Have You Seen The Gorilla?

"In a recent experiment conducted by professors from Harvard and the University of Illinois, people were asked to watch a video-tape of two three-person teams of students passing a basketball back and forth, and count how many times the ball was passed among the members of one team. On that tape, while the students are passing the ball, a person in a gorilla costume walks slowly among them, stops, turns to the camera, thumps his chest, and then walks on.
So busy were the subjects with counting passes that fewer than half of them even noticed the "gorilla" at all. When they were shown the same videotape again but without the instruction to count the passes, they all saw the gorilla-and most of them refused to believe it was the same tape they had just watched. When a professor repeated the same experiment , live, before a group of four hundred people, fewer than 10 percent even noticed a dark shape, let alone the gorilla."
Scientists call this phenomenon "inattentional blindness." You can be paying so much attention to one thing that you're blind to a whole lot of other things. That's one way in which your brain can misdirect you when it thinks it's doing things right."
- Get Out of Your Own Way, by Robert K. Cooper

This "inattentional blindness" is the effect of habituation and limited focus. When we focus on a certain thing or things we selectively choose those "things." This choosing cuts off other things. Choosing what to focus on is a powerful capacity that when left to our old habitual tendencies suffocate our ability to see new opportunities or novel forms.
We are many times self-delusional in a sense when we affirmatively believe that what we perceive is absolutely the only reality. We have to consciously realize that what we consider real is only our selective attention to a group of things. To combat our tendency to this "inattentional blindness" we can use several methods to jolt us into re-evaluating our environment for the best possible opportunities. Three ways to do this are:

* Ask different questions throughout your day; i.e., "How can I do this more
effectively?"
* Take different routes to and from your usual places of commute.
* Seek Novelty - consciously seek a new experience through meeting new people,
or reading/learning something new.

By exercising your perception in different ways you open the doors to becoming aware of new opportunities. It is only by seizing opportunities that we breathe life and excitement into our spirit.

Angel Armendariz

What Kind of Question Is That

Questions are brutally powerful. So powerful in fact that they are the very source of science itself. The very fact that you're able to read this from where you are right now is due to questions. I wonder how many people have actually studied the history of questions and the impact certain questions have had. In your own life questions guide focus, they guide decisions, feelings, moods, emotions, and concepts.

What would happen if you consciously chose which questions you asked yourself throughout the day? For example, during lunch time instead of the trite & overused "What's for lunch?" we asked "What can I eat right now to build a beautiful physique and enhance my energy level?" Do you see the power here?

The small distinctions questions can make in your life can be a gigantic lever of power. Here are some more questions, instead of "How could he...or...why would she?" we could use "How can I....or...what would it take to...?" The key difference here is the first form of question makes us focus on the problem and the power of it. The second set forces you to focus on the desired outcome. Amazing how simple, yet how effective.

Another trick to making question work for you is to refer the question back to you. This gives you honest responsibility, and thus the power to change things in your hands. For example, "why didn't he buy from me?" would be changed to "what could I do to make the sale?" Even better, in regards to a sale, is flat out asking "what would it take for you to buy?" at the point of sales, instead of second guessing and wasting time after the fact.

Novel forms of psychology stem from these lines of questions. The old school Freudian camp were the proverbial "why" junkies. This psychoanalysis was great at wasting time and making a persons problems overwhelming. Forms of psychology that started asking the "how's" and the "what's" questions actually produced radically fast results. Gestalt, Cognitive-psych, and NLP, were the primordial forms of these evolved, results/goal-oriented based psychology therapies.

To change anything immediately change the question. You'll have the honor of joining a group including Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Socrates, and Leonardo Da Vinci.

Angel Armendariz

Using Your Zoom Function For Success

How Do You Use The Zoom Function?
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

The theme of seeing both the part and the whole runs the gamut of this manifesto. Holons as discussed previously, again referring to a thing being both a whole and a part allow efficient analysis of processes that are important to us. A second point in the thought process of efficacy is what can be referred to as zooming in and zooming out.

Zoom out to see the big picture, the forest, the future, or the goals; and zoom in to see the pieces, the steps, the details, the rectangles, to master the manifestations of your hearts content. To cultivate the ability to zoom in and out of scenes in your life is a basic necessity to establish proportion in your life and assimilate circumstances in the grandeur scope of things.

