that we'll be found out, spinning everything so much and so often that we no longer no what is and what isn't.

Last Night
As Iris and I munched on spelt crust Puttanesca pizza at Baba Louie's last night, we discussed our week. Iris was over the moon with her fledgling experiment with running. I was glad to be wrapping up a big project I've been working on for Angel Medical Systems and especially glad to be nearly done writing FDA-compliant documentation of my work. On Wednesday, we had a wondrous experience celebrating Quinn's fifth birthday (Iris and Quinn spend time together in the playroom six days every week. Check out Zen Master Quinn.)

As our discussion ebbed and flowed we drifted into a sequence of really interesting (and from my perspective bizarre) experiences over the last week involving folks at the Option Institute^TM and Autism Treatment Center of America^TM, two amazing places that have helped me and so many others, places that I love and want to thrive. As we talked, I would occasionally say, "Wow, that's really interesting, I'd like to write a blog about that."

I would start explaining the concept, how it was illustrated by our experience, and why it was meaningful and useful.

After the third or fourth such excursion, Iris stopped me and said, "I really love these ideas, but as you've been illustrating them, you keep talking about hypothetical people and organizations, when in fact they're based on real people and a real organization."

"Normally, you're authentic and up front regarding names of people and groups. Why is it that you often talk about people from the Institute and the Institute itself anonymously?"

After my initial eloquently phrased response of, "What do you... well you see... I... uhmmm... err... Do you really think I do that?", Iris pointed out, "Yes, but only when it seems that someone might take what you're saying as negative or unflattering."

Well, slap me upside the head and call me Susan. After momentarily losing my command of language generally let alone English, I looked at Iris and said, "You're right!" We then proceeded to figure out why.

Enabling Dad
I remember when we finally decided to do something about my dad and his drinking. It was April 14 (the night before tax returns are due in the USA), I was in the middle of band rehearsal in the basement and the kids were all upstairs with Rene getting ready for bed when my dad stumbled into our house drunk, maniacally yelling about his f#&@ing computer and that I had to help him get his taxes done.

I ran upstairs and found my dad in tears about not being able to get his tax return done. He had a boxful of papers and some floppy disks. Rene had come running down the stairs as I had come running up. I looked at her saying that I'd take care of this. I yelled down to the band to carry on without me. I sat down to figure out my dad's taxes as he pissed himself and passed out on the couch.

After finishing his tax return and getting him home, I told my mom that we had to do something about my dad, that we couldn't keep waiting for him to simply get better. At this point, my mom wasn't ready to use the word alcoholic; there were just times when my dad drank a little too much.

We found a place associated with the hospital in town that offered an inpatient rehab program. When I talked to my mom about it, her first question wasn't "Is it a good program?" nor was it "Do you think they can really help him?"; it was, "If goes to a place right in town, won't people find out about it?"

Over time I've discovered that keeping this kind of thing secret doesn't work. "It takes a village" as they say. But the village can only help if they're clued in to what's going on.

Baby and Bathwater
OK, so back to 'why'. As Iris and I talked, I realized that in many ways I was operating like my mom, perhaps coming from a really different place, but having the same effect nonetheless.

As you become more and more authentic, you end up decompartmentalizing your life. You end up just being you. Nonetheless, I'm perfectly happy to let others compartmentalize themselves. Someone can be loving and caring in one situation, and hateful and malignant in another; I simply look at each for what it is. Each is just an example of something he's doing; it's not who he is.

Also, I don't confuse the message with the messenger. Einstein can be a self-absorbed, misanthropic bastard and I'd still buy relativity.

Thing is, I don't believe that other people operate as I do. I believe that, in general, people confuse doing with being and that they confuse message and messenger. I believe that people routinely throw out the baby with the bathwater.

As a result of that, I find myself actively avoiding direct discussion of things about the Institute or people there simply because of my belief that, upon seeing some of the things that might be perceived as negative, people would chuck the whole thing. I don't want that.

So, instead, I do what my mom did with my dad. No one intervenes and the village can't help.

The Best Way to Travel
Seeing all this feels really good. Thanks for traveling with me through my process.

I absolutely believe that living authentically and openly is the best way to go. The discomfort we experience as we emerge from the darkness of our lies and secrets into the light of authentic living is momentary. Our anticipation of that discomfort is amplified by fear and uncertainty.

However, once we get past it, there's nothing so freeing as having nothing to hide, no secrets, no lies, no waiting for the other shoe to fall or the skeletons to emerge from the closet. It's like coming off an addiction. The transition may be difficult, but being free of it is worth it.

OK, I'm clear now and I've got so much more to say authentically and openly, but I'm going to save that for tomorrow. For now, I'll leave you with a couple of questions:

Are you some who keep secrets and maintains lies? (If you find yourself viewing 'lie' judgmentally, then you probably are.) If so, why... who are you enabling... how does it feel... would you like to be free of it all?

Are there places in your life where you've kicked, where you've freed yourself from chains of secrets and lies? How did it feel to do so? Would you do it again? How come?

More tomorrow....

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, authenticity, empowerment, philosophy

Every Friday until November 7, 2010 you will find entries from a series written by Iris about her training to run the New York marathon in 2010. It is something she never aspired to do; she has never run a distance of more than 2 kilometers in her life. In this series she describes her adventures and how she works on her beliefs to transform her challenges and successes into one great experience.

During the last week, four people came up to me to tell me how inspired they were about me starting my marathon training. One friend told me that after reading my blog she is considering training for a half marathon. Another friend in the category of “running is awful” is considering training to run a five K as a fundraiser for her son. A third person was telling me how she realized that it is important to create time for herself, because that gives back to her family. All of them were realizing how this would be an awesome way to work on their beliefs…

What Happened this Week
Last week I didn’t run, but worked out every day to help my body to get going after not having worked out for, well... years. So I began the week on Sunday with my first run.

I had no idea what to expect, so I thought to start by running at a comfortable (comfortable?) pace and holding on to it as long as possible. I then would switch between running and walking as long as I could do it. Eighteen minutes later I stepped red-faced and winded from the treadmill having covered 1.35 miles.

I thought to myself, "Hmmm... I've got a long way to go!" and noticed that I was starting to feel disappointed with the result. But then I decided to just "stop it" and "not go there". Instead, I decided to be really happy with my first run. I complimented myself for taking this first important step. I considered how I would remember this moment in November after finishing the marathon and think to myself that ten months ago I couldn’t even run one and a half miles!

Brain Training
I bought a book that’s called Brain Training for Runners which keeps me entertained in the quiet (quiet?) hours. It combines research around running with belief making, and it gives lots of information that is very, very useful to me. It tells for example that research has proven that the body tries to prevent itself from exhaustion by giving feedback to the brain that says 'Stop it!'.

Matt Fitzgerald explains that, to teach your body to run longer and longer distances, you want to consistently train in a way that moves beyond and ignores the signals your body is sending to your brain to stop. In particular, you want to constantly pushes your limits in the beginning of your training!

This guidance is, umm, well, completely opposite to anything I've ever believed before. When it comes to my body telling me to stop, I've always been a really great listener. Nonetheless, I decided to adopt this new belief and have been challenging myself to run more and longer every run I do.

On Wednesday I crossed the 2 mile mark, and today I will run 2.3 miles. I am excited about the progress I have made in this week. I have pushed through my limits and have learned that my experience of exhaustion completely disappears within 10 to 30 minutes of completing my workout. If I can recover that fast, I must not be at the limit of my running, so it is easy to say that I can do a little bit more the next day. The pain in my legs which started the morning of my first run has miraculously disappeared. Mark told me this would be the case, but I could not imagine it!

Thoughts to Action
Yesterday night, I signed myself up for my first 5K run ever. On February 12 I will do my first public running performance and instead of being horrified I am really very excited. Interesting how things can change in such a short time…

Weekly Beliefs
I won't cover all the changes in beliefs that I made during this week, but I’m going to share a few clear changes in beliefs and some ways I have been motivating myself:

After my first run, I read a Facebook note of a friend saying that he had just run 10.8 miles that day. I immediately created the belief: “Wow, if he can do it, I can do it!”

After my first thought: "Oh, that’s not good enough! This will never get me to the Marathon", I was able to jump to more useful beliefs such as:
To push my limits I have been using positive affirmations:
Seeing that my body recovers quite quickly on all the changes I have implemented, I made up the belief: “I've been given a great vehicle and with enough driving lessons I can run a Marathon with a smile on my face.”

I transformed last week's belief:“This is going to be a challenge, but doable” into “Training for a Marathon is great fun and an interesting challenge that impacts many different parts of my life and I am ready to go for it!"

Physical Changes

• The pain in the muscles in my legs disappeared.
• I lost weight
• My skin is not itchy anymore while running
• I've started to look forward to my next workout (who would have thought)

Next Week’s Goals

• Get myself to relax in my breathing instead of trying to control it
• To do a 4.5 - 5K training run on January 31 (I'm building up to it)
• Tweak my beliefs a bit more every day
• Be more conscious of what I eat and drink
• Keep better notes about my thought processes so I can share them in this blog.

Well, I’m off to my next training session. What are you doing today?

Labels: iris tuomenoksa; marathon; beliefs;

I've been thinking about breaking my internal watch. So many things are driven by time! I think time is a great construct, but can I just have it there as a structure, like the walls in my house, and not think about it all the time? The more I think about time, the less present I am. When I have lots to do, it's hard for me to settle down to allow the time required for 'slow' tasks, like being in the playroom or reading to my kids.

Don't get me wrong! I'm much better than I was. I just want to continue being aware that time is just a concept, a way of framing what we do, not something that controls me, and that I'm in control.

