WEAPONIZING EFFECTIVENESS - Let Slip the Dogs of War

G’day kids…

No didactic teaching points this week: just a story. But first, some background to understand the story.

There’s a line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that became so famous that it is now cliché:

“Cry ‘havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

It’s not all that common usage in your generation … ever heard it before?

There are different interpretations about what it means, but for me, it has always referred to the time in war when a leader needs to take things to the next level. Something has happened … some specific tipping point has been reached (or the enemy has done particularly gross or vulgar things) … and the leader declares that it’s time to “throw out the rule-book,” “take off the gloves,” or, “take no prisoners.” It is a declaration that rules of order (even wartime rules) will no longer constrain him “and that he will intentionally, willfully allow destructive chaos to reign (cry havoc), and that he will literally let the beasts (dogs of war) off their leash (let slip) to do what comes naturally: attacking the enemy with unrestrained viciousness. Proportional responses are thrown out the window … he wants to inflict as much damage (and usually pain) as possible. Societal and political rules and constraints that are in force during times of peace are a hundred miles in the rear-view mirror.

Last week I spoke about the civil war inside all of us. Back in 2002, I started to realize the degree that this civil war had been raging inside of me and I hadn’t even been aware. This disgusted me, that I could have allowed inattention to dominate my life … and complacency … and lazy contentment … and smug self-satisfaction … and dangerous arrogance … and self-sufficiency. I had allowed my elephant to run wild; he was loose and without restraint. And he had been running wild and free for so long that my rider had lost all hope of actually trying to hold the reins because he knew who actually reigned (pun intended). I was living a very self-limiting, self-defeating and self-destructive life. 

My shame and embarrassment about this ran very very deep. The strange thing is that it wasn’t the type of embarrassment or shame that dominated the first 20-25 years of my life … this one was completely different. I actually cared very little about what other people thought about me. I was ashamed and embarrassed inside myself. I don’t recall even being that ashamed before God because I knew that He knew what was (and had been) going on. It was just in me … I just couldn’t believe how I could have allowed this to happen while being oblivious to it all along.

I remembered back in the late 80s and early 90s reading about how our minds make significant paradigm shifts: that such shifts are ALWAYS accompanied by a Significant Emotional Event (the psyche book actually acronymized it as S.E.E.). I’ve read dozens of books over the last 5-10 years that explain the brain-science on this phenomenon very well, but the bottom line is the same thing: it takes a significant emotional event.

Well, my embarrassment and disgust must have run so deep that it emotionally traumatized me … so much so that I achieved a moment of clarity about what was necessary. I needed to declare all-out-war on the elephant … that part of me that Paul (in Romans 7) described as the “sinful nature,” within him. I knew it was going to be a bloody fight but I was prepared to take no prisoners. I knew it was going to get ugly, but I was prepared to fight as dirty, or even dirtier than the enemy within. In that moment I cried havoc, and let slip the dogs of war on myself.

That was the day that, with prayer, my rider began to research, study, and train me on what I needed to do cooperate with God’s transformational processes in order to put to death the sinful nature in me. When I began all this in 2002 I believed that I needed to simply “kill” that thing within me … to kill the elephant. I now know that the elephant is actually the powerhouse in me and that I don’t want him dead … I want him trained to serve me rather than remain wild. I will be weaker without him than with him, but he and the rider need to work together. I needed to learn the art of elephant training. What you guys know as The Omega Program (taught 2007 through 2012) was my first effort at creating a holistic training program for completing the work that God begins in people … to train their riders how to appreciate and then train their elephants. 

2002 was the first time I let slip the dogs of war and my focus was on how I related to other people. The second time I loosed the dogs on me was in 2006 when I needed to take charge of my physical health. I had tremendous success with the first one in 2002 because those changes became permanent in me. The second one was moderately successful but didn't completely last and some old habits returned (poor eating and exercise habits). I guess I didn't totally let the dogs loose the second time; it's more than nine years later now and I'm starting to get that disgusted feeling again. I think I have to let all the dogs loose on the elephant. (shhhhh - don't tell him - if the elephant knows the dogs are coming he'll buck the rider and go wild again).

:-)

I love you both.

