What makes us able to hear feedback is the growth of a bigger and more sophisticated matrix able to support our expanded consciousness, as shown on the Map of Learning Soft Skills. With the expanded matrix to catch and integrate new feedback we leave area (1.) Unconscious Incompetence and enter area (2.) Conscious Incompetence.
The two qualities of feedback that make it useful for learning are clarity and possibility. Clarity comes from distinctions that show exactly where, how and why our present level of competence is lacking and what that causes for us. Possibility comes from new perspectives that spotlight previously unseen behavior options. Both the clarity and the possibility are already there – but we cannot see them before we acquire enough matrix.
MAP OF LEARNING SOFT SKILLS
Learning happens when any of the four driving forces actively take you to the next level. The map shows a spiral going clockwise round and round coming straight up out of the page. This means that although you can learn by making different kinds of efforts, completing the learning cycle must include a balance of all four forces and go through all four stages. The step from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence feels awful because everyone sees that you do not already know. This step cannot be avoided. Decide now to go ahead and learn even if you look bad. Feedback guides you to the treasure of gaining new competence. Fierce learners do not hang out in Unconscious Competence for more than about 15 seconds before seeking consciousness about a new incompetence. (The original source of this map is disputed, possibly D. L. Kirkpatrick 1971, W. C. Howell 1977, or T. Gordon in the 1970s. This map is also similar to the famous Johari Window. The driving forces of learning were added to the map by Clinton Callahan in 2006.)
Recognizing deficiencies can be reason enough for us to react with embarrassment, shame, guilt, hopelessness, self-reproach or rage. The pain of seeing that there is a soft skill we don’t know is only made bearable by contrasting it to the pain of seeing how much difficulty we cause without the new soft skill. When the clarity and possibility from feedback cause us too much pain, we are finally motivated to try to do something differently. At first, however, all we understand is that we are incompetent. We do not know how to behave competently. Even though we don’t know how to change we still want to change, so we keep trying. But our trying is imperfect. So with each new try we also keep failing. Enduring the discomfort of repeated failures as we keep trying to behave in more effective ways is actually two things occupying the same place at the same time. Holding both experiences within us creates an uncomfortable conflict. Willing ourselves to contain this conflict rather than giving up in the face of repeated failings builds an energetic learning force. By remaining convincingly cheery while repeatedly trying and repeatedly failing we give the force a useful direction that slowly develops incompetence into competence. Eventually, we enter the domain of Conscious Competence (3.), to some degree.
Practicing our new competence over a long period of time builds a new learning force. The new force is momentum. The Box becomes accustomed to experiencing its new shape and therefore its new patterns of behavior. The new responses to external conditions become more normal, familiar and automatic until the Box fails to identify the new behaviors as new anymore. They have simply become the Box’s natural way of behaving. Our Conscious Competence (3.) drifts into Unconscious Competence (4.) succumbing to the learning force of momentum. What we may not realize is that Unconscious Competence is a learning force of its own.
Unconscious Competence continues to build matrix at its new level. Even though we may start feeling bored or unchallenged at this stage, if we responsibly continue, then matrix is still being built. Often, when we least expect it, the floor suddenly drops out from under our feet. Where we thought we had everything under control we suddenly find ourselves in internal or external chaos, bigger than ever. Our peak performance of Unconscious Competence (4.) spirals up to the next level of Unconscious Incompetence (1.), ready for the next adventure in learning. To watch this cycle of learning occur over and over again gives us new respect for a force of evolution full of elegance, beauty and grace.
After a few times around the cycle we may conclude that we are merely going in circles. Here we are, back again being conscious of our incompetence. While it may feel the same each time, it can be useful to notice that we are actually moving along in a spiral and the one who has the feeling has changed. Not everything is still the same. Yet, overall, we may well imagine it being better to stay in denial about our inabilities, because recognizing our incompetence mercilessly annihilates our present self-image. Learning may be hindered through consciously or unconsciously deciding that, all in all, it is better not to know. Why should we choose the pain of disambiguation over the bliss of our ignorance? Such a decision is a personal preference and therefore inarguable. The inarguability inhibits learning soft skills.
We make a private decision as to what extent we are willing to experience the pain of increased awareness. The subjectivity of this decision creates a “soft-skills learning paradox”: Soft skills cannot be taught; they can only be learned. You cannot force anybody to learn a new soft skill. Learning soft skills is a personal choice and is accomplished only through diligent personal efforts. Personal efforts means repeated practice in a safe environment where mistakes do not cost too much. In such an environment you can begin your soft-skill learning journey into the extraordinary.
SECTION 6-E
New Results Come From New Actions
Light reflected from the ink patterns on this paper enters your eyes. You have trained your mind to take nerve impulses from your eyes and recognize the twenty-six familiar letter shapes of the English alphabet. Your mind further assembles patterns of letters into individual words. Then your mind does an amazing thing. It takes groups of words and melds them together into ideas. The jump from bunches of words to meaningful concepts is nothing less than miraculous. And you are doing that right now.
