IF YOU CAN'T CHANG E THE WORLD, CHANGE YOUR STRATEGIES

PAUSE A MOMENT

CHANGING STRATEGIES

Good morning once more. Welcome now to Pause a Moment. Tonight = Changing Strategies.

[Change Partners – Frank Sinatra – 2:43]

I think I'm pretty safe with tonight's topic being relevant; we all surf waves of wanting change in some area of our life, and at other times we see change coming when we don’t really want it. Although we often get a fit of the wobblies when a Change looms threateningly on our horizon, Change is actually what we came here to experience. Change is a not-negotiable price of Evolution. Life-forms that do not change become extinct. Life without change gets boring. Change is even mandatory for non-sentient forms of existence like rocks. The question of the role of Change in life is not one of fact, but one of subject, speed and degree.

Let's start tonight by looking at how we might change the way we go about changing our lives – by changing the means we use to effect change – our Strategies for creating and handling Change.

But there’s something that needs to be handled first. No matter whether it’s just our self or those around us negotiating a turning point, change affects everyone. So, let's begin with some strategies for Communicating with ourselves and others.

[La Raya – Eric Serra]

Do you feel you're misunderstood?

Do you get caught sometimes misunderstanding others?

How effectively do you communicate?

One of the keys to success in anything is your ability – an ability that you already have – to make new, crucial distinctions and decisions. So that you can deal more creatively and effectively with people, we’ll look firstly at how to make breaks with the way you’ve habitually tried to communicate in order to broaden your own skills for generating empathy.

Firstly, cease being a theoretical believer in a notion about Possibility and instead become an avid student of what’s actually achievable. That will involve working on yourself, dismantling the fences you put around "what's possible" and noodling out your long-ingrained habits of rejecting radical ideas instantly as “not possible”. Unexamined assumptions, beliefs and conclusions from the dead past bind and blind us. They bind us into limited and limiting social, religious, cultural and political teams of like-minded can’t-doers, and blind us to alternative perspectives and possibilities that may be more valid, useful and effective.

Constantly notice the people around you. Note how you blur the lines around your reality to fit in with what’s popular and agreed upon among them. Watch, too, how they blur their own “truths” to get along with each other, especially how they change from moment to moment and day to day, all the time unconsciously revealing more of their inconsistencies. Recognise specific patterns each person has for perceiving the world. Notice under what circumstances they employ certain patterns, and under what circumstances they’ll do the exact opposite. Examine under what circumstances you employ those same patterns and begin to notice when others adopt similar, or opposite, patterns to you. Notice how people send out indistinct or conflicting signals through the way they speak, the quality of energy driving what they say, and dissonances between what they do and their demeanour, and what they're saying.

Understand that people may not always remember exactly what you say, but they will never forget how they felt while you were saying it. Through this approach you can develop a whole set of distinctions and connections with people that can empower you in knowing how to communicate effectively with all types of people.

[Friendly Persuasion – Prague Philharmonic]

Bring up under>>>>

If you want to be an agent for change, you really do have to learn a bit about reading the effect you’re having, and to vary your communication with differing kinds of people. For example, once our initial, moral reaction to a situation has snapped in, some people then sort primarily by feelings and others sort by logical thinking. And some people embrace change (neophilic) and other people avoid it like the plague (neophobic). Would you try to persuade them all in the same way? Many people blindly try, and wonder why they're not getting through.

Some people make decisions based only on specific facts and figures. Firstly, such people have to know if the parts will work– they’ll think about the broader picture later. Others are convinced first by an overall concept or idea. They react to global chunks. They want to see the big picture first. If they like it, only then will they think about the details.

Some people are turned on by beginnings. They’re most excited when they get a new idea off the ground, and then they soon tend to lose interest in it and go on to something else. Others are fixated on process and completion. Anything they're given to do, they have to see all the way to the end, whether it’s reading a book or doing a task at work. You are, I hope, beginning to see the importance of strategically recruiting a team of individuals with individual styles that will, directed in concert, deliver you the results you want.

The way we look at the world influences the way we ARE in the world. People sort and classify by different criteria that are particularly significant to them, and that’s how they see the world. For example, some people sort by food. That’s right, by food. Almost anything we do or consider doing is evaluated in terms of what's important to us. Ask a foodie how to get someplace, and they’ll say, “Go down the road until you get to Hungry Jacks, turn left, and then continue down until you get to McDonald’s and turn right, and then hang a leftie at Kentucky Fried Hormones until you get down to that chocolate-brown building.” Ask about a movie they went to, and they immediately begin telling you about how the candy bar was. Ask about the wedding, and they’ll tell you about the catering and the cake.

A person who sorts primarily by people will talk mostly about the people at the wedding or the characters in the film. A person who sorts primarily by activities will talk about what actually happened at the wedding, what happened in the film, and so on. My point is that, if you are ever going to be any good at communicating, you have to –

•    be aware that people do talk and organise their perceptions in different languages. They have different code books and are motivated by different priorities – from coldly rational through to wildly emotional. To be effective you must adapt your pitch: you have to step away from your position and into their world, and look at your proposals from there.