Dad

WEAPONIZING EFFECTIVENESS - Lessons from the Land

Morning my children…

This week my SE.A.L. theme takes us to the last place … the LAND.  Why? What’s there? Well, the elephant of course … because I want to talk about how the largest land animal in the world relates to our effectiveness.

So let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

Back in 2008-09 I took an evening course delivered by a neuroscientist called, “How the mind works.” She began the course with this sentence, “All human beings are born as hedonists ... pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding creatures."  My first thought was, “wow, what a dim view of humanity.” My second thought was, “yep … I get it.” Despite it being an unappetizing “truth” for me, I can’t argue with the statement. In fact, I believe it to be a key truth in understanding myself, especially my self-sabotaging nature.

We are born with strong animal instincts for survival and a genetic predisposition towards seeking pleasurable things and avoiding painful things. As we grow older and develop a conscience and a will and something along the lines of self-determination (one of the things that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom), we know that we need to subordinate those basic instincts to our control … to our will. The thing is, these instincts are powerful beyond imagination and will completely dominate us unless we learn how to tame the beast within us so that we act like a human being and not like an animal.

The analogy of taming this beast is brought out very well in Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The HappinessHypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom,” where he shares with the reader a model that he developed for explaining the struggle we all have with the beast within us: a rider on an elephant. The rider is the rational conscious part of the brain and the elephant is the more emotional subconscious part. 

The rider knows where he wants to go … he wants to be good and do good and he wants to head in directions that are noble, principled, spiritual and altruistic. The elephant, on the other hand, is stubbornly selfish, lazy, hates pain and is only interested in what is safe and pleasurable. AND .... the rider is easily exhaustible while the elephant seems endlessly energized. One yeah, one more thing; the elephant spooks easily at change.

Ben Franklin understood the inner conflict as evidenced by his quote: “If passion drives, let reason hold the reigns.” [side note: the Heath brothers … Chip and Dan … turned the elephant/rider analogy into a brilliant strategy for how to effectively bring about change when change is hard … check out their book SWITCH].

OK … here’s the deal. This inner conflict between the rider and the elephant is really a civil war going on inside of us. This isn’t a new discovery; it’s been known about for millennia. If you want the Christian take on this you can look to Jesus who said, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” or the Apostle Paul, who actually describes the civil war in himself in great detail in Romans 7. If you want something more recent then there is the Canadian First Nations story (which, by the way, made a great heritage-moment commercial that I’m sure you remember) where a chief tells a young boy that inside each of us lives two wolves, one who makes us do good and one who makes us do bad; when the young boy asks the chief which wolf wins, the chief offers, “the one you feed.” 

Of course, even this is just a reworking of Plato’s charioteer with two horses (a good one and a bad one). 

Maybe you want something even older than Jesus, Paul or Plato … so I could point you to Buddha’s “internal raging elephant.” Still not old enough? OK, how about King David who prayed to God in the psalms, “Lord, give me an undivided heart.”

Then maybe you want a very modern version from the likes of Freud with his teaching on the id, ego and superego. 

But then again, maybe you’re completely satisfied with the simplest version of all … the Hollywood depiction of the little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other.

Personally, I really like the elephant and rider analogy because it fits well with social science and human performance data … something we will visit in the posts to come. Here are the two driving truths about the elephant:

1. The elephant doesn’t just want pleasure … it wants pleasure NOW. In fact, it wants the pleasure NOW so badly that it is willing to borrow tomorrow’s pleasure and bring it into today, or like in Æsop’s fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs (a fable about the unprofitability of greed), it brings the pleasure of all-the-tomorrows into today. But here’s the rub … the elephant will do this even if it knows that by bringing the pleasure into today, not only will tomorrow’s pleasure be zero, today’s pleasure will actually be a diminished version of what tomorrow’s pleasure would have been. Of course, this is that whole conversation about delayed gratification that brings to mind marshmallows.  
2. The elephant is also highly motivated to experience no pain NOW. In fact, it so desperately wants to avoid any pain NOW that it is quite content to delay the pain until tomorrow … even knowing that when tomorrow arrives, the pain might actually be much worse. All it knows is that it just can’t handle that pain NOW.

This pleasure-NOW, no-pain-NOW nature within all of us creates the urgency paradigm that we looked at in the April 18 post about the matrix. The elephant has the power - this is the principle we need to understand; all that remains is to teach the rider how to train his elephant. 

