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htb issue 00021 .. 0628.98 .. distribution: 322+
previous: The 10 Day Mental Challenge
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A recent Salon article caught my interest. It talked about the prestige some people find in appearing to work round the clock, when in fact they waste their time slacking. According to the article, these people are the norm.
These days, we all have ten thousand things to do at any given moment. Time management is essential. But all the planning in the world won't do any good if we just don't feel like following the plan. We need to manage our states, too, and that's what this issue's about.
Ever set out to do yardwork and wind up watching TV? Swear off sweets only to reach for the cookie jar ten minutes later? Sit down to write an NLP newsletter but surf the web for an hour instead?
Welcome to the muddle. Come on. Squeeze your way in. You've got lots of company - just look around next time you're at the office. That's the point of a muddle: all manner of people, places and things competing for your attention at every moment. Whee!
I've found that if you ask someone why they like their free time, they'll usually say one of two things: "WHAT free time?" or "because I don't have to think about anything else."
Fun states - whether you're relaxing on a beach or riding down a roller coaster - are usually pretty clean. When you're in those states, you're doing one thing, your attention's on that thing, and you're enjoying it. You don't even have to think. Everything just flows.
Muddled states - when you're not enjoying yourself - usually come about when you've got something else on your mind. Your attention is split. You're doing two, or twenty things at once. Call it incongruence.
"Congruency" is about the biggest word there is in some parts of the NLP community. If you're not congruent, they toss you off the roof. They feed you to the sharks. They even tell you metaphors.
They don't tell you how to get congruent. Maybe I just missed it, but I have never seen a neuro-linguistic program to foster congruence. So I built one.
We've got several big projects at work all coming to a close next week, so I've been working overtime. In fact, I was up there last night - all alone in the office at ten pm on a Saturday. I don't mind the work. I enjoy the programming. I just wanted to be out with my friends or at home, working on manifestation.com instead.
Muddled. And I was sick of it.
After just completing my positive-attitude mental diet, I was binging, and I wasn't getting anything done.
I found myself pacing back and forth through the hallways, arguing with an internal voice. "What am I doing here?" "How come I'm not working on my own business?" "What happened to working with kids?" "What happened to NLP?" "Have I just WASTED the past year and a half?"
My thoughts started changing. "How can I use this?" "What can I learn?" "Every behavior is useful in some situation. Just not necessarily this situation. Let's put this aside and do something else instead."
I'd somehow whined and grumbled my way to a really resourceful state as I paced down the hallway, and as soon as I noticed, I stopped, put my hand on the wall, and anchored the state spatially.
For you non NLP'ers, an anchor is a stimulus that produces a specific response. They're a natural feature of our nervous system, and the reason we're able to understand language (words are anchors for internal representations) or hang on to an old piece of junk for "sentimental value".
In nelping, any old anchor will do, and in this case I marked out a physical space in the hall as an anchor for the "NLP state". It's a simple psychology hack. Decide that space holds the meaning, and your brain takes care of the rest.
| a syllogism for the information age |
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I've always had great states for work, personal projects, and friends. I just never bothered to distinguish between them. So I'd get frustrated about work, slack on my projects, and ignore my closest friends. I had a muddle of resourceful states waiting to be sorted.
I went to the end of a dark little hallway, got back into my muddled state, and took inventory. What were all the things on my mind? Going out to meet people. Getting this work done. Continuing a short story I recently started.
I took that one and ran with it. Literally. I focused on the act of writing, and dashed off to another part of the hallway, near a painting on the wall. I declared this the spot for my writing state, and I focused on writing. What was it like the last time I really enjoyed writing? What did I see, think, hear, feel? I did the whole elicitation thing, and anchored that state.
Back to the muddle. What was here? Frustration, wanting to go work out, wanting to program, wanting to get up on stage.
Hmm. It seemed like it was growing. No matter. I picked one of the states, took it to a specific place, and focused until I was totally in that state. Then I left it alone, and went back for more.
I wound up with seven distinct states anchored in different corners of the building, and no muddle to be found. I went to the NLP state and looked around.
These states weren't task specific. Rather than "working on projects" and "working at work", I had clean "programming" and "creativity" states. Instead of "socializing", I isolated "playfulness," "aggressiveness," and a blend I called "boldness." Instead of "web surfing," I had "learning". And so on
Now that I had each state isolated, what do I do with them? I realized it was an ideal chance to watch each set of behaviors from the outside, and tweak them.
I marked out a new anchor: the meta spot, home of the detached observer. I imagined myself in each clean state, in turn, and asked questions for each one. "What's not perfect yet?" "Has there ever been a time when I'd done this better?" "Who else has resources I could use here?"
I realized my creativity state, in particular, was lacking. I separated it into an energetic brainstorming state, an action state, and realized that I could use this detached observer state as well in my creative process.
I stood in my meta spot, and looked out at the various states I'd built. I wanted to bring them all together, but keep them separated, so I could get the most out of each one.
I was hunting for a metaphor. Something to let my unconscious know what to do with these states. I settled on stages.
I pictured myself out there, representing myself differently for each state. A board room for "aggressive", an improv stage for "playful", a room full of books and computer screens for "learning", and so on. The idea was to have a separate place inside my mind for each state - after all, we're not often in two rooms at once.
Finally, I stood in the meta spot, closed my eyes, and mentally pulled each anchor in. There's a very definite kinesthetic feeling associated with this kind of integration. I don't know how to describe it, but you can try it for yourself. I found myself unconsciously rocking on my heels for a minute or two, and then I opened my eyes.
It was time to test.
As I sat down at the computer, I realized I had a choice. I could surf the web, write a story, or get the job I came to do done. I could make that choice any time I wanted. I chose to get it done.
I worked for an hour and a half, and I was on a roll. When I reached a stopping point, I came home and went to bed. Today, I wrote this issue, and now I'm going back to work to finish my program.
Yeah, I've got a ton of things to do. That doesn't mean I'm swamped. I know now that I can organize my time, and more importantly, I can choose which states to go into at any time to get what I want to do done.
Time to get to work. :)
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