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Today’s Headlines:

• [Pentagon] to send up to 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan to make up for NATO pitfalls
  
• More School Choices for Stud

But … on to today’s subject:

The comments on one of my articles in the May TimeWarp Technologies™ Newsletter, “Mother, May I,” were split, probably indicating where the writers are in relation to the Conduct Metaprogram of NLP (Rule Followers/Breakers). This blog entry expands on the concept of rule-governed behavior.

Psychologists identify rule-governed behavior as behavior that follows a verbal rule. If you are baking a cake, for example, you will receive a number of rules about mixing ingredients, the size pan to use for cooking, the temperature of the oven, and the length of time for baking, and a testing procedure for determining whether the cake is done