[From Rick Marken (2011.11.29.2100)]
Hi Andrew –
I’m not sure that PCT is what you’re looking for. But I think you can get a better idea of it’s relevance to what you want to do once you get your copy of Behavior: The Control of Perception. Until then I’ll just give you some of my thoughts relevant to your introductory remarks.
What kind of things are you looking for? I think you have the best stuff already if you have TIm Carey’s books; supplement that with Powers’ Behavior: The control of perception and you should be good to go. Of course, I also recommend my www.mindreadings.com site, especially the on line demos. But my site may be a little more academic than what you have in mind.
Rick,
It is great to hear from you and I was actually going through your demos on your site about 3 hours before you sent the email. Those are very helpful in showing the real-world proof of PCT and that behavior controls perception. Your site is very well thought out in the sequence of demos. I may very well be jumping the gun in asking questions until I go through ‘Behavior: Control of Perception’, I guess I feel a bit like a kid in a candy store in that I have been disappointed with so many self-help philosophies and different forms of human psychology and PCT just seems to ‘make sense’ to me on a very basic level.
AS: I am trying to help develop a system for people to be able to apply PCT to areas such as goal-setting, goal-visualization, increasing motivation. goal-achievement, better understanding yourself, building self-confidence and living a purpose filled life.
Well, PCT is certainly relevant to all those things, though I think PCT suggests that people can’t help living purpose filled lives; life is nothing but purposes.
This would probably have been much better stated in another way. I guess that for me the idea of ‘living with purpose’ is when someone becomes more aware of what their higher level goals are in life, and then through reflection on what matters to them most, ‘higher references’, and taking inventory of their strengths and weaknesses, through tools such as DISC assessment or personality test, consciously designs a path for themselves. Mind you, I am still working all of this out in a PCT framework!
AS: I can see how some of the ideas of PCT such as ‘focus’, creating reference points for goals, understanding how hierarchies could cause lower level goals that in are in conflict to self-destruct, and the like as very practical applications.
I’m not familiar with “focus” as a PCT idea; what is it? I would say that reference points are themselves goals; they are the specification of the goal state of a perception. So one of my current references is to reply to you; I am satisfying this reference as I perceive my words going down on the “page”. And conflict doesn’t really destroy anything; it results when two systems have different references for the same state of the world. Conflict does keep perfectly good control systems from being able to control (carry out their purposes).
With regards to ‘focus’ I was referring to the ideas that Carey talks about in MOL that we are only able to be aware of, or ‘focus’ on, one area at a time and that through MOL we are able to shift our focus to higher levels and thus get a better understanding of what goals or reference points may be higher up, and in turn, help to understand where conflict may be occurring. Destroy was poor phrasing on my part, perhaps re-organize would have been more appropriate? If someone decides that they are going to work 60hrs/week in order to make more money in the New Year, but their higher reference for a good quality of life is not based on money but spending as much time with their family as possible, as they start putting their time into work, and are getting less time with their family, there could be a conflict and they may end up decreasing those works hours. Some people might take from their decreased work hours the mistaken belief that they are lazy or not motivated enough, when in fact, if they had taken the time to become more self-aware and evaluate their goals in the bigger scheme of MOL ‘why’ questions, they may have better set their goal, or made sure it aligned with their higher references.
AS: I would certainly appreciate any help in finding good resources to read or any advice on how to proceed in the application of PCT to personal development and helping individuals achieve ‘peak performance’.
I think the Carey books are the best we’ve got.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading two of his books and he was kind enough to create a dialogue over email with me which I greatly appreciated. One of the things I am hoping to understand with further reading is how PCT accounts for natural characteristics, such as breeding dogs to have certain ‘personality traits’, and I’m sure I will get a better grasp of that as I read more.
AS: Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, I know it was a bit long-winded,
You have no idea what long winded is;-) This is not Twitter. Wind as long as you like.
As I pour through more on PCT and continue reading, going through ‘People as Living Things’ now, I am sure I will get answers to some of my questions, and really appreciate you sharing your thoughts!
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On Nov 30, 2011, at 12:02 AM, Richard Marken wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 8:34 PM, andrew speaker andrew@lionsforchange.com wrote:
Best
Rick
but I wanted to respect the request to start any new post with an introduction, background and areas of interest.
Sincerely,
Andrew Speaker
404-913-3193
www.LionsForChange.com
–
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com