There are things that we want. That we are committed to. For example, I really want to work diligently and become an excellent teacher.
Then there is the reality of what happens, or doesn't happen: sometimes I work diligently, sometimes I spend time on unimportant chores, or distractions like games, books, etc.
Why? It's important to understand the answer to that question, if you want to change it. The why is the answer to the question: what needs am I getting met by doing/not doing these things: the games, books, distractions. Perhaps for me there are a few desires being met: the desire not to fail (if I don't try, I don't fail). The desire to feel comfy, to be entertained.
Once you recognize and own these things, you can then move on to the next step: what are the underlying assumptions or beliefs that underly these competing desires? To find this out, a good way is to ask yourself what bad stuff you fear would happen, if you didn't get these competing desires met. In my example, if I imagine just not playing games or reading books for pleasure anymore, or at least doing so much less, I fear my life would become dull, unhappy, and unpleasant. Empty.
Then the final step in this system is testing those assumptions in simple, non-threatening ways. Perhaps I try, once, to not give in to the craving to read or goof off during work time. And then I discover, my life is just about exactly at the same level of pleasure and enjoyment overall (and a bit higher in the long term sense of self-satisfaction, since I'm working towards my long-term goals.)
This then begins the process of weakening the competing commitments. They were strong because of the fears of what would happen if they didn't get met. But if it turns out those fears are baseless or greatly exaggerated, then they loose their urgency.
It should be noted that this is an emotional and habitual shift, which means it requires repeated practice over a long period of time (but not necessarily for long stretches of time each day. Frequency over duration.)
This is expressed in different words by Robert Fritz, who talks about "the creative process, the universal structure that leads to successful creating." He's another dude I happen to have read, and his nutshell is he looked at successful creators, and tried to isolate the difference between people who created a lot and people who didn't. Basically it came down to what he called oscillating patterns and advancing patterns.
An oscillating pattern is, in essence, the structure created by having two opposing desires. Back to my example, the desire to do all my homework and the opposing desire to go surf the web because I'm scared of failure instead. It's called oscillating, because sometimes one desire seems to win out, and when it's the "good" one, we feel like we're finally making progress, but eventually, that desire starts to get satisfied, or something triggers the other desire, and then it takes over. Robert likened it to being attached to two rubber bands, one in front of you and one behind. As you start walking forward (doing homework), the rubber band behind you starts to pull stronger and stronger, (fear of failur, fear of an empty life) until I give in to that pull. Then, after a day long binge of netflix, the remorse of not doing my homework kicks in, that rubber band is pulling stronger, and I do some more homework.
Roberts solution is almost the same as Kegan's. He says you need to switch to an advancing pattern/structure. Wich is just one rubber band, that you keep putting ahead of you. He doesn't really have any good advice for dealing with the interfering rubberband like Kegan does, but he has more specifics on setting up the advancing desire:
First, you still need two points, but the first point is your present reality, and the second is you're positive desire. Keeping yourself aware of both of these creates need. Awareness of your present reality, ergo, I've got a ton of homework to do, juxtaposed with you're nice looking goal: happily having done all the homework satisfactorily, creates need. Creates movement.
Second: the goal needs to be something you actually want. Sounds obvious, but so often in our society we try to pick the 'right' thing to want, based on what other people want, or what we're told is right to want. But the bottom line is, if you don't want it intrinsically, it's not going to create the lasting energy needed to get to it.
Roberts solution to the competing desires. (I wanna get thin but right now I really want the ice cream) is not to do the fancy deep thinking Kegan suggests, but just to refocus on your structural tension juxtaposition (the image of what you truly want next to the truthful image of where you are presently.) and that should give you the energy to choose the long-term goal over the short term gratification. But I don't think the methods need be exclusive.
