General Notes

Mast Peace Conference

Stanford University

August 2001

Title:

Our Native Language of Intention:  Generating and Sustaining Intentional Relationships at Home, Work and in Community:

Key Speaker:
Scott Taylor
Scott Taylor Consulting

Summary:

We attempt to experience and express our value to others through the language of verbal & non-verbal behavior.  However, through the insufficient “relationship model” each of us inherited from our caregivers, the dominating behavioral aspect of this model often fails to express our feeling and our underlying Intentions. We learned to react to people’s behavior, rather than first speaking to their deeper Intention.  WE ARE NOT OUR BEHAVIOR!  Behavior is only a first step in signaling for attention; not a direct route to getting seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued. In this workshop we will uncover the forgotten language of our authentic Self, Intention, and co-create a new relationship model that can repair and renew difficult communications with significant others in our lives.

Core Principle

Life is about relationships.

Relationships are based on conversation. 

Conversation is  constrained by early childhood models. 

Models determine the success or failure in relationship.  

Success is achieving the desire or result expected from a conversation.

  Life's Greatest Gift

 To be in relationship where you are valued unconditionally and challenged behaviorally is to achieve life's greatest gift

  Relationship Model

No one consciously lays awake at night thinking of ways to sabotage work or personal relationships unless their model has run out of options.

No one is holding back a better model than the one they are using right now.

  The Results Question

The right question can change a lifetime of conditioning.

To direct and deepen any conversation, ask a question about a detail in the other's conversation.

  Two Parts of Listening

We know we are being listened to when the other person asks us questions about what we are talking about.

PRINCIPLES FOR LIVING

by: Scott Taylor

Principles

We all survived childhood-there was no choice.

Learn how you got "hardwired," then use your unique style to help others.

Life is about relationships-not things or jobs.

Healthy Parents & Managers

Create safe environments for self and others.

Use and model healthy relationship skills.

Verbalize your feelings, then teach others.

Make agreements to communicate with healthy skills.

Daily Communication

Show up. (Arrive)

Pay attention. (Attend)

Tell the truth. (Feel)

No attachment to the outcome. (Yield)

Techniques and skills

OREO Technique

Engage the person (unique self) with a positive statement.

Inquiry if you can talk about a particular behavior.

Suggest again your positive statement.

Characteristic List

Write a negative characteristic list for the person with whom you have difficult communications.

Sit quietly and find the characteristics within yourself.

Feel the characteristics.

Expand your container.

Write A Letter/Read The Letter

Dysfunctional System Concepts

We are 100% responsible for how we feel.

We cannot feel anything we are not wired for from childhood.

We need to name our/the primary stressor in our lives.

Don't blame others for their behavior, however we need to hold adults responsible and accountable.

Be aware of your reaction or response to other people.

Avoid projecting your discomfort and holding it on others

Engage the person (unique self) with a positive statement.

Inquiry if you can talk about a particular behavior.

Suggest again your positive statement.



What's Missing?

We have all made references that describe others “bad” behavior.  We verbally or silently point out “bad” behavior every day. Musicals, films, plays, television, radio and operas all focus on “bad” behavior themes.  Newspapers, magazines, books, tapes and DVD’s amplify our own fear of being caught doing “bad” behavior.  That’s why we love them.  We all have a vicarious need to project “bad” behavior out side of ourselves on to others.

 

What Relationships Are Missing?

 

·      All relationship/communication advice falls short if it does not refocus on why we behaved in a specific way in the first place.

 

·      We act out to get attention, and then to be seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued by others. 

 

·      We need to understand that when we are not getting the attention or results we want, our relationship/communication model has run out of options. 

 

·      When we are not getting the attention or results wanted we are trying to communicate with our hardwired model and it is not working.

 

·      What keeps us from having healthy relationships is our hardwired conditioning.

 

No matter what a person’s behavior they are asking to be seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued by others.

 

 

Why Is So Hard For Some People To:

 

·      Join community groups or volunteer?

·      Improve the environment, schools, healthcare, their habits and their life?

·      Make changes in their communities?

·      Help teenagers with their problems?

·      Stay on a healthy diet and workout consistently?

·      Keep a promise? Tell the truth? Tell a lie?

·      Explain their feelings, express anger, speak of their love or get advice from their spouse or significant other?

·      End a drug, gambling, shopping, or sex dependency?

·      Believe that others are inherently good?

·      Get promoted or get attention?

·      Be seen and understood by others? 

·      See the real person inside their partner, friend, in-law, teenager - beyond physical deformity, race, religion, gender, foreign language or behavior?

·      Accept me for who I am and enjoy the diversity of my cultures, my food, clothing, religion, customs and beliefs?

 

Why Do Some People:

 

·      Hurt the people they love?

·      Blame others for their problems?

·      Derive pleasure from others pain or loss?

·      Hate?

·      React with fear at certain behaviors that others ignore?

·      Believe that his or her religion, politics or beliefs are the only right ones?

·      Believe that his or her “normal” is the right normal for everybody?

