Rewards

Made a list of things I'd done in my life. Whatever came to mind for five minutes. Then asked myself "what was the most exciting thing about it? Why did I stop when I did? Doing that gave me a clue what my rewards were. Would you like to see that list?

To connect people together and see them create or discover something that didn’t exist before
To be around when discovery is happening – improvisation, performance; how communication and thinking can be like dancing and singing together.
To “save” what would have been wasted and make it functional again with small encouragements that cumulatively add up over time.
How to gradually sneak out of habitual traps that were gradually gotten into – it’s like magic but makes so much sense.
Presence of mind – wisdom – persistence are all rewards.
The ability to sleep anywhere – ( not sure if this is a skill or a reward!)
To feel a conduit of connection while tapping the unknown – while making art, the line flowing from my eye to my hand without me being in the way; music emerging from me without interference, invention and the absorption of curiosity surprising me as it bubbles out; effortlessness of motion while on a bike or in water…
I have an “other worldly” fascination – worlds of expertise that I can dip into by knowing someone and experiencing what they know first-hand, invented worlds like authors do in scifi, science worlds like the biology in a puddle, snorkeling in an underwater world, or just hitchhiking and getting into a stranger’s world. This gives me endless patience to listen to whatever people want to tell me because it’s feeding my fascination with how they are – what their own story is by describing their world.
I can see so clearly how things could be easier for people when they make it so hard for themselves and so I’m motivated to tip the balance a bit in their favor. I know I must respectively wait for them to ask for my help, but I sit impatiently waiting for them to get a clue of what I could do for them. Pretty much, they have no clue.
Best reward: a state of flow…effortlessness. A natural state that feels as if I just ate some sort of magic mushroom. Timelessness absorption where there is no ticking measurements; just complete and utter involvement.
Would you like to try this as an activity? Or perhaps you already know some of your own rewards  - why you do what you have done.....?

Free Won't

What is the relationship between opinion, the interpretation of experience, conviction and Truth?

Well, pure science tries to prove what's true whether people believe in it or not.

Empirical reasoning and personal observation seems to be at odds with subjective observations. For me, personal research is the Truth - but of course, it's an operational truth that can always be updated.

So - what is "proof" of reasonable, operational truth? Why - it's the sum total of your ability to integrate the conclusions and insights you've gathered and how you are making use of them. Sometimes it's the collection of assumptions you've decided to believe that other people have told you, you've read, and some of what you've decided to believe purely because it sounds like a good idea to you.

MRI brain research comes out and declares that before we know we've made a decision, our body has already prepared itself to execute it! Turns out because of this background preparation, we only have 1/64th of a second to veto what we've already prepared to do.

We don't have that "free will." Instead, we have "free won't!"


Describing reality "seems to be" one of the irresistible assumptions inherent within the structure of English...and the nature of reality will differ depending on perception/attitude/conditioning.
... AND culture!

Well - let's take the saying "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."(For those in ESL, it's an expression implying that carefully equal revenge is justice, even if violent.) But now Wolpert has proven that a judgment handed out of what is equal violence isn't going to be perceived as fair.

This scientist Daniel Wolpert, (self-described "movement chauvinist.") proved how perception mistakes levels of intensity.  He says people hitting each other are going to escalate the payback, all the while intending to deliver "an eye for an eye." How the brain interprets relative force depends on if you're doing it to someone else or if the force is getting it done to you.

Apparently, relative force is just one perceptual misconception that got measured - there are many more that haven't been measured...yet. Here's another one:

http://theconversation.com/fake-finger-illusion-pokes-holes-in-body-ownership-18508

This makes me sort of feel like I'm watching MythBusters... I'm on a roll.

Most of us think in our language. (Actually, that's another way I differ from most people. I don't...think in words all the time. Sometimes, I think in images. When I think in words, they are randomly shifting phrases of words, poetically intermixed and remixed, depending on shifting priorities. I'm a person who intermixes prepositions, the tiny little relationships words.)

I observe one of the culprits for rampant miscommunication is that English doesn't have an adequate way to indicate subjective experience and frame uncertainty. English has... "seems to be," "from my point of view" or "IMHO," but these are examples of qualifiers or frames that attempt to serve this function of describing subjectivity. But these "frames" are scoffed at by the writing professionals. There's a reason for that.