Self-awareness/knowledge is about getting to know and understand your rider and your elephant. Self-management is teaching your rider how to train your elephant.

OK guys, I'll wrap up this week with a question, which I will answer in two ways:

Question: So then, how do I train my elephant?

Answer 1: I start by getting to know both the rider and the elephant... REALLY getting to know them. Here are a few truths about them.

Truth # 1: you can't talk directly to the elephant, you can only talk to the rider; therefore, if you want to teach the elephant anything, you'll have to tell it to the rider, who in turn tells it to the elephant. 

Truth # 2: you'll need to teach your rider how to speak elephant language.

Truth # 3: you need to know that the rider and elephant are driven by morally opposite things, with key facts being that the elephant is incredibly indolent (avoids pain and effort at all cost). Sayings like, "no pain, no gain," freak the crap out of him. He is easily spooked by change ... any kind off change. He always wants to take the easiest possible path.

Truth # 4: your rider is easily exhausted; your elephant is endlessly energized.

Truth # 5: your rider believes that the elephant has no self-control and condemns him ... the real problem is that your rider simply needs to learn how to make self-control irrelevant and how to quit putting hard or unclear choices in front of the elephant.

Answer 2: By fully understanding Answer#1, I realize that the strategy of actions fall under 2 categories:

1.            I need to make my (the elephant's) bad behaviour visible to me; in other words, I need to make my unconscious behaviour conscious, so that I can deal with it.

2.            I need to create a better (easier) path for the elephant to walk every day so that the rider doesn't have difficulty in getting him to turn down certain roads.

Watch yourself. Observe yourself. Turn off the TV, IPOD, laptop, cell phone, and any other noise that is distracting you. Do this on a regular basis so that you can get to see what the elephant is really like. Warning though ... he hates being watched ... that too kinda freaks him out a bit, even when it is you (the rider) watching him, so just be prepared for that.

Next week we go to war!

I love you guys.

Dad

Weaponizing Effectiveness - Lessons from the Air

Happy Long Weekend…

I hope you reflected on the water theme from last week. This week we take to the air. As with all of my theme titles, I use them to cheat my way to the actual theme that I want to talk about.

When I think of air I think of flying … and when I think of flying I think about pilots. Pilots get a lot of money for arguably very little work. They take off and they land … apart from that they put the plane in cruise-mode, better known as “auto-pilot.”  Must be nice, eh, to have a job where most of your paid time is when you are doing virtually no work … just coasting as it were.

Actually, I don’t think about this in any cynical or jealous way at all. Actually, I love the concept. In reality, we don’t really pay pilots for all their time … we pay them for getting us safely in the air and getting us safely back on the ground again in a different location that would take too long any other way. In my books, pilots earn every cent: big bucks for the predictable hard stuff and then be ready in case hard stuff happens when you don't expect it. That’s the way it should be.

In fact, that’s the way it should be for life; get an extremely high reward for a hard effort, and the rest is free. I love auto-pilot.

OK, I’m not talking about pilots and planes, but about personal effectiveness and freedom. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend most of our life on auto-pilot and not struggle to accomplish what we need to accomplish? Here’s a question for you: how often do you rely on auto-pilot? And by “you” I don’t me you two personally … I mean people in general. Or how about if I asked the question this way:

What percentage of a person’s behaviour is conscious and self-regulating?  Or the opposite: what percentage of a person’s behaviour is non-conscious, habitual and automatic?  Are you sure you want the truth? Can you handle the truth? I picked up the following from well-documented social science data gathered by performance experts.

You might be asking what this means. Well, what it means is that 95% of your actions and behaviour do not require an act of intervention by your conscious mind. 95% of your actions don’t require a decision to be made. You just do things and behave on some auto-pilot routine that’s running in your head.

I know … you can’t believe it either, right? This just doesn’t make sense. I “know” that I am making decisions all day long and choosing how to behave and what to do. But if you actually take time to really observe yourself and watch/listen to everything you do/say, you will be shocked to discover that this is true. 

