Monday, December 28, 2009

This year I resolve:

It seems to a contractual obligation for most radio announcers to say that this year their New Year's resolution is to "not make any resolutions." This mantra gets annoying, but it does tell us how hard it is to keep resolutions. As a coach, I'm a professional resolution-suggester, so it only seems fair to tell you how to keep your resolution, and I do encourage resolutions. I make and keep mine. Here's how.
Make your resolution small, specific and symbolic.
Instead of saying, "This year I will be more patient," you say, "This year I will refrain from criticizing my spouse's driving. Or my daughter's hair style. (Last year I stopped blurting grammar corrections for TV announcers. I had to stop watching Fox News, tho).
Do pick an action that is symbolic of who you would like to be. If you are a Two, don't resolve to help your daughter, you already do too much of that. Take a look at your enneagram style and resolve to do one symbolic act that is just slightly out of your comfort zone.
Then, unless it has to do with sexual deviance, employ the usual support systems: write it out, share it with someone who will annoy you by reminding you if you broke it, and give yourself a small reward. The reward must be small and symbolic, too, because if you make it large, you're going to work for the reward instead of the inner satisfaction of being less neurotic.

Friday, December 25, 2009

A smart old man was being taunted by some teenagers. Instead of attacking them, he gave them each a dollar for being such good taunters and invited them to do it the next day. Next day, he gave them another dollar, but on the third day only a quarter and on the 4th day, he refused to give them anything. Well, they weren't going to taunt for free, so they quit.
What the old man did was to substitute extrinsic reward (money), for the internal reward of pleasure. Worked like a charm.
The next time you read the phrase, "Follow your bliss," know that it means "do things for internal, intrinsic reward, not extrinsic ones.
But realize this will seem counter-intuitive because from early childhood we are offered bribes to poop, grades to read, money to help mom, and trophies to play baseball. That's how we destroy the pleasure of personal bliss.
If you are an Enneagram Three, you are particularly susceptible. The US is a 3 culture and we use an insane threeish metaphor-- "bottom line" --when we mean conclusion. Bottom line is extrinsic; conclusion, pleasure, competency, and bliss are internal.

Monday, December 21, 2009

People do what rewards them. That's relatively obvious. What is not always obvious is the reward. Hard work pays off after the work is done. Laziness pays off now. (a nod to Steven Wright).
But the principle is sound: what gets rewarded gets done. So for your personal enlightenment, write down what rewards you usually work for, and don't forget the intrinsic rewards.
Now let's apply that to today's health care reform bill. Here's the business reward plan for the insurance companies: They are rewarded for not providing service. If they provide a service (pay your bill), that is an expense, a fiscal punishment. But if they only serve those they think won't need their service or refuse, confine,shave, omit and otherwise not serve those who DO need service, they make money.
Does anyone see a problem with this structural reward system?
What is rewarded gets done. Today's mantra.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

I love to watch basketball, especially my team, Kansas. But I cringe inside every time I hear some coach or fan say that sports are like life. Here's how they are different:
First of all, sports are highly regulated and supervised so that the competition is fair. If Walmart competes against a boutique or you compete with your older sibling, it is no more fair than high school seniors playing the 4th graders in a sporting event.
Second, participation is voluntary. Participation is life is mandatory.
Third, you start over at zero every game. In life if you competed unsuccessfully in math in the 3rd grade, now you lack those skills in the 4th.
Fourth, sports have referees and umpires and a jillion rules. Don't you wish you had a referee at your job or in your family?
Fifth, sports usually have only one criteria for winning: points. Effort, pleasure, creativity, sportsmanship are not posted along the bottom of the TV set: just the score. In life, we have multiple criteria that are often overlooked.
Sixth, in sports, the game ends, in life, you never get to quit.
Seventh, in sports the good guys and bad guys are clearly labeled. In life, people change sides without changing jerseys. Think Joe Lieberman.
Eighth, in sports what is good for you is bad for them. In life that is seldom true.
Ninth, in sports, all the action is public. If life, much of the action is out of the sight of others. Think sex, politics and banking, for example.
Tenth, in sports the rules are public, unambiguous and agreed to by both sides. In life you learn the rules as you go along, they change by context and are not clearly defined.


