Beyond Growth

More is More, Until More is Less

Duff McDuffee — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:22:15 +0000

A huge number of personal development books and blogs are dedicated to the principle of leverage, also known as efficiency, the 80/20 rule, productivity, etc. But the thing is, many people use a “less is more” strategy far too early in the game.

In this great article “Is less really more?” I found via @andyfossett on Twitter, movement, strength, and conditioning coach Clifton Harski challenges the notion in exercise that less is always more.

He brings up three main points:

1. Efficiency for its own sake is often boring, and fun activities are often inefficient precisely because you are doing them for their own sake, not for some outcome.

2. As Harski puts it, “80% is a B-. Those 20% that people ignore, take you from ‘ok’ to ‘good’. They are not unimportant.” In other words, you can squeak by with a highly efficient program, but won’t get to good or excellent by simply being ruthlessly efficient.

3. “Less is more” recommendations originate from people already doing more–in particular, lots and lots more than you are likely to be doing unless you are at the professional level in that area.

We can think of this not just in terms of fitness programs but much more generally using the “law of diminishing returns.”

We can summarize this principle as this:

First more is more, until more is less. When more is less, then less is more. That’s the rule, more or less.

First More is More

If you are doing almost nothing, then first you need to get in the game. This is true whether the area is fitness, nutrition, business, learning in a particular field, etc. In all fields, newbies make rapid progress because in systems, more is more at first.

Newcomers to strength training make linear gains, putting up more weight every week if not every session.

People who go on diets to lose weight find that the first few pounds are the easiest to lose (and the last 10 to 15 the hardest).

More marketing for a business that has never done marketing leads to more customers, often in a linear dollars to customers kind of way.

a Pomodoro schedule

But inevitably, the law of diminishing returns sets in.

…Until More is Less

Then what happens is that for the same extra effort, fewer results come.

Strength gains were going up by 5lbs on each lift per session, then 5lbs per week, now nothing for weeks.

The first 30 pounds melted away, now you’re always hungry and you’re losing weight only at a rate of 1/2 lb every two weeks.

You keep spending money on marketing efforts which used to have a big payoff but now they barely even bring in what they used to.

You’ve gotten basically organized and productive with to-do lists and priorities, but you keep surfing productivity blogs and organizing files with no real productivity gains from these activities.

Only then do we get…

When More is Less, then Less is More

When we hit this arena of diminishing returns, some people double-down and waste resources. Other people give up entirely. Whereas the most effective strategy now becomes “more is less”–to focus on the most important elements and become efficient.

When a person or organization in this context focuses on putting energy towards priority tasks, then expending fewer resources (“less”) brings about more productivity, as measured by the ratio of inputs to outputs. Therefore less is more in this context.

But critical to this discussion is that less is NOT more until it is, until inputs have been maximized, until you are doing sufficient volume in the gym or really putting yourself out there in your marketing, etc. And even then, you might purposely choose inefficiency for reasons of fun, for artistic expression, or to develop excellence in a chosen area.

This incredibly buff 60-year-old guy has a workout that many people would call very inefficient:

He does 700 pushups, 10 sets of pullups, and 10 sets of dips, five days a week. It’s hard to argue with his results though, and he looks like he enjoys it. Can a person get fit and muscular on less than that? Absolutely. It’s all up to you how what you want to do with your life.

Authentic Spirituality and the Double Binds of Power

Duff McDuffee — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:47:56 +0000

Let’s say you are a famous spiritual teacher, and someone asks you in an interview what your biggest challenge is in your life.

That’s the basis for this teleseminar series, Teaching What We Need to Learn.

The most likely answers will be things like “I get mildly angry at other drivers when I’m in my car.” This is of course not the biggest challenge the person actually has in their life, it is a harmless vice other people can relate to and won’t severely judge the person for, thus resulting in no loss of power. (See Law 46 of The 48 Laws of Power.)

This Q&A is similar to the infamous interview question, “what’s your biggest flaw?” The correct way to answer this question is to be honest yet inauthentic by framing a flaw as a strength, like “I sometimes just work so hard I forget to take care of my own needs.” Nobody ever answers this question by saying, “oh, that’s got to be my meth habit”…nobody with a job that is.

In both cases, the game is that the question appears to be about being honest and authentic to create a deeper relationship, but the subtext is that one cannot be honest and authentic or else the relationship would be threatened. In the case of the spiritual teacher, if they are honest they sacrifice their power and thus role as someone to look up to for spiritual guidance. In the case of the interviewee, honesty and authenticity would harm their prospects of employment.

But then there is a second layer which makes it a double-bind for the spiritual teachers, which is that they are expected to be actually authentic, to be radically different than smooth politicians and marketers in positions of power. We look up to them and give them power precisely because we expect them to be radically other, free from the corruptions of the world and the marketplace. So when they are asked the question, “what is your greatest challenge in life?” we expect more than an inauthentic answer. We expect a radical transparency. Anything less and the teacher is a phony just like you and I and thus has nothing to teach us about how to live.

