This is the text from the original ebook I wrote back in 2006
(there’s an new book currently in development and that will be in print either later 2009 or early 2010).
The Way of the Lover
Volume 1. Relationships
The Secrets of the Real Inner Game
By Michael Roach
What you’ll get from this book
This is a book about something called ‘Inner Game’. It’s not a book about how to pick up women or men. It’s not a book that’s exclusively aimed at men who want to seduce women, and it’s not a book that will teach you techniques, it is much more than that, it’s about doing what works for you.
The simple idea of this book is that once you have your ‘Inner Game’ in place, you’ve gone beyond technique, beyond doing stuff to try to be a certain way. Once you can be the way you want to be you can get what you want, and be in the relationship you want.
The term ‘Inner Game’ was coined by W. Timothy Gallwey who wrote the Inner Game of Tennis in the mid 1970’s, and a series of Inner Game books subsequently. This is how Tim describes Inner Game:
It is impossible to achieve mastery or satisfaction in any endeavour without first developing some degree of mastery of the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. Most of us have experienced days when our self-interference was at a minimum. Whether on a sports field, at work, or in some creative effort, we have all had moments in which our actions flowed from us with a kind of effortless excellence. Athletes have called this state, “playing in the zone.” Generally at these times our mind is quiet and focused. But whatever it’s called, when we’re there, we excel, we learn, and we enjoy ourselves. Unfortunately most of us have also experienced times when everything we do seems difficult. With minds filled with self-criticism, hesitation, and over-analysis, our actions were awkward, mistimed, and ineffective. Obviously we all would prefer to have more of the first and less of the second.
What this book is, is an introduction to how to live life “playing in the zone”, and a look how to use the cutting edge psycho-spiritual technology of the MythoSelf process to get for yourself how to play the real inner game, and sort out the most important relationship of all, the relationship you have with yourself.
Why ‘the relationship you have with yourself’?
This is THE SECRET, the skeleton key to your success.
What most people do is look for what is missing in themselves in other people. And when they see that in someone else that is what attracts them.
But this is what dooms relationships to failure … people don’t stay the same, they grow, change and develop. And when you no longer are missing what attracted you, what you saw in your partner, you no longer want your partner.
Many people are under the delusion that they are half a person, and only when they find their other half will they be complete … What you’ll find when you work with me is that you want to be complete as a person yourself so you are not dependant like some junkie getting a fix from your ‘other half’.
Are you a Lover, Warrior or Worker?
Warriors spend all their time stuck in conflict, fighting for this or that, and for them life is a struggle.
Workers are happy with what they’ve got, comfortable with the safety of the nine to five existence.
If either of these seems to be like you, you have the choice to be different to be something more. You could learn to be a Lover.
Lovers are different to ordinary people. In this book I’ll introduce you to the MythoSelf Process, and show you how you can use it to get what you want and want what you get. My teacher Joseph Riggio describes the Mythoself Process as an aesthetic model. (Aesthetics is both the study of beauty and the properties of a system that appeal to the senses).
There’s a difference between sex and making love. The first is a physiological process the second involves feelings and you as a human being. It’s about your experience, and what I can teach you is how to truly have your experience where you take pleasure from the life you live, living in each moment while also knowing where you are going and knowing that you are getting there, and how to truly be with the people you want to be with, whether that’s in bed or just in life.
Let’s start with a little story that metaphorically symbolises what this book is about. This short story was told by Joseph Campbell, the world’s foremost expert on Mythology, the stories told by cultures throughout the world:
… (Heinrich) Zimmer loved to recount an amusing animal-fable from India. It tells of a tigress, pregnant and starving, who comes upon a flock of little goats and pounces upon them with such energy that she brings about the birth of her little one and her own death.
The goats scatter, and when they come back to their grazing place, they find this just-born tiger and its dead mother. Having strong paternal instincts, they adopt the tiger, and it grows up thinking it’s a goat. It learns to bleat. It learns to eat grass. And since grass doesn’t nourish it very well, it grows up to become a pretty miserable specimen of its species.
