[Neurons] 2012 Meta Reflections #

[meta at acsol.net]

From: L. Michael Hall 
2012 Meta Reflections 
June 11, 2012
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		THE POWER OF EGO-STRENGTH

A power that you are not born with, but that you develop in
the process of growing up is what we call ego-strength. 
This is the power of your self to be strong in the face of
life and especially of life’s challenges.  It is the power
of having a strong sense of self---to use your powers of
mind, emotion, speech, and  behaviour to figure things out,
to face and deal with the people and events of everyday
life, and to neither fall apart, throw a tantrum, or get
aggressive when things don’t go your way.

Little children do not have this power and so do not feel
themselves strong in this way.  With a little child all you
have to do is look at him or her with a cross look, then out
comes the lip and they fall apart.  In this they are very
fragile, their ego or sense-of-self is fragile and easily
overwhelmed.

Yet as a person grows, learns, and develops his or her
powers (mental, emotional, linguistic, behavioural,
relational, etc.), one’s sense-of-self grows stronger. 
And as it grows stronger, a person develops another power---
the power to be able to face reality as it is and for
whatever it is.  This is ego-strength.  Now you have the
strength or power to face new things, things unknown,
confusing, upsetting, undesirable, challenging, etc. and
feel that “I’ll figured it out.”  “Sure, I don’t
like it, but no big deal.  I can figure it out, think it
through, ask others, read about it, google it, and use my
powers of language and action to figure out some effective
responses.”

I had an insight yesterday while presenting the Unleashing
Potentials workshop in the Self-Actualization series to a
group of the ABNLP (Australian Board of NLP) here in Sydney.
 Someone asked, “What do you do if  someone gets ‘all
emotional’ while experiencing the Crucible pattern?” 
And someone else asked about ego-strength, what it is and
how it relates to the Crucible?

That was great timing!  I had just completed the
introduction and demonstration of the Crucible.  So an
insight was generated that would probably not have arisen
otherwise: The factors that we use as the resource
mechanisms for the deep change in the Crucible to facilitate
the unleashing of potentials are the very same factors that
build up the power of “ego-strength” in a person.

What are these factors?  We construct the Crucible from six
primary resources, three giving us safety-change factors and
three giving us confrontation-change factors. 
1)	Unconditional positive regard for self or self-esteem.
2)	Witnessing what is, observing sensory-based information. 
3)	Accepting or acknowledging what is for what is.
4)	Ruthless honesty for speaking the truth about what’s
real and authentic.
5)	Responsibility or ownership of one’s responses.
6)	Appreciation as the ability to see deeply to the value
and preciousness of something.

Each of these factors are also factors that generate the
powerful experience of ego-strength they do so by enabling
you to feel safe in your own skin knowing yourself as having
innate worth and value so that you can see cleanly and
clearly without needing to distort things and able to just
accept what is without fighting it, rejecting it, or
defending against it.  They also enable you to operate
effectively in the world by knowing and speaking what’s
real and authentic, the truth, instead of needing to cover
up, lie, deceive, or pretend reality is something other than
it is.  And doing that leads to two other powers--- the
power of responsibility and the power of appreciation.

Want to facilitate someone’s ego-strength?  Want to coach
someone so that they build up a stronger resilience within,
more proactivity, and self-responsibility?  Use the Crucible
pattern.  I kind of knew this when I wrote the book, The
Crucible Model and the Fires of Change and I also kind of
did not know it.  At least I didn’t know it explicitly as
I do now.

If you coach, train, consult, or do therapy with individuals
or groups, your power to be a crucible and to create a
crucible space is a power that enables people to face the
truth, come to terms with the challenges of life, and at the
very same time to develop the ego-strength that they need
for such. 

Where can you learn more about all of this?   Well, of
course, from the book, The Crucible and the Fires of Change
and also from the workshop that Neuro-Semantic Trainers
train all around the world, Unleashing Potentials.  

 

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