What would constitute a radical act in this situation? I propose that a teacher could violate the rules of game by doing one of the following:

By actually answering authentically, disclosing something deeply embarrassing like an addiction, a moral transgression like sleeping with a student or spending money from the spiritual community on personal luxury goods. This would of course destroy their source of power by being portrayed as “other,” but could possibly save their status as a legitimate teacher. Chogyam Trungpa pulled this sort of thing off and maintained his status as a spiritual teacher, despite sleeping with married female students and drinking to excess.
Refuse to answer the question or participate in such an event. Emphasize that as a well-known spiritual teacher one cannot be fully transparent about one’s personal life, that this is just the nature of the role–like a psychotherapist or a politician. This risks exposing the game that is these kinds of marketing events and ensures that such a teacher will never be invited again, thus also diminishing their public power.
To name the game but also play it. Similar to the previous example, one could say, “I won’t say what is actually my deepest struggle because that would be personally embarrassing in this public forum. But I will give an example of a minor struggle.” This is a less radical authentic act but maintains one’s power, although also risks being kicked out of the game.
To mock the game by answering in an utterly over-the-top foolish way. For instance to answer the question by saying, “well, this is really embarrassing, but ok. I round up stray dogs and torture them until they are totally mean, and then I host dog fights every other Wednesday night at my ranch house. You know, you should come over some time.”

By actually playing the game, these teachers are identifying themselves as politicians primarily, not as spiritual teachers of authentic living, thus reinforcing power games and the notion that spiritual teachers are free from the kinds of struggles you and I experience in life.

Personal Development and Justice for All

Duff McDuffee — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:38:12 +0000

So much personal development and self-help culture encourages achieving personal financial goals so that one can help others, either simply through the invisible hand of the market or by one day becoming a wealthy philanthropist. I think it’s a crucially important part of one’s personal development to understand why this quest is a myth, ultimately failing to understand the structural violence endemic to global poverty.

Today I watched an excellent documentary, available free on YouTube, on the recommendation of a twitterer named Matthew Stillman. The documentary is entitled “The End of Poverty? Think Again” and makes a strong case for what the root causes of poverty really are (hint: it’s not lack of natural resources) and what real solutions might look like (hint: it’s not aid from first world nations).

I highly recommend that you check out this movie as part of your personal development.

The World is Not Your Mirror

Duff McDuffee — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:13:50 +0000

“The world is your mirror” is a popular phrase in self-help culture. In reality the world is not a reflective glass surface. So this is a metaphor that means something like, “instead of blaming others, examine your own thoughts and behaviors and how you are contributing to the problem.”

This can be a very helpful strategy in many contexts. For instance, if you have the same kinds of problems in intimate relationships with partner after partner, finding yet another partner (“The One”) without determining your role in the situation is not likely to be a good approach. A better strategy is to introspect and change your behavior first. For instance you might ask yourself, “how do I manage to choose the same kind of partner again and again? How can I improve myself in this situation instead of blaming the other person? In what ways am I contributing to creating this problem?” This approach is commonly referred to as taking responsibility and is a sign of maturity.

The phrase “the world is your mirror” can also be used to avoid blame or responsibility. For instance if you confront a person about their harmful behavior and they deny causing harm, saying it’s your fault because “the world is your mirror,” they are implying that you must have created the situation somehow and that you should introspect and change your behavior instead of confronting them about theirs. This is commonly referred to as denial and is a sign of immaturity.

Some people always turn things back onto themselves and never confront anyone else. I did this for many years. This is commonly referred to as being a doormat and is a sign of a lack of assertiveness.

Too Much of a Good Thing

I’ve observed that in personal development culture, all too often people take a good idea and push it way too far. While it can be helpful to examine one’s own map of reality and habitual behaviors for areas of improvement, believing that the world actually is your mirror can trap you in a narcissistic hall of mirrors. Everywhere seeing only your own reflection, a person can become completely alienated in their own reality, unable to see anything but themselves. (Some Beyond Growth readers may recall that I’ve covered this before.)

Here’s a quotation that illustrates this sort of thing (source):

“All of your relationships are inside of you. There’s no relationship out there. There is only the reflection of what you are doing inside yourself and how you’re dealing with relationships inside of you, not out there. It may look as if a relationship is you with another person or with other people, but it is always you within you, and relationships are one of the greatest mirrors you can have for yourself-your patterns, your beliefs, your conditioned responses.”

-John-Roger

First off, this quotation begins with a direct falsehood. Relationships between people are between real people, not merely ideas. We have ideas about our relating and ideas about other people, but the relating and people are actually real and not reducible to our ideas about them. While I’ve found that improving relationships with various parts of myself has improved my relationships with other people, it does not follow from doing so that I don’t really relate with other people or that other people are really just projections of my consciousness.

To give an example, in second grade I had a crush on a girl for the first time. Since I never approached this girl and shared with her about my feelings, my idea of our relationship became very distorted compared to the actual relating we did. Our actual relating consisted of being in some of the same classes, but did not go much beyond that. My fantasy of our relationship on the other hand involved a mutual romantic interest. If my relationships were only inside of me, I couldn’t even make this comparison between the idea of our relating and our actual relating.

This narcissistic reductionism traps us in a hall of mirrors, the exact opposite of the purpose for saying the metaphor “the world is your mirror.” The whole point is to see that we are driven by our maps of reality but that the map is not the territory. Our ideas about the world are not the world. If our ideas about reality were equivalent to reality, then there would be no need to introspect because it would be impossible to update them to be more accurate and useful.

The world is not our mirror–the world is the world. The truth is we can never completely know the world, and the world was not created for our introspection or our personal growth. Introspection and personal growth are choices we make in response to life situations, and can be very helpful at times. But we should not confuse our choices for some Ultimate Truth. If I love others only because I believe they are truly part of me or were sent here to teach me about me, that’s not love at all, but selfishness disguised as love.