When the young tiger reaches adolescence, a large male tiger pounces on the flock, and the goats scatter. But this little fellow is a tiger, so he stands there. The big one looks at him in amazement and says, “Are you living here with these goats?” “Maaaaa,” says the little tiger. Well, the old tiger is mortified, something like a father who comes home and finds his son with long hair. He swats him back and forth a couple of times, and the little thing just responds with these silly bleats and begins nibbling grass in embarrassment. So the big tiger brings him to a still pond.
Now, still water is a favourite Indian image to symbolise the idea of yoga. The first aphorism of yoga is: “Yoga is the intentional stopping of the spontaneous activity of mind stuff.” Our minds, which are in continual flux, are likened to the surface of a pond that’s blown by a wind. So the forms that we see, those of our own lives and the world around us, are simply flashing images that come and go in the field of time, but beneath all of them is the substantial form of forms. Bring the pond to a standstill, have the wind withdraw and the waters clear, and you’ll see, in stasis, the perfect image beneath all of these changing forms.
So this little fellow looks into the pond and sees his own face for the first time. The big tiger puts his face over and says, “You see, you’ve got a face like mine. You’re a tiger like me. Be like me.”
Now that’s guru stuff. I’ll give you my picture to wear, be like me. It’s the opposite of the individual way.
So the little one’s getting that message; he’s picked up and taken to the tiger’s den, where there are the remains of a recently slaughtered gazelle. Taking a chunk of this bloody stuff, the big tiger says, “Open your face.” The little one backs away, “I’m a vegetarian.” “None of that nonsense,” says the big fellow, and he shoves a piece of meat down the little one’s throat. He gags on it. The text says, “As all do on true doctrine.”
But gagging on the true doctrine he’s nevertheless getting it into his blood, into his nerves; it’s his proper food. It touches his proper nature.
Spontaneously, he gives a tiger stretch, the first one. A little tiger roar comes out - Tiger Roar 101. The big one says, “There. Now you’ve got it. Now we go into the forest and eat tiger food.”
From Reflections on the Art of Living - A Joseph Campbell Companion, Selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon.
If this story seems familiar, the themes were used in Disney’s Lion King film.
Are you living your life as more of a goat than a tiger? I can show you how to access your real Primal Knowledge™, so you not only get what you want but want what you get.
Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey is one of the inspirations for this book, you’ll find out more about this later.
The other inspiration is Dr Joseph Riggio, the technology, the ‘how to’ of this book, specifically comes from his work, particularly Soma-Semantics™ technologies and the MythoSelf® Process. Any distortions, deletions or generalisations are purely the result of my interpretation.
Fundamentally what you’ll get from this book is that you can step into the power of the now where you don’t have your problems or limitations and can access your innate primal knowledge.
LET ME SHOW YOU HOW.
Chapter 1 - Living Life on Purpose
Have you ever met someone who was living life on purpose, that it was obvious to you that they were going somewhere? Did you wish you were more like them? How would you describe this person? Would you say that they were passionate about what they were doing and where they were going? And even more important what was your reaction to them? I’d bet you had one of two reactions, you were either jealous and became cynical and dismissing of them as a result of that or you found their passion infectious.
In other words you’ll feel passion for them if your interests are in alignment with them.
This is one of those things they try to teach in persuasion and influence trainings. The idea being that if you can fake the congruence people will believe you and buy what you’re selling. This is what confidence tricksters are good at. Watch the film ‘Catch Me If You Can’ with Leonardo DiCaprio, which is based on a true story as a good example of this. However, the reality is people just get at an unconscious level when you are faking (particularly women). Some people may be used to overriding those signals. In other words they’re not used to listening to themselves. But at some point they’ll get the real message. Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book ‘Blink’ is about this.
What matters here is if you are passionate about something, you will communicate that passion to others. This is what I teach my clients, how to access their passion or bliss, their innate primal knowledge. When you learn to tune back in to your own inner signals you know when something or someone is right for you, and they know too.
This is actually a very serious point, and I get more than a few clients who when first talking to me, believe that they are not passionate about anything. This is the first thing to uncover, your passion.
Joseph Campbell, is famous for the saying “follow your bliss”.
