Setting Perceptual Assumptions Into Place
How perceptual assumptions get set up is also not well known. As humans we tend to adapt to anything that is repeated or deliberately practiced. Given the presence of a repeating situation, we will spontaneously design and train a habit to deal with it. It pays off to think a bit about the wisdom of this habit design on the front end. This is why thinking skills are so indispensable.
When we train a habitual perceptual assumption, it is designed to disappear underneath whatever our level of sensory ability happens to be. Our sensory ability is dulled by the use of habits, and sharpened by the use of awareness, observation and thinking skills. We create a perceptual assumption by training a habit. The advantage is that it becomes handy to meet a stimulus without having to design it again each time. We can focus on other things that are more important. We build the skills we expect...and usually some habits we don't expect.
But the danger is the same issue: we no longer register a successfully trained habit on our radar as an activity. Habits become innate by design. The habit "goes off" whenever the stimulus is offered on the outside, or the thought is "thunked" on the inside. There is a significant advantage to this. This is designed so we can add a new habit on top of the previous. This is known as a "behavior chain" and is handy in skill building. It's possible to train new perceptual assumptions.
It is not a very common skill to be able to undo a habit learned by accident. Undoing habits - of thought, of movement, - these can result in a new perceptual assumption - an insight that changes us. Thinking skills are a way to address this challenge of how to undo outdated assumptions.
Most people never think of subtracting what is in the way as a useful strategy, just as lateral thinking techniques are not usually the first order of preference. People most often assume they must train yet another habit to take the place of whatever habit is not working.
Most people assume that insights happen "by accident" and not on purpose. Wouldn't it be useful to be able to purposefully illicit insight? It would be worth the time even if you had to follow indirect means to get these insights. Well, that's what happens with a little deliberate lateral thinking....and using Alexander Technique...and sometimes, elevating a discipline so it becomes an art by intercepting habit with awareness.
Please let me know if there are other worlds or disciplines which have this effect - because I'd love to take them for a ride!!!
A drawback is hidden in habits becoming innate. It's awfully difficult to get rid of what you cannot sense. Disappearing is a feature of a habit. People commonly find themselves doing things thoughtlessly that they did not intend to do or seemed to have forgotten about possible consequences.
Examples are common: holding one's arm up to support a purse that is not there; perhaps also holding one's arm up after having a injury to one's arm that has healed. Another example night be driving somewhere near home and making the most familiar series of turns to head back home instead of turning to go to the different place where you intended. Asking someone what time it is when they're a little drunk and holding a glass of beer might encourage them to pour the beer on themselves when they turn their arm over to look at their watch.
The more you repeat a habit, the more ingrained and innate it becomes. "Practice Makes Perfect."
Thinking skills pop us free out of our habitual assumptions, just as Alexander Technique has the ability to free us from our kinesthetic sensory habits. But we must remember to use these tools to give them a chance to work and gain their advantages. By their nature, these tools of innovation run contrary to habit. The conscious remembering must be assigned to take its place in some portion of a routine for these tools to be allowed to work as intended.
In Alexander Technique, the best time to assign it's use is as you begin to go into action. This is because as soon as we think of doing something, we are already preparing for it. Right before action we have a moment of "veto power." This is a built-in instant to decide the unique means of how we are actually going to perform the action and apply it uniquely to the situation.
Most of us miss or pass by this instance of optional choice. The reason we pass it by is because we are on auto-pilot or are just not paying enough attention. But sometimes it is because we do not know how to pay attention very well or we favor a very limited means of paying attention. Usually, multiple habits are in charge of coercing us otherwise, going off underneath our ability to perceive habits at work. Similar to a computer that gets overloaded with programs running in the background. If we then attempt to add in our intentional goals there is the danger of losing what we were trying to accomplish.
Best to "clear the decks" by using a little tool such as Alexander Technique that subtracts unnecessary routines and unites our intention - at the start of an action.
Do you have a suggestions when would be the handiest times to install a habitual reminder to use basic, strategic or lateral thinking?
When we train a habitual perceptual assumption, it is designed to disappear underneath whatever our level of sensory ability happens to be. Our sensory ability is dulled by the use of habits, and sharpened by the use of awareness, observation and thinking skills. We create a perceptual assumption by training a habit. The advantage is that it becomes handy to meet a stimulus without having to design it again each time. We can focus on other things that are more important. We build the skills we expect...and usually some habits we don't expect.
