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Originally Posted by Bruce Achterberg  I need to build long-term relationships with people for communication to be most effective. My specificity causes me to be widely misunderstood, but in the right conditions, it also allows for extreme effectiveness (relative to usual effectiveness levels; everyone is capable of it, but few embrace it, hence the relatively non-extreme levels of effectiveness).
But yeah, I do have a good handle on this. What I'm starting to get used to now is embracing the notion of providing value to others. I'm already pretty intuitive, but when I write posts that feel right, I seem to get really positive feedback about them. I must be tapping into some sort of need, or something, since I don't get responses like that usually--only since I've been embracing this new position of mine and using my intuitive abilities I developed the last few months from playing games. Yes, that's right, from playing games. Ha!
I'm *very* curious to further explore this phenomenon, partly because it's interesting, partly becuase it's inherently enjoyable. Sign me up for lots more interaction and writing like this; it's good fun and I'm all for it. Maybe I should just interact with everyone like this, but I find it tends to cause people to just whine a lot, heh. Maybe I should do as Steve does and acknowledge that they're infected with the whininess-disease and continue serving as an example of what you can be like if you don't complain all the time. Hmmm. |
I used to work for a hedge fund where the organizational directive was "truth." They were obsessed with truth and held it above all other values. Communication within that firm was brutally honest. I could call my boss an idiot if I wanted to - as long as it was based on truth - and suffer absolutely zero consequences. In fact, I'd get rewarded for doing that if it helped him make an actual improvement. Indeed, people were often promoted and rewarded for telling the CEO where he was mucking up.
The people at the top level all LOVED the place because they felt like they could be totally themselve there without worrying. On the other hand, there was more than a reasonable amount of whininess at the lower levels. People there were getting their feelings hurt.
I often had discussions with people there about the best way to handle this. I think from a "bulletproof" standpoint they made the right choice to just not acknowledge feelings. It could after all lead to a slippery slope that then lead to compromising on truth because you were scared about another's reaction. On the other hand, there's no reason why an adroit manager couldn't juggle both of them. You're as non abrasive as possible and communicate in the terms most effective to the person who is listening to you, but under no circumstances do you compromise on truth yourself.
If I ran a company of my own, I'm not sure how I would do it honestly. You can't always count on stellar people being in the right positions, so perhaps I'd take the same approach. In my personal life, I decided I can trust myself to play by a different set of rules. One of my favorite of the NLP presuppositions is that you have *total, complete responsibility for your communication.* That means if you say "what a wonderful day we're having" and the person next to you goes off on a rage (strange example I know) then it is your responsibility since your words caused it.
Why would anyone ever hold a deranged belief like this? Because it's useful! It puts me in a state of mind where I think more about the other person than I do about myself. In the end, my communication typically ends up being more effective as a result. In essence, I try to speak the way I need to in order for them to "get" what I am saying. This requires navigating the other person's quirks, habits and perceptions. This is as opposed to just speaking the truth straight out and leaving them to sort it out on their own.
There's something to be said for "shock and awe" too which seems to be Steve's (and a lot of people around here) favorite method. It could be summed up as "To hell with whininess, I'll just speak my truth and hopefully it'll get you to wake up long enough to see its validity."
Both approaches seem pretty valid, and it's nice to have both in your arsenal.
(heh, hopefully I didn't just totally misread you, whcih I'm open to having done, and there is something useful in that above discussion for you)
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Feel free to share more of your experiences about ToolsToLife.
I'd be curious to know what exactly content the 90-day course covers, and why it's so good.
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Sure, I'll give you a quick rundown of the structure.
Tools overall philosophy is: Much of our behavior is a result of our ingrained thoughts and habits. Let's change those habitual thoughts and maybe that will free us up to make changes. Many attempts at change fail simply because our old habits suck us back down into our unsuccessful ways.
Consequently, the first 30 days is basically a cleaning house of negativity and building of self-respect and trust. You do simple things, like smile throughotu the day, brush your teeth, and drink water. And you do them often. Each one of those subtly communicates that you like yourself. Strangely enough, it actually seems to work really well. It turns out when you tell yourself 100 times per day that you love who you are you eventually get the message. In most cases, after 30 days, you find you rarely complain anymore, and it grates on your ears when others do so. You also find it exceedingly hard to fool yourself into believing your old excuses. You've just been conditioned out of it.
After the 30 days, they take advantage of your new, solid foundation. You keep drilling on all the old stuff, and they start adding in new techniques. They spend time talking about visualization, results vs goals, how to set goals and track them, motivation. Other topics are ushered into the mix like relationships, identity, To Do lists. It can seem like a haphazard mix, but what starts to emerge is a sense of "the successful individual." You start to see how really this stuff you do from one day to the next is just a natural extension of what a holistically happy, positive, driven, fulfilled individual looks and acts like. By slowly adopting all the pieces of that individual, and doing so on top of your solid foundation, you begin to emerge AS that individual by the end.
Of course the caveat is, as always: You do the work, you get the results. You read the chapters, watch the videos, but don't actually LIVE it in your daily life and you'll get some benefit for sure, but you won't be transformed.
It's funny, my mother is on Day 5 and now she's harassing my father to do it. I also signed up my sister and she's joined the fray too. So, what i wrote could all be true. That or it could be the most successful cult ever!!!
If you've got any ?'s just shoot. Hope that was helpful. Oh, and PS another friend of mine echoed your original comment. He went to the website and for the life of him coudln't figure out where to go next. He's also a CS major so that is saying something.
Finally, I'll make a comparison between Tools and Steve's work. I'll start off by saying that no comparison is really necessary, in the sense that the two very easily coexist within the same growth effort. I'd say the presentation of ideas by Steve is often more in depth than what you'll get in tools. He has a lot of original insights that are presented in unique ways. Tools touches on a lot of the same topics, and the material within it is good, although head to head Steve's writing is better. The value doesn't come from there though. It undoubtedly comes from the fact that it is an actionable plan for *living* the material day in day out. If I were designing a master course, I would probably put Tools first and then after people had reached proficiency I would sick them on Steve's work to get even greater insight. Also, because they were already solidly successful, they would be able to implement his ideas rather than just nodding along and then returning to their old ways, or trying to change and then failing.