So how do you find out what your bliss is then?
Well you could come and talk to me for a start!!
Some other things to do are to notice what captures and holds your attention on an ongoing basis.
What fascinates you?
What do you spend you time doing?
There’s lots of ways to find meaning and purpose in your life, these are just a couple of suggestions to start you off with. But what you really want to access, is what I teach that is part of the MythoSelf Process, that is how to access the you when you are at your best, what W. Timothy Gallwey called ‘playing in the zone’.
You may have heard athletes describe their performance when they’re playing at their best. Often they describe that they are ‘not thinking’, that they are ‘in the experience of the game’. This is where all their attention is on the outside focussed on ‘playing the game’ as opposed to thinking about playing the game. This is the critical distinction between peak performers and others that can’t make the grade. The difference between getting the gold and getting nowhere.
What’s actually happening here are that these peak performers are more ‘in their body’ and less ‘in their heads’.
Think of someone you know, admire or want to be like. You should be thinking of someone with alpha male or female characteristics, (top dog, leader of the pack).
Now from what you know of this person that you admire. Are they more ‘in their body’ or more ‘in their head’?
Another way of saying this is that, if you were in the presence of this person. What would your reaction be to them? Would you be admiring the decisions that they’ve made, listening to what they think about various topics? Or would you be having a physical reaction to their ‘presence’?
Being ‘in your body’ or embodied, is about moving through the world in touch with your primal animal power as a man or woman, your innate primal knowledge.
I don’t mean regressing and becoming a Neanderthal. I specifically mean being out of your head, not stuck in the thinking mind, but not without it either… (Spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle call this being in the Now). How would you describe an alpha male? As a Neanderthal or as the leader of the pack, with brains as well as brawn? If you look at the dynamics of a wolf pack, it’s not the strongest that is the leader, it is the strongest AND smartest pair.
Gary Klein who is regarded as the foremost expert on intuitive decision making in the world today, and has been featured on TV programmes like Oprah, worked with and studied groups like the US Marines, the Chicago Fire Department, and nurses on neo-natal care wards. He found that these people making critical decisions, or rather the specific people in these groups who made the successful life saving decisions, relied on what he called ‘intuitive knowing’. This is very different from the pseudo-magical version of intuition where people are just ‘assumed’ to know things. Klein’s research established that these people had developed ‘gut instinct’. In other words that they had a base of somatic knowing that enabled them to make decisions based on knowledge, not guesswork.
This is what I do with clients, teach them how to access that gut instinct, how to pay attention to the subtle inner signals that tell you when you’re right and when you’re wrong, or when you just don’t know.
My teacher Dr Joseph Riggio, tells the story of his teacher Roye Fraser, creator of the Generative Imprint™ model. Who as an Israeli commando in the war was leading his men through some dangerous terrain. At a certain point Roye stops for no obvious reason, and ‘just knows’ not to go further, in fact not to move or do anything until he knows why. Roye had also commented that he’d become very aware that in the life and death situations he was regularly in that those people who’d made the decision to come back were the people who actually came back. So Roye’s standing there not moving, but paying real close attention. He eventually notices the virtually invisible strand of tripwire tight against his boot, and noticing that can make out the placement of mines surrounding him and his men on either side.
How the MythoSelf Process is different is that it works at the level of ontology rather than epistemology. Epistemology is about how you think about things. Most personal development systems (including NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming) work in this domain, changing the way you think about things. Ontology is about working at the level of being. You don’t change the way you think, you don’t change, but everything is different. So that may sound nice and esoteric and may even cause some slight confusion!! But the practical application is you go beyond thinking to having a way of being. Where it’s you who’s getting what you want and wanting what you get, and being in the relationship you want to be in.
Remember – it’s not about thinking, it’s about doing. Moshe Feldenkrais said if you’re thinking about doing something you’re not doing that thing. Some people spend their lives in thinking. When I work with people they get to experience themselves being at their best by choice so they can be this way whenever they want, like all the time, and choose to live life from this as the foundational position.
This is best described to me in the quote by Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Chapter 2 - Stepping in to the Future Now
So this may all sound well and good in a theoretical way, but how to you make it real?