It comes back to being fully in every moment. The funny thing is that when I plan my time well, I can actually forget about time. For me, something as simple as blocking time for an activity frees me incredibly to enjoy the moments and be fully there.

A great example of this was one day last week. I cleared some time to read a Zachary story, a Simonne story, and then do some Math. I knew I had until 3pm to do those three things.

Once the time was cleared, I broke the watch! I decided not to watch time, to really relax and enjoy the interactions. This was not about checking something off my list.

We started by reading Saturn For My Birthday, and didn't go any further! We got sucked into an entire unit study on Saturn, why the planet would float, the relative size to earth, the moons, the solar system in general. We then looked at every other planet, the length of its days, its years, and so on.

I unearthed several books on the topic and we had a field day. Actually, a field ten-days. I was able to expose my inner artist (I did the sun and the background of the picture you're seeing below) and the children thoroughly enjoyed drawing and painting the planets and moons. Zachary wants to make a solar system mobile, so our Saturn inspired activities may continue for some time.

This is what happens when I create space for something,then allow the thing to completely saturate the space: delectable!

Yet, there is something about stopping to plan my time, the steady call of all the activities demanding my attention, that keeps me from planning. I have told myself that 'planning' is less important than 'doing'. (Hmmm... assessment or judgment?)

So, I've decided, if doing is important, then maybe planning is important too. Here's how I plan to help myself (I've decided to make this one of my challenges as I work with me in my own playroom). I will be challenging myself to see planning my time as a wonderful and enjoyable activity that gives me more time for what I want to do.

To do this:

1. I will enthusiastically and thoroughly celebrate all my attempts to plan
   
2. I will invite others to share planning time with me, because I enjoy people around me working on a similar project
   
3. I will actively recognize that there is no one to reprimand me for not planning, but me!
   

So don't be surprised if you hear me saying:

"Guess what I did today? I sat for ten full minutes and thought about what we would do in our home school tomorrow! It was wonderful!!"

If you really love doing and don't love planning, then maybe it's time to view planning as a wonderful way to help your doing! By planning our time, we can completely forget about time. By paying attention to time, we can ignore it. What a luxury!

Have great fun planning your time and then forgetting about it!

Labels: faith clarke, homeschool, planning, present, solar system

I was wondering the other day about things that happened in my past. While studying psychology I learned that we can suppress things that continue bubbling in the deep and then break out one day making a big bang.

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, beliefs

I'll often use words that evoke emotion in others. I love words like stupid, ugly, tonnage, asshole, fat, evil, dumb, lazy, worthless and bastard. They can serve as the judgment equivalent of a Geiger Counter. In fact, with words like these and a little elbow grease you can create a judgometer.

Having your own judgometer is fun and useful. A judgometer is great for surfacing latent judgments. You can use a judgometer alone or with friends. To use your judgometer, simply invoke one of the above words (or a word of your choosing) and see how people respond. The degree of reaction to the word is directly proportional to the degree of judgment held by the person reacting.

Stupid
One of my favorite judgometer words is stupid. It seems that the word stupid is highly charged for many of us sending our judgometers deep into the red.

The thing about stupid is that it's, well... a word. It means slow to learn or understand. As a word it can't really have any effect on you unless two criteria are satisfied.

1. You believe the word accurately describes you, and
   
2. You hold a judgment about the word

In order for something to register on the judgometer, it must satisfy both these criteria.

Judging Our Judgments
One of the fallacies that pervades discussions of the Option philosophy is that judging is bad. (Note, bad is another great judgometer word). Over and again, I'll hear people say, "If you practice Option, then you're not supposed to judge."

While this would be consistent with Christian philosophy, or at least Christian philosophy as Jesus taught it, it's not something inherent to the Option philosophy. Although dropping judgments is something that practitioners of the dialogue learn to do in order to better facilitate the exploration of beliefs by others, dropping judgments has no place in the philosophy per se.

Philosophically our goal is to be aware of our judgments and how they affect our thoughts and feelings, not to banish our judgments. In fact, if you look at some of Bruce Di Marsico's writings from the late 60's regarding the Option Method, you'll notice that he talks about our judging our judgments as being one of the things that leads to unhappiness.

On Being an Asshole
Based on responses I've received regarding my statement 'just because you're loving and accepting of someone doesn't mean that he's not being an asshole', I take it that the word asshole is great judgometer.

Although I'm sure definitions vary, to me being an asshole simply means: acting in a manner that displays total disregard for anyone else often at the expense of others. Now, rather than saying, 'Hey look, so-and-so is acting in a manner that displays total disregard for anyone else often at the expense of others' each time I refer to someone doing that, I find it easier to say, 'Hey look, so-and-so is being an asshole.'

Why is this important?

Important is a Judgment
Before I explain why it's important, I'd like to point out that important is a judgment as is unimportant. Each time we make something important we're judging it as having greater significance, value and/or meaning than something less important. When we call things unimportant, we're judging them as having less significance, value and/or meaning.

Why is important important? Because important is a great judgometer word. However, unlike judgometer words such as stupid, ugly, lazy and asshole, important doesn't stand alone; it requires a companion word or concept. So, to use important with your judgometer, you'll need additional material.

If you're talking with someone who is enthusiastically explaining something she considers significant, meaningful and/or of great value, then proper application of the judgometer would involve dismissing what she's saying as unimportant.

If she responds simply by asking you 'why is it unimportant?' without any trace of emotion and without losing her enthusiasm, then you've got someone in the 'passion-with-a-loose-grip' zone. She's able to enthusiastically engage without hanging on to the outcome nor taking it personally. If not, then you know that you're talking with some who is hanging on to the outcome and taking it personally.

Denial or Acceptance
Let's get back to why it's important not to drop the word asshole when deciding to love and accept someone. Here's the tricky part that I think we've been circling over the past week or so.

Remember, being an asshole simply means acting in a manner that displays total disregard for anyone else often at the expense of others.

When I decide to love and accept someone who is being an asshole, it doesn't change the fact that he's being an asshole. It just means that I am not judging him for acting in a manner that displays total disregard for anyone else often at the expense of others. I see clearly in the full light of day how he's behaving and I love him.

When I decide to love and accept someone who is being an asshole, but I find it difficult to use the word asshole, it indicates that I am still holding onto judgments regarding his actions and manner. Since I'm maintaining my judgments about his being an asshole, in order to love him I have to deny that he's acting in a manner that displays total disregard for anyone else often at the expense of others.

Love based on denial isn't a sustainable strategy. In fact, it's a complete nonstarter. You never get to address the things that you judge in the person you love, because in order to love her you deny they're there.

Guilt vs. Guilty
I once worked with this guy who was absolutely amazing until he did something assholic or stupid. Because he held strong judgments about being an asshole or doing something stupid, he'd get to the point of denying that what he did ever happened. He'd simply reinvent the whole story with amazing powers of denial.

One time we gave presentations in a large team meeting that was recorded so that those who could not attend would be able to hear what transpired. Talking privately after the meeting, I pointed out that some of the things he said were "less than loving" (he's a strong advocate for loving people).

His initial response was that he hadn't in fact said what I'd indicated. So, having the audio recording, we played it back and listened. Upon hearing himself say verbatim what I'd suggested he'd said, his response was... well... um... it was to erase the recording and ensure that there were no copies lying around.

Bears often uses the phrase, "It's never to late to have had a great childhood."

I think this is a great phrase that is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean that we delete the recording, that we deny or block out or rewrite the facts. It actually involves seeing the facts of our childhood in full light with crystal clarity, and then rewriting our experience of them. It's not about changing what happened, it's about changing our judgments.

What Sets Off Your Judgometer?
One of the things that defines us is the set of words that send our judgometers into the red zone. The words are different for each of us; they tell us a lot about ourselves. Over the next day or two, I invite you to note the words that you react to. What do they tell you about yourself? Why are the words charged for you? How do those charges affect how you perceive yourself and interact with your world?

I also invite you to explore your past experiences and actions, especially those ones that you may not feel so great about. Are there skeletons in your closet that you're hoping no one will find? Subjects and experiences that you avoid? Perhaps it's time to drop the denial routine and start working through your judgments.

So everyone, it's time open up those closets, turn on the lights and fire up your judgometers!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

One of the things I like best about believing that we are "belief makers" is that every day is a new day. I can wake up each morning and decide how I want to live my life. I can make the same decisions each day and continue to live my life the way I have been or I can make different decisions and change my life completely. Some people do this self exploration once a year and call the changes "new year's resolutions". I don't know about you but for me this process never worked. Within a few days I would "break" the resolution, judge myself for it, and wait a year to make the same old resolutions. Retailers LOVE that so many people operate this way as it makes their marketing plans much easier. How many adds have you seen lately about diet products, ways to quit smoking, going back to school, etc.? This year I have only one resolution. It is to "keep moving forward". Inspired by the Disney movie "Meet The Robinson's".

I have decided that my issue is simply that when I judge myself, I stop moving forward. I actually move backward as I look back at all the examples and excuses I have for why I "failed" and then flood my brain with beliefs about why whatever I am doing is impossible for me. Really productive huh? I love my belief that moving forward no matter to what is incredibly more helpful. I am having fun playing with the unknown. Moving forward without a perfect picture of what the forward looks like is quite freeing. Often times I would only move forward if I could achieve exactly what I wanted the way I wanted it. For example, I would only exercise if I had at least a full 45 minutes to do it. Since that rarely happened, I rarely exercised. By celebrating the moving forward verses the outcome of the movement, I am exercising a lot more. Even if that exercise takes the form of simply parking far away so my walk to the destination allows me some exercise. Funny thing... I always heard people talk about parking far away but my rigid beliefs about exercise prevented me from trying it. Now, I find it fun verses my previous description which was "stupid".

