As an integral health practitioner for the last 15 years, it is safe to say the approach you take to one area of your life is the same approach you take to any area of your life. Your outlook is your unique lens and perspective to the way things work. But that uniqueness doesn't extend very far when you take on the tasks of everyday life.
There is typically a pattern that leads up to any event: A + B = C. In the realm of behaviorism, that is Antecedent + Behavior = Consequence. When you can begin to recognize the patterns in your basic behaviors, you can learn to create new patterns in behavior. We call this "making a choice." (This is the formula behind classical conditioning which I'll go into more as we go along in this blog.)
The "choices" we "make" require a certain repertoire, a toolkit if you will. If it is not in our conceptual toolkit, we have no means of accessing a particular behavior, desired or not. When we consider what it means to cultivate consciousness (the foundational motivating drive to all my work), making a conscious choice requires some forethought and preventative measures. "Choice" implies being conscious or in control of our decisions, so let's consider the unconscious factors that drive 90%-95% of human behavior. How do we get a look at everything we are unaware of?
That unconscious majority is the beast in our conquest of change. Any transformation requires some way of relating, and how we relate to something creates the matter around us. How we relate to one part affects our perspective toward the whole. Understanding what something is helps it to become something else. We are all, in essence, part of the same moldable primordial goo doing whatever goo does. But does a caterpillar have to know it is a caterpillar to become a butterfly?
Know that how you do anything is how you do everything. If you want a particular transformation to occur, you must succumb to the fact that goo is going to be goo, meaning change will happen whether you like it or not. It's as simple as that. If you are unable to change one area of your life, change an area you have perceived control over and watch the domino effect unfold in goo form. When you change one element in a system, the whole system changes shape. Like waves of rippling primordial goo.
Think about how all the threads in a spider web are connected. Pulling at one point shifts the shape of the entire web. There is flexibility and adaptability to this design that makes a strong metaphor for relating to the transformation process. It's also delicate, so let's do this lightly.
At the end of the day, I ask myself, "Does any of this really matter?" The answer is matter is everything we call this earthly 3rd dimension, and we are all part of a greater whole. Whether or not matter is real (or goo) is up for scientific debate; however, we understand this thing we call consciousness as the way to actively relate within the world around us. We are talking about creating meaning between relationships, tangible or conceptual.
We form meaning through communication. Here, words are the tool. We try to discern how a part is related to a whole with our words, then attempt to convey that meaning to someone else. (FYI, the majority of our communication is non-verbal, but again, that's a topic for another blog segment.) We frame a concept with our words and form a relationship to what is outside of us.
Relational Frame Theory is another cool principle that comes out of behaviorism and is a little-known concept that I love to apply in innovation and creativity strategy development. The link goes into the science of RFT, but basically when we begin to understand the function of an object as more than it's intended use, we begin to see how other objects can be used to achieve a similar means. Let that idea sink in and notice when you apply that thought later.
Transference is a complex term in the realm of psychology, so let's simplify it for our sake. Remember those ABC's I mentioned above? and that spider web? Let's tie all these pieces together: How life works is much more practical than we humans tend to make it. If we consider ourselves waves of goo, every ripple from every wave directs what happens next. There is a force and a reaction. When we consider how the forces around us influence our reactions, we can adjust the intensity of our peak and harmonize to generate what matters most to the whole.
So, when I say how you wash your car is how you feed your neighbor's cat while they're on vacation, know that your capacity to transfer energy from one area to the next is as natural as breathing. Improving one area of your life or business ultimately makes your whole experience better.
It is safe to say that your approach to life stems from your values, beliefs and circumstances. These are factors that help us address the "how" of doing anything. The condition or quality, the extent or degree, or more simply put - it is the way. Now when we are talking about mapping out your transformation journey, we start by looking at where you are at now and which way you want to go. The way you pick is important.
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