When using those phrases, there's danger that a person's motive will be too easily misunderstood for why they did it. These qualifiers are touted as indicators of uncertainty by editors. Writers will be admonished by editors to come out and dare to boldly say the declaration. But, without these qualifiers, a writer's motive of an open or scientific mind won't be adequately conveyed.

What if the subjective attitude is not meant to be considered a rhetorical point delivered with uncertainty, self-effacement or as a disclaimer? "From my point of view" is not necessarily another way of saying "I haven't taken a poll or conducted my research properly."

For me, using a subjective qualifier is a proud expression of conservatively stating my own open uncertainty toward the possibility of discovery and being wrong.

Readers have reacted to my using language in this way as if I'm obligated to talk this way legally. Because otherwise I'm "making claims" that could be proved false. They imagine I'm afraid that I might be sued for making promises I can't keep.

Huh?

Front End Intuition

It's easy to assume that the sign of a "passion" or "intuitive flash" is something intense. As a kid I used have intense feelings of "yucky" about something that repelled me or made me want to rebel. But over the course of my life, I've realized the quality of an impression about what makes a person happy or is a signal of engaging a talent is just as often more curious and subtle than the opposite shocking and obvious "yuck!"




For me sometimes, it's many different qualities that signal something "important to me" is going on. Those qualities of Importance are also different for each person. Here's some examples:

•  Me noticing myself musing over what "sticks out" as a logical fallacy or "not fitting." I find my mind has jumped over to a completely daydreaming type track of thought, despite the attraction of real life.

•  Perhaps a sense of effortlessness, as if I've just forgotten to feel bad in the last recent period of time where something that I had just been doing makes me happy, because it has completely absorbed my attention.

• * It does sometimes happen fast, in a "flash." The quality of my attention suddenly jumps to attention that makes time artificially slow down into a focal point. This happens in movies when the script writer wants the audience to notice an important point in the plot line. (Usually accompanied in movies with a curious sucking sound or whiplash sound effect! But such sounds don't happen in real life.)

• * Sometimes I only notice something was important in hindsight, after a calamity where I "should have known" to pay attention to a clue I was given, but it went over my head at the time. An example of this came for me in a flash of intuitive prediction where I didn't know I was getting a self-preservation warning message until after the (fortunately minor) accident had happened. I had to think back what made that predictive thought different from any other paranoia...so I could recognize it and be certain enough to act on it to become for me the useful intuitive warning it was.

Apparently, listing more of these from other people would be useful.  Because I've talked about this very subject in dinnertime conversations as one of my favorite Dialogue subjects to trot out in polite conversation. The results of doing it quite often over the course of my life are that these qualities that help people recognize intuitive messages are completely unique to each person.

What have you noticed?

Animal Portraits!

Do you have a favorite kitty or canine? Send me a picture and I'll apply my artistry... It's not expensive - Only $100. per drawing, unframed. You'll have a lasting keepsake of your charming, loyal or playful animal companion.

Language for Perception

How do you perceive? Well, you just do it. That's an inadequate answer, so I decided to do some thinking about this.

Perhaps the way I teach people to observe themselves would be relevant to making up a language for perception. It's my business to be teaching people to perceive what they take for granted by teaching Alexander Technique. I use the often ignored kinesthetic sense as a medium, rather than the visual or auditory...but maybe we can cross-pollinate with it. Maybe we can use the same process and apply it to perception in general - say, the visual sense.

In Alexander Technique classes, students walk across the room and try to describe how they are walking. They can't, usually. So I introduce them to categories to form some questions for themselves. These categories function like thinking tools to organize and focus their point of view.

The categories are:

• timing
• sequence
• quality
• direction
• relationship

Once they have these categories, their ability to describe what they're experiencing for themselves gets unleashed. Their new ability to observe and describe what is happening works so well they can later design, on the fly, inventive ways for getting past some pretty serious self-imposed limitations.

So perhaps we could do this with perception in general. We could make general categories to help people ask themselves specific questions. Answering these questions would give us new perceptual information out of what we usually take for granted.

We're talking about the raw perception, not the content. So - how we direct attention to say, the visual sense with these categories? If I were to apply the same categories I just mentioned, I'd get something like:

• Quality: attention can be focused, like a searchlight, or diffuse like an overhead light.
  

• Timing: depending on when you pay attention, different things will be happening. A frozen image will show you stuff that you would miss in a movie, for instance. Bits and pieces do not have the same effect as the whole. Timing will influence the figure-ground relationship of what you can see. If you're moving fast while traveling, you'll have a whole different experience compared to moving slowly.
  