The reason this is important is because the United States is a 3 culture and we have a belief that competition is good. Competition is usually destructive for some of the reasons above and others that I'll talk about later.
When I coach, I take context seriously. Any problems we have are contextual as well as personal. The "rugged individualism" of the US is destructive, especially if people are having a hard time. We blame the individual, not the context. But that assumes life is fair, like a sporting contest. Nope.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

What IS an Enneagram style?

An Enneagram style is technically an ego-state, that is a cluster of characteristics held in place by a narrow focus of attention, an energy flow that derives from it, a world view and a group of inner processes (strategies) that we repeat until they are habits.
These patterns of attention, energy expenditure, expectations and responses to extenal realities amount to a trance. A trance is generated from within, an automatic habit of including and excluding certain information and a habitual way of responding to information.
You all know people about whom you say, "Oh, I can't tell him that, he can't hear that." You are describing his trance.
Our trances are our most common form of mendacity - we don't lie by saying what is not true, we lie by not seeing what is true.
An Enneagram trance is active and dynamic, it is the unconscious patterns by which we do a lot of our thinking. What I do as an Enneagram coach is help you see those patterns and then interrupt them.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

What we expect is important because it highly influences what we see. We "find what we're looking for" makes easy sense when we're conscious of what we're looking for, but we fail to understand that an unconscious "looking for" in the sense of expecting is just as powerful.

Immanuel Kant, German philosopher highly influential, especially in the field of ethics (he was a One on the Enneagram), writes as follows:

The world as we know it is a construction, a finished product, almost--one might say--a manufactured article to which the mind contributes by its moulding form as the thing contributes by its stimuli."
If you know your enneagram style, you might think about what your usual expectations are and then look around you and see if your life reflects that.


Sunday, December 6, 2009

Every Enneagram style has a fairly specific set of expectations. Eights expect a fight, threes expect success and nines expect to be overlooked.
These expectations have some serious consequences. For one thing, we are much more apt to a) find what we're expecting and b)be surprised, disappointed, elated or otherwise emotionally stirred up by the unconscious comparison between what stimulus we run into and what we expected.
First, we tend to find what we're looking for. "Are you looking for trouble," is probably quite perceptive at times. "She has uncanny knack of finding fabric stores" is probably more canny than "un".
Our moods are quite influenced by our expectations. George Bush was a criminal, a draft dodger and an alcoholic, so he did not get criticized because, as HE said, low expectations always helped him. Everyone says how smart Obama was and we're all upset because after almost a year, we still haven't cleaned up Bush's mess.
But it's more personal than that. We think comparatively about everything. Retailers put very expensive things near the things we might actually buy so they look cheaper. Rodney Dangerfield was asked why he married his wife (because he said she was so ugly). He answered, brilliantly, "Because I saw her mother first and she didn't look so bad.
I'm 6 feet tall and I'm sure I look teeny when my sons Steve (6'3", and Dan (6'3" and my grandson Sage (6'2") stand by me for a family picture.
So when we evaluate anything, we need to realize our evaluation is partially dependent on what we expected and how reality compares to our expectation.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009


What did you expect?

Expectations are a primary filter. Our emotions are (among other things) an interpretation of an event and our expectations of what that event will or should or might be.
For example. A small baby messes itself all the time. Nobody gets upset. But if a 10 year old does it, we do get upset. Same mess. Different expectations.
So when things upset you, you might say to yourself, what did you expect?
But ask that of yourself quite seriously and then ask yourself if your expectations were / are realistic? How do you know? (Are those your private preserve or have you smoothly incorporated cultural expectations? Watching a lot of TV lately? )