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The personal mastery technology we propose in our book, Profit
From Experience: A guide to knowing yourself and influencing others; Publisher:
O'Brien Group, 2003, rests on four adaptive skills: 1) Raising consciousness;
2) Imagining; 3) Framing & re-framing; 4) Integrating new perspectives.
Here's the explanation we offer:
"Raising consciousness means, not just thinking, but thinking
about thinking, noticing—and managing—the workings
of your mind so your mind won't run away with your life like a startled
horse.
"When you imagine, you create a mental picture—the
most vivid image you can—of an outcome you desire. Does it
work? You bet it does, and you do it all the time. If you're typical,
however, most of the imagining you do goes by another name. Worry.
This most common form of imagining leads not to something you want
but to something you don't, and it works depressingly well.
"Framing and reframing form the very foundation of the human
experience. They are the essence of personal freedom. They are about
interpreting the world, making meaning, assigning significance to
the events of life. When two thousand years ago the Greek Stoic
Epictetus noted that it is not the events of life that matter but
our opinion of them, he was talking about framing and reframing.
You don't have to think of anything in any particular way. You can
think of green as white if you wish. But some ways of thinking about
things are more helpful than others. Learning to frame and reframe
means learning to see things in the most helpful light, that's all.
"When Robert Livingston refers to changing one's world view
he is describing what happens when you integrate new perspectives.
What we see depends on where we stand. And where we stand—that
is, the view of the world our senses present to us—is profoundly
influenced by the biases of our family of origin and the hand fate
dealt us. Thank heaven we're not stuck with just one world view.
We can get a new one anytime merely by learning to integrate the
perspectives of others. In this sense, the points of view of other
people rank among life's most priceless gifts."
If this is beginning to sound esoteric, be assured it isn't. In
fact, the irony of personal mastery is that it rests on practices
that are deceptively mundane. In our book, we lay out a 21 day series
of essays and exercises that methodically engage the reader in raising
consciousness, imagining, framing and reframing, and integrating
new perspectives. We have received enough feedback in workshops
and executive coaching sessions where we have presented these methods
to know that their effectiveness is virtually guaranteed to those
who earnestly apply them. But in thinking about personal mastery
and its application in the organization, two paradoxes have become
clear to us.
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