[Neurons] 2012 Meta Reflections #41

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2012  #41

August 13, 2012

Empowerment Series #26

 

 

 

THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

 

 

After 21 days of trainings here in Colorado and seeing so many people from
so many countries coming here for the Leadership Trainings of NSTT and
seeing people network, create new associations, and plan how they will
support each other, I feel impelled to write about the power of community.
This is one of the things that people most often speak about when they speak
about the value that they derive from Neuro-Semantic trainings.  They talk
about feeling a part of a community, that they have found a new family, and
that they are part of something bigger than themselves-a world-wide
community of like-minded visionaries out to change the world!

 

The power of belonging is an incredible power and, of course, is one of the
basic "needs" in our hierarchy of needs as detailed by Abraham Maslow.
Because we are social beings, we need to be welcomed into community where we
feel love and affection, and where we are valued and appreciated.  And when
we experience the gratification of this need, it brings to nearly everyone a
healing and wholeness.  And because it does, with it we are enabled to move
up to the highest needs, the being-needs of self-actualization.

 

The power of community not only speaks about what it does for us in terms of
our health, well-being, completeness, and motivation, it also speaks about
what we can do together as a community.  We have a special way that we
express this in Neuro-Semantics.

We can do so much more together, than alone or apart.

 

Doing things together- that is actually also the secret of the success of
the human race, the secret of civilization itself.  Korzybski called it
time-binding.  By creating symbols and then language, we have been able to
cooperate and collaborate with each other over the years and centuries and
millennia.  Today you and I can read Aristotle and as we do, we train our
brain and nervous system with the very distinctions that Aristotle learned,
discovered, and transmitted.  We bind what he learned in his time to what
you and I can learn today and as we bind those learnings into our
nervous-system-and-brain.  And together we can know more and do more than
alone or apart.

 

The same principle holds for all of the manmade "wonders of the world" that
we hold dear and awesome, whether the Pyramids of Egypt or the Eiffel Tower
of Paris or one of the Castles of Europe, the Great Wall of China, or one of
he skyscrapers in today's modern cities.  We marvel in amazement at what we
can achieve by working together, coordinating efforts, cooperating with
resources, and collaborating in visions.  So also what we can do when we
collaborate: defeat a Hitler, engineer nuclear power, go to the moon or send
a rover to Mars, invent computers, and a million other things that makes
life better.  Together we can generate more transformative creations than we
can alone or apart.

 

Actually, in the lives of all genius and creative people, we find that they
didn't do it alone.  There were always colleagues and supporters whether
they be mentors or sponsors or co-workers.  Michelangelo did his work
through 14 painters that worked with him.  Edison created thousands of
patents, many if not most of them created by his thousands of workers and
associates. 

 

The power of community is the power to multiple one's influence, to spread
new resourceful ideas, and to embody the transformation it makes in human
lives.  The power of community in today's world also facilitates
credibility.  In research, the most credible journals are peer-reviewed
which means that others who are equally knowledgeable and experienced
examine the writings and offer critiques.  And this refines the articles
making them more accurate and therefore useful.  In community we can create
accountability structures so that we manage ourselves, our egos, our pride,
and our use of power.

 

Communities generate numerous energies.  They generate for us a context in
which to make sense and meaning of what we do and create.  Here is a place
and a group that recognizes the contributions that individuals make and that
honor those contributions.  This was the point that Howard Gardner made
about "creating genius" in his book, Creating Minds.   To have a "genius"
legitimized as a genius, you need a community that does precisely that. 

 

Yes, community is powerful.  In an effective and especially in a
self-actualizing community, we are able to become more fully ourselves, more
loving and compassionate, more disciplined and focused.  Community brings
out our humanity as social beings and calls upon us to move beyond the small
world of self and to enter into the larger world of others.  Community also
challenges us to develop the special social skills, states, and attitudes
that enable us to from being a private person to being a public person - a
man or woman for others. 

 

Today community and the power of community is spoken about in so many
different ways and studied from so many different perspectives: social
intelligence, emotional intelligence (EQ), groups, high performance teams,
organizations, sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and the list goes
on and on.  We are social beings and, on the average, we do not do well
alone.  While we can use solitude for growth and reflection, we are
diminished by loneliness.  We need others.  We need to be a part of a
cohesive and supportive community.

 

And yet needing others doesn't mean that we innately know how to get along
well with others.  If we see anything from human history- we don't know that
intuitively.  We have to learn that.  We have to discover and be trained for
the social skills, states, and attitudes.  High performance teams do not
just happen, they are created, or better, co-created.  They are facilitated
by group and team coaches who know how to bring people together, integrate
differences, confront and resolve conflicts, and empower people for "playing
well together." 

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D. ---  Neuro-Semantics International

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                              

1 970-523-7877                                               

     

What is Neuro-Semantic NLP?   Get your free subscription to "Neurons" ---
the weekly International  Newsletter of Neuro-Semantics.  Subscribe at
<http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com.   Dr. Hall sends
out  Meta Reflections  every Monday (Colorado time).  Trainers' Reflections
occur  on Tuesdays and Meta-Coach Reflections on  Wednesdays.   Contact Dr.
Hall at   <mailto:meta at acsol.net> meta at acsol.net  

 

For world-class Coach Training --- see Meta-Coaching System at
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org and at
<http://www.metacoachfoundation.org> www.metacoachfoundation.org  

 

Neuro-Semantics launched the New Human Potential Movement in 2007, for
information about the Self-Actualization workshops, go to
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://eight.pairlist.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20120813/f72a2c51/attachment.html>