Many times we fail to include information in a particular circumstance in our lives because we fail to zoom out and see the big picture. We are at times so stuck on seemingly endless details that we take those for the whole of our lives and of our mock reality. I'm reminded of a Persian saying that goes " I cried because I had no shoes...until I saw somebody that had no feet." I've seen people with minor problems, especially financially, focus intently on those results, make a morbid picture, slump their postures, make their breathing shallow, and imagine these results producing even greater turmoil.

What do you think this does to your ability to act effectively? What kind of messages is your nervous system receiving? This creation of an imagined hell is manifested immediately, and you feel the effects throughout your body sometimes to cause your own pathologies; this additionally coagulates any mental abilities. Under such imagined danger you body instinctively shuts down cognitive operation, and you by this means create your own sabotage. This amazing display of what your mind is capable when you focus on something is an example of the degree of power disposable to you to effect yourself and circumstances...although this is clearly a negative use of such power.

In a scenario that produces an undesired outcome leaders have acquired the ability to use the zoom out function in some form and overcome obstacles. If you focus on a small piece, and have no awareness of any remedy or alternative, you've achieved learned helplessness. When an individual isn't able to "see" a positive alternative it creates an incredibly powerful effect of dissonance. Because of the fact that problems are incredibly beneficial to us, as you will see in the chapter on Artificial Problems, it becomes essential to be able to use the zooming out ability to grasp a more empowering reality. This can lead us to seize opportunities and use problems to our advantage.

One way of applying the zoom out function is to see your life in a timeline fashion...see the many obstacles you've overcome...see what valuable lessons you learned that you would have otherwise failed to acknowledge had it not been for a particular tragedy. The timeline or capitulation method allows you to see, feel, and hear how time flows...you're able to witness, at a very personal level the ebb and flow of life, the cyclic format of existence, the seasons of your ascension in life; and put things in "perspective" this exercise will free a lot of dissonant energy....you re-experince the reality that change is inevitable, and thank god it is that way. This is one form of zooming out of your current situation and seeing a larger perspective.

The goal of the visual zoom out function is two fold. To put yourself in a more resourceful state of mind, and secondly to have a visual display of pertinent information to allow you to see more empowering alternatives. In The Power of Impossible Thinking, by Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Colin Crook, and Robert Gunther, the authors, allude to zooming in and zooming out as a creative function that is used in progressive organizations to enhance their mental models. An example of this in business is related by the authors; a simultaneous method of zooming in and out is used in what is called "Extreme Programming" or (XP) and is used by such companies as Ford Motor Company, Daimler Chrysler, and UBS...

"The key is the definition of tasks for each programmer. One person, the "driver," is zoomed in on the details of the development of the code, while the other, the "navigator," is zoomed out, looking at the big picture as the programming is moving forward. This helps avoid the problems of well-written code that misses the bigger picture or becomes detached from user needs."

This is an example of using this ability to create more empowering alternatives...in the (XP) case more empowering software through enhanced code, using the simultaneous zoom in, zoom out with a partner.

" There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking." - William James

- Excerpt, Untitled, by Angel Armendariz

The Puppets - Who's Pulling The Strings

Analogies help us better understand things. I recently started thinking about puppets. The string puppets that dance around when you move the strings with your hand. I remember playing with those puppets when I was a young lad...good kid. The puppet now serves as a good icon for our lives.

Think of yourself as a puppet. You are both the puppet and the master of the puppet - the string puller. Your mind can be thought of as the master (string puller), and your body actions & movement as the dance of the puppet. In theory our minds guide our actions and behaviors in the ways we choose. Thus, you dance to your own beat - you pull your own strings. The problem arises when we choose not to be the puppet master. When instead of pulling our own strings we delegate the string pulling to others; or worse inanimate things.

A common puppet set goes like this: a person delegates one string to the economy, the other string to the news, the other string to the day of the week, the other string to a significant other. Alas, no more responsibility, now in this example we are no longer our own masters...we have given away all our powers to act and be as we choose.

Now, we are pulled every which way by the new appointed puppet master. We become clowns...a spectacle...a side-show dancing dramatically to the ambiguous movements of these inanimate string pullers. Ultimately, however, we can choose to wake up and take back our strings, and assume control of our puppets. When this happens you have control, you take responsibility, you dance as you choose. The only actions and behaviors are based on your own string pulling, not somebody else's.

In this way it would not be uncommon for someone to choose to be blissful, energetic, passionate, competent, loving, excited, and optimistic....because all these states of being are as easy simply making a choice...even in the face of spectacles, crises, panics, or what have you.

Angel Armendariz