I lead a workshop on Sunday. I had knowledge, I had strategy. I executed it. It was sloppy. What was missing?
I didn’t know. But ‘god’ works in mysterious ways, the book I am reading has an answer that shows me what has been missing for me on Sunday and all my life.
The book, Peak, the new science of expertise, calls it Mental Representation.
Mental Representation is being able to see the finished product in your mind’s eye, and also see the process getting there, so you can anticipate missteps, and can correct, given that you know how it is, how it looks when it is perfect.
Mental Representation for what I want is a skill I haven’t practiced much in my life. Partially because I haven’t spent much time deciding what it is that I really want.
Why? Let me explain.
Kathy Kolbe of Kolbe index fame says: you have only so much ‘conative’ energy to go around.
Conation is the way you approach a project. It’s an instinctual energy. Kolbe says there are four conative approaches, Fact Finder, Follow Through, Quick Start and Implementer. We all have those four in different proportion. The numbers always add up to 20, and my numbers are 4-4-9-3. I am the type who jumps into action without doing much if any thinking, planning, fact finding beforehand. I have an idea and I jump… fast. Lots of ‘False starts, crushed dreams‘.
Some people are mainly researchers, fact finders (Knowledge), others are systemizers/strategizers aka follow through (Strategy), or Doers/Starters, and some are mainly Implementors (Execution)
But in my experience, no one teaches effectively and consciously the component of any project that is the secret missing piece.
I was attempting to teach that piece this past Sunday, because it’s been missing for me, and it’s been missing for my students.
There was one guy, Maxwell Maltz, who tried to do it, but, alas, one only hears what one already knows… I read his book and read and ‘practiced’ the exercises he and his followers developed, but it brought me no success.
Every person who is part of the Psycho-Cybernetics society, or who succeeded with Psycho-Cybernetics, employed the Mental Representation method to succeed. Consciously or unconsciously. I misunderstood the whole teaching.
There are two ways to live life:
- to have a destination, a goal, and spend the life either achieving or missing the goal, but not being happy
- to have a clear picture of the finished, accomplished life, and live ‘into’ it. That second way includes fulfilling yourself with what you are unwilling to be without, because it would make you unhappy. And includes not including what you are unwilling to put up with, because they would make you unhappy. And obviously unless you do this second way, you’ll be unhappy… guaranteed.
The second way is what’s missing. It is the closest to what one could call ‘successful living’.
Landmark Education is trying to teach it, but students never develop an effective Mental Representation… and the ‘possibilities’ they invent remain words… empty words.
I am sure you have no idea how that is done. I am beginning to see…
Goal driven life
What are the shortcomings of the goal driven life? One shortcoming is that it gives you the location of the goal. Every step of the way, towards the goal, your experience of life is not-yet, or ‘this isn’t it’. the prescription for misery.
And another shortcoming is that you can bumble along the way, lose your focus, because the goal is so far away, and you have no pointers of how to get there.
And finally, because a goal driven life is a life based on definition, where even the kitchen sink will fit… and none of the unwillings are even considered.
At all cost… ugh.
Mental Representation driven life
What is the benefit of having a clear, three dimensional picture with you in it, of the end result, the perfection? Including and considering that you are important to you. That how you feel is important to you. That you have requirements, and without fulfilling them you can’t be happy… But moreover, you won’t want to do what you seem to need to do.
A mental representation that can be tweaked.
A mental representation where you can see the gap
- between what you do, and what would cause the result,
- between who you are being, and what would cause the result,
- and also what you have and what you need to produce the result. Skills, knowledge, attitude, people
because you and the picture are merged, like a bubble you carry around yourself.
The second way allows you to increase your skills to get closer and closer to what you have envisioned, who you have envisioned yourself to be.
The secret is to live inside that mental representation and TWEAK yourself to match the perfection, bit by tiny bit.
You can have a mental representation for running a marathon, eating in a way that makes you physically the best you can be, lifting weights, or writing a book.
And you’ll do your life to bring it about, in its imagined perfection.
So a good life is created by really two projects: 1. the developing of the mental representation of what you want… and 2. then the adjusting your actions, beingness, attitude, environment, etc. little by little to match it.
My attitude has been: I don’t want to do it. I can do it, but I am resistant to it… I have been resistant to it.
But I am interested in the good life. A life I love, and for that I am willing to become masterful at it. And it is never too late… I say.
—So, how do you learn to create a Mental Representation and use it to guide yourself to success?
The book, Peak, tells the story of how Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write well using Mental Representation.
He liked how the British magazine’s articles were written, so he used those as his Mental Representation of perfection. Of how an article should be built, constructed, written, including the use of interesting words that he understood but never used.
Through painstaking process he successfully used his Mental representation to develop the capacity to write well… his books are still read after centuries.
Most results you desire need you to have skills you don’t now have… attempting big results on your current skill level is like thinking that Bill Gates could have founded Microsoft on a coding skill level of a beginner.
Knowledge is highly overrated
People think that they can buy a course that promise them to become a millionaire, and can become a millionaire through the knowledge of the book.
Education in this day and age is suggesting that knowledge is enough. But the death rate caused by doctors proves that it’s ineffective.
Doctors are taught knowledge, and that makes them dangerous: because doctors need to develop skills, but they don’t know how. So they do the best they can… and it’s not enough.
We live in a seriously unskilled society, where skill building is not even talked about.
And no amount of doing will make up for lack of skills…
Mental Representation is the core of skill building and the core of a life well lived.
Read the book Peak, the new science of expertise. It says it so much better that I can at this stage.
I have the pdf and the kindle version in my paid subscribers area.
You’ll find the missing piece of the puzzle… that if you pursue, your life can become a whole lot better, maybe even wonderful.
PS: Tai is quite successful. I think he is unconsciously competent in having Mental Representation of what he is going for.
He learned skills through osmosis… meaning that he learned the Mental Image of what successful people do and how they do it, because of his method of learning: mentors.
Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com) read the book Made in America by Sam Walton (Walmart) a hundred times to build his Mental Representation of a multi billion dollar company. I’ve read the book myself, and I can see how he did it. The book is like a blueprint. Few people built consciously, with a precise Mental Representation, like Sam Walton.
Same with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan. Both worked with Mental Representation. Grew into the image they invented for themselves.
Learn the skill, read the book. Don’t be left in the dust, clueless.