• Sequence: chains of paying attention to one thing after another bring different results; and mixing up sequences actually has an associative emotional effect. It's easy to mistake sequence for cause and effect.
  

• Direction: Where we are oriented contributes to Point Of View. POV and motive about what you want others to do, react and agree with you will color how you describe what you see.

Anyone else want to try one or more of these four categories about perception that I made up and apply them to help generate a new language for perception?

This is using your Thinking Skill bag of tricks!

Favorite Pet?

Do you have a favorite pet? 

Here's an example of a photo I was shown to be able to draw a likeness of this kitty named "Josie." You can see the drawing I made. What do you think?

Incarnation Objectives

A friend of mine who had been trained as a Shaman told me he had a special talent. This was to take someone back to have a little talk with the "Advisors" who had been around when the person incarnated. The useful part was these Advisors knew what your particular intent was for being alive. Of course I was interested in learning what "purpose to life" I had intended to play out. Although he cautioned me that once I got the attention of these busy and rather serious ethereal "advisors," I had better be getting with the program if I was off-course - I still wanted to know. Who would want to waste an opportunity like this if it was useful?

The experience was not particularly notable; at the start it seemed to be a garden-variety hypnosis session that was fun to tell about mostly because of the sense of humor of my particular advisors. But the session had an unexpected result. The two of them were a little like an edited conversation between Homer Simpson and Groucho Marx.

The message for me was, "if you want to help people, don't let them obligate you." This message was delivered as these Advisor characters pulled off me a strange webbed, sticky stuff. The session was an interesting experience in synesthesia, because I could hear it coming off as well as feel this stuff sticking to me as it was pulled off the backs of my legs and in places where I'd had injuries. That had never happened before in a hypnosis session.

It was obvious that helping others was my purpose, and I'd been already doing just that much of my life. It was how I was doing it that evidently needed to be reconsidered. Most of the rest of the session gave me hints about specific ways I could take more effective care of myself. Some of these choices of how to best provide for my own needs were in question for me.

What surprised me was the immediate effect afterwards. In fact, it was rather shocking. Soon after, I got a call from one of the beneficiaries of my help. There was a significant surprise in the experience of the call for me. It's as if my dopamine receptors had been scrubbed clean again. Somehow, my friendly Shaman had taken me back to a brightness level of emotional and perceptual sensitivity of decades ago! Somehow, I'd accidentally-on-purpose shut myself off from my own emotional reactions to the people I'd been helping without realizing what that would mean for me. Part of the reason I had questions about how to provide for myself better was because I'd lost this sense.

Of course, recovering my "brightness" knob of emotions had mixed results. It made me realize the cost I'd been paying for hanging out with people that most would shun. This was something that I'd actively ignored because of my convictions that these people needed help from someone - and I had nominated myself to be that "someone".

The experience my Shaman friend gave me has me re-evaluating what I actually do for people and how it realistically affects them. Since I seem to have this bent, perhaps I should be more professional in how I express it rather than personal?

Naaah.

Influences In Creative Thinking #1

I have had a lifetime of benefits from using de Bono's creative thinking ideas, even though I have merely enjoyed the humble success of an interesting and creative life. My choices have led me to put time to be creative ahead as a priority, which has turned out to have been a rewarding, satisfying and happy choice.

I'll start out with how I used de Bono's thinking skills in the first five years after I ran into them from reading one little book called "PO". This book was the start of many inspirations to seek out "new perceptual assumptions" during the course of my life. You'll also read a number of additional points about how de Bono's ideas affected me as an adult - (I am now 55.) I still enjoy seeing many parallels between de Bono and other brilliant observers - great minds often think alike.

Let me tell you some of the first ways I used these ideas when I was a teen. The first book I read of de Bono's affected me deeply. It was "The New Word, PO" that I stumbled across in the Riverside, CA library when I was fifteen, (1970.) The effect of reading "PO" on my personal life was immediate. One of the first expressions of problem solving that I applied as a teen was for the challenge of getting along with my group of friends.

Thinking skills as way to ask for participation
By far the greatest advantage for me that ran through the book PO was that I could now had ways to ask others to play thinking games with me. The many de Bono books that I later read, continued to give me terms for asking for participation in many of the thinking skills that I had already innately been doing, but had never been able to describe to others. These terms also helped me to explain to others my motives for using thinking skills. It helped to minimize authoritarian resistance to the question of who defines the priorities & criteria of what constitutes improvement. In short, it stopped conflicts over who had or wanted to have control.