Other People are Other People

The one distinction that has most improved my intimate relationships more than anything else is to treat the other person as an other, as precisely not me. Other people have their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, reasons for doing things, personality styles, and personal histories. Other people make their own decisions, which means I cannot force anyone to love me, or want to be in a relationship with me. I also cannot force anyone to change. This means giving up on any attempt to manipulate someone to be more like how I’d want an “ideal” partner to be. I can make requests, but the other person can just as easily deny my requests. Most of the time when people deny my requests, they provide me with information that I wasn’t aware of, reasons why the request I was making doesn’t fit for them. When I consider the other to be other, I am more open to actually listening to this information, even though it is often difficult, precisely because I cannot know it a priori.

Many times when people are in arguments they will say things like, “I just don’t understand why he did that.” But rarely do they say next, “…and I’d like to know, so I’m going to go and ask him.” But since other people are not reflections of me, I can’t know until I ask. Even more disturbing is that they might also not know, for as human beings we are also strangers to ourselves, no matter how much introspection we’ve done or how many personal development workshops we’ve attended. Our inner workings are forever mysterious, changing, and never quite completely fit our ideas about them.

Here’s an exercise for you that I’ve found interesting:

1. Close your eyes and allow an image of a tree to come to mind. Notice all the details about it–the shape, the size, etc.

2. Now go outside and compare your image of a tree to a few actual trees. Notice what’s different from your image compared to the real trees you see. Focus especially on subtle details that are different or that you didn’t expect.

3. Now think about some quality of a person you know that you consider to be true and unchanging. For instance perhaps you think of a friend as quick to become angry.

4. When you are actually interacting with that person, look for what’s different from your idea about this person and the quality you thought was true and unchanging. Again, focus on subtle details that are different from how you imagined this person to be.

Anthropology Grad Student Looking For Help With Research Project

Duff McDuffee — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:39:10 +0000

We recently received a request from an Anthropology graduate student looking for people involved with personal development programs. I am sharing this person’s request here:

Hi Beyond Growth Readers! My name is Araba, and I’m an anthropology graduate student at UC Berkeley who is conducting research on personal development programs, identity, and narratives of self-help in the U.S. I’m currently looking for personal development program participants who are interested in taking 30 to 60 minutes out of their day to reflect on their experiences with me.

Whether your participation in a personal development program has led to subtle changes or radical transformations in how you think about and frame your life experiences, I am interested in hearing your story. If you live the in the Bay Area, I would be happy to meet up for coffee or lunch to talk. For non-Bay Area residents, I will be conducting interviews over Skype. Please email me at araba [at] berkeley [dot] edu if you would like to participate or have any questions about what will be covered during the interview. Thanks!

-Araba

Please contact Araba to help with the research project if you are interested.

Kinky Intimacy Games: More on the Authentic Man Program

Duff McDuffee — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:21:05 +0000

In a recent blog post, I shared my observations about “Circling”–a group process similar to Encounter Group Therapy that plays a significant part in the group called Authentic World (also Authentic SF/Authentic Man Program/Authentic Women’s Experience and now Integral Center in Boulder). There was a long discussion about it on Facebook.

Many people disputed my conclusions, especially that “Ken Wilber and Integral have historically been associated with many toxic groups, authoritarian leaders, and religious cults, so this new community center [Integral Center in Boulder] seems to be making decisions consistent with past problematic associations.” Others disputed my conclusion that the purpose of Circling was to induce abreaction, claiming that the technique has evolved and no longer emphasizes abreaction (but it still occurs sometimes), and that circling in general is not aggressive.

There is a video currently on the Authentic Man Program YouTube channel that supports my conclusions, especially that of an authoritarian, dominant or aggressive communication style present in the methods of Authentic World.

In the following video posted to YouTube, Travis Decker aka Decker Cunov–president and founder of Authentic SF (also Authentic Man Program, Authentic World, Authentic Woman Experience)–has an intense conversation with a young woman called “Sandra.” This video is a sample from a $147 downloadable program teaching men how to create emotional and sexual intimacy with women called “Getting Her World.”

(Trigger Warning: themes of psychological and sexual control)

In this clip, “Decker” uses ~~his knowledge of~~ techniques that I believe originate from various psychotherapies including Gestalt, hypnosis, and Transactional Analysis along with dominant body language (leaning in; unblinking, continual eye contact), curse words, and sexual suggestion for an unspecified outcome. (Edited on 4/4/2012 at 4:26pm for factual clarity after comments from Decker in the Facebook thread. New text in red.)

Gestalt and Hypnosis Techniques

At 2:34 the conversation goes like this:

Decker: I don’t even remember your name.
Sandra: Huh. See? This is bad.
D: Is it?
S: [eyes up and to the left] Umm…
D: Stay with me.

Eyes moving up and to the left is usually in terms of NLP a sign of accessing “visual constructed” internal processing. What that means is that a person’s eyes moving in that direction usually (but not always) indicates they are thinking, possibly by constructing inner pictures. Why did Decker say “stay with me” here?