•    practice actively listening to the people with whom you want to communicate with the clear intention of discovering what turns them on and, just as importantly, what turns them off. Active listening is a skill, and usually has to be learned, unless you really do insist on being a hermit.

•    practice talking in languages and relevancies other than your own.

•    Practice creating contexts-in-common and bridges across which you can lead people willingly into your space so that they can see for themselves from your point of view. You can't do that by force.

[Friends and Lovers – George Martin]

Bring up under >>>>

If I may use myself as an example, I begin this programme every week on one assumption about what you and I have in common –  at 20 past four in the morning, neither of us can sleep. I've got some entertaining to do and you have your own reasons for being awake. In order to be relevant to you and your reasons, I use my knowledge and past experiences as a counselor and as a broadcaster, and my skills as a creator of contexts to speak to you in languages that are more likely to be relevant to you. And I deliberately set about casting around for possible causes of your insomnia (that takes care of the first hour), suggesting possible healings in the second hour, and in the third hour celebrating any “a-hah's” you may have gotten in the context of a new day dawning.

Another deliberate undertaking of A Little Night Music is to provide a framework for variety and balance in the content of the show in order to dilute any depression and anxiety that may be accompanying your insomnia. That’s how I plan this programme so that it has the best possible chance of being relevant to you at this time.

We tend to follow one strategy or another for seeking personal rapport. It is observed by others as our “style”. For some solutions we may lean slightly more to one side than another. For others we may swing wildly to one strategy instead of another.

There’s nothing carved in stone about any of my strategies. I'll try anything that works, and I constantly encourage others to do the same. If you find you’ve hit some kind of bothering roadblock, it may be that you have made choices and decisions that put you in a condition of depoweredness. If that’s so, you can now make choices and decisions to direct yourself toward a more empowering state. You can choose to adopt strategies that help rather than hinder you successfully making that U-turn.

But that isn't going to happen until you're ready.
And simply saying "I'm ready" is not going to open any escape hatches from the comfortable prison in which you're incarcerated.

Dr. Phil McGraw has articulated four possible incentives for "wanting to change", only one of which has any hope of being permanently beneficial to you. Here they are:-

1. When change is compelled by an authority -- for example, when you're offered some kind of rehabilitation programme as an alternative to punishment.
2. When you impose behaviour change on yourself to escape censure or isolation.
3. When you are intellectually aware of a need for change, but your heart is, at best, lukewarm about doing the hard yards.
4. When you are mentally, emotionally and spiritually lifted off your foundations to let go of everything you've held to be "true" and try something you've never tried before -- I will move, or die.

I think you can guess where I'm going here. From ground-shattering personal experience, I know that Dr. Phil was on the money when he said, "Stage 4 is when you can honest to God say, ‘I am so sick to death of this that I will not put up with this from myself for another second, for another minute of another hour of another day. I don’t care how scary it is, I don’t care what’s on the other side, I will not put up with this from myself for another second. I will change this, I don’t care what it takes.’ That’s when you get change,”

When you deliberately decide on any strategy it immediately starts suggesting to your mind what to focus on and what to ignore. Things start moving in the direction you’re implicating. If you’re moving toward something desirable, for example, the things you’re moving away from are being deleted. If, however. you’re trying to move away from a troublesome way of being, then you’re deleting things that could be moving you toward. This is why focusing on what you don't want and don't like, and the people that embody those negatives, is NOT a good idea. You're deleting the very things that will put you back on your feet. It's self-defeating.

To change your strategies, all you have to do is become aware of the things you normally delete and choose to focus your attention on them and develop them. Don't make the mistake of going to war on the old choices and habits that have been holding you back; just leave them alone. They will gradually drop away, wither and die from lack of your attention. Give them no more energy. Look to what you do want. Let your old concerns lie where you left them. Let them be, and they will let you be. Focus on what you DO want, and open your mind to everything that shows up. If you want new things, make new choices of what to give your attention to.

And let go the habit of making another common mistake, that of confusing yourself with your behaviours or making the same mistake with someone else. You say, “I know her. She does this, this, and this.” Well, you don’t know the whole of her. You know her only through a limited range of her behaviours in a limited set of circumstances, and through the lens of your limited interpretation of those behaviours. But she is much more than some of her behaviours, just there is more to you than some of the things you’ve done in the past. Give yourself and others a break! Separate the person from the behaviour.

If you’re someone who tends to move away from everything, maybe that’s a pattern of behaviour up until now. If you don’t like it, you can change it. In fact, there’s no excuse for you not to change. You have the power now. The only question is whether you allow yourself to change strategies that no longer work in your best interests.

There are two ways to change our strategies. One is by Significant Emotional Events – “SEEs.” The other is, without waiting for a significant drama crisis, by consciously choosing for change and making decisions to enact the changes you now prefer.

Historically, our parents are a rich mine of SEE's. If you saw your parents constantly moving away from things and not being able to achieve their full potential as a result, those experiences of them influenced what you move toward or away from, and the way you still move toward or away. You might have either copied them, or resisted doing it the way they did it. Either way, you've sacrificed flexibility in your own capacity to respond appropriately to new and different circumstances. Like it or not, you've become a function of the way they did it.