Today is a new day. A day full of opportunities to make new beliefs. A day to explore new possibilities of simply moving forward. So with all my love I say to you "keep moving forward".

Love to all,
Kathy

So, I totally get the idea of not placing artificial limits on ourselves and that our default sense of our own limitations tends to be artificial. Growth is simply the process of transforming what we can't do into what we can do. If we peer far enough down the sequences of growth steps, eventually one of them will always look impossible. Yet, if take each one as it comes, voila!

I'm a great advocate of being able to do anything you set your mind to, but "a man's got to know his limitations."

Conservation of Stuff
You've probably heard the law of conservation of matter, i.e., matter can be neither created nor destroyed. As big as it is, the universe is still finite. Essentially, it's a zero-sum game.

There's also Kaufman's Law of the Conservation of Hair. Once a man reaches adulthood, hair can neither be created nor destroyed. It simply moves from place to place.

I'd like to introduce you to Teflon's Law of the Conservation of Doing. Being part of this finite universe, we operate finitely. Each time we decide to do one thing, whether we're aware of it or not, we actively decide not to do another thing. We can become more efficient and effective at doing, but in the end, it's still a zero sum game.

Simply, Teflon's Law of the Conservation of Doing is:

Everything we do requires that we not do something else.

Why is the Conservation of Doing important? Well, first of all, whether or not you're aware of it and whether or not you believe in it, it seems to be in effect. You never ever make a decision to do something that doesn't have an impact on other things you're doing.

Second of all, not recognizing the first of all has it's own consequences. If you continue to make decisions to do things not realizing that your choices affect what you're already doing, everything you do slowly degrades in quality. People who do this often end up in a general malaise where nothing feels right, nothing is going well, and they can't quite put their finger on what it is.

Third, the impact of violating conservation of doing may not always be immediately apparent if you're surrounded by others who pick up the slack. However, once you either burn-out or exhaust the capacity of the slack-picker-uppers, the consequences of ignoring Conservation of Doing can result in an explosion rather than a slow degradation.

Doing Anything vs. Doing Everything
I've been called everything from eternal optimist to patron saint of lost causes and it's always been tricky as there are many times in my life when I've been able to accomplish things that everyone said were impossible, and, there have been many times where, well... they were right.

What's the difference? I've realized that one of the fundamental differences for me has been the difference between doing anything and doing everything.

When I find myself in an impossible situation where I'm surrounded by people who are smart, talented and motivated, it seems that the impossible always becomes possible.

However, when I'm surrounded by people who are doubtful or pessimistic (people with a wait-and-see attitude), well, it never works. My first response is to believe that I can get them there, but the net is that I end up trying to fill all the gaps myself, i.e., trying to do everything. In the end, it typically fails.

Confusing Philosophy with Practice
A common thread I've uncovered among people who tend not to do what they say they're going to do is a philosophical bent that completely ignores conservation of doing. For example, I know lots of people who wax poetic about the infinite capacity of love and how the more they love, the more love they have. I think this is a beautiful notion akin to the mythical perpetual motion machine. Beautiful, but, well, stupid.

Folks who subscribe to this belief tend to fall in and out of relationships on a regular basis. Or they tend to have many dissatisfied customers. Infinite love tends not to last very long. Why? Because each of us has only so much time to spend with others each day, and, while the quality of our love may be wonderful, quantity sometimes matters.

This can be explained in terms of food:

Let's say that you depend on me for food and that I commit to feeding you. Let's also say that I make these commitments on regular basis so that I have more and more people I'm feeding. Over time, I start to ration the food because of quantity limitations, but the quality of the food gets better and better.

At some point, you're down to 1 teaspoonful per day, but it's the best spoonful ever. Eventually, you starve to death, but with really, really great food!

Love begetting love and setting no limits on my capacity for love are both wonderful concepts, philosophically.

Your Stop List
Do you ever find yourself in situations where you're overwhelmed by all that you have to do feeling that you're not doing anything well? Perhaps you feel that you're doing some things well, but really slacking on others. Are you burning out the people who work for you or with you whether their employees or friends or family members? Have you exhausted the limits of your capacity to improve your efficiency?

If so, it's likely that you're violating Teflon's Law of Conservation of Doing.

The solution to this is simple and straightforward albeit perhaps a bit challenging to implement. The solution is simply to, as Faith put it so eloquently, "Just Stop It!"

However, in this case, the Stop It doesn't refer to how you're feeling, it refers to what you're doing.

Creating a Stop List
A key management technique that many people never learn is the creation of a stop list. A stop list is simply a list of activities that you're going to no longer do, or at least put on the back burner. If you're overworked to the point of exhaustion, a stop list can literally be a lifesaver. If you're in business, a stop list can be the difference between success and bankruptcy. Stop lists are amazing tools.

To create a stop list:

1. Grab a piece of lined paper and draw four columns labeled Activity, Time, Priority, and Stop.
   
2. In the activities column, write down all the activities that you're doing or trying to do. (Don't forget things like sleeping, eating and driving to work).
   
3. For each activity, roughly estimate in hours or fractions of hours the amount of time required each day to do that activity well and write it next to that activity in the Time column.
4. For each activity, specify a priority level from 1 to 10 in the Priority column making 1 the highest priority. The priority level should reflect the priority you desire, not the one that you've put into action.
5. Add up all the hours and write the number down at the top of the page.
   
6. Walk through your list and write Stop in the Stop column of each low priority activity you intend to stop. As you do so, subtract the amount of time for that activity from your total time.
   
7. Repeat step six until the number of hours is less than 24.
   

Implementing Your Stop List
As you implement your stop list you'll be amazed to find out how much time you spend on activities that you don't consider important or perhaps not desirable at all. Also, as you implement your stop list, don't be surprised if not everyone is happy about it.

If you're a slack-picker-upper, then the slack-droppers might not be pleased. If you spend a lot of time in inane socializing around the water cooler, the office-gossipers may miss you. If you spend lots of time chasing down meaningless data for executives who don't know what to do with it anyway, you may be asked to explain yourself. The people who routinely walk into your office to gripe may get their noses out of shape when you stop them after the third time you've heard the same complaint.

However, as you implement and stick to your stop list, you'll also start to feel much better. The quality of the things that you do will improve dramatically. You'll see progress in your life and you'll improve in areas that matter to you.

Corollary to Teflon's Conservation of Doing:

As you stop doing things that don't matter to you, the quality of the things that you continue to do will get better and better.

What will you stop today?

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Matthew 5:43-48 (New International Version)

Over the last couple of days I've been learning about the art of love and it's been a wonderful experience.

"Love" as an Incantation
I received a call from a dear friend a couple of days ago who had received a bunch of calls from other friends telling her that yet another friend had called each of them accusing her of all sorts of terrible stuff. In addition to the accusations themselves, the accuser asked everyone he called to decide between him and my friend asserting that, if they didn't decide, he would no longer befriend them.

Knowing my friend and the circumstances surrounding the accusations, it was imminently clear that accusations were baseless and the accuser was simply lashing out at my friend because... well I'm not sure why. The catch is this: in each case, as the accuser made his accusations he sandwiched them in statements of how much he loved the friend he was accusing. It's as though, as long as you 'say' you love someone, then you can 'do' anything you want to them.

Our accuser seems not to quite get the point.

Loving the Accuser
I'm pretty good with people coming after me, attacking me, etc. and still maintaining an attitude of love and acceptance. I'm not so good when I see people going after friends of mine, especially when they're bullying.

When I heard my friend's story and how essentially the accuser was trying to discredit her to the point of taking away her livelihood, my initial response was to go after him hard, fast and decisively. I'm quite good at that kind of thing and, well, although I could have said that I would do so lovingly, it wasn't exactly love that was driving me.

My friend appreciated my enthusiastic support, but did not take me up on my offer. Instead she asked if we could simply brainstorm ways to love her accuser and potentially bring him around. Wow! She was actually doing love, not just talking about it.

So, we embarked upon an exercise to reach out to her accuser in as loving and accepting a way as possible. It's been an amazing experience.

The Clarity of Loving
As we loved and accepted her accuser, our thinking became clearer and clearer. We considered all the accusations to see where they might have merit and where they didn't. We saw how the accuser was simply acting out of fear and then worked to understand what might be driving that fear. We worked together to draft a letter to her accuser inviting him to talk about the accusations and to work things out. Everything became clear, easy and relaxed.

In the end, neither of us knows how all this will work out; in the end, it doesn't really matter. The process of approaching the whole situation from a place of love seems to be all that really does matter.

All You Need
As I indicated, we're still in the midst of this little dramatic adventure. Who knows where it will take us and what we'll discover. But, as Chris Kisling pointed out the other day, "In the end, he who loves the most, wins!"

I would add for clarity, he who actually loves, not he who says he's loving.

Lovingly, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, love, mark tuomenoksa

Every Friday until November 7, 2010 you will find entries from a series written by Iris about her training to run the New York marathon in 2010. It is something she never aspired to do; she has never run a distance of more than 2 kilometers in her life. In this series she describes her adventures and how she works on her beliefs to transform her challenges and successes into one great experience.

On Sunday, when I announced that 2010 would be the year that I run my first marathon, I had the experience of being "high" from the thousands of feelings and beliefs floating around. I felt excited and overwhelmed. I felt fearless and scared. I felt curious and I felt like looking away. I had no idea how I would accomplish what I intended, but I clearly made the intention to accomplish it anyway.

Taking Action
Instead of doing a dialogue to get myself together, I decided to simply take action. I researched the steps I would need to take to get me to my goal and then immediately started implementing them.

I found that although I usually like to clear my mind before taking action, taking action can be a great way to clear my mind.