·      Join causes to eradicate abuse, hatred, racism, sexism, class, and then perform these same acts themselves on others?

 

Important Questions:

 

·      Why do psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, teachers, bosses, police, politicians, lawyers, recording and film stars, sports stars, priests, popes, kings & queens, talk show hosts, radio personalities have difficulty in their own personal relationships?

·      Why do authors of “self-help books”, “community affairs”, “relationship,” and “child rearing” have difficulty in their own personal relationships?

·      Why do people with no particular track record in personal relationship skills end up teaching, coaching and counseling our children by leading Scout Troops, 4-H, after school sports, or other extra circular activities?






The Bucket Plan

1.   One day I came up with a new idea for a fireproof house.  In one year I completed it according to my fail proof plan.  One month after the house was complete it caught on fire! I have a bucket, but no water is available. The plan never mentioned water.  My fireproof house burns to the ground.  This is not the first time my plans have lacked an essential ingredient.

I’m feeling a bit discouraged. I feel like I’m living in a hole in the ground. At a local coffee shop a smiling man tells me of a new, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. While listening I climb out of the hole in broad daylight. I stretch my wings and feel renewed.  Using his description of success to guide me, I soon fall into a deeper hole. The plan never mentioned skills I don’t possess.  I feel embarrassed.  I don’t frequent that coffee shop anymore.

I remember when I climbed out of that hole.  It happened one afternoon while at a bookstore.  I peruse a book on how to have a perfect relationship.  It describes me to a “T”.  I go to a pricey one-week workshop mentioned in the back of the book.  I become one of them.  I go back home to my “loved ones” and tell them the good news – I’m a new person.  I tell them how they should change, so we can be happy. Everyone avoids me. The plan never mentioned others rejecting the new me.  I throw away the book. I find myself a vacant dark hole and climb in.   I am embarrassed and ashamed.

I climb out of the dark hole one evening after meeting and talking with the person of my dreams.  We were at a mutual friends anniversary party. We talked all night.  Being twin souls was mentioned more than once.  We began dating and liked everything about each other.  We were connected at the hip.  We married before the year ended.  Soon we began to see faults in the each other.  Soon we were angry more than happy.  We saw a counselor.  She gave us a surefire plan to solve our problems.  She had even written a book and was on Opera’s show.  The plan never resolved why we get locked into a negative belief about our partner and cannot take another route; costing us the whole relationship.  We were divorced within the year. I continued to be mad at my Ex for not being more.  How could I have been so blind? We went our separate ways and climbed into our separate holes.  I have lost track of time.

I have invited several dates into my house.  I call it a house now rather than a hole.  A hole is so non-classy.   I explain all of my preferences and likes and dislikes so there will be no misunderstanding. Anyway, the person that I am now seeing is perfect.  They’re not at all like the last fourteen potential mates who only saw my faults after a short time of going out.  We were setting up the arrangements for our wedding when the change occurred; A Jekyll and Hyde change in personality.  I was shocked when, after I had worked myself to the bone, my perfect partner said I was cruel, negative and boring.

2.   Winning a million dollar jackpot, yet not having a financial model to use it wisely.

3.   Being told to stop smoking for health reasons.  The Cure does not take into consideration the underlying hold on

4.   us and psychological reason for the addiction.

NOTES:

“The hole” is our hardwired container.  What we believe is “normal.”  It is packed with our preferences, likes, and dislikes, partiality, fondness, and inclinations.

“Climbing out of the hole” is a moment in time when I am shocked out of my hardwiring sense of normal.   Being fired from a job, being asked for a divorce, a child gets hurt, our house burns down, a flood destroys our house, an earthquake disrupts the freeway system

There is something fundamentally missing from relationship models and therapeutic process.  That would be the understanding of the absolute impact our hardwiring or conditioning has on our relationships.  At the slightest behavioral signal from another can make us go unconscious.

Following I will give numerous examples of respected professionals who regularly dispense advice to clients seeking to improve their relationships.

In 35 years of study and application of relationship skills, I have only read one book that hints at a solution to the relationship anomaly.  All others are suggestions of process or skills.  All fall short in real time communication.

For example, a man or woman may be told to stand up to their spouse when they become angry.  Yes, setting boundaries and being assertive is important.  However, in the moment the partner accelerates, the spouse goes unconscious.  We have all been there.  Mustering up resolve about how we were not going to get hooked by the others behavior, and the next thing we know we are fifteen hundred mile behind our eyeballs.

What is missing from all other models is to understand the landscape of hardwired conditioning.  In real time it can be seen as the difference of whether a person remains aware of their responsibility in the altercation or recoils or reacts to the aggressive person.

Aggressive here is being used in an all-inclusive way.  A person being violent is as aggressive as a person who hides in a corner.  Both are attempting to hook the other person to their relationship model.

In other words the people involved constantly reflect on how they are vested in the dysfunctional conversation.  What behavior of mine contributed to the outcome?  After the shock of the assault on our hard wiring, we flip into an active-reflective mode.  It helps to have this tattooed on our arm.


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