One possibility is that prolonged eye contact is a method of trance induction. It’s also commonly interpreted a sign of either aggression or intimacy or both. By holding intense, unblinking eye contact for several minutes, most people will go into a trance-like state. This trance-like state might be interpreted by Decker as “emotional intimacy.” If that’s the case, he might interpret breaking eye contact as breaking the intimacy and therefore gives the suggestion “stay with me.” Indeed, Sandra drops noticeably into trance at 4:18-4:30 (she stops talking, facial muscles relax, blinking stops, etc.).

An interpersonal trance state like locking eye contact certain does create a kind of emotional intimacy, but it’s important to note that emotional intimacy occurs in both life-affirming and harmful contexts. For instance, locking eyes with a gang member in a dark alley is a very dangerous kind of intimacy. Being emotionally connected does not necessarily mean that the connection is mutually beneficial, consensual, or appropriate, or that some other game isn’t being played.

Another possibility is that this is a technique from Gestalt psychotherapy. Gestalt emphasizes working “in the here and now” instead of the verbal content of the conversation.

At 3:39 in the following classic video demonstration, Fritz Perls’, founder of Gestalt Therapy, says, “I disregard most of the content of what the patient says and concentrate most on the nonverbal level as this is the only one which is less subject to self-deception…on the non-verbal level, the relevant gestalt will always emerge and can be dealt with in the here and now.”

At 7:11 Perls’ points and says, “now what are you doing with your feet now.” “Gloria” laughs and says, “I’m afraid you’re going to notice everything I do!” This strikes me as similar to Decker’s suggestion “stay with me,” although without first pointing out her eye movements.

Transactional Analysis Techniques

At 3:44 Decker says, “you don’t have to [remember other people's names], but they better. That’s the game you play.” Pointing out what game other people are playing is a technique from the Transactional Analysis (TA) school of psychotherapy called “name the game.” Games are ways in which people relate by playing various roles, especially ways that are problematic. TA was popularized in the 1964 book Games People Play and the 1967 book I’m Ok, You’re Ok. Many people adopted principles of TA into daily conversation after the popularity of these books.

After “naming the game,” at 4:10 Decker gives two options: either a man plays Sandra’s game, or…

“I don’t fall for that shit at all. And then where I’m left is, I take you home tonight, I make you cum, I enjoy our bodies together, but I don’t know how much further I’d go. Because if I’m willing to put my cards on the table, and you’re not? Then I’ll enjoy you, like ‘oh that’s cute.’ But I’m not gonna [pants like a dog] do all the work.”

Decker expresses his intention to have a one-night stand with Sandra at this point in the video, but couches it in ambiguous language so it’s not clear whether his embedded commands are statements of his real intentions or just talking generally. He says “if I’m willing to put my cards on the table” but at no point during this short clip has he said anything at all about himself. He has put none of his cards on the table.

In a debriefing with AMP trainer “Garrison,” Decker again reiterates his willingness to have a one-night stand with Sandra at 6:14:

“I’m not willing to entertain you and be a little wind-up toy. And, if I’m not going to do that I’ll still fuck you, I’ll still enjoy you, for a night, but I’m going to look elsewhere for someone who’s willing to actually play, not hide out.”

“Play” is a particularly interesting choice of words in this context considering Decker’s use of Transactional Analysis with Sandra. What game is Decker playing with women? It seems to me the rules of Decker’s game are the following:

There are two players in this game: the Opener, and the Opened.
The game is played on a heterosexual date.
The Opener is played by a man and the Opened is played by a woman.
The role of the Opener is to get the Opened to become emotionally intimate, for example to cry, by first refusing to play the Opened’s game, and then by using techniques of Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, curse words and sexual suggestion, along with unflinching eye contact to induce trance and/or abreaction in the Opened.
If the Opened is not willing to play properly by crying or otherwise expressing emotional intimacy, trance, or abreaction, the Opener may still choose to pursue using the Opener for his own sexual enjoyment.
If the Opened is willing to play by crying or becoming vulnerable, then the Opener may decide to continue the game.
The game ends when the Opened refuses to play, and after the Opener has used the Opened for his own sexual enjoyment.

We could call the game Decker is playing in this video, “let me see how fast I can break you open.” Decker plays the role of the Opener, who demands “emotional intimacy” and who’s role is to break the other person psychologically until they cry or otherwise show a strong emotional response.

How To Win a Game

The question I have is, “why does this woman, who doesn’t know this man, owe him sexual or emotional intimacy?” According to RAINN, 1 in 6 women in the United States have been the victim of attempted or completed rape, 54% of which have never gone reported. 2/3rds of sexual assault are committed by someone the victim knows.

Given this context, why should a woman like Sandra open up to a man like Decker on a date, or be willing to have sex with him that night? His language was “I take you home tonight, I make you cum, I enjoy our bodies together.” Language of consent is conspicuously missing from these sentences. His present-tense statements about his intended actions presuppose that she has no choice in the matter or has already consented.

At 5:22 Decker makes assumptions that Sandra consented: “she doesn’t feel insulted, it’s a safe place for her.” But in this short clip at least, he never asked. Perhaps they cut out this section and he’s quoting her? Or perhaps he’s doing more mind-reading.

Instead of developing a trustworthy relationship through time that proves he’s not a rapist, Decker in the role of Opener demands that this woman open to him now, and will not take “no” for an answer. In fact, a “no” to the intimacy game (a phrase also used by Authentic World-associated groups) he is playing means he intends to “enjoy our bodies together” anyway.

At 7:43, Garrison asks Decker, “Now, would you have delivered something like this on a date.” Decker says, “Totally. Absolutely. With this much fun. … What’s more interesting to me is this dance, not the content.”