Now this is where a paradox becomes evident. We are told our whole life, “pay attention,” or “be alert,” or “be self-controlled.”  From the data we just saw, apparently we only have 5% of our brain available to our conscious mind … only 5% is at our disposal to be as attentive, alert and controlled as we need to be.

You’re probably saying now, “but wait a second … I know lots of people who are incredibly well-managed or self-controlled … and a lot of people who aren’t.” So obviously everyone’s percentages aren’t the same … that 5% / 95% thing must just be an average for all people. And you would be right …. it is an average for all human beings.

Now check out the following. First think of all the highly disciplined people that you know … and now think of all the very undisciplined people that you know. Think of them as two groups … those with great discipline and those with virtually no discipline (the high achievers vs. the couch potatoes). Now take a guess at what the above percentages look like for each of those groups. Give some thought before you read on. If the 5% / 95% is an average for all humans, then do the high achievers have numbers that are more like 10% / 90%?  Do the couch potatoes’ numbers look like 3% / 97%?

And the answer is …. they are still identical …. 5% and 95%. There is no difference in how much of their lives are on auto-pilot.

So what is it then that sets these two groups apart? The answer is actually not all that surprising. The difference is in how each group uses their 5%. The highly disciplined group is intentional in everything they do … they establish a reason for doing what they do and they only do what makes sense according to the reasons that they have given themselves. Those reasons are called, “purpose.” High achievers/performers have declared one or more focal points (purposes) to which they direct their energy, including a substantial amount directed towards changing what their auto-routines look like. They recognize their basic weaknesses, especially towards their natural inclinations to be lazy and indolent (pain-avoiding) and they expend a substantial part of their 5% on establishing rituals / routines that draw them away from those self-limiting, self-defeating and self-destructive behaviours.

High performers don't have higher IQs, they are simply wiser. They know how life works, in particular, their life, and they learn from their mistakes for the purpose of self-correction. They don’t have any more brain-power to work with than the rest of society … they just use what they have in a way that services their mission (because they have one: a mission).

We all have auto-pilot. I watched the two of you long enough to know what your auto-pilot routines look like, and I’ve also watched you learn how to change those routines to something that works better for your life. I encourage you to continue being an observer of your own behaviour so that you’ll make the most of your brain-power: all 5% of it.

Personal freedom for me means being free from the constraints of of the 95%. And since I can't change the percentages, I am learning how to use the 5% to change the auto-pilot from one that does't serve me to one that does. 

Next week I will continue right where I leave off here as we take to the land.

I love you guys.

Dad

WEAPONIZING EFFECTIVENESS - Lessons from the Sea

Ahoy Mateys

OK guys … let’s talk about water.

Look at this picture and then answer the following question. What do you think it might mean if I said to you to, “be like water?”

This is a lesson taken from the world of martial arts … to “be like water.”  Any idea what it means?

Think about it before you continue. Seriously … ponder for a minute or so what it might mean to “be like water.”

Now watch the video. Your Mom took this a few years ago while I was sitting on the dock at the lake and throwing rocks into the water. I threw 5 successive rocks into the water … each one larger than the last. The first is a small pebble … the final one is a large rock. Go watch it then continue reading.

OK, what did you see? In particular, what did you see that might help you to say, “I want to be like this … I want to be like water?”

I show this video in workshops and let people think about the question for a few hours. I first introduced it in Omega and let them ponder it for weeks before answering the question. I’d like ask you to go away for a week and think about what you saw in the video (watch it over and over if you need to) but I doubt you’ll do that before just continuing reading. [the best learning happens if you can figure it out on your own - so take a few minutes anyway].

Welcome back.

What I wanted you to notice were two things: 

1. Proportional Response
The size of the disturbance in the water is determined by the size of the thing actually doing the disturbing; the bigger the rock, the bigger the response. "Duh!" you are saying. Well, it's not such a duh after all because it is not actually the way most people respond when a stone is thrown into their emotional pond. In the military world, this is called a “proportional response.”  Someone bombs one of your buildings so you respond by bombing one of their buildings … you don’t respond by nuking ‘em. That would be a disproportionate response.

I watch people all the time have a nuclear-sized reaction to a pebble-sized stressor. Metaphors for this over the centuries include phrases like, “making mountains out of molehills,” or, “tempests in a teacup.” Water has the built-in property to respond proportionately to the size of the disturbing force … nothing more.