The ‘trick’ if you like is accepting the premise that we don’t live in a cause - effect universe. Now if you know anything about science you understand that this kind of idea comes from Newton, and his analogy of the ‘clockwork universe’. Updating things a bit, we have Einstein, and Quantum Mechanics and one of the leading thinkers in this area and colleague of Einstein was David Bohm. Bohm proposed the idea of enfoldment. In an interview in Omni magazine in January 1987 Bohm describe this as follows:
Everybody has seen an image of enfoldment: You fold up a sheet of paper, turn it into a small packet, make cuts in it, and then unfold it into a pattern. The parts that were close in the cuts unfold to be far away. This is like what happens in a hologram. Enfoldment is really very common in our experience. All the light in this room comes in so that the entire room is in effect folded into each part. If your eye looks, the light will be then unfolded by your eye and brain. As you look through a telescope or a camera, the whole universe of space and time is enfolded into each part, and that is unfolded to the eye. With an old-fashioned television set that’s not adjusted properly, the image enfolds into the screen and then can be unfolded by adjustment.
In other words time is not linear and all of the information is enfolded into the reality of this moment. The trick is in unfolding this enfolded information. The MythoSelf Process shows how to do this. (A good book to read by David Bohm is ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’).
Further we have the idea of teleology. So rather than living in a cause - effect universe you decide to orient your self teleologically. This means you have a future based orientation. So it’s about what you are becoming, rather than where you have come from. When you learn how to do this, you’re making the decision to move towards what you want rather than move away from what you don’t want.
Most people spend all of their lives trying to move away from things, people, places that they don’t want. And don’t get any closer to what they do want.
This doesn’t mean ‘acting as if’. This is just living in a fantasy, pretending that life is what you want it to be when it isn’t.
When you truly know what you want, when that has been skilfully facilitated from you. You can set up your ‘Trajectory of Intent™’, and begin to move towards having the life you want, a life worth living. Being the person you were always meant to be. Being with the people who are totally right for you. And having the experience of your life.
So what do you want?
A life worth living as an alpha male or female getting all that you’re entitled to as leader of the pack. Or are you content to be one of the herd, living life on the edge, and making do with the leavings…
I can show you how to get what you want.
Chapter 3 - How to be Attractive
No one likes people who bring them down, who constantly moan and whine and suck the life energy out of them, like some psychic vampire.
And yet what’s the first thing people usually start to talk about when they meet (other than the weather)?
Typical scene:
John “Hi, how are you?”
Jane “Oh, not too bad really”
So we’re off to a lousy start, unless a miracle happens, things get drastically worse and we head rapidly down hill.
What you want to do is ‘be the miracle’.
This is all about how you use your energy. Not sucking it off someone, but radiating it.
Do you naturally know people who leave you more ‘up’ after you’ve been with them?
They do this by focusing on what works. Or as my teacher Dr Joseph Riggio says by being in the ‘excitatory’.
Look around you and take note of the people you hang around with. Do most of these people help you to feel more up or do they help you stay down?
The more you both hang around with those who inspire and support you, the more you’ll be this way.
And the more you are this way, the more you’ll also attract other people who are this way as well.
Simple question: Do you want to be with a lover who attracts and inspires you? Or are you just hanging with the other zombies who are half alive?
Some people try to fake this by practicing techniques where they are deliberately funny, amusing, or provocative. But if these are just lines and there is no substance behind the performance, you’ll get more than a bad review, you’ll get nowhere.
When you are truly you, the authentic you when you are at your best, as I can show you how to be. That is part of the art and science of the MythoSelf Process. When it’s skilfully elicited from you and you’re taught how to operate yourself in this way so it just becomes perfectly natural. You are naturally attractive. And even better, because you are truly being you. Not trying to model, some film star or idol. The more you try to be like someone else, the more you’ll attract what’s a ‘match and fit’ for that kind of someone. And because you can never be that someone (because you are you) you’ll never truly get what you thought you wanted. But when you are truly being you at your best you will attract people who are attracted to you.