So Decker’s dates involve this same kind of conversation: unflinching eye contact, the “let me see how fast I can break you open” game, a willingness to use a woman for his own pleasure if she doesn’t want to play his game.

In the theory of Transactional Analysis, the only way to win a game is to refuse to play, as Decker refuses to play Sandra’s game. To refuse to play Decker’s game however means to refuse to open emotionally and sexually–to walk away–and also to refuse Decker’s judgment of what that means about you: that you are “hiding out” (versus having reasonable doubts about his intrusive psychological interrogating).

(Interestingly, my refusal to play a similar game–minus the sexual intimacy–seemed to be the thing which most upset most “Authentic World” members in the Facebook thread about my previous article. The same thing happened when I refused to play the game in the men’s group which I was briefly a part of that did the circling exercise I described.)

Is This Game Abusive?

Whether this sort of thing constitutes abuse is a matter of extent and consent. There’s a big difference between being chained up and whipped in a dungeon without consent vs. with consent. The former constitutes kidnapping and assault, the latter just some fun role play between consenting adults. If we assume this game is explicitly consensual, the best we could say is that it is some sort of kinky psychological role play, and possibly therapeutic–just as going to a Dominatrix might be therapeutic for a control-freak executive.

In response to a question about whether he would engage in this kind of conversation on a date, Decker says “absolutely.” He doesn’t specify whether he alerts potential dates to the kind of kinky psychological games he is absolutely willing to engage in and whether they want to play too, and understand the rules.

We all engage in less extreme versions of these techniques and games in daily life. For instance you might point out an anxious tic in someone by saying, “I noticed you keep brushing your hair behind your ears–are you nervous?” In small amounts, this kind of “calling out” is certainly not abusive or coercive. Therapy and hypnosis however take these kinds of normal, everyday behaviors and amplify them for the purpose of making significant changes to personality and behavior. Because of that, consent is built into legal structures around the profession of psychotherapy to prevent abuses of power.

In my opinion, a man using the tools of therapy in an intense encounter or interrogation of a woman, for the purposes of dating, and without consent is the worst form of “dual relationship.” Even if these ways of communicating aren’t called therapy, they certainly can create a dependent, power-imbalanced sexual and emotional relationship. If there is explicit, verbal consent, we could consider this a kind of “lifestyle D/s” (Dominance and submission role play as a lifestyle), or perhaps just an occasional kinky D/s encounter, depending on how often you play. Either way, the practitioners of such techniques have an obligation to get explicit, verbal consent, and to make the nature of the power game being played clear, as well as how to stop playing at any time. Even then, there is never any guarantee that consent is always present. (See Safe, Sane, and Consensual vs. Risk-aware consensual kink–links obviously NSFW.)

In another video described in this blog post on Integral Life, Decker talks with his wife, presumably in a similar fashion, until she begins crying in his lap. Perhaps the introduction of a “safe word” could be helpful for those couples who wish to play such kinky intimacy games. Otherwise there is no clear way for a person to stop playing if it becomes too much for them. Making assumptions about consent when using powerful psychological techniques on your partner is not a particularly good way to make sure everybody is enjoying the game.

Because these safe guards do not seem to be in place within the dominating therapy techniques employed by Authentic World and it’s subsidiary groups, my recommendation to readers is still to avoid these groups and their products…unless you’re into that sort of thing. There are many safer alternatives that are not playing power and control games for those of us who don’t wish to play, yet still want to develop good communication skills for mutually-beneficial, drama-free, mature and harmonious relationships.

Since comments are still broken due to comment spam overwhelm, let’s do comments on Facebook again. Or you can email your thoughts to info [at] beyondgrowth [dot] net.

Lifehacking as Testing the Limits

Duff McDuffee — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 01:49:43 +0000

Hackers often break systems just to see where they break. This might be for fun, or for devious ends, to help, or for some other reason like an activist cause.

For instance, a security person in an IT department might get hired specifically to try and break through their web security to get a password they shouldn’t be able to get. A different kind of hacker might break in to the same system just to see if he or she can. A third might hack the security to steal a bank account number to then transfer money out of. And a fourth hacker might take down a website in protest, as in the many protests the group Anonymous has engaged in.

Lifehacking is a buzzword that has attempted to rub off the cool mystique of hacking culture to the rest of life (online and off), but frequently refers to lame nonsense like backing up your computer hard drive, or boring lists of tips on facing your fears–neither of which involve breaking systems or testing the limits.

My previous post was what I’d consider lifehacking: pointing out limits of change techniques, in this case for safety and effectiveness. Many people reacted as if I’d hacked their web site, or let myself inside their apartment when they were away. Few people like to have the limits of their systems tested, even if they say that their life is all about growth and evolution.

But that’s exactly what we should be doing a whole lot more of. Fuck this lame shit about backing up hard drives and tips for this or that. Anyone who writes another article like that and calls it “lifehacking” should be ashamed of themselves.

I’m not calling for a change in language or rhetoric. Calling yourself remarkable is of the most unremarkable thing of all. I’m saying let’s engineer a better world by seeing where the systems of this world break, hopefully long in advance. Go out and break something today, something you love (not SOMEONE though).

Let’s stress test our communities, break our favorite techniques to make them better, imagine what would happen if we took everything to its logical conclusion. Don’t wait until it breaks on it’s own. We learn by breaking stuff, so break early, break often.

