Overcome the “Primal Learning Loop” With Curiosity
As the car I was in began to spin, hydroplaning along the gentle curve of the road, I could hear myself saying, “Oh god oh god oh NO!” I had been in just one car accident before, in the back of a taxi, but that was a quick t-bone strike at low speeds with a…
February 11, 2020
On Levels of Development (Part 2 of 2)
For those adults who make it to the level of development beyond the fully-formed-adult, everything they find meaningful is up for renegotiation. The people who go beyond the fully-formed-adult are never ultimately satisfied with any single “form” of anything, having long ago become suspicious when people claim that a single-way or best-system will last or…
December 2, 2019
Trump is an Open Book
Donald Trump is a narcissist with a capital “N.” Many psychological labels have entered the vernacular, which is good and bad; good because more people are being educated about what’s driving our individual and collective behavior, and bad because as we continue to use ever-more-hyperbole to describe mundane events, the meaning of these labels gets…
July 6, 2018
Developmental Epicycling
An “epicycle” is an ancient Greek astronomical term that was used to explain the apparent retrograde motion of planets as see from Earth (they appeared to move backwards sometimes). Everyone assumed that planets had circular orbits, and it would take centuries to learn that they are elliptical. Something similar occurs in human development, where the self…
July 6, 2018
On Levels of Development (Part 1 of 2)
For years people have told me that I should “write about levels the way you talk about them.” And for years I would send them a brief paper written by others. When I would circle back and ask about the paper, most of them persisted in their request that I write about levels the way…
March 12, 2015
Integral Bypassing 2
Integral Bypassing is when you falsely believe that you are “2nd Tier” because you have read the books of Ken Wilber or of other integral authors. One easily risks arrested development when engaged in Integral Bypassing, as Wilber discovered when he began getting letters and other forms of feedback (see “One Taste”) that revealed a…
July 17, 2013
Think Positive: Immunity to Change Coaching on The Law of Attraction
Although the 2006 film “The Secret” popularized the “law of attraction” through media attention from the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Larry King, the notion that our subjective states create all or part of the objective world goes as far back as the Hindu “law of karma.”
December 3, 2012
The Source of Our Immunities, Part 2
BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION vs. CULTURAL EVOLUTION Immunity-to-Change coaching gives coaches and clients a map of a naturally occurring psychological immune response that is out of whack. Actually, a “psychological inflammation” response is out of time more than place. Just as epigenetics is showing biologists and doctors that hyper-inflammation is actually a “normal” immune response when understood…
December 2, 2012
The Source of Our Immunities, Part 1
Brain & Behavior As an Immunity to Change coach, I spend a lot of time thinking about how our “psychological immune systems” get in the way of achieving our goals. I began my career in psychology as a biologist – I was studying the structure and function of the brain, in the “decade of the…
December 2, 2012
Boomerang Kids/Generation: Crowded Nest Syndrome
Too much coddling? Not enough challenge? Changes to the economy? Changes to the culture of employment? Return to a culture of caring for aging parents? Boomerang “kids” are, as the name suggests, coming home.
December 1, 2012