So you get to be with people who are attracted to you by being you.
Remember at the start of this book I spoke about people who try to fake their way through life. The film Catch Me If You Can is a good example, he made short term gains but ended up with no one and nothing.
Chapter 4 - Being the Hero
If you’ve ever seen a film you’ve been impacted by the Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, has been used as the Hollywood bible for how to produce the perfect story. Campbell wrote about what he called the ‘Monomyth’ the universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture.
You can think of this as a map, one that the Hero’s of all time have followed, knowingly or unknowingly.
One of the things I talk about with clients is what stories they resonate with. Everyone, when they really think about it, has some movie, some book or some story from somewhere that has special meaning to them. What matters is, what is it specifically about the story that you identify with? Is there a character that has special meaning to you?
This is not about a book you’ve read recently or a film you’ve seen recently where you go, ‘I’d really like to be like the hero there!’ But some character you really have a resonance with.
This is informing you about your current story, where you have been, and the patterns you have been running in your life. The more you can become conscious of the patterns you have been running, the more then you can choose to deliberately create your own story.
The story where you are living the life you want to be living. Where you are getting what you want and being with the person and people you want to be with.
Campbell spoke about the ‘Call to Adventure’. This is where you have some sense that something more is possible for you. In traditional cultures this first occurred in adolescence, and there were rites and rituals to enable this transition.
Today it’s more often the case that people get used to denying the call. They then live their lives, feeling the lack. Though they’re not sure why, or what it is that is missing. So this sense of emptiness is filled by addiction, to alcohol, drugs, sex or just a lack of aliveness as people become numbed out to the experience of a life that they once glimpsed as a possibility but they don’t have.
The teacher and mystic Gurdjeiff spoke of people living their lives whilst being asleep. Is this how you live your life? Wandering around from one misadventure to another, never really getting anywhere, never really getting closer to who you want to be and who you really want to be with. The sad fact is people settle for what they can get. Being mediocre is as good as it gets. And eventually they find someone to share the misery with them. But the call still comes knocking at the door. In the dark of night, the tantalisation that more might be possible rises up, in dreams, and in fantasies throughout the day.
I have news for you, more really is possible. You can wake up from the numbness, the drudgery of everyday life. Just like in the Tiger story at the start of this book, let me show you how to find that inner you. I can show you how to release that playful, passionate, real you.
I offer you an opportunity.
The opportunity of a lifetime. To find out, access, and truly be who you were destined to be.
The technology exists to do this, and it’s called the MythoSelf Process.
I’ve been interested in this technology since 1997, and formally training in it since 2000.
I used to work with people getting rid of their problems, now I just help people get a life instead.
What this technology has meant to me is everything. I live this process. Every day I step out into the world alive to it’s possibilities. Alive to the people around me. In touch with the world, in a way I would have considered supernatural before. And yet it’s totally natural. I’m in touch with the rhythm of the world. Senses attuned to going for and getting what I want out of life. The word that fits to describe this best for me is primal. And people notice this…
So do I walk down the street growling? – No way, one of my favourite quotes is from Toshitsugu Takamatsu who said: “It’s better to be a pussycat than a tiger, if you’re a tiger people will look at you and run away screaming. If you’re a pussycat women will pick you up and cuddle you on their laps and feed you nice things.”
I can teach you how to purr on the inside. Let me show you how.
Chapter 5 - The Journey to Becoming Human
You may have noticed the following difference between men and women (though maybe I’m at risk of stating the obvious). Men can often think more short term (like how do I get this woman home with me tonight), while woman want the fairytale, true love and prince charming. Okay, so while stereotypes aren’t always true, many a fair maiden has kissed a frog and seen him turn into a hansom prince. It’s just that unfortunately the morning after the night before she wakes up in bed with a frog next to her. And as for the boys, when you start becoming a man you get that you don’t always want to borrow a car or even rent one. It’s more fun driving one all of your own.