For example, Core Transformation is my favorite personal change technique. It’s so good it was hard for me to find a way to break it. But today I recommended to someone they do a different technique–a technique I don’t even use–based on the particulars of their situation. I only knew to do that because I’ve stress tested CT by doing it hundreds of times and thinking about it a ton over the course of a few years. I know the limits of my favorite technique, not just its benefits. I’ve spent quite a bit of time contemplating how it could be used for evil too, just so I’d be aware if I ever started drifting in that direction.

Willpower research has shown that visualizing positive outcomes are not as useful in achieving a goal as imagining obstacles and ways to overcome those obstacles. Breaking your favorite system will teach you much more about how it works than just using it as directed.

Don’t fantasize about your future, go out and break something today. Then you’ll discover what’s really possible.

Speaking of broken, comments are currently broken due to massive volume of comment spam. We’re working on it…

What I Observed about “Circling” from an Authentic Man Program Facilitator

Duff McDuffee — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:40:37 +0000

“Circling” is the name of a technique performed by facilitators part of a group called Authentic World (also Authentic Man Program/AMP and Authentic Women’s Experience/AWE, and now Integral Center).

Recently Authentic World has become associated with a local community center in Boulder, Colorado called Integral Center (formerly Boulder Integral/Boulder Center for Integral Living). This community center is loosely associated with Ken Wilber’s Integral philosophy and Integral Life company. The new community center is emphasizing “a renewed focus on Integral Community and Relationship” which in practice means doing a lot of this circling technique in evening meetings and weekend workshops.

I observed this circling process just one time several years ago, as facilitated by a leader of the Authentic Man Program, so some of my recollections may be inaccurate. Since I’ve written previously about not singling out individuals on this blog anymore, and since my purpose in this article is to give my observations and interpretations of the technique itself for general analysis of it’s structure, I will leave names anonymous.

The reason I’m writing this is because many people I know and like are still involved with Integral, and I’ve not yet been able to express my observations and objections to this method in any context in which they would be heard. This is particularly ironic given the purpose of the circling technique is sometimes expressed as “seeing and being seen,” but in any case, writing is a method of expressing myself that I feel it is easier for me regardless of whether I’m “seen” or not.

Context
The group was a new men’s group in it’s 3rd or 4th meeting. A guest facilitator was invited into the group for the first time. He was from out of town.

The group had never done circling before. Circling was not explained as a process. The facilitator asked for a volunteer.

Client #1
The person being circled was not asked what they wanted. The facilitator was not said to be a psychotherapist, but indicated to me that he was trained in NLP. No disclosure forms were signed.

The client appeared anxious, gesturing nervously. The facilitator entered into non-verbal rapport by matching and mirroring physiology (body posture, breathing rates, gestures, etc.).

The facilitator then described his own experience, especially his feelings of what he imagined it was like to be the client. He also used mind-reading (guessing what the client experiences) and psychoanalysis into what he thought being the client was like, in an emotionally intense encounter (as in Encounter groups from the 1950′s). He also asked questions of the client, primarily about feelings (emotional and bodily). The facilitator calibrated with the client’s verbal and nonverbal feedback and adjusted his verbal patter to this feedback. The client appeared progressively more uncomfortable as this went along.

The facilitator seemed quite skilled at what he was doing. He frequently pointed out things to observe to the rest of the group, but was in complete control of the process and did not seek help in facilitating from participants in the group.

My interpretation was that the facilitator’s verbal patter was a combination of rapport building and aggressively humiliating/shaming the client’s psychological defense mechanisms for the purposes of inducing a dramatic abreaction.

Once the client abreacted (sobbing violently within about 10 minutes of being “circled”), the facilitator instructed the client to lie on the floor and instructed the group to place hands on the client as support as he cried, which we all did.

There was no ecology check (checking for objections or side-effects of the change/technique) or future-pacing (imagining having a new, more resourceful response in the future). I interpreted this to mean that the facilitator considered the abreaction therapeutic in itself and so did not bother to check, despite him claiming training in NLP.

The client was debriefed and he said he re-experienced a recent, moderately traumatic event during the abreaction–something he had forgotten about–and reported feeling relieved.

Client #2
Again no outcome was elicited from the client, leading me to believe that the facilitator thought the process itself is therapeutic without defining any client outcome. Again this is a strong departure from NLP change processes in which clients define outcomes and where abreaction is generally avoided.

The client had a background in martial arts and internal martial arts. The facilitator matched and mirrored physiology and began speaking his emotional and somatic experience aloud in combination with mind-reading and psychoanalyzing the client. None of his statements or analysis made the client abreact. The facilitator blamed this on the client as him being too emotionally guarded. The client agreed verbally, saying it may have to do with his martial arts practices, but still appeared unmoved. The client expressed a desire to feel more. The facilitator became more and more aggressive in his psychoanalysis but nothing lead to abreaction so he terminated the “circling.”

I interpreted the facilitator to be frustrated as he tried to “break” the client and elicit an abreaction. The facilitator explained to the group that it was OK to not get a strong emotional response from a client. I interpreted this to mean that he was saying it’s OK for the process to fail, that the goal was to get an abreaction but that it doesn’t work every time even for an experienced facilitator.

Again there was no ecology check or future-pacing because there was no defined outcome and apparently no change (which was undefined).

There was a third client but I can’t recall what happened then.