Interpersonal relationship problem solving
At the time it was obvious to us that we teens had no clue how to deal with interpersonal relationships, so we were quite open to new ideas. When interpersonal relationship problems would occur for us, it involved many members of our whole group. So we problem-solved as a group. From reading de Bono's book, we separated the description and expression of our problems from what we were going to do about them. Then we could try out various solutions and improve them. We discarded what didn't work and redesigned other experiments until we did find some useful processes.

The form of problem solving we stumbled on was similar to co-counseling - (many years later published and popularized by an adult psychologist who had the same idea independently.) But our way had an additional value. Somehow we figured out how to work together toward continuing improvement without inciting further conflict with each other.

After we had listed all of what might be bothering us or speculated possible causes of internal and external conflict in each of us, we united as a group and categorized those concerns which seemed to be about similar issues, noted those which seemed to be unique and connected those which seemed to be related to our relationship with each other. This activity put us on the same side of the question.

Because of the reversal example in the book PO, (and because of the story of the pan being used to iron a shirt;) we figured we had made assumptions that could be at the core of our misunderstandings of each other. So we actively looked for a way to uncover what those assumptions were.

We noted how each person's explanation of shared situations differed. As we listened, we found ourselves coming up with various conclusions or judgments. These conclusions became a signal for us that there must be an operative assumption underneath them. Until we noticed the provocation of a reaction, these assumptions were hidden. We decided we didn't really know enough to determine conclusions and pass judgments. That is when and why we decided more experiments were needed and this had to be an open-ended solution that could be improved.

Once we had all the pieces of the content, we came up with ideas how to deal with the issues (which included our own illogical feelings,) including problems of how to implement our bright ideas in real time when they were most needed.

Our teen discoveries
We decided that "truth" of what "really happened" didn't matter and was a dead end. Each of our points of view about what happened were valid, because of the emotional content and because of how important we were to each other. So in a sense, we invented a concept of "emotional truth."

For instance, one of those problems was how were we going to deal with deciding if we should do what we had said we were going to do as a group together when one or some of us were distracted. Nobody wanted to be left out and nobody wanted to be rejected. So we came up with a codified way to notify (or give a "chance to listen" as we described it.) This phrase was designed to give distracted members of our group a chance to answer back with a momentary "date" ("give me 5 min. then I can pay attention to what you're asking.")

If or when anger would come up, we learned a great deal about how little awareness the angry person had about how they were affecting others before they realized they were angry. So who was starting a reactive fight became quite an interesting question that held rather surprising answers for all of us. To find this information out, some of our experiments were quite volatile! During our experiments, we managed to remain friends - two of these women I am lucky to count as lifelong friends over the last 40 years.

Designing independent study courses
As a teen, another form my creative thinking inspirations took was to dare to propose an independent study of history credit during my first semester of my sophomore year in high school. After reading a specific historic account, I compared how various history books had described it. This research taught me some miraculous insights about point of view, bias and persuasive language. It taught me specifically to recognize exactly how language may be used to promote certain invested interests. Later I understood that teachers use language in this way to bring about an experience for their student, so manipulation and promotion wasn't all bad. (Of course, as a teen , I was quite reactive at that time to being controlled by adults.) From this experience I realized that going through a process could have results that I could not foresee.

During college, I was also led by a curiosity about perceptual assumptions to explore how behaviorism and animal trainers seem to be at odds with each other in a college independent study communication credit at USIU, Poway, CA. Since my final paper explored some of the possible differences between the Whorf-Sapir ideas as well as issues of inter-species communication, I invented what is now called mind-mapping to express and synthesize these divergent results in pictures and flow-chart style.

The skill of reasonable motives
As an adult, most fascinating to me were the de Bono ideas about encouraging speculation for what was motivating people in mysterious situations. I really took these mysteries to heart. At first, speculating about unknown but reasonable motives was useful for my own entertainment in people-watching situations. Later the skill took on another useful result.

This creative ability of finding positive, reasonable explanations, (requiring deliberate, skillful practice,) saw an unexpectedly handy use. Strangely enough, the skill became useful to get people to behave in a civil manner. These were difficult people who were complaining, acting mean or were apparently pursuing revenge. Whether it meant the person suspected I was incurably gullible or that I was merely stupidly hopeful didn't matter. My creative skill to come up with a perfectly compassionate and understandable explanation made difficult people motivated to not disappoint in the future.