Be like water! Respond proportionately (appropriately) to things and don’t over-react … people who over-react tend to drive others away from them because they are exhausting and/or toxic to be around.

2. Recovery to Equilibrium
The most amazing thing that I hope you saw was how quickly water returns to calm after a rock is tossed in … regardless of how big the rock is. Watch the video again and specifically watch the spot where the rock enters the water (the centre of the disturbance). The biggest response of the water happens right where the rock hits the water … sure there are ripples that go out but they quickly abate with distance (I can show you the equations for this if you ever want to see them … remember, I was the wave guy at work for many years). 

AND … the place that returns to calm the quickest is at that very same centre spot where the rock hit. The water has the built-in ability to return quickly to its original state. This is called recovery.

Be like water! Regardless of how events or people disturb or stress you, return as quickly as possible to calm. This is possible only if you have a calm place built into the centre of you to which you can return.

What (or Who) is at your centre? What (or Who) helps you restrict your reactions to only those that are proportional? What (or Who) helps you to recover quickly to calm regardless of the stressors in your life.

I learned the lesson of being like water and discovered its greatest application … in forgiving people for how they have hurt or offended you. This takes practice, but the skill is well-worth the practice because it has contributed greatly to my effectiveness in life and in relationships. The ultimate goal in this is … well … let me save the final punchline for the final blog post in June.

I love you guys. Be like water!

Dad

WEAPONIZING EFFECTIVENESS - SEAL Tactics for Life

May the 4^th be with you guys.

As you saw, I didn’t post on Saturday. Why? Because I wanted to greet you this month with the salutation, “may the 4^th be with you.” Why? Because I’m a Baby Boomer who makes lame jokes? Absolutely not (OK, I DO make lame jokes, but that’s not the reason in this particular case).

It’s because the Star Wars stories are about …. well …. they are about war … and this month I want to take you to WAR!  


Almost 14 years ago I declared war on my dysfunctional way of living. Over the years that have ensued I have learned and tinkered with many strategies and tactics. Many (most) have proven toothless and devoid of power to actually initiate change within. But a few have proven powerful. I want to share some of that with you this month.

Back to Star Wars for a minute. This franchise changed the face of movies forever and I was blessed to be amongst the handful (OK, so there were hundreds of millions of us) who got to see those movies live as originals and not as re-runs. In many ways Star Wars was a true trichotomy because it had:

1. futuristic gadgetry like laser swords and star ships and death stars;
2. old-fashioned “western-like” good/bad guys and shoot ‘em ups (albeit with laser guns);
3. mind-over-matter mysticism and magic.

This month I want to talk about war … the inner war that wages inside all of us … and the things that I learned that have helped me immensely in winning more battles than I’m losing. I’m launching into this month’s discussion from a strange angle … not from one of modern gadgetry, mysticism or shoot ‘em up westerns … but from one of extreme personal training and discipline.

When I think about rigorous training and discipline I immediately think about the US Navy SEALs. They are amongst the world’s leading battlers in dangerous and challenging situations. I won’t debate about whether or not they are the very best … that’s a debate I’m not equipped to take on … but Seals are world-renowned for their skills and training. In case you didn’t know (although I’m sure you did), the term “Seal” is actually an acronym:

Navy SEAL Insignia

Se.A.L. … meaning that they are highly skilled in battle and trained to operate in all environments, on the Sea, in the Air or on the Land.

SEALs are mission-minded. Always!

SEALs are intentional in everything they do – always connecting to purpose minute-by-minute. They never do anything for no reason. They are very successful because they are literally intentional mission-minded purpose machines, starting with their training, ending with the completion of each mission, and throughout the strategic disengagement in between.

In keeping with that I will spend the next 3 weeks focusing on one particular aspect of each of the words as it relates to highly focused inner training/discipline. In particular:

Sea – how I learned to have a mind like water (and what that even means)

Air – how I learned to develop a reliable purpose-serving autopilot

Land – what I learned about training from the largest LAND animal

On the final week I want to explain why the best path to personal inner discipline is to “let slip the dogs of war.”  (have you heard this expression?  do you know what it means?)

I love you guys

PS – Happy Engagement Faith!  Woohooooo