The first actions I took were these:

Labels: iris tuomenoksa; marathon; beliefs;

...or, Did Anything Really Change?

I was sitting in a diner with a friend this evening, talking about the things that we allow to fuel our feelings of sadness or happiness. She is a recent college graduate and has not yet found a job in her chosen career path. She feels uncertain about the future, about where (in which country or state) she will live and what she will do. Sometimes, she is doing fabulously, thinking about her bright future, focused on actualizing her dreams. At other times, she feels lost and wonders about her ability to navigate her world. We were talking about some of that this evening, and I wondered: What internal changes prompted her change in response? What changed?

From Not Knowing to Knowing
My husband had to tell his personal assistant that she no longer had a job due to whatever companies say these days. As far as he was concerned, she was doing a great job. Last week, she was feeling comfortable. This week, she is not. What changed?

From Genius to Globally Delayed
I look back on my journey with Jaedon. Being my first born, I had no prior frame of reference; everything he did was amazing. He started staring at his toes and fingers at 3 months, and didn't stop for years. I thought he was incredibly smart. "You are going to be a scientist, the way you are studying those fingers!"

Jaedon could find the pivoting point of any object and set that object spinning for seconds, no matter how irregular its shape. "Amazing!", I thought.

Then, a few months later, I was introduced to the idea of autism and all the related jargon. Looking at his hand became 'posturing' and 'stereotypical behaviors'. Spinning objects became 'perseveration'. I moved from amazed to depressed. I started telling Jaedon "Stop looking at those hands! People will think something is wrong with you!" It was no longer amazing or smart to me. What changed?

Jay improved so much between the time we originally tried to get an assessment at 22 months and his official assessment at 30 months, that I went into the Kennedy Center full of optimism. He was looking people in the eyes, going over to people with interest, playing with toys... This was amazing!

When I read the report they wrote about him, I wondered "which child are they writing about?" He was what? Globally delayed in all domains? Moderate to severe autism according to the CARS rating? I was devastated. What changed?

I allowed someone else's voice to be louder than my own internal voice (a bunch of unhelpful beliefs there). I threw out my voice that said, "This is wonderful", and substituted a voice that I had given authority, a voice that said, "This is horrible."

My son was exactly the same boy that I was awed by just 24 hours earlier; yet, I had embraced something completely different. Once I gave up my own voice, everything started changing all the time. My whole frame of mind and my perspective all depended on whom I spoke to and the credibility I gave them. I would then replay their voices over and over in my head to firmly establish their unhelpful thoughts in my mind. What changed?

Back to the Diner
My friend seems to be doing the same thing I did with Jaedon and all my advisers. Hopefully, she will talk soon to someone who gives her a chance to explore her beliefs and find her own answers. Tonight, I was not that person. I just told her to stop it! (see the link in the title...I know, but watch it, hilarious!)

I guess I was really talking to myself. Honestly, why should I give up my own voice, my own good feelings, and place higher value on the thoughts and feelings of others? It just results in me embracing negative beliefs about my life and situation. No! I decided not to do that anymore and encouraged my friend to do the same.

OK... maybe I will gift her a dialogue with Iris, just in case my Stop It! didn't help.

Amazing Me, Amazing You
I've decided to look for new opportunities in every life happening. I can find ways to help my son, who is amazing, communicate more effectively, just as I can find ways to help my 'typical' children do so many other things more effectively. In both cases I can celebrate their existing amazingness while moving happily towards their future amazingness. No need to motivate myself with fear that they aren't really as amazing as I thought, or, that I'm not as amazing as they need me to be.

I can maintain my idea that I am amazing, that my husband is amazing, that my kids are amazing, that you are amazing, even if external things happen that I may not like or want, even if others tell me otherwise.

My wish for you is that you will do the same (no dialogues required), no matter what comes your way.

When you hear a new opinion, receive a new assessment, finally get the news, remember, nothing has really changed.

You are still the amazing you that you were yesterday!

PS, Please enjoy this inspiring example of alternatives to the dialogue.

Labels: all blogs, change, faith clarke

Based on the ever wise, insightful and delightful guidance of our dear friend Chris Kisling, we've undertaken the process of renaming the A New Option blog. Going forward, A New Option will become Belief Makers.

In order to make sure that we don't lose any information or web references or google information, we'll be making the transition over the next week or so and have already begun with the blog page itself. I've also procured the url www.beliefmakers.com and will be constructing a site dedicated to this little endeavor we've undertaken together. Who know's what 2010 will bring!

Why Belief Makers?
Well, in addition to the URL being available, Belief Makers quite succinctly captures the core of what this blog is about. One of the things that really distinguishes us humans from other animals on the planet is our capacity to create, modify and act upon beliefs. Whereas much of the physical universe conforms to an action-reaction model, event A causes event B, we humans do not. Expose ten different people to the exact same event and you'll get ten distinct responses.

Why? One model suggests that each observer has a unique set of beliefs that filters (alters) their perception of the event. Rebuke one child and he becomes completely compliant; rebuke another and he becomes completely defiant. Witness defeat in one adult and he quits. Witness it another and he becomes more persistent.

Although one might site physiological differences or genetic differences or hormonal differences as potential causes for these variations in reaction, one thing has become quite clear: what you believe can have as dramatic an affect on how you respond to events in your life as any other variable, not just external or emotional events, but even physiological events.

Knowing this, then it seems reasonable to explore and understand how we actually go about manufacturing, modifying, accepting and discarding beliefs. Through this understanding, we develop a new tool to help us address the challenges in our lives. Although we can alter our reactions to the world around us through any number of means (exercise, diet, supplements, medications and so on), we believe that one of the biggest levers for change we have happens to be our beliefs.

A Open Marketplace
In essence, Belief Makers is a marketplace in which we buy, sell and exchange beliefs. Over the coming year, I look forward to an exciting and growing market. I look forward to insightful and challenging discussion. I look forward to dramatic change all through the power of beliefs.

So long, A New Option! Welcome, Belief Makers.

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa

Let me start by saying that I'm not sure where this one is going. Today's blog is a bit of an intellectual digestive process. It's all about me and not to be taken seriously.

The Users
When I listen to people, I tend to really listen. I follow their eyes, their gestures, their expressions. I really parse what they're saying. And more recently, thanks to my education from Alexander, I've also learned to interpret words based on how they feel versus what they mean.

One of the things I notice frequently when hanging out with a group of people is that many people don't do this. When the conversation shifts from one person to the next, the attention of the first person often doesn't follow it. As person B begins talking or answering a question, person A might drift out of the conversation (staring off, not reacting to what is being said, not interacting). My takeaway is that many people are interested in conversations when the focus is them, but not otherwise.

The Recyclers
Lately I've become less and less patient with the long and winding disjointed narrative threads that represent the inner workings of what substitutes in many people for thought, specially when the threads either have nothing to do with the stated intention of the speaker, or, when they've been replayed so many times they sound like the voice of an automated alarm system repeatedly saying "please exit the building."

The Conspicuous Consumers, et al
I long ago abandoned conversations with people who wanted to talk exclusively about their latest vacations or acquisitions or the latest gossip. More recently, I gave up on discussions of politics or business or education or the environment or psychology or medicine as I came to realize that oftentimes people are simply reciting well-formed (formed as in hardened cement) poorly-founded (thin on evidence and logic) opinions that they have little interest in changing. Even more recently, I've grown weary of diatribe of people who say they really want to change themselves, but simply can't because...

There are simply fewer and fewer conversations in which I want to engage. On Saturday, Mark K and Rachel J spent the night with us. As Mark was about 15 minutes into a 20 minute answer to a yes-or-no question, I stopped him asking him to drop the narrative and simply answer the question. If you're looking for rapid repartee and highly interactive conversation involving everyone at the table, talking with Mark can be like playing basketball on the beach.

Mark responded really sweetly curtailing his answers to yes/no and fill-in-the-blank questions to something under five minutes.

The Rigid
I approach most new tasks and challenges inductively, bottoms-up. I develop a strong intuitive sense of what I want accomplish (I can see it in my mind's eye) and then I jump right into the low level details and concepts; I skip all the stuff in the middle, all the hierarchical structures, all the frameworks, all the architecture.

If I'm working on software that requires me to learn a new language, I don't learn the whole language, just the parts I need to accomplish what I'm working on. If I'm writing a business plan, I first dive into the individual products and services to understand them and from that build the higher level structures. As I work with the lower level elements, the common threads reveal themselves and the overall structure emerges.

This approach has served me really well in designing and building new systems. The resulting systems are elegant from a design perspective, they easily adapt to change and new requirements, they work. This approach has also enabled me to be significantly more productive than my peers. While many are still trying to come up to speed on a new computer language, I've already finished the project. I won't be aware of all the nuances of the computer language that they've learned, but I'll have uncovered tons of undocumented features and capabilities.

The problem is this. When you work inductively, it's tough to collaborate with people whose thinking is reductive, top-down. They like to be handed the framework (the big picture) and a road map showing them where all the little pieces fit. If the framework isn't there, they don't know where to start. If you give them a framework without all the components, they'll start conducting an inventory and notice that some of them aren't there.

For me, the architecture just kind of pops out at the end; at least the left brain version of it. It's an artifact of the process, not the driver of the process. As a result of this, I can typically only begin collaborating with deductive thinkers as soon as I'm finished the project.

(Note: it's not that top-down doesn't work; it's just that it only works for well defined and understood systems, not novel ones.)

The Fearful
Since beginning this blog, Iris has received feedback on various occasions from some folks at the Option Institute regarding format, content and changes they would like to see. Iris incorporated much of this feedback, but not all of it. Apparently some of the folks at the Institute are of the 1% empty ilk and have therefore come to perceive Iris' efforts as not being supportive of the Institute.