But the danger is the same issue: we no longer register a successfully trained habit on our radar as an activity. Habits become innate by design. The habit "goes off" whenever the stimulus is offered on the outside, or the thought is "thunked" on the inside. There is a significant advantage to this. This is designed so we can add a new habit on top of the previous. This is known as a "behavior chain" and is handy in skill building. It's possible to train new perceptual assumptions.
It is not a very common skill to be able to undo a habit learned by accident. Undoing habits - of thought, of movement, - these can result in a new perceptual assumption - an insight that changes us. Thinking skills are a way to address this challenge of how to undo outdated assumptions.
Most people never think of subtracting what is in the way as a useful strategy, just as lateral thinking techniques are not usually the first order of preference. People most often assume they must train yet another habit to take the place of whatever habit is not working.
Most people assume that insights happen "by accident" and not on purpose. Wouldn't it be useful to be able to purposefully illicit insight? It would be worth the time even if you had to follow indirect means to get these insights. Well, that's what happens with a little deliberate lateral thinking....and using Alexander Technique...and sometimes, elevating a discipline so it becomes an art by intercepting habit with awareness.
Please let me know if there are other worlds or disciplines which have this effect - because I'd love to take them for a ride!!!
A drawback is hidden in habits becoming innate. It's awfully difficult to get rid of what you cannot sense. Disappearing is a feature of a habit. People commonly find themselves doing things thoughtlessly that they did not intend to do or seemed to have forgotten about possible consequences.
Examples are common: holding one's arm up to support a purse that is not there; perhaps also holding one's arm up after having a injury to one's arm that has healed. Another example night be driving somewhere near home and making the most familiar series of turns to head back home instead of turning to go to the different place where you intended. Asking someone what time it is when they're a little drunk and holding a glass of beer might encourage them to pour the beer on themselves when they turn their arm over to look at their watch.
The more you repeat a habit, the more ingrained and innate it becomes. "Practice Makes Perfect."
Thinking skills pop us free out of our habitual assumptions, just as Alexander Technique has the ability to free us from our kinesthetic sensory habits. But we must remember to use these tools to give them a chance to work and gain their advantages. By their nature, these tools of innovation run contrary to habit. The conscious remembering must be assigned to take its place in some portion of a routine for these tools to be allowed to work as intended.
In Alexander Technique, the best time to assign it's use is as you begin to go into action. This is because as soon as we think of doing something, we are already preparing for it. Right before action we have a moment of "veto power." This is a built-in instant to decide the unique means of how we are actually going to perform the action and apply it uniquely to the situation.
Most of us miss or pass by this instance of optional choice. The reason we pass it by is because we are on auto-pilot or are just not paying enough attention. But sometimes it is because we do not know how to pay attention very well or we favor a very limited means of paying attention. Usually, multiple habits are in charge of coercing us otherwise, going off underneath our ability to perceive habits at work. Similar to a computer that gets overloaded with programs running in the background. If we then attempt to add in our intentional goals there is the danger of losing what we were trying to accomplish.
Best to "clear the decks" by using a little tool such as Alexander Technique that subtracts unnecessary routines and unites our intention - at the start of an action.
Do you have a suggestions when would be the handiest times to install a habitual reminder to use basic, strategic or lateral thinking?
Add a Comment
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Comment by Franis on March 28, 2011 at 7:57 -
Elia Kehayias (who just joined us here) wrote:
One of the replies to your article by M Cahill, recommended reading 'Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabatt-Zinn. Another book worth reading is Change your mind, Change your Brain by Sharon Begley", just wondering if you have since read either of these and what your thoughts were.
I still have not read those books yet. Thanks for the tip to reopen what M Cahill wrote in August of last year... I'll make a point of reading them now...
Related, have since been reading "The Watchman's Rattle - Thinking Our Way Out Of Extinction" by Rebecca D. Costa. It contains quite a bit of brain science about why humans tend to bite nature's hand that feeds them, so to speak.
Costa's parallels to de Bono's thinking abilities, attitudes and philosophy are striking. She also points out that humans desperately need to "design a way forward."
Was led to Costa's book by reading "Collapse - how societies choose to fail or succeed" by Jared Diamond. It's a anthropological documentation history of failed societies, with some interesting suggestions about design.
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Comment by M Cahill on August 26, 2009 at 21:18 -
Hi all!