After
After the meeting, that night I felt unstable emotionally, high and hypomanic. The next day I felt emotionally exhausted, unstable, and mildly depressed.

Conclusions
Circling seems to be a method of group psychotherapy in the vein of 1950′s Encounter groups or Large Group Awareness Trainings. The primary purpose as a technique appears to be to induce abreactions through gaining nonverbal rapport, engaging in aggressive/challenging mind-reading and psychoanalysis, and then providing emotional and physical support once the client abreacts.

No outcomes are defined which implies that practitioners of circling assume that abreactions induced under nonverbal rapport are themselves beneficial regardless of client context or outcomes, a dubious assumption.

It is well known that abreaction is an unpredictable therapeutic intervention. Carl Jung expressed interest early in abreaction therapies but later rejected abreaction as a therapeutic method. In particular, abreaction has the common side-effect in many cases of simply reliving traumatic events over and over without gaining a more resourceful response. Psychological debriefing, a similar approach where a person recalls a recent traumatic experience and expresses their feelings about it to a therapist, has been shown to be the least effective treatment for PTSD, often making things much worse. Many toxic, cult-like groups like Scientology use abreaction therapies due to the intense emotional experience that bonds individuals to the group.

My conclusion is that circling uses an outdated and potentially harmful method of abreaction therapy in a context that should be called group therapy but is not following proper legal or ethical guidelines to do so. The structure of the process itself runs many risks, especially that of unnecessarily re-experiencing traumatic memories, and creating a cult-like therapy group which emphasizes aggressive emotionality. Ken Wilber and Integral have historically been associated with many toxic groups, authoritarian leaders, and religious cults, so this new community center seems to be making decisions consistent with past problematic associations.

Since there are many safer and more effective alternatives to abreaction psychotherapy, in my opinion there is no reason to select circling as a way to improve one’s relationships.

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How Do You Know Whether Your Personal Development Efforts are Working?

Duff McDuffee — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 02:44:27 +0000

I recently achieved a goal with regards to a dietary habit, but then suddenly realized I didn’t know why I was doing it and therefore had no clue whether it was working. Many of us do this–wasting time, money, and energy because we don’t have a clear outcome and ways to measure progress.

Per the Body Ecology diet, I’ve begun consuming coconut water kefir before meals and cultured vegetables after meals–both sources of probiotics. This was difficult for me to remember to do, and also the cultured veggies don’t taste all that great so that aspect was also difficult. Also both cost money, especially since I buy them at the store instead of making my own.

I have a history of digestive health issues and probiotics apparently help with that, but how much should I take and how frequently? What am I even going for here and how can I measure whether my efforts are working or not?

Thinking more about it now, my health goals are the following, in order of priority:

Maintain digestive health (especially no stomach pain and good “movements”).
Maintain balanced moods.
Maintain current weight at least (especially don’t lose more than 5 lbs since that has been a problem for me).
Gain lean muscle mass.
Maintain good immunity (at most one or two mild colds a year currently).
Improve sleep quality and eliminate need for more than 9 hours daily (I sleep too much).

Probiotics may affect several of these goals, but probably primarily the digestive health. My moods are imbalanced mostly by a) not eating frequently enough, b) eating too much sugar or drinking caffeine, c) not getting enough sleep–all of which are currently in balance. Gaining lean muscle mass mostly requires that I eat more and work out with more volume. Immunity is related to intestinal flora, so that also is a potential outcome. My sleep quality and shorter need is unlikely to improve from more probiotics, but I’d take it if it works.

So how can I measure improvement in something like “maintaining digestive health?” I could track days where I experience stomach pain as well as intensity and duration versus days I don’t. Those are very infrequent nowadays, so I’d need to keep a log because I wouldn’t remember. I don’t think I want to create a spreadsheet of my bowel movements and post it online all Quantified Self style, but some private tracking of this data set could also help determine whether my efforts were working or not. I could also track immunity in terms of frequency and intensity of illness.

I’m still not completely sure though how I can determine which quantities, frequency, and even types of probiotics are optimal for me without some sort of data crunching and experimentation with variables, but I guess my alternative is to spend time, money, and effort at something that I have no way of determining whether it is bringing me more of what I want (or give up on my outcomes altogether).

Exercise is more straight forward in some ways because it is easy to quantify. In strength training, you know you are improving if you can lift the same weight for more repetitions or a heavier weight for the same reps. But even here, you must define your outcome–is “lifting more weight” your outcome, or is it something else like “decreasing body fat percentage,” “less back pain,” or even “enjoying learning new movement skills”? Only you can determine your outcome.

It’s important to know if your personal development efforts are working, otherwise you become a “health hobbyist” or a “personal development junkie,” spending time and money on trying things for their own sake. If that’s your outcome, then enjoy! But if you’re dieting or working out or taking a communication course for a purpose, then know your purpose and figure out what measurements you need to track to know whether it’s working or not.

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What Nervous Twitching Has Taught Me About Inner Peace

Duff McDuffee — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:09:09 +0000

As a child, I would frequently bounce my leg, tap on any flat surface, rock back and forth, or otherwise move and shake. While this was a useful way of calming and soothing myself (aka “stimming” as it’s called by those who study Autism Spectrum Disorders, or “nervous twitches” as I usually referred to them), it had the unfortunate consequence of annoying other people and giving me unwanted attention in the form of shaming and public humiliation.