I bring your attention to the phenomena of your mind making concepts out of ink marks on paper because, as remarkable as is it, I am interested in more than that from you. I am interested in you taking these ink marks and creating new behavior patterns in your life. I want you to actually be able to enter the experiential territory of extraordinary human relationship. Having new electrical patterns in your brain from new thinking patterns may be a necessary first step. But I want real results! New results only come from you taking new actions.
Did you ever think that you could create new results from taking the same actions? Most of us do. Such thinking is a kind of insanity. New results cannot come from taking the same actions. New results only come from taking new actions. The question is precisely this: How do you get new concepts into your mind to produce new actions from your body? The answer is: Some kind of leap, some new connections have to be made. The actions we take now come easily for us. Most of our daily actions are produced by reflexive habit patterns; they are unconscious. New actions require conscious decisions. Your willpower must be involved – your conscious motivational volition.
What do you really want? Do you want to keep experiencing what you have always been experiencing in relationship? Yes or no? Answer now.
If your answer is no, then you are going to have to enter the unusual. You are going to have to break out of your own pigpen. You are going to have to try some unfamiliar and perhaps, at first, uncomfortable things.
For starters, try something new right now. Raise your right hand and say out loud, no matter where you are and no matter who else is there, “I am willing to take new actions.”
I am waiting. Did you do it?
If you don’t do it this instant you will never do it.
C’mon! Who really has control over your ability to decide? Who really has control over your voice? Who really has control over the part in you who chooses what you do? Is it you? Or is it the rules that were hammered into you by parents, normalcy, or other authority figures? Who has authority over your actions righ
t this moment? If you think that you have the authority, then prove it. Prove it to me. Prove it to yourself. Raise up your hand and say out loud, “I am willing to take new actions.”
C’mon! I just did it myself, sitting in front of my old Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop computer at 6:08 PM on a Sunday night in December in the Callahan Academy office on Gistlstrasse in Pullach, Germany. I am alone here but someone could have seen me through the window. I did it anyway. You can do it too.
Last chance. Low risk here. This is just an experiment. Go ahead. If you are not willing to risk such a simple new action as raising your hand and saying a few unusual words like, “I am willing to take new actions,” how can I expect you to responsibly decode an irresponsibly encoded message from your partner late some night when it is really difficult and it really matters?
Thank you. I assume that you did the experiment. I first did such an experiment some twenty-five years ago sitting alone in a doublewide trailer near a cotton field in Phoenix, Arizona, and I still remember that experience. It shocked me that it was so difficult to make such a simple new action. It surprised me to hear my own voice in an empty room. It woke me up to the just-proved and now undeniable fact that I do have enough courage to actually take new actions. The unusual action created a waking moment for me that I still remember. Your life can be filled with waking moments if you start taking more new actions.
Like to Learn
The fact that we do not know already about extraordinary human relationship is not bad. The fact that we do not already know means that the universe is vast, elegant, multidimensional and sophisticated. The fact that there is a lot that we do not know is actually a blessing – that is, it is a blessing if you like to learn. If you think that you do not like to learn it may be worth investigating why you think that.
The way to investigate why you do not like to learn begins with trusting the internal sensation that you do not like learning. Once you decide to trust that sensation, take a deep breath, let it out, relax, and allow yourself to drift back along the sensation to recall your feeling’s place of origin. You may recall one or more events, self-reinforcing moments in which you came to the conclusion that you did not like to learn.
The “I can’t learn” or “I hate to learn” stories build on and reinforce each other. For example, there may have been a promotion available for you at work, but being promoted depended on you learning how to operate a new computer-software program. You may have tried a few times and gotten frustrated. Then, every time you thought of the promotion you remembered how much you hate to learn new computer programs, so you didn’t do anything to get that promotion. You developed an automatic story that replays in your thoughts about not being able to learn. Then that story sought ongoing evidence to keep itself alive.
This is only one example. You probably have several other examples from earlier in your life. Bring back the memory of one of those earlier “I can’t learn” incidents and let the feelings get bigger. Watch any pictures that go by. Recall the exact moments in which you made the decision that you do not like to learn. Say out loud the exact words of your decision about not liking to learn. When you have said the sentence, take another deep breath and write down your old decision.
As babies and children we were subject to various forms of abuse, neglect and betrayal by those people who were theoretically being responsible for taking care of us and educating us. Even small or momentary abuses can be the cause of lifelong high-impact decisions.
The people who created the circumstances in which the abuses occurred were probably not aware that they were being abusive and causing scars. They probably had no idea what we felt like and what kinds of life-shaping decisions we were making. Perhaps we did not even know it ourselves. The people who were taking care of us probably thought that they were creating the best possible circumstances for our survival. For sure, they were doing the best they could do, given their own life experiences and upbringing.