This is a very interesting discussion. It appears to me that you are skirting around the area of a disclipine called mindfulness. This disclipine can break lifetime habits by the power of awareness, i.e. present moment living. ( Incidentally the Bible tells us that the only moment we have is now). This skill can be learned and it brings you to a new level and clarity of thought.
It is based on 2,000 year old Eastern meditative traditions and cognitive therapy. A book I recommend would be Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabatt-Zinn. Another book worth reading is Change your mind, Change your Brain by Sharon Begley. It pulls together the research of studies of Neuroplasticity; demonstrating that by mentally exercising we can physically alter our brain structure until we die. The repercussions of this when fully understood will be world changing.
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Comment by Franis on August 4, 2009 at 21:14
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Yes, cats respond well to creative thinking when communicating with them, because of their curiosity and being such efficiency experts who are obviously in a supervisory position. Cats don't often respond well to negative reinforcement because they're more likely to merely remove themselves and ignore you. So creative thinking is required to keep a cat's interest. After all, you are that big, slow giant that cats must massively slow down all their reactions to play with.
Rees, remember that I was giving an example of how I used thinking tools in a past project. As I was approaching the project, I was using the thinking tools I knew about from de Bono's work on the front end. Fortunately I ran into my first de Bono book at fifteen (PO) and did my first de Bono course by correspondence in the mid 1980s. So obviously, the thinking strategies I'd learned from de Bono came out in how I approached writing on such a subjective and challenging topic.
Coming back to the arena of perception, I believe there could be quite a bit of innovation. It's obvious that humans have quite a bit more capacity to perceive than they're using - because of this phenomena of habituation of the senses. It's striking how rich the senses become the moment you stop the routines - the sensitivity available is seething under the surface, waiting for a chance to tell you it's secrets. As you free those routines, it's really amazing on what level it is possible to sense immediately. Once you take away the routines, we are all creative thinkers and astute perceivers... It just takes practice to express it.
Most people do not even think about how this habituation exists - they are superb at taking it for granted. The coercion of conditioning is a kind of mass cultural trance state. Really, proprioception is an ignored sixth sense; the sense of touch usually refers to something or someone touching us or us touching them - surface sensation. If it was valued, wouldn't the word be commonly present in one's spell checker?
"Intuition" is a very general word for what happens when perception is freed. The experience of using one's intuition needs creative thinking to become specific and useful on the front end, otherwise you just have some random impressions that lead you to say, "Some part of me suspected that was going to happen!" I think we need some more words for the areas around qualities of perception.
We could also use some new words about describing location in space. Some dancers agreed and originated Laban terms; but they haven't become common usage.
People don't really think about how proprioceptive assumptions matter to limit them. It is surprising how much perceptual assumptions do matter. How could such a great idea as freeing one's thinking and one's ability to observe not be immediately valued by everyone?
One of my virtual questions is, "how can I convey the usefulness of freeing thinking and observational ability?"
Freeing perception and thinking ability is key to opening up whole new worlds of possibility - do you agree?
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Comment by Franis on August 1, 2009 at 9:26
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Thanks for reassuring me and encouraging me to take the next step up.
Eons ago, I completed a correspondence de Bono course (offered through Oxford) that contained quite a bit of the DATT, it sounds like. But the DATT seems to have a few extra tools that I've missed because they have been developed since. For sure, I'd love to treat myself to a course with a real live trainer...but that takes money I do not imagine that is coming to me anytime soon - Money to travel and for the course.
Since for now I seem to have too much on my plate at present, I'll have to suffice with some of the tips on this website. I'll keep going with that...
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Comment by Franis on July 30, 2009 at 7:49
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When I was a kid, since I didn't have much strength to dig deeper, I would tend to dig a hole laterally wider, whether I needed a wider hole or not. :o) Wonder if that was an indicator of my lateral thinking preferences?
Doing a C&S implies familiarity with results and the workings of the subject. Familiarity is often a weak point. People tend to see the short term benefits of a consequence for their intended goal. They can completely forget to account for the gradual effects over a period of time, the effects on others, imagining themselves in all facets of the situation they are planning for. This forgetting can still be carried out during a C&S.
One of my big insights was that I need to do a C&S periodically at certain stages to redirect how to best carry out my goals. Sometimes I can't see ahead until I'm standing on the step I just took to get where I am now. An interrupted line of foresight is not a reason to avoid the project.