In the book Dune by Frank Herbert, the hero of the story Paul is forced to undergo a trial by having to keep his hand inside this box, which is a high tech torture device in that it emits pain in increasing intensity. The test is, will Paul remove his hand from the box, and so find relief from the pain, but if he does then he’ll be killed. The reason he’s forced to endure this test is that according to the story it’s to determine whether he’s human or animal. The animal would chew its leg off to escape from the trap, but the human would endure to overcome whatever odds to get what he or she truly wanted.
You probably have heard the saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
But you don’t need to spend the next ten years of your life talking to a therapist about what’s not working and why you’re not getting what you want.
The shortest route to the destination is going directly there. It may be the scenic journey touring around all your history of why you haven’t got what you wanted, and why you aren’t with who you really want to be with. But do you want a real result or not?
Listen, has talking or thinking about your problems gotten you anywhere closer to the answers you want?
When you focus on what works in your life, just like anything you practice, you get better at that. You get more of a life that works.
The decision is always up to you.
What do you want?
Let me show you how to have a life that works, your life, where you are getting what you want. Are in the relationships that you want to be in. And are in those relationships with all the playfulness, passion and purpose that you desire.
Chapter 6 - Showing up to Your Real Life
In the years I’ve been learning the Mythoself Process a comment from one of the senior students and now Master Trainer Jeffrey Leiken has always stuck with me. He reminded me to ‘show up’. People are creatures of pattern, it’s just that most of the time these patterns are out of awareness. I mentioned in a previous chapter about becoming aware of the story you have been living in your life. For me as a kid I loved comics, particularly Marvel comics. With characters like, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, and of course Spiderman. This for me was the mythology of my youth.
You may have seen some of the recent film adaptations of these comic book hero’s. I found the second Spiderman film particularly resonant. Peter Parker is our loveable hero, who when he puts the mask on becomes the spectacular Spiderman. In this film Peter comes to doubt himself, in that life is hard work. He’s failing at his studies, he loses his job, and the woman he loves doesn’t want to be around him. And it’s all because he’s spending all his time as Spiderman, not as Peter Parker.
There’s a scene near the end of the film where Spiderman has to stop a runaway train before it goes off the end of the track potentially killing everyone. Of course, as the hero he saves everyone, but in doing so he’s so beaten, battered and bruised that he loses consciousness. And it’s at this point the villain seizes the opportunity to unmask him. And the amazing Spiderman is revealed as this ordinary nothing-special kid. So the other people on the train recognise he’s just like them. He has the same difficulties and problems, and the same hopes and dreams. And this is where they uphold him, and stand with him. So from trying to deny his true nature, he now accepts who he is.
When you answer the call to adventure, things become possible that weren’t before. Joseph Campbell said: “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before”. When Peter Parker follows his bliss we get the happy ending, he gets to save the day and get the girl.
One of my teachers Stephen Gilligan wrote the following when he signed one of his books for me:
May the strength and skills of your ordinary self be the path to extraordinary experiences.
What I’ve learned how to do is show up and be present to the life I am having. I know that any judgements I make are just that, labels I’m putting on my experience. In other words: “It’s all just data”.
One of the best examples of the Hero’s Journey is the film ‘The Matrix’, at the end of the first film, after he’s realised it’s all just data, Neo says:
I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
Eliciting the Excitatory Bias Exercise
This exercise is based on one of the exercises that is part of the Mythogenic Self Experience™ weekend, and is used with permission of Dr Joseph Riggio and is copyright Applied Behavioural Technologies Institute, Princeton.
You’ll need someone to help you out with this exercise so find a friend you trust to help you. You and your friend need to prepare yourselves by reading through this exercise a couple of times. Further your friend should get into their role by thinking of themselves as someone who is highly observant, like a TV news reporter who will be reporting back to you what’s going on. Start by getting comfortable with each other; make sure you both feel at ease and you are feeling good, curious about what’s going to happen in this exercise, and remember you want to enjoy it so make it fun.
Step 1 - Get your friend to ask you the question:
“What do you know to be true about you when you’re at your best – absolutely?”
Answer the question.
This should not be something you need a long time to think about. Try to reply as spontaneously as possible. And don’t make it difficult on your friend; give them a nice detailed answer. (This is why you spent the time getting at ease together before the question was asked).
