By Joel Bowman, on February 1st, 2017% When Martin Luther King said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (in his I have a dream speech), he was, of course, referring specifically to racial disparities. Unfortunately, racial disparities haven’t disappeared, and perhaps even more unfortunately, our culture has added a variety of other disparities by which we judge people. Like skin color, they are all superficial in nature and say nothing about the content of their character.
The first thing that occurs to me is the bias many hold . . . → Read More: Content of Character
By Joel Bowman, on February 1st, 2013% In some ways this blog entry ties back to my previous posts on Choice Points: “Forks in the Road” and Evidence Procedures. One of the things I have been noticing about recent political debates is how often people, and perhaps especially politicians, seem to be absolutely sure of so many things.
Bell Curve
In statistical terms, when we measure most populations on most scales (such as height, weight, IQ, education, age at death, etc.) the result is the familiar bell shape of Pareto’s Law.
It make sense: Some people are really tall, some are really short, and . . . → Read More: Yes, No, or It Depends?
By Joel Bowman, on January 22nd, 2013% I don’t very often write extended book reviews for my blog, but I am making an exception for Choice Points: When You have to Decide Which Way to Go, by Phil Hollander, Robert Reaume, and Harvey Silver. (See Amazon.com for more.) It is an excellent book in more ways than one. I will say more about those ways, but first, a bit of background:
In the interests of full disclosure, I need to say that I know one of the authors, Phil Hollander. We first met in 1994 at an NLP training with Richard Bandler in Toronto. We have . . . → Read More: Forks in the Road
By Joel Bowman, on July 14th, 2012% This blog entry, which I am cross posting to the SCS Beyond Mastery Newsletter, could have been called “Adventures in Kinesiology,” as in some ways, it is a follow-up to my blog from 22 April, Adventures in Mesotherapy. Debra and I have just returned from the 37th Annual TFH Conference, where I experienced two powerful healing sessions from people attending the conference. But first, a bit of background information:
The training complex, “Hamburger University,” was connected to the Hyatt Lodge by a walking bridge over Lake Fred, which I suspect was named for Fred Turner, who followed . . . → Read More: Wellness for All
By Joel Bowman, on May 29th, 2012% In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures
By Joel Bowman, on April 6th, 2012% In the book, Persuasion Engineering, and in workshops of the same name, Richard Bandler and John La Valle discuss the concept of “inoculation.” In medicine, the shot you receive to inoculate you against a particular disease anticipates your exposure to a pathogen and teaches your immune system how to respond appropriately so that you can avoid the disease. It’s a good metaphor to creating resistance to harmful ideas in a wide variety of change work, including sales, behavioral change, and therapeutic interventions.
If you buy a new car, say an ABC from the DEF dealership, not long after you . . . → Read More: The Importance of Inoculation
By Joel Bowman, on October 2nd, 2011% Several news sources used the following headline to report the results of a recent medical study: Doctors predict impotence after prostate treatment. A number of other news sources used the following wording: Study: Potency after prostate cancer varies widely. And other headlines put it this way: Sex After Prostate Cancer: New Study Helps Predict Erectile Function Post-Treatment
Which of the headlines is a hypnotic command promoting impotence for those facing prostate surgery? I suspect that most readers of this blog know that “Doctors predict impotence after prostate treatment” is a form of “doctor hypnosis.” One of my videos on . . . → Read More: Why Everyone Needs to Know Hypnosis
By Joel Bowman, on September 11th, 2011% In a recent article in the Huffington Post, George Lakoff (author or co-author of numerous books and articles on metaphors and other aspects of language usage), said the following about framing:
Framing is much more than mere language or messaging. A frame is a conceptual structure used to think with. Frames come in hierarchies. At the top of the hierarchies are moral frames. All politics is moral. Politicians support policies because they are right, not wrong. The problem is that there is more than one conception of what is moral. Moreover, voters tend to vote their morality, since it is what defines . . . → Read More: Framing—Again
By Joel Bowman, on September 4th, 2011% Debra and I spent the last week of August in San Antonio, Texas, at the Healing Touch Program Worldwide Conference. Because we had a lot of stuff (primarily manuals and CDs) we needed to take, we drove from Michigan. The drive took two days, with the second day starting just east of the Mississippi River. We went past Little Rock, Arkansas, Texarkana, Dallas, and Austin before reaching San Antonio. We had a good view of the Texas drought.
Although we had seen TV coverage of the drought, that’s not the same as seeing the effect on the land while . . . → Read More: Feeling the Heat
By Joel Bowman, on August 11th, 2011% In case you haven’t noticed, the United States is embroiled in a political and financial conflict that is influencing the stability of world financial markets. One of the headlines of a recent (9 August 2011) New York Times article states, “Wave of worry threatens to build on itself: Hesitation over the uncertainty of the economy can make things worse.” That led me to wonder the degree to which perception can actually determine reality. The term I associate with perception as a determiner of reality is self-fulling prophecy.
Although the concept of prophesies determining future events is ancient, its modern . . . → Read More: Perceptual Frames and Self-fulling Prophesy
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The Importance of Inoculation
In the book, Persuasion Engineering, and in workshops of the same name, Richard Bandler and John La Valle discuss the concept of “inoculation.” In medicine, the shot you receive to inoculate you against a particular disease anticipates your exposure to a pathogen and teaches your immune system how to respond appropriately so that you can avoid the disease. It’s a good metaphor to creating resistance to harmful ideas in a wide variety of change work, including sales, behavioral change, and therapeutic interventions.
If you buy a new car, say an ABC from the DEF dealership, not long after you . . . → Read More: The Importance of Inoculation
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