Without giving it a name, I have already used the strategies of the CAF, FIP & OPV to write my first book on how my teacher was presenting her innovations in teaching Alexander Technique to groups.
The stage of the CAF was expressed in gathering as much information as possible. This took the forms of class notes, quotes and letters people had written my teacher. Then I prioritized all of it by associative sequence of topics, so in a sense I did a C&S. Then because the topic was so circular, I used the sequence of how she presented the topic to organize it - that's how I determined the FIP. Then I talked to her older students to see if what I had come up with was correlated with their experience of what she was doing as she taught. Which was an OPV. When there was a correlation, I knew I had the structure for how to present the book in writing. Voila!
It seems too long to do that whole process here, but It looks like my main problem in doing a KVI now is the list is on the previous page...! So, maybe I'll do it and report back about results later?
I'd love to hear more comments from others on their use of the various combinations of thinking tools. This is fascinating to me.
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Comment by Franis on July 27, 2009 at 2:12
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Thanks Rees. Very inspiring. I will make a note to track down this book by de Bono on creating a "Flowscape" in his book "Water Logic." Very interesting how values are akin to thinking in general! I'll have to check out "Six Value Medals" and course on Values also.
People seem better at knowing what they do not want, generally first. Later, they can turn around these unwanted points into a positive statement about what they want that is implied.
We have quite a few items on the CAF! This is going to be a loooong and interesting list of values!
For sure, being aware of ones' values and deliberately being able to prioritize ones' values is a meaningful advantage.
After studying why people select certain choices, I suspect that people rarely do actions reflecting self-sabotage. (My apology to those counselors who have learned to label so many people with a "poor self-image".) Most people are merely answering some other value ahead of "wisdom." Sometimes the cumulative effect of doing something repeatedly cannot be known until you find yourself in that situation. Then you must take measures to put out the fire after the fact.
"Hindsight is 20/20."
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Comment by Franis on July 26, 2009 at 14:46
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Thanks Rees!
A suggestion: If we want to make this website accessible to others not so familiar with de Bono's work, perhaps we should spell out more often what these acronyms stand for to help others understand what is meant... ?
So, PO is the most general laterally associative "provocative operation", and as such, it is EBNE: "excellent but not enough". FIP is "first important priorities" and CAF is "consider all factors" AGO is about intentions, (aims,) goals & objectives...
...or anyone else who knows could do this...
For my benefit, could someone give a one-sentence example of the use of KVI in habits? (I've forgotten what the acronym means.) Also, could someone make me more familiar with the use of Water Logic? (I can guess that it has something to do with how water gradually wears away harder surfaces or expands when it cools instead of contracts...but I"d like to know...)
On the CAF, (consider all factors) I would add...
Memory of possibilities and information that could help
Intimidation level under pressure to succeed & how to minimize this (related to others' habits)
Fear and how to make experimentation safe
Toward interrupting the habit - the ability for deviousness and strategy to prevent or stop the habit
How to determine the need for bright ideas NOW - (related to memory)
Sequence of when and how the habit starts and expands in stages (turning your nemesis into an advantage)
Outlining the benefits of being free of the habit - motivation to change the habit
The fall-back consequence if habit change is not successful - (related to fear of safety during experimenting)
When is the most efficient time to influence or re-direct the habit with the least effort
How judgment of a standard of what is desired seems to escalate, (ahead of increasing skills)
Frustration level, willingness and one's tolerance for feeling unfamiliar and uncertain
Cost of giving up what is familiar, (once you open the "can of worms" you can't go back to complacency)
The ability to realize that you are, in fact, doing the old same thing NOW (that NOW is the time to put into action what experiment to do , if you have decided on what to try.)
When to stop, withdraw or rest from the actions of improvement that is most constructive (so you aren't discouraged and will be willing to renew gradual progress)
When to recognize or acknowledge that your current strategy is unproductive, (that you should give it up and try something different)
(Related to patience,) noting gradual progress and having a way to measure it
Using forethought in solution design, perhaps outlining FIP (first important priorities)
(I'm sure there are more... anyone else want to take a stab at the CAF on dealing with habits?)
Rees: "Discussion often opens up problems. Thinking solves problems."
Certainly talking about problems is helpful. The challenge is that someone would have to be perceiving the issue as a problem. Then someone needs to describe it. (Perhaps part of the problem is that there isn't much of a way to describe what happens in movement in language, for instance. This challenge may exist in other subjects, which is why new terminology may to be invented in a new field.)
