Is it just me or do some of you feel that we live in a see-saw world? We just catch our breath when some other blame game starts up to keep the culture of chaos in full sail. For instance, we elect a President and a few months later a passel of people wish they had voted for the other person. Historically when one party wins the Presidency the other party wins the mid-term elections. All that I read about this yo yo effect is that so many people want change and they want it now. At what price? As the cliché goes, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ and most problems are going to take a concerted effort to give someone we elected enough time to accomplish what he promised. But the mechanism to get us to change the things we can may have to be stark and self-sacrificing. Keep reading.
Alan Deutschman writing in an article entitled Change or Die http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or-die.html points out that research says that if presented with life or death only 1 in 9 will make a change. Although the brilliant dissertation talks a lot about health and inculcating the Joy of Living will do more to change a person about his diet, exercise, no smoking or over-eating, he makes a salient argument how “frame changing” is the capacity to rethink and restructure how we think about most things.
I quote from his article, “The big challenge in trying to change how people think is that their minds reply on frames, not facts. “Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have—the long-term concepts that structure how we think—is instantiated in the synapses of the brain,” says George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California in Berkeley, California. “Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us: why would anyone have said that” Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy or stupid.” Lakoff says that one reason why political conservatives and liberals each think that the other is nuts. They don’t understand each other because their brains are working within different frames.
Deutschman goes on to conclude that framing only shifts through radical change. It is as if he is saying what we recommend in 12 step recovery: “Make it touch going in and it will be easier coming out.” We here in the Sedona Intensive practice and preach radical change. If I am not mistaken it is radical change that must come to all of us if we are to survive to thrive in the Republic of the United States and in the world at large.
Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com/.
Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://www.yourenotwhoyouthinkyouare.com/