Having spent time with venture capitalists and some fairly cutthroat business folks, and having witnessed firsthand what it can mean to be "unsupportive" (e.g., best make sure your D&O insurance is paid up), it's been a bit of a challenge to take this labeling of Iris' efforts seriously. But apparently there are people who have.

Over the past few days, I've witnessed several incidents of people who are distancing themselves from people like Iris and Joy, because they don't want themselves to be perceived as being "unsupportive" of the Option Institute. I had thought to post the emails themselves, but let it suffice for me to describe what happened.

For example, Joy from Denmark, who is one of the regular contributor to this blog, had asked a friend volunteering at the Institute for a month to bring back copies of the Adventures in Happiness book. When Iris contacted him to arrange his getting the books, he emailed Joy and her saying that he wasn't going to bring the books to Joy because he didn't want to be "perceived as being unsupportive of or disloyal to the Institute." He mentioned that he needed Option and couldn't afford to be cut-off as it were.

Another friend sent Iris an email wishing her a happy new year. When Iris responded suggesting that they might spend more time together in the new year, the response of her friend was that she didn't see them getting together any more, but that she hoped they wouldn't end up "enemies."

I can't imagine that there's any substance to their concerns, but it's amazing to see what happens when people (friends) begin to operate from places of fear. In this case, they end up being neither friends to Joy and Iris (from whom they've simply walked away) nor to the Institute (whom they end up portraying as some type of cult rather than the amazing place it is). It doesn't serve anyone.

The Nutritious
Over the years, I've learned to adapt to people no matter where they're coming from. I've learned to engage the users in broader conversation, divert the conspicuous consumers into the depths of philosophy and meaning, knock the fence-sitters off their fences, loosen up the rigid, and de-fear the fearful. But lately I find myself wanting more.

The more needn't mean other people. I notice that I'm continually more and more happy on my own than with others. However, I also notice that oftentimes being with others feels like running in deep sand with ankle weights. I even find myself drinking extra glasses of wine just to slow myself down to the rate of conversation.

In the end, I think it's just about time.

I'm already crazy busy and there are so many more things that I want to do, so many ideas and concepts that I want to explore, so many things I want to learn. Pete recently turned me onto an application that transforms the Mac into an amazing synthesizer and I've been writing new music like I haven't done in years. As I've learned more about sensory integration from Kat and medical devices from Jonathan, I've become really inspired to start working on device that could help kids with autism improve their sensory processing. The work I'm doing with relate to autism is just beginning to take off. On and on...

I guess, although I can adapt to and enjoy time with pretty much anyone, it's time for me to more actively surround myself with people who are nutritious. Of course, nutritious for me may be lethal for someone else, and vice versa.

But the main thing for me is to decide what that means (for me), and then to become more proactive in deciding with whom I engage (and with whom I don't.)

If you made it this far, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my musings. Do you think about the people in your life as being nutritious? Maybe you've considered them in terms of net energy flow... the people who take more energy than they give... the people who give more energy than they take... and the people with whom the combined energy exceeds the sum of its parts. Are you nutritious?

Thank you for listening.
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

In the last week I have asked the following question to a lot of people around me: what are you going to do in two-thousand-and -ten that you have never done before? I also answered the question myself at different times during these conversations. I am quite proud of my list of new things I will be doing this year, but I realized that I was not satisfied with my answers, because all the new things I will be doing flow from things I am already doing. For example: creating a new book with the A New Option Blog, or creating new activities related to my mentoring business and musical career.

I wanted to come up with something really challenging and new. Something I would never have thought about, and would be a real challenge for me. Something ridiculous!

There you have it!
Two nights ago, I found my answer when I was preparing for bed. I found the biggest challenge for me physically and mentally. A challenge that when I think about it, my mind says that's too ridiculous to even consider. I have been pushing away the possibility, and have tried to deny the existence of the answer. I kinda wish I never found it! But wouldn't it be great if I could do it?And naturally I can, because thousands of people do it every year. But I do not understand how they do it, and I never wanted to know.

I have to think about by friend Joy, who's visit in 2009 has somehow planted this seed in my mind. And now this seed bursted and the first small tiny sprouts are becoming visible. And I am fighting it will all my resistance, because I know this will mean that I have to change most of my habits, dig deep into my beliefs in many areas, and take action in a way I am very resistant to!

Yesterday evening I went to bed knowing that I am going to do it. And I could not sleep, because I am nervous and afraid. I know this year will help me break from thousands of behaviors and beliefs that are no longer serving me and create wonderful new habits, but I imagine it to also be a hard process. Probably the biggest challenge I have given myself since... I can't remember.

301 days
Three Hundred and One days left to my goal, and I know that I have to start without delay. There is a part in me screaming yes finally, do something! You have not been active enough. It's time to get your body in action and get over yourself. At the same time I am reciting a list of past events in my head that prove that what I am going to do is NOT, NOT, NOT an option.

I never ran more than two kilometers. And these runs have always been a mental struggle. I hate it. I hate that little voice in my head that says: what the F*K are you doing? Are you insane? This is totally ridiculous! Stop now. If it hurts it is unhealthy!

Lottery
This morning I signed up for the lottery of the 2010 New York Marathon and I will start training today. If I do not get into this Marathon, I will run another marathon at the end of this year to make sure I will go through this learning process by challenging myself in this new way.

My first beliefs to tackle:
1. It is going to be hard. I want to motivate myself with something more fun than this drama statement, but at this moment I strongly belief that it is going to be hard.
2. If it hurts it is unhealthy. With my light asthmatic lungs pain shows up easily in the beginning when I challenge them. I hate challenging them.

Mark sent me a link to a website this morning where a running mom is motivating others to start too:

"All you have to do to get started is put one foot in front of the other. You don't have to be fast. You don't have to have a lot of stamina when you're just starting out - you'll get there!You don't have to be in tip-top shape. You just have to get out there and put one foot in front of the other and make it a block, then another block. If all you do the first time you go out there is run ten blocks, you've done better than I did my first time running outdoors."

Labels: iris tuomenoksa; marathon; beliefs

One of the things that I encounter from time to time is people who are afraid of me. The thing about this phenomenon that may be a bit peculiar is that the people I'm speaking of aren't people whom you would consider to be timid or weak or in low positions. They're people who are nominally forceful, strong and in positions of relative power.

The other night, we were hanging out with friends talking about what scares us, and one of my friends said, "Well, you scare the shit out me!"

When I asked him why, it came down to him having always been the strongest person he'd known in regard to his area of expertise, and he simply didn't know what to do with someone he considered to be stronger. His having been afraid would have completely escaped me were I not to have asked.

This morning, I started thinking about how people who are nominally powerful manifest fear. It's often not easy to spot and as such, easy to misinterpret. That being the case, I thought it might be useful to share some of ways that I've seen strong, powerful people manifest fear. Seeing that it's just fear can be useful in understanding how to respond.

The Grin-F!^k
The Grin-F!^k (GF) is probably my earliest experience of how people in positions of power do fear. Essentially, to GF someone requires you to maintain a facade of friendship, supportive-ness and agreement while working behind the scenes to discredit and undermine the source of your fear. GF'ing has become almost required learning in the executive ranks of corporate America because it works, quite effectively.

The problem with GF'ing people is that there are side effects. First, because he is duplicitous, the GF'er starts to question the motives of others, "Are the really befriending me or are they just GF'ing me?"

Second, although the GF is used to cope with fear, being consistently duplicitous leads to greater fear. Third, over time, after you've GF'ed enough people word gets around.

Project
I love to argue: not the getting emotional and upset type of arguing, but the classic debating type of arguing. I love it because great arguments require me to be super clear on what I think and why I think it. After a really good argument, I feel like I have a much clearer understanding of both my position and the other person's position. Best of all, after a really great argument, typically both our positions have changed.

Over time, I've become really good at argument and I'm always looking for really good arguers with whom to engage. When I find them, I do so enthusiastically, energetically and with great delight.

The problem that I've found is that many of the really good arguers argue not to play with ideas or to gain clarity or to learn from one another, but instead, they do so to win. The problem with arguing to win is that it locks you into a position; you abdicate flexibility. And since no position is actually right, since every position can be improved upon, arguing to win with a competent person who's arguing to learn will almost guarantee that you're going to lose.

This can become quite unnerving for powerful people who are used to winning (and perhaps always win) arguments. The fear response in these cases is projection, e.g., accuse the other person of simply arguing to win.

You can learn a lot about a powerful person's motivations and fears when they start accusing you of motivations that make no sense to you or that are completely off the mark. What they're telling you is their own motivations and fears.

Disappear People
Many powerful people have what I would refer to as strong powers of denial, a useful skill if you want to attain positions of wealth and power.

Strong powers of denial can be really, really useful. Convincing yourself that things aren't so bad when all the evidence says otherwise, can be the difference between succeeding and folding.

Strong powers of denial can also have really interesting long term side effects. Justifying outrageous compensation because you're a CEO independently of how well your company is actually doing is one of my favorites. Claiming that someone is really good at their job simply because you like them or brought them into this world is another. And of course, there are all the justifications that go into egregious labor practices.

Over time, people in positions of power who've long exerted the latter form of denial tend to surround themselves with others who buy into the same beliefs or who will keep their mouths shut.

Over the years, I've gained a bit more finesse at communicating my observations of the discrepancies between reality and the perspective of the powerful person. I always do so in a manner that proposes workable alternatives, not simply criticizes what they're doing. Nonetheless, at times I find myself suddenly disappeared. Not fired, just not invited to meetings where my opinions might be pertinent to the discussion at hand. In some cases, the really fearful among them have asked me to work more from home, to spend less time at the office.