At first I wasn’t even aware that I was engaged in such unconscious behaviors, so I often denied other people’s observations and accusations. When I became aware, I frequently felt embarrassed and resolved to stop such behaviors, but many times couldn’t because I wasn’t aware I was doing it and so I didn’t know how to stop.

When I was made aware of my unconscious movements by others, I tried holding myself still through bodily tension, but that just made me more anxious as the energy built up inside almost ready to burst. This is what I mostly did during my youth because I didn’t know of any other option than to self-monitor myself constantly and tense my body so I wouldn’t attract unwanted attention for my “stimming.” I learned to split my attention between what was happening outside and what my body was doing. As a result, I became extremely self-conscious which gave me a great deal of anxiety in social situations.

In high school I found a few books on meditation and Buddhism at a used book store and tried sitting still and meditating. I remember the first time I sat down to meditate. I resolved to sit perfectly still for 30 minutes but literally could not sit in one place let alone still for five. I practiced a little here and there will almost no success, but kept trying whenever I could.

In college I happened upon a book on self-hypnosis that a friend loaned me. I attempted some relaxation exercises which were nice, and some arm levitation which failed utterly. Somehow I got the idea to try relaxing my feet by placing my attention there and acting as if I were dead. I figured if I was dead, I wouldn’t need to move and bounce nor tense my muscles (luckily I didn’t know about rigor mortis). So I just gave up on moving or tensing and just let the muscles in my feet relax.

I first focused just on my big toe for as long as I possibly could until I could feel it start buzzing pleasantly. Then I scanned my other toes, then the ball of my foot, then the arch, then the heel, then the top of my foot, and finally my ankle, until my whole foot was buzzing and tingling. The sensation is similar to how a limb feels when you sleep on it funny and it goes numb but then wakes up, except more pleasant than the painful “pins and needles” feeling.

I then tried the same exercise with my hands while at a music concert. Many of my friends were in the conservatory of music at my university and so I went to many senior recitals that year, but always got antsy and started bouncing and tapping and drumming away. So I put my attention on one hand, starting with the tips of my thumb, slowly scanning that thumb and acting like it went numb or I was dead and thus didn’t need to tense or move at all, letting go completely. After a few minutes, sometimes 10 or more, it too began to buzz and tingle, and then I could continue until my entire hand would go numb and tingly, or sometimes both hands and both feet by the end of a 90 minute concert.

I noticed that my mental state also changed when I did this. I went from anxious with my mind racing (my default mode at the time) to much more calm and clear, my body buzzing and tingling and generally feeling quite relaxed. I wondered what would happen if I could get my whole body feeling this way, but it struck me as something that would take a very long time since it frequently took me 20 minutes or more just to get a nice buzzing going in one foot.

Later a friend turned me onto S.N. Goenka’s 10-day Vipassana meditation courses. I found the Vipassana technique to be surprisingly similar to my self-hypnosis technique in many ways, except not focused on going numb or making your body buzz, but instead being very aware of bodily sensations with a precise awareness without reacting, scanning from head to toe. The results ended up being somewhat similar however, as the natural progression of my meditations went from feeling lots of gross bodily pain to subtler pleasant buzzing and a flow of sensation all over. After my first course I noticed that emotions are made up of physical sensations for the first time in my life! I always thought emotions were just thoughts and hadn’t noticed they had a physical component to them. I realized then how poor my bodily awareness had been. And by my third course, I could sit all day without a problem—a big change from my first five minutes!

Most recently, I’ve become interested in whether my personal experience applies to that six-pack abs of meditation, “inner peace.” I’ve experienced inner peace numerous times through meditation, self-hypnosis, and Core Transformation, but it isn’t a lasting, ongoing peace yet. I still get nervous about some things, I still have ADD-like behaviors, and I still have a hard time letting my mind settle. Even when I have scanned the body with great precision in Vipassana, I can still be thinking about something else at the same time, due to the skill I developed in splitting my attention.

To focus on one thing at a time is frequently painful for me, and the basic “shamatha” (literally translated as “calm-abiding”) mediation where you focus on just one thing (the sensation of the breath at the nostrils, a specific body part, a mantra, or whatever) is something I feel I haven’t progressed in at all really, despite my progress in other techniques. Shamatha is the first technique I learned (and the first that many people learn), yet I still can’t keep my mind focused for very long before I’m like that kid again, unaware that his leg is bouncing—except this time it’s my mind, and there’s nobody to point it out to me except me.

Could it be that ongoing mental chatter, aka “the monkey mind” is like the nervous twitching of a leg? My first approach was to tense up against such activity, as if “shamatha” didn’t mean “calm-abiding” but “struggle to control your mind.” This aggressive approach seems like a similar strategy to tensing my body to stop bouncing my leg or tapping my fingers. It doesn’t work all that well for me in any case. I end up snapping at people and demand silence in my environment, something impossible to achieve even deep in the wilderness.

If I were dead, there would be no reason to continue an endless stream of purposeless nonstop thinking, so perhaps I can “die before dying” by just letting go of each thought as it arises. That’s what I’ve been trying lately at least, and it seems more like “calm abiding” than what I was doing before. It’s less about repressing thinking or cutting off one’s ability to think (which unfortunately many people take as the goal of meditation) and more about letting go of unnecessary nervous mental twitching.

Maybe inner peace doesn’t have to be such a struggle as we sometimes make it out to be.