You may have made a rational and expedient decision to avoid learning. But before you made that decision you loved to learn. In fact, you probably decided to be born for the sole purpose of learning. Even if you think that you are what in esoteric circles is referred to as a “walk-on” – someone who is an “old soul” who has already been around “many times,” who has already “been enlightened” and who has come back for the altruistic purpose of “serving others less fortunate than themselves” – you still came here to learn how to serve better. There are no “walk-ons.”
Esoteric labels have the power to block you from being vulnerable; the same as everyone else. The idea that you are here to “teach” rather than to learn may simply turn out to be a clever ruse created by your Box for avoiding the inevitable discomforts that occur during learning. Without irrevocably acknowledging that you do not already know what is next for you to learn about, learning stops.
Your mind is yours to play with and to make into whatever you want. You made up your mind once about learning. Using the same procedure, you can make up your mind a different way about learning now.
Without permission from anyone, without warning, you can change your old decision about learning and in this moment make a new decision.
No matter what you decided before, about you and learning, regardless of what happened in the past, you could make a new decision now. Are you ready for your next experiment? Here it is. Put up your right hand again and say out loud, “I am changing my mind. I have decided that I like to learn.” Now, grab a scrap of paper and write down the exact words of your new decision.
SECTION 6-F
Entering the Liquid State
We can’t modify our behavior and create extraordinary human relationship without first modifying the thing that decides what we do – our Box. The Box is one of the hardest substances in the universe, far harder than diamonds. Not only is the Box resilient, it also has the uncanny ability to repair itself. Given these challenges, what procedure could actually cause the Box to change shape?
We are asking how to change a solid with one shape into a solid of a different shape. This would be like having a handful of gold coins and deciding to use the gold to form a statue of an angel. How do you do that? First you must melt the gold coins. As the coins melt, the gold is released from its disk shape and flows into shapeless liquid. The liquid is then poured into an angel mold. After pouring the hot liquid gold you do nothing. The gold cools down all by itself. You peel off the mold, and there you have it– an angel! Same gold. Different form. Since the gold has a different form it has a different functionality. Function follows form. Previously the gold functioned as money. Now the gold functions as sacred art.
MAP OF THE LIQUID STATE
Without a liquid state the Box cannot change shape. Without a new shape the Box produces the same old results. Only authentic liquid states lead to Box expansion. Do not underestimate the value of the liquid state.
This same method is used on the Box. The Box is made out of solid beliefs, opinions, attitudes, assumptions, expectations, and so on. These components can find a new relationship to each other while the Box is in the “liquid state.” When the Box solidifies again its new form – you – gets a new functionality. This is how to make behavior changes and gain abilities that help you to create extraordinary human relationship.
You already know the value of changed functionality or you would not be reading a book about improving relationship competence. What you may not yet recognize is the value of the liquid stage between one solid shape and the next. If you don’t go through some kind of liquid state you get no new shapes in your Box, and therefore no new behaviors.
The secret for changing behavior is to navigate to the liquid state. Whether the liquid state lasts for three seconds or three days, it is the way to experience sustainable change. For example, your organic comprehension of any of the ideas in this book occurs through releasing previously solid perspectives and passing through the liquid state of “not knowing” until a new u
nderstanding solidifies.
What does the liquid state feel like? Each of the four bodies has its own particular liquid state sensations. For example, physical-body liquid states can range from 100-percent “on” – like being in the “flow” or the “zone”– with exhilarating power and no resistance to movement; all the way to 100-percent “off” – like feeling nauseous and being sick in bed for three days with a “flu.” Intellectual-body liquid states can range from unendingly brilliant clarity to confused blankness or stubborn disagreement. Emotional-body liquid states can range from tears of ecstatic joyousness to tears of despair, outrage, vengefulness or hysteria. And energetic-body liquid states can range from groundless spaciousness, total freedom and oneness with all beings everywhere, to meaningless angst and existential chaos. The liquid state experience, like all experience, is completely neutral. The experience has no built-in implications – it simply is what it is and feels exactly like it feels. The liquid state experience, like all experience, is also temporary. Any stories that get attached to the liquid state experience are produced and sponsored by the creative genius of your Box. Pay attention to the editorial slant behind the stories your Box generates for you. The test is to discover their purpose.
Sudden reordering applies to individuals, to relationships, and to organizations. All three configurations are able to stay in denial and resist an opportunity to evolve with extreme ferocity. When you are in any of these three configurations and evolution is knocking on your door in the form of potential chaos, although you were taught that “the show must go on,” you can also use the opposite strategy: let the show fall apart. Stay present, stay involved, keep breathing, and take the whole system into breakdown. By intentionally navigating directly into the liquid state instead of away from it, you can save yourself a lot of grief caused by waiting for “accidental” circumstances to build up and force an even bigger breakdown.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 20