Question Loyalty
When powerful people have reached the tipping point from fear to paranoia, they'll move from questioning the immediate motivations of others to more generalized discussions of topics such as loyalty, ethics and integrity.

I always enter new working relationships with the shared understanding that I'll be there as long as we're working on something that we find mutually beneficial and engaging, and as long as we like working together. Sometimes we'll end up disagreeing on priorities or how we want to go about accomplishing them and I'll decide to proceed on a different path. For me it's never that big of a deal; it doesn't require us to sever the relationship or to feel ill will or for that matter to not work together.

I've also experienced the flip side of this where someone who worked with me chose another path. I've learned that great people are like great beer, you can enjoy them for a time, but you can't keep them. Again, no big deal, we'll work together again later.

The thing is that not everyone responds this way. Some seemingly power people react with amazing levels of fear and anxiety that are not always perceived as such. First, they'll make a big deal of the whole transaction and take measures to protect themselves from the inevitable fallout of our parting ways. Second, they'll insist that people who are still working with them not have any relationship with me. Third, they'll actually start to question the loyalty of anyone who does.

Of course, all this is just big-time fear to the point of paranoia.

So What
When strong and powerful people manifest fear, the effects can be much more far reaching than those of people with less power and strength, affecting many more people. Because the fearful person is powerful and respected, their actions are often simply accepted by others who feel that their only option is to cope. You wouldn't believe the number of people who get suckered in by the whole "loyalty" challenge.

When powerful people get scared, people who are the source of fear often respond with dismay, fear and anger themselves. It can become a real mess.

The thing I've found really useful is understanding that the source of all the craziness is simply fear. The powerful person is feeling afraid and powerless like any of us feel from time to time. They just manifest it in ways that are different and often much bigger. They're powerful.

Knowing this allows us to not take their actions and responses personally. They're scared and taking care of themselves in the best way they know.

Knowing this also helps us to better interpret their accusations and posturing giving us better insight into the nature of their fears and how we might help with them.

Knowing that all the ultimatums and self-righteous demands for loyalty are just the fear talking also gives us a great perspective from which to support the people who feel caught in the middle. They don't need to choose sides. They don't need to feel trapped. They don't have to join into the dance.

Perhaps you've experienced the fear of the powerful or perhaps are in the midst of it. If so, know that they're just scared and you can help them like you would any one else who is scared.

Have a powerfully fearless weekend!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

That was the question Isaiah asked me as we watched the ball drop, January 1, 2010.  I remembered quite well where the decade went, but I understood his question. The accomplishments of the 90's feel very clear.  We had life figured out.  It was a decade of many pleasant, life changing experiences. I graduated from college,moved to the U.S., went to graduate school, started a career, moved to Jamaica, got married, had a child and bought a house!  Perhaps the 90's represented us working towards and getting much of the stuff people typically set as goals.  We were steadily checking them off our list!  The external accomplishments.


The 2000's on the other hand, felt like smoke and mirrors  in many ways.  We discovered Jaedon's autism, lived apart in 2 separate countries for 2 years, then completely relocated to the U.S., sold our house, I became a stay-at-home  mom, Isaiah, having never worked for anyone but family in his life, got a job, we experienced our own personal recession, started a home business and started homeschooling.  That decade represents external and internal re-organization.  Much of  the accomplishments are somewhat invisible to all but those who know us well.  People on the periphery of our lives just saw the upheaval.  



Looking Through The Rubble....
It was a very useful upheaval.  I've discovered so many things, asked wonderful questions and found helpful answers.  I've gone through somewhat of a metamorphosis. Most things came relatively easily to me,before the 2000's. I've become more persistent, more tenacious than I was.  I would love to be even more persistent, to follow through and follow up on the things I would like to be doing, as well as persist in exploring the limits and obstacles in my path.  That will be my promise to myself for this decade.  More fundamentally, I developed a mentality I find difficult to describe.  It reminds me of my grandmother. She was a 'gangsta', a 'thug'. You know the type: relentless, determined, persistent, fierce, having a mentality that says there is no obstacle big enough, if this is something I really want.  Momsie was larger than life and I'm realizing that so am I!

Our New Building
So the 90's was like living in a beautiful building that seemed to meet all our needs.  The last decade was the gutting of that building to fortify and expand foundations, redo wiring and beams.  It's not a pretty sight to the outside world and the owners of the house can get distracted by the short (how short is short?) term upheaval.  This decade will be the construction of a whole new building, although I am sure there is still some gutting that will be done.  I'm really excited about that's ahead because I think the building will be even more beautiful and useful,certainly stronger,but also, it will be so much bigger and will serve, give shelter to many others, while keeping us dry and comfy in a variety of weather conditions..

Many construction projects get stalled. Resources run out or people change their minds.  I want to spend this month thinking about the resources needed for this project,the fuel I use as I go about my construction.  I really want to be intentional about having a steady supply and keeping my tank filled up.  I'll keep you posted on how that's going.

Thanks for listening to my new year musings.  Happy New Year!  The year isn't really new unless you are new, so make all your dreams come true in 2010 by continuing to be a New You every day!

Labels: change, faith clarke, happy new year

Recently I have thought about what loyalty means to me and I want to share with you some thoughts based on the definitions from Wikipedia:

Loyalty and Marketing
The practice of providing discounts, prizes, or other incentives to encourage continued patronage of a business. Generally, loyalty programs are considered less expensive to maintain than allowing customer defection or 'churn'.

In most of my work life I have been working in what we call "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM), or Customer Relationship Management Analysis.

To manage your customer relationship means among other things that you want to decide which customers you want to keep and which you do not want to keep, and how much you are willing to pay to keep your customers.

You might think that it is a simple calculation: money in - money out, by watching the balance. It's not that simple. I used to work for a phone company, and I can tell you: there isn't a simple relation between what the company earns per customer and size of their bills! It's a calculation of the amount of in going and out going calls and where there are directed to and from. What time were the calls, did we get the information on the call or were there delays? How much time did we spend on the customer, what price the phones were that we gave them. And last but not least: who is his network? If we loose one will we then loose others, because they are used to call each other at a cheap rates?

We did not want to keep all our customers, or we did not want to keep them all on similar terms. We wanted to keep the customers who paid well for the services we provided. Among those customers we looked for the loyal customers and we looked on how we could increase their loyalty.

• Step one is purchasing and re-purchasing (what we call having a long lifetime)
• Step two is having them not use our competitors’ products
• Step three is advocating for us

On the other hand: having a large number of customers was important at the stock exchange, regardless of the value of each customer. So we also wanted the not-loyal customers, but at what prize?

Loyalty and ethics
The concept of loyalty is an important part of ethics. Plato originally said that "only a man who is just could be loyal", and that loyalty "is a condition of genuine philosophy". The philosopher Josiah Royce said it was "the supreme moral good", and that one's devotion to an object mattered more than the merits of the object itself. Loyalty is a quality you look for in a friend.

I agree: Loyalty is definitely what I look for in a friend. I see loyalty in a friend as someone who is true to their word, who'll do what they said they would do. Who will say the same things to my face as they would say behind my back.

I find it interesting that Plato relates justice and loyalty. To be just means to have the "right" morals, but according to whom or what? Does it mean that I can only be loyal to someone or something who is sharing my perception of what the right morals are?

I guess: Yes!

Let me give you an conversation I had with an ex: If I believed that one should never lie and you believed that it was ok to lie but that one should never say something bad about another person. And then you would ask me about your haircut and I didn't like it. Saying that I didn't like it would then be disloyal to you, saying I liked it would be disloyal to me.

What I take from Plato is that loyalty is subjective and that we will always see loyalty according to our own ethics. Even if we see ourselves as loyal, people with different ethics might see us as disloyal.

Loyalty is an illusion
If I get Josiah Royce right then being a loyal friend means that the value of being a friend means more than the value the person you befriend has (according to whatever standards).

So maybe loyalty is an illusion, or loyalty is based on an illusion. It is not based on values or facts but just a decision: this is what I make up that loyalty is and these are the people or causes I want to be loyal to. And no one can prove that I am loyal.

Loyalty within Hierarchy
Within hierarchies loyalty usually has to be given to authority.

This is one of my favorites, because I know that when it comes to authorities I have a different way of showing loyalty than most others: I am authentic! I believe that being honest is one of the biggest signs of authenticity and loyalty I can give. Some people believe that obeying or pretending to agree is the biggest signs of loyalty.

Loyalty in the Bible
Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other." (Matthew 6:24 NIV)
Attempting to serve two masters leads to "double-mindedness" (James 4:8), undermining loyalty to a cause.

James 5:2. The Bible also speaks of loyal ones, which would be those who follow the Bible with absolute loyalty, as in "Precious in the eyes of Jehovah, is the death of his loyal ones", (Psalms 116:15)

I used to believe that I had made up my own religion. I wasn't brought up in a religious home but as a kid I learned a lot about the bible. And what I understood was that "God will always forgive you", "There are no sins" and "Thou shall love thou brother". What I got was: we are all doing our best and God loves all of us. I really meant ALL OF US. So you can imagine I got confused when I heard people condemn gays or people of other religions. First I thought that they just hadn't read the bible yet. Later I thought that I had just made up my own religion since I seemed to get something different from the same book.

I believe in Jesus saying that you cannot have two masters. You have one or none. But this also means to me that if God exists, them I am one with God. Because if I am loyal to God I cannot be loyal to anyone else unless they have the exact same morals as I have. I can only be loyal to God if we share the same morals. If not there will be times where I will be disloyal to him or to myself. I believe that I am always doing exactly what I want to be doing so I cannot really break my own moral standards, I can only change them. So if I am loyal to God then my moral and my ethics are the same as God's morals.