In my experience, habits are designed when someone, somewhere back in their past, perceived a problem and then designed a solution to it without much forethought or awareness of their assumptions or the ability of the habit they were designing to be updated.
Problems eventually came when the person who originally perceived the problem had limited options and had to choose among them for solutions. Now the person might have grown further and has deemed themselves able to use more sophisticated means and new information. But the habit they installed is pre-empting the show before these improved means can be used.
The person installed the habitual solution in the past. This habitual solution has become too innate so as to have disappeared from awareness. It's former (outdated) remedy automatically runs every time the trigger that identified the problem would be recognized.
Part of the problem is that the brain is a superb recognition system. Sometimes the brain mistakes a trigger by lumping a broad range of stimuli together (as "similar".) When in fact, this determination of similarity is a mistake. This trigger, if it were not mistaken, would require the immediate need & speed for a habit to "fire off." Sometimes this need is so imperative that the brain has lumped the solution together into a dire need for self-preservation that self-justifies ahead of ALL other priorities.
So I think the best way to describe this problem on the front end is not discussion, but perceptual awareness. How to pay attention? Then comes the ability to describe. Then the challenge to be aware while the problem is going on to gather more information about how it works without trying to improve it with former half-baked solutions. (As in having a baseline before the experimenting starts.)
This demonstrating an authentic example of the problem is often quite uncomfortable. The ability to tolerate uncomfortableness while refusing one's previously ineffectual habitual remedy takes determination...and a conviction that there must be a better way even though you cannot, at present, know it ....yet.
It is this unsavory, uncertain feeling that makes people not want to admit they were wrong. They already have A Solution...it's just not working very well. But it hasn't stopped working entirely yet. To give it up a partial solution may have various emotional reactions. It may feel scary, shameful. or encourage excuses or a shift of responsibility, as Rees suggests. It requires a certain courage, daring or ability to suspend or unhook the emotional reaction. Some people call this objectivity, but I think suspension is a better description. (In the Alexander Technique, we call this inhibition.) Whereas once a person has NO other choice, then the need is obvious and so the willingness to try a new process toward a solution is obvious.
The tricky part to some habits of movement is whenever some habits were installed, sometimes the original reason or feeling that fueled a need for the habit to be designed is a mystery and is hidden too completely by the solution. The ability to stop the (suspected outdated) solution IS the problem. As far as I have found, tracing back the habit closer to the source of when it is about to "go off" will reveal the original motivations for designing the habit in the first place. (Warning, this design may be pre-verbal!)
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Comment by Frans van Wamel on July 25, 2009 at 13:07 -
That's one way of putting it. I had to think about "They will die off if they are not activated." but I guess that it has merit. It makes me think about the situation you can find your self in.
I have found that the awareness of the habit itself - or the subsequent emotional response from it - is often harder to identify in the first place. Once found though, through insight or experience, it will be on the way out. Creating that space so as to practise that consciously often stops you, as it attacks the 'old-self'.
Ever been in a fashion store?
You are shopping for new clothing. Browsing from shop to shop looking for that ‘something’ you like. You rather enjoy it, if it was not for those pestering sales people who keep on hanging around you asking: Can I help you?
Two things might happen
1. You say no until you find something yourself, whilst you avoid those sales people, miss the ‘special’ or something you did not even know it was there.
2. Accept the invitation and be guided by the suggestion: Try it on. Once you wear the clothing it gives you the chance to, ’see and feel’ if it suits you. This is something you cannot do when you just hold something up in front of you, or skim the shop and racks whilst politely refusing the help offered.
You could always say no afterwards.
My point is, we often are not even aware of what we do. When you become aware of the habit, way deep down your own identity will be attacked. It's not easy to do consciously, as the subconscious is trying to hide it.
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Comment by Franis on July 25, 2009 at 3:12
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Ok, you can state what you want in a positive way. But what you want, you don't have yet.
As a strategy to get what you want, you provoke the habitual response deliberately.
Habits don't usually diminish by themselves. They will die off if they are not activated.
So, I'm very curious now. Exactly how you would diminish the habitual response after you've provoked it?
Or, do you mean the work "provoke" as in PO's "provocative operation"?
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Comment by Robert Maher on July 24, 2009 at 12:01
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change....create the reality you desire in a statement, provoke the habitual response and experieince it deliberatly until it diminishes to 0.
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