Finally, another angle on this thing, is Byron Katie. She calls it inquiry, and focuses mostly on discovering and busting the assumptions that are behind our structures (both the structure Kegan describes and Fritz describes.) It focuses on the final step of Kegan: testing your assumptions and beliefs. Her method goes like this: Start with someone who pisses you off, or saddens you, or who you have in some way not forgiven, then with some prompting questions Katie calls a "Judge-your-Neighbor worksheet," judge the heck out of them. Tell them what they are doing wrong, and how they should change. This is the easiest way to start finding assumptions/beliefs, but after your comfortable with that, you can just write down whatever thought it is that is bothering you, even stuff about yourself. (however it's ineffective to start with yourself: that's too close to home and people tend to short-circuit the process and not get good results when they do that first.)
Once you have the emotionally charged belief that's making you mad/sad/depressed, you go through answering a series of questions in a meditative way, that tends to make great progress towards dissolving that assumption/belief. The questions may not be that useful without some hand holding to walk you through using them, but here they are:
Is it true? (the statement about life/the person/etc.)
Can you absolutely know it's true? (if the answer to the first question is "Yes")
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be (how would you be) without that thought?
And then you try turning around the statement to an opposite statement and finding examples of how that statement could be just as true.
It's not manipulative, which is nice, it's really just a guided tour of your belief, and the questions lead you to the realization that what you thought was so true, was maybe not quite as true as you thought. This is very much a practice, not a philosophy, so understanding it does nothing for you. It's all about the trip you take. And like all practices I know of that lead to permanent change, it takes repetition and persistence.
What interests me is that all these people seem to have independently stumbled upon one big thing. Like three blind people feeling up an elephant. They are all describing this thing to me, using different words, maybe focusing their description on different parts of the elephant, but they all seem to be talking about the same thing.
And what is that thing? I'm not sure exactly what to call it. It is the part of our mind that is our assumptions and beliefs about the world. And it's function is to determine (in concert with our desires, which seem to be a different part of the mind) our behavior.
The structure is quite fascinating, because, since basically all of our beliefs and assumptions are incorrect, at best approximations, we are in effect living in "The Matrix." An artificial reality. And by adjusting the fundamental structures of our Matrix, we adjust our experience and thus our behavior.
Robert Fritz is solely interested in action and motivation, so he doesn't spend any time with the underlying assumptions. He just wants to push the gas pedal on this machine, which means putting awareness on where you want to go, and where you are, rather than where you are told to go, and where you don't want to go. But if you're car is broken, he can't really help (I tried his stuff, it was not particularly effective, but that was because there was other stuff in the way that he didn't give tools to fix. Or if he did, I was not aware of them)
Kegan is interested in how the car works, so it can be fixed or modified to run more efficiently.
Katie is interested in disassembling the car, so she's really good at that, and if Kegan needs some of it disassembled to run better, she can help. But ultimately she's interested in completely eliminating the car and just flying around like superman. Or to use the Matix analogy, Fritz wants to use the rules of the Matrix to be as strong as the rules allow, Kegan wants to do cool things in the Matrix be re-writing the rules and Katie wants to step out of the matrix altogether.
What does this mean practically?
Fritz: choose something you really want to create and practice structural tension regularly to give yourself the motivation to get it done. (Juxtapose your clearly seen present reality with the reality/thing you want to create)
Kegan: Figure out what you want, figure out how you trip yourself and keep yourself from getting that, figure out the conflicting desires that cause that irritating lack of progress, figure out the assumptions behind those conflicting desires (what bad stuff do I think will happen if I don't give in to the conflicting desire.) And then bust those assumptions to make the conflicting desire weaker and easier to ignore.
Katie: Bust all assumptions/beliefs that are causing you pain.
And to summarize further into a nice little nugget you can take with you on a post-it:
- Figure out what you want, frequently juxtapose it with where you are to turbo charge your motivation and action.
- Figure out your competing desires that undermine you, (start with the undermining behavior.)
- figure out the assumptions about them that make you afraid to let them go.
- bust those assumptions with real life tests and/or Katie's method. That will weaken the competing desires.
- See if you can get those desires met in healthy non-disruptive ways. Or if not, just don't act on them, now that they are weakened.