Step 2 - Now get them to ask you the question:
“How do you know?”
When you answer this question your friend needs to be paying attention to not just what you say, but also your body language or the non-verbal communication that you use. This is where they need to objectively notice what is happening. If they had a video camera there what would they see on the camera? They need to notice what gestures you are making, how you are holding and positioning your body, and the exact language you are using, and the sequence you are using it in. While this may seem like a lot to be paying attention to, remember you can run through the process several times. (Note: Mythoself facilitators are trained in adumbration rather than calibration. Adumbration is best described as predictive calibration, more akin to tracking – If you want to read more about tracking, read the book ‘The Tracker’ by Tom Brown, and if you want to read more about Adumbration read ‘Beyond Culture’ by Edward T. Hall).
Step 3 - Your friend now needs to play back to you the markers (the things you do), that that they have noticed. These are the markers of the “Excitatory Bias”.
You friend should say to you: “So when you’re at your best you’re…”
So what they’ve recorded (observed) they now need to play back to you, using your words, tonality, posture and gestures. It’s okay for your friend to emphasize you. They need to anchor the Excitatory Bias using kinaesthetic, spatial and tonal anchors. For the kinaesthetic anchor your friend should be mirroring your posture and body language (not overtly at this stage). For the spatial anchor they should be noticing for where your eyes look, they will notice that you repeatedly look in a specific direction when you’re talking about how you are when you are at your best. They should reference that point in space when talking to you. And for the tonal anchor when you are talking about how you are when you are at your best, they should notice for where you ‘lean on’ or emphasize certain words, and replicate your tonality when playing back those words to you.
Step 4 - They now need to re-install the amplified and intensified ‘Excitatory Bias’.
Get your friend to repeat the above process, and re-anchor your responses. Remember none of these anchors should be overt at this point, they should be part of the conversation you are having.
Step 5 - They should now make the excitatory bias consciously available to you, so that you know how to do it in an embodied way.
Have your friend say to you: “So, when you’re like this [get them to have you do you from the excitatory bias] you’re…”
Get your friend to teach you what you say and do specifically and with precision. They need to go through with you what you do step by step and in sequence, so that you are able to repeat it back to them.
Step 6 - Finally they should elicit a verbal representation of the excitatory bias.
Have your friend say to you: “What’s a word of phrase that you’d call yourself when you’re this way? (Your friend needs to be playing back to you what you do with your body as they ask this).
Make a verbal statement that for you represents how you are when you are like this.
This is just the start of the process, in the Mythogenic Self Experience™ weekend it’s known as exercise 1. When a skilled facilitator walks you through this process, it’s easy, fun, and you’ll begin to get the sense of what life will be like for you when anything is possible.
Thanks to the following:
Dr Joseph Riggio – Without Joseph I wouldn’t have been able to write this book. Everything here is fundamentally based on his work, the Soma-Semantic™ technologies and the MythoSelf® Process, which draws on the work of Roye Fraser and his Generative Imprint™ Model. But more than this Joseph is the inspiration behind this work. You can find out more about Joseph athttp://www.josephriggio.com
Charlie Badenhop – Charlie is the creator of Seishindo (Pure Heart, Simple Mind) and a nice guy with an extraordinary way of touching people. You can find out more about Seishindo at: http://www.seishindo.org
Stephen Gilligan – Steve is the creator of Self Relations Psychotherapy and well known in the field of Ericksonian hypnosis at:http://www.stephengilligan.com he’s also great in the Aikido dojo.
Phil Young and Morag Campbell – Huna and Polarity Therapy training, real magic and real masters at work, look at: http://www.masterworksinternational.com
Jonathan Altfeld – Jonathan is great at building real world NLP skills, and he’s probably the most fun NLP trainer to train with: http://www.altfeld.com/mastery
Peta Heskell – Best selling author and the original and still the best Flirt Coach, I’ve known Peta for more than ten years (we met thanks to Paul McKenna), she is a true hero, who heard the call, answered it, got the boon, came back from the journey and now starts others on their journeys: http://www.attractionacademy.com
“MythoSelf® Process” is a registered trademark and is used with permission.