But change is possible. If they, and you, only sorted by necessity, and missed out on some great job opportunity because the company was looking to someone with a dynamic sense of Possibility, the shock of losing the chance may be enough to jolt you into realising: I need to make some radical personal shifts here. 

If you tend to move toward everything and get taken in by a flashy-looking investment scam, it would probably affect the way you look at the next proposal that comes your way. We learn by our perceptions of experience. The mistake we make is to assume that this here-now experience is the same as a past Significant Experience, and we trot out one of our well-practiced reactions learned from the past, that may by now be totally inappropriate in the present. Oh this is some game, isn't it?

The second way you can change your strategies is by consciously deciding to do so, not because your life has come to a screaming halt, but because it becomes clear that it’s a good idea to do so before things get squiffy. Most of us never give a thought to which metaprograms we use; in fact, most of our conditioned reactions use us. We are the naïve victims of our own predilections. The first step toward change is in  recognising something you were previously blind to. You cannot change what you don't cop to. An awareness of exactly what we are currently doing provides the opportunity to see, and make new choices, and thus make for change.

Let’s say you realize that you have a strong tendency to run away from things, or take what looks like the easiest path. How do you feel about that tendency? How well is it working for you? Are you certain of that, or could your short-sightedness come back one day to bite you on the bum? Sure, there are things – and people - you want to move away from. If you put your hand on a hot iron, you would want to move it away as soon as you could. But aren’t there also things – and people - you really want to move toward? If your strategic focus is on moving away, you are not moving toward anything, except by accident. Isn’t a part of mastering your life a practise of making a conscious effort to move toward something worth your while? Haven’t most great leaders and great successes focused primarily on moving toward a vision, rather than away from a nightmare? Now you might want to begin to stretch a little. You can start thinking about things that appeal to you and actively allow yourself to be drawn toward them.

You could also think of metaprograms on a higher level. Do nations have metaprograms? Well, they have cultures, religions, biases and behaviours, don’t they? Then they have metaprograms, too. Their collective behaviour over many times forms a pattern, based upon metaprograms of their leaders and the people who support them. Australia for the most part has a culture that seems to move toward. It also has a counter-balancing sub-culture that pulls back on change. That's why our politics at the moment feels like we're in the middle of a three-dimensional tug-o-war, with a bunch of opportunists pulling in all directions. Watching the Whitlam documentary series recently reminded me that we have a history of short bursts of visionary change followed by long brakes (sic) of reactionary withdrawal. Australia's current overt tug-o-war directly reflects the inner conflicts between the ideals of us, its citizens. We're confused about what to do next – about climate change, boat people, Muslims, immigration, aborigines. And the victims of that confusion are waiting for us to make up our minds, while we scout around for a leader who'll make up our minds for us. This isn't working.

What do you think – do countries like Iran, Syria or Indonesia have internal or external frames of reference? What about our own country? Are we actively creating and re-creating our own identity, or are we looking to hang on to old, external models from elsewhere? And as you ponder this, remember that your perception of your country mirrors your perception of your self. Whatever our government is doing, whatever Her Majesty's opposition is doing – we are doing. It's time we all became more aware of our part in creating and perpetuating what’s happening.

Awareness of our strategies can be useful on two levels. The first is as a tool to calibrate and guide your communication with others. Just as a person’s physiology will tell you countless stories about him, his behaviours will speak eloquently about what motivates him and what frightens him off.

The second useful thing about heightening your awareness of strategies is as a tool for personal change. Remember, your behaviours betray the character you created to run the show while you went out to the world's longest lunch. Your behaviours are an expression of part of you, but they are not who you are. Who dictates your behaviours? Me? Certainly not, and I don't want the job thank you. You? Yes – but which “you”? Your heart or your ego? This “You” that you decree to be “I am” is the author of your behaviours, and of the stories you make up to justify them. If you tend to run any kind of pattern that works against you, all you have to do is change either the behaviour, or the “you” that is creating it – or better still -- both. This isn't rocket science.

But be aware that when you do change something and your heart experiences a liberation, your ego will jump in protesting “I've been robbed!” My suggestion, go with your heart, and let your ego learn to live with it.

*****

You might like to stand in this question for a while….Why would you NOT want to change something that isn't working for you any more?

Let the answers come and jot them down. You may find out how and (maybe) why you’re sabotaging your own progress.

And that may have something to do with a realisation that "change" is not the answer to a life that has run out of potential. "Trying to change" is your mind telling you it can change itself. It can't, and it won't. Have you never noticed how effectively your mind argues with you any time you want to make change? How can something that has caused you so much contradiction possible create congruity? The mind that was originally invented for discovery has become an overlord concerned only for its own survival. We cannot live without a Mind, but it must be dismantled, and consciously re-built. That's a job, not for change but for Transformation.

And that's another story............

[Friendly Persuasion – Prague Philharmonic – 3:44]