If I am God I guess that everyone who believes in God is God. But in my thought process this leads to God is everyone, and this means we are all the same, which really confuses me because I experience that we are not always loyal to each other. I have had friends who would one day say that they would help me, and the next day they would say that helping me would mean being disloyal to someone else.

I just want to be loyal in my own way, to my own standards, and I am blessed with the knowing that my loyalty is the same as being God.

So maybe loyalty is one big illusion based on an illusion. Maybe that's why Wikipedia writes that:

Loyalty plays an important rule in Literature.

Labels: all blogs, beliefs, choices, empowerment, joy vigh strand, Loyalty

Yesterday evening I got the message that Faith will post her article tomorrow instead of today, so decided that I would write something for today. I sat myself behind the computer to write this article, but nothing happened. My paper stayed blank, blank, blank. In the end I decided to get some sleep and create some inspiration.

During the night I had in my dreams a long conversation with a cousin that I haven't seen for a long time and who sent me a Facebook invitation earlier this week. I also visited some old classmates and did some other dream stuff. But then my dreams changed into a lecture!

My brain's lecture
My brain explained to me how it stores the memories from the different moments I experience. It told me that I chose to store things in black-white pictures or in colored pictures, and that I chose the resolution of the picture. The higher the resolution the more details get captured. It told me that can store a lot of pictures behind each other (like a movie) or that I could decide to save things in one snapshot. My brain showed me examples of pictures with the size of the file written next to it and zoomed into some of the pictures to show me the difference in quality and detail.

The most two most interesting things about this lecture were:

Labels: iris tuomenoksa, make belief

Iris and I decided to stop working long enough tonight to go have dinner at the Old Mill. Seems that we've been running non-stop for... well, for a long time, and it was nice just to sit and talk.

We covered a range of topics from Iris' recent experiences in the playroom and hew new found understanding of Autism and how to best reach our kids, to how much we appreciate various people in our lives, to apparent paradoxes in what we humans say and do: the last being the topic of this blog.

Being Present
Many of us talk about 'being present'. In our circle of friends, it's become so commonplace as to not actually mean anything any more. Or, based on how I hear people using the phrase, it seems that way. It appears that words often bypass quality control on the way into our vocabularies. We like the sound of them. We have a basic sense of what they mean (or at least into which category they fall). The people around us use them and no one stops and corrects our usage. So, we add them.

At AT&T, we used to call this pod-speak (in reference to Invasion of the Body Snatchers) . What mattered most was sounding as though you knew what you were talking about. People developed an uncanny ability to construct syntactically flawless sentences where they had no clue about the semantics.

This was not a limited phenomenon. It was pervasive. As a technical guy who ended up being a marketing guy, I would often attend large meetings where someone would make a statement that was completely nonsensical, and everyone around the table would be nodding in agreement. Pointing out that the statement had made no sense at all endeared me to some, and to others, well...

Pod-Thought
Lately I've come to the conclusion that watching most people think is like watching little kids play soccer (or football for you non-US types); all the kids are simply chasing the ball without the ability to maintain a context or hold a position or anticipate the future. In essence, they're all present with the ball. However, in being present with the ball, they're not present with say, the game, or the plan, or their position.

The verb phrase being present doesn't actually mean anything without an object of some type. Being present with what... with whom... with when?

From one perspective, no matter what we do, we're always present with something; it's just a question of what or when or why or for how long.

As Iris and I discussed this, we talked about friends who have kind of dropped out of life in order to be present with their thoughts and feelings. Then we got back into this right/left brain thing again. (Bear with me for a moment; it's just a paradigm and a shorthand.)

Roles and Responsibilities
Let's say that you want to make really useful decisions about where you're going and what you're doing. A good way to do this requires reasonable consideration of where you've been and what you anticipate, i.e., thinking about the past and the future. The trick is to be present in your decision process, while considering past events and future potential. (If this sounds like an oxymoron, then your vocabulary quality control might be needing an overhaul.)

The problem with considering past and future is that, for many of us, this leads to the children's soccer match. As our logical left brain considers the past and the future, rather than holding its position in keeping us present in our decision process, our emotional right brain goes charging after whatever our left brain has brought up. Before we know it, we're clouded with regret (from the past) or fear (about the future) and our right brain renders our left brain useless. (Repeat, it's just an analogy, it's just an analogy...)

So, in some ways (allegorically speaking), being present is a right-brained phenomenon. The key to clear thinking is to not cripple our logically structured left brain by limiting it to immediate sensory input. The key to clear thinking is to free our left brain to explore all the possibilities, while keeping our emotional, creative side comfortable and focused on the thinking process, not the potential outcomes. If we can do that, we're golden.

But...
However, based on our experiences, many of us feel incapable of this. So, rather than considering the past and future when making decisions, we simply try to be present. (The astute among your are thinking, "present with what?")

Well, in this case, our being present is really defined by that with which we're not present. In our attempts at being present, we actively block stimuli from the past and from the future. We're present only with our being present.

While this may feel good, ultimately, it's not very useful. In essence, it's akin to deciding you're fearless simply because you've blocked out thoughts of anything that scares you. It's not about facing and overcoming our fears; it's about avoiding them. It's like being able to enter a calm and meditative state only when you can isolate yourself from stimuli and not when you're in the midst of stimulaic hurricane.

Well, this may seem obvious, but that ain't what being present is about. Being present is the zen, it's the passion with a loose grip, it's the calm in the storm, it's about being totally in the moment as you consider everything past and future. It's not a curtailment of our logical structured side, it's an enhancement to it.

So What?
If you find yourself able to be present only as you mediate, or withdraw to a retreat center, or take a hot bath, or get away from everything, then I would suggest that you don't get it. Although these things are all wonderful and feel great, if this is your concept of being present, then you're selling yourself short.

I would suggesting trying on the idea that being present simply means being calm, focused and un-distracted regardless of the environment, stimuli or situation, and, that being present is something that you can learn to turn on at a moments notice.

Then I would suggest trying it out. Rather than being present through avoidance of stimuli, I would suggest trying being present (per the definition above) in the midst of various stimuli. You know what they are, they're the ones you normally shut out while being present.

Happy first Wednesday!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Predetermined
From a physics perspective, if you were to roll the universe back to the very beginning and get every little particle exactly where it had been and then kick off the whole thing exactly the same way as it had been originally kicked off, then you would still be reading these words right now. Nothing (absolutely nothing) would happen differently. All the dominoes would fall just as they'd fallen before.

At a basic physical level, the universe is deterministic; everything that happens is simply a result of whatever preceded it. This atom runs into that one which runs into two others and so on. Set off the big bang again and every single atom would do exactly the same thing, gazillions of atoms over billions of years.

Predetermined Chaos
Now, being deterministic doesn't make the universe predictable. Predicting is something that we humans do (or try to do). Even though everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen is predetermined, gathering all the required input and running the calculations to accurately predict what's next is simply too complex for us mortals.

As a result, although the universe is completely pre-determined, we can still talk about topics such as Chaos Theory (you know, a butterfly batting his wings in Argentina causes a hurricane in New Jersey). Chaos Theory doesn't mean that the things are not deterministic, it's simply a reminder that there are so many variables to be considered that we can't possibly predict the future with 100% accuracy. There are certainly situations in which we can become fairly reliable predictors, but they're limited (relatively speaking) and we're never 100% all the time.

Teflon's Paradox
So, here's the funny thing. The universe being deterministic and all, from a physics perspective, there's no such thing as free will. Everything is playing out in a complex sequence of interconnected events that rolls back to the big bang. Every decision that we make is simply the result of an incomprehensibly complex set of cause/effect relationships. Run the program again, and we'd still make exactly the same decisions.

I totally buy this from a scientific perspective. And yet... I totally operate as though I have free will. Scientifically, no such thing. Philosophically, free will is everything.

Proving God
Now, I'm quite comfortable with this apparent paradox. I'm fine with there not being free will, and yet, with my acting as though I have free will. Nonetheless, when I used to believe in Christianity, I would often employ this paradox as an existence proof for God when talking to my atheistic friends with a scientific bent.

In a nut shell, they would agree that the universe is deterministic. I would point out that this implied there was no such thing as free will which would make them feel quite uncomfortable. While they were willing to accept the deterministic nature of the universe, they were totally unwilling to accept that they did not actually have free will, that free will was just an apparition.

So, I would say, "Free will can't exist within the deterministic physical universe; therefore, free will must originate outside the physical universe. Hence, the existence of God."

Of course, this didn't actually prove that God exists (let alone who he or she would be); it just called into question the nature of free will. If you believe in free will as something that's real and you buy into physics, then free will must be something that occurs outside of the natural universe. It's super-natural.

Variable Free Will
Over the years, I've had lots of discussions regarding free will. One of the things that I've noticed is that oftentimes the people who most vehemently espouse free will are the ones who seem not to exercise it that much. On the one hand, they would be offended if you were to suggest that they were simply pre-programmed robots playing out the unfolding of the universe. On the other, they would be even more offended if you were to suggest that they could choose how they felt about any situation independent of the situation itself.

They strongly espouse free will, and yet conveniently lose it when victim-hood better serves them, a variable free will of sorts. To me, it seems that either you would have free will or you wouldn't.

Harwood's Variable Constant of Randomness
As my friend Jonathan and I have played with all these concepts, he came up with something that he hopes will trump relativity in the annals of science, a scientific basis for free will, an answer to Teflon's Paradox. He calls it the Harwood's Variable Constant of Randomness, named after its inventor.

At this point, it's just a theory, and he doesn't actually have a formula, but it goes something like this:

1. Each time we approach a decision, even if absolutely every variable down to the smallest subatomic particle is in exactly the same place, going exactly the same direction, at exactly the same speed as the last time we approached the decision, we can actually make a different decision than last time.
2. Given the universe is deterministic, making a different decision than last time when nothing has changed is impossible...
3. Except, when you introduce Harwood's Variable Constant of Randomness (or Harwood's VCR) which variably and constantly interacts with other elements of the physical universe to yield apparently random results, i.e., free will.
   

Now I'm sure how all this will play out, but I definitely like the utility of the VCR. It's really cool to keep in mind that no matter how many times you've approached a situation and made exactly the same boneheaded decisions, that the next time could be different simply because you decided to make it so.

So, are you a free will espouser or a free will practitioner? What will you decide today?

Happy First Tuesday!

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Happy New Year!! I am so blessed to know each and every one of you reading this blog. Today I have decided to do something different. I have decided to introduce you to one of my dearest friends Cheryl Grayson. I haven't known Cheryl for very long but like many of you, she has touched my life in a very special way. Her website www.pocketchange-cpg.net has a new blog author.... ME..... I am sharing my new blog with both sites tonight to continue to unite the people I love the most with thoughts from my heart. Happy New Year!
Love to all,
Kathy

I want to make the statement that your age has nothing to do with your years on the planet, but with the energy and curiosity you put into everything you do.

I recommend embracing the world like a seven year old, in a way where anything can be interesting and fun.

During the No Room For Jello New Year's concert, my little seven year old friend Aly and her mom Kathy came by to enjoy the music. During the break, Aly invited herself and her mom over to our house the next day to play music. We made the date and we were thrilled to know we had more fun coming up.

Around three thirty the next day, my two friends rolled into my house needing to warm up in front of the fire place while administering some asthma medication to relax lungs that had tightened during the hike up the hill to our house. What an experience and the visit only just started!

Mark had just left the house to get some snacks for our visit and we girls took the opportunity to enjoy ourselves with some music. I will not write about this; instead you can watch the video I created later that evening with the movie material we shot during our indulgence. When was the last time you celebrated life like a seven-year-old?


Even though out musical adventure was a lot of fun, I think that things in the world of this seven year old got even better after we had snacks and drinks with Mark.

Why?

Mark disappeared...

Aly asked "where is Mark?" and I answered, "he is probably putting some wood on the fire downstairs."

Aly went to check it out and came back to report that Mark was not putting wood on the fire but seemed to be looking for something. When I asked her what he was looking for, she disappeared again to fulfill her Sherlock Holmes task...

For the next half hour, we saw Aly and Mark slowly moving through the house. Every door and drawer in the house was opened in a systematic way. First they would look at each other, then they would create question marks on their faces and signal "maybe in here?" Then the storage space would be opened to see if this was the place to find eight triple-A batteries...

We ended our afternoon making funny faces until the little lady who had earlier told us that she wanted to stay forever was ready to go home to her own little bed...

When was the last time you had so great fun NOT finding what you were looking for and embracing the moment with so much curiosity and excitement that the experience outweighed the goal?

Labels: all blogs, curiosity, excitement, iris tuomenoksa

It all started a couple of days before Christmas. Pete, our guitar player in No Room for Jello called up and said, "Hey Mark, I've got this crazy idea. I've been working with this young woman who has an amazing voice and we've been asked to perform at a big New Year's Eve event in Hudson. I was thinking we could put a band together complete with horns and everything. Do you think you could write horn arrangements for about nine or ten songs?"

Without thinking about it, I said, "Sure! Sounds like fun."


Preparing for the Big Gig
Two days later (Christmas Eve), we were all assembled in our living room. The big round chair for two had been replaced by a set of drums. There were singers standing where the couch had been, a bass player just to the left of the fireplace and horns in front of the piano. We were on our way.

We rehearsed and worked through arrangements for all the songs, rehearsed again on Sunday and Wednesday, and then on New Years Eve, we performed. (If you'd like a glimpse, just click the play button on the image above.)

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you might recall that the first rehearsal marked the beginning of Iris' existential crisis (at least musically speaking) which in turn inspired a bit of exploration around left- and right-brainedness, or as my friend Jonathan calls it, "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

For me, the last week provided an amazing opportunity to learn more about how we behave when lots of new and unpredictable things are happening in situations that we consider to be meaningful and important.

Iris
First of course, y'all got to participate with Iris as she struggled with her singing after encountering someone who whom she considered to be truly gifted. She not only felt terrible about her music, but began to doubt everything she was doing. Not only that, but she did it for days which for Iris just doesn't happen.

One of the things that is really wonderful about Iris is her wide-eyed optimism and persistence. She regularly engages new adventures without a thought as to whether or not she can do something; she easily sidesteps the "advising couch-potatoes" as she calls them, the naysayers who insist that should should be more careful, that she shouldn't set her expectations too high. She sets her mind on what she wants and no one can tell her otherwise.

Being with Iris, I've come to learn that stubbornness is in the eye of the beholder; if the person who persists is doing something that you agree with, then they're confident and persistent. If on the other hand, they're doing something you don't want, they're resistant and stubborn.

Over the past week, my eye beheld stubbornness. I started thinking that he best way to convince Iris to do something would be to argue for the opposite of what I wanted. Then, after a session in the playroom with Quinn on Thursday, Iris came home inspired and excited.

Iris had been talking to Quinn's dad Randy, who is a professional musician and composer. Randy had been asking her about her singing and Iris had explained that her style was more like Astrid Gilberto than Aretha Franklin. Randy suggested that Iris might spend time exploring singers whose styles resonated with her, styles that she could more easily imitate and learn from. Randy somehow penetrated her persistence.

Yesterday afternoon, before our performance at Fuel, Iris and I played around with singing styles that came easily to her and arrived at something that really sounded great. As we performed last night, it was as though Iris had received a beautiful new instrument. She sang wonderfully.

Driving home she said, "It felt more like talking than singing."

I said, "Cool. Then keep talking!"

For Iris, who has been working diligently to develop her vocal technique, her best performance came with something that required very little technique, and more of her getting in touch with who she is as a singer.

Scott
For our trumpet player Scott, whom I mentioned as a left-brained-everything-structured-and-predictable musician, facing a big gig where things were in flux right up to and through the performance was something of a challenge. His first response to Pete was, "OK, as long as Mark is going to write out all the parts."

As we began rehearsing, he would consistently ask me if I could send him copies of everything so that he could practice. His vocabulary was littered with phrases like "I can't..." and "I'm not someone who can..." and "I gotta have at least..."

But then something magical happened. Each rehearsal began with the litany of what would be required to perform, but then by the end Scott would be improvising and playing parts on the fly. Better yet, the less that Scott looked at and relied on the music, the more confident he got and the better he sounded. In spite of his beliefs about structure and predictability, Scott has a big heart, big enough to overcome his fears and doubts.

By the end of the performance on New Years Eve, Scott was even moving with the tunes on stage and playing solos ad lib.

Ken
There was our novice bassist Ken who had only ever performed in his church and only with music in front of him that he'd practiced and practiced.

Ken is an artist who makes his living sketching architectural structures. Ken had recently completed a sketch of our lead singer's house and mentioned to her that he played bass. Since we hadn't yet recruited a bassist for the gig, she invited him along.

From the very start of the first rehearsal, Ken wanted to make sure that everyone knew that he was completely unqualified to be playing with the band. He then set out to prove it and regularly reminded us that he had told us so. Through all his apologetic and prognostication, the person over whom Ken had the greatest influence was Ken.

He slowly developed this kind of internal panic (quiet on the outside, frantic on the inside) where he could no longer translate the words that he was hearing; all instructions from either Pete or me just ended up gibberish.

Many Christian churches teach a practice called positive confession. Forgetting for the moment the specific causality, the idea is that what we say will happen, tends to happen. Every time we make a dyer prediction, we contribute to that prediction becoming reality.

Knowing a bit of the lingo, I asked Ken about what he was confessing, and then what results he expected to get. Over the next couple of days, we had a chance to speak more about it and slowly Ken dropped the negative jargon. By Thursday night, it was gone altogether and he was excited and upbeat for the gig. Ken did great!

As Though It Were Working
It seems that there are many things that we do in our lives simply because we've always done them. Over time, we don't even question how we operate, let alone consider alternatives, even if our way of operating doesn't get us what we want.

We may even actively profess that our behavior doesn't work. And yet, we cling to it like a life preserver in a stormy sea. We say we want one thing, and then we stubbornly persist in doing the very things that preclude our getting it.

At first blush, this appears quite bizarre, but I think that there's a logic behind it. At some point in our lives we adopt a behavior to take care of ourselves at points of crisis. If we grow up surrounded by naysayers and doubters, we learn stubbornness and persistence. If we grow up in an environment where everything is out of control and nothing is certain, we learn to create structures that give us at least brief moments of control. If we grow up being criticized or living with disappointment, we learn to beat the critics to the punch and expect failure.

Over time, our crisis behavior emerges independent of the nature of the crisis; it's just a response to the sense of crisis... even when the situation has changed completely... even when the behavior doesn't work.

So What?
What behavioral baggage are you carrying into this new year? Do you find that in certain situations you seem to jump to old behaviors that you considered long gone? What are the situations and what are the actions? How did you come to taking those actions in challenging situations in the first place? What were the triggers and how did your actions work for you? Do they still work?

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Happy New Year! Ahhh... the first day an exceptional year. I can feel it, this year will be extra especially great. I bet you can feel it too, right?



I imagine that being in silence and meditation for 10 days will be a life-changing, inward journey. I intend to gain clarity, depth and sensitivity in perception and to nurture my perspective and priorities of well-being, peace, calm and ease no matter what is going on around me.

Labels: happy new year, intention, jeannene christie, meditation, silence