Probably in hind-sight this was a mixed advantage, but it was one that I was attracted to nevertheless - so having practiced this skill offered me useful means of avoiding and mitigating difficult situations. Projecting positive outcomes had the effect of negotiating how "difficult" people should treat me in a civil fashion. Of course, in most cases I had to actively guard against violation, set boundaries and enforce them. However, I was able to work personally with seniors, the disabled & homeless, despite their culturally disenfranchised.

F.M Alexander skill training & de Bono's thinking skills
Building a separate new perceptual assumption frees creativity, as does uncovering self-limiting patterns of thought. Positive, forward thinking movement during creative thinking is indespensible - this is absolutely the same with F.M. Alexander's work. I became interested in Alexander Technique in 1976, and have been a teacher since 1985. I see these as parallels exist between de Bono's work and the principles of F.M. Alexander's. Alexander Technique provides a tool for carrying thinking into action that includes training a new perceptual assumption - proprioceptive assumptions. I was also happy to note additional interesting parallels between Alexander Technique and de Bono's work in the Masterthinker series.

Plus, Minus, Interesting, Unknown
I have since used the Cort thinking skills in many situations where decision making was tricky. I especially found useful the Plus, Minus and Interesting to help me explore many factors to stop them swimming around within my concerns. Over time I came to add another useful section to this activity, which was "Unknowns." Having this "Unknowns" section, (Positive-Negative-Interesting-Unknown,) got me to form questions about what was missing. Having questions helped to point me in the direction of where to go next to get these missing elements. Not knowing where to go next is often a great deal of the content that tends to result in unproductive resistance. Sometimes the unknowns were what was stopping me from acting.

Thinking skills taught patience for extending questioning time
Knowing what my questions were also motivated patience. Meaningful questions can become virtually unanswered, but many questions require patience for answers to arrive. Some unknowns are not answerable at once, because the time when they could be answered hasn't arrived yet. It's impossible to anticipate everything, but that shouldn't be a reason to stop the project. There are many times when you must stand on the step of where you are going to be, in order to see ahead.

Thinking skills revealed, extended and developed my natural talents
Before I ran into what de Bono had written on creative thinking, I wasn't very creative in a practical sense; I was only able to identify a happy accident - to be creative accidentally on purpose. I had always been a fast learner, but I mostly learned through osmosis and imitation. Once I had structure to hang my brain on such as the ones proposed by de Bono's ideas, I became deliberately creative. You can head out to www.franis.org for the long list of my multiple creative abilities.

Creative thinking welcomes improvement
I decided to enter this competition because my 97 yr. old Alexander Technique teacher Marj Barstow had called me the most resourcefully creative person she had ever met, (and she had taught many professionally creative performers during the course of her life!) Possibly what makes me notable as a creative thinker is because I am not intimidated by social constraints as has limited most women that stops them. I can problem solve when being criticized, angry or emotional. This characteristic in myself was no doubt the result of some great parenting, but I believe in part it has been from the benefit of having run into de Bono's ideas at an early age. Without that, I never would have learned how many benefits there were to being blessed with the ability to think.

Testimonial toward effectiveness
For the ability to manifest my creative thinking, I owe a great deal to de Bono's ideas. They have been a significant and fascinating benefit to me, my relationships and my work during the course of my life in the last forty years. Without thinking skills, intelligence and multiple talents are mostly a nuisance, spawning wild ideas that never culminate into results.

If you'd like to check out Edward de Bono's new forum for thinkers:
http://www.debonosociety.com/forum

Time Flies & Slows

This year is the year of the boar, (if I've gotten it right.) Got to participate in pageantry by holding up a forty foot Chinese dragon. It was quite a challenge physically because I was near the front, untangling bamboo spines and hoops, but was quite a fun time.

I was born in the year of the water snake in the Chinese astrology, in the hour of the dog - which makes me an awfully sociable snake lady. Do you know your Chinese astrological sign?

Was thinking the other day how time seems to speed up and then slow down, back and forth during the course of my life. What reason it does it do that? What do you think about this?

Perhaps, the more events being noticed means more of time slowing down. When nothing in particular stands out, the faster time speeds up...

There's a species of tick that sits around on a branch for up to nearly 17 years in a state of semi-hibernation. ...Until a nice warm body happens to come within jumping reach and it seizes opportunity. In only a few days, it feeds on blood, makes babies and dies. Can you imagine what its perception of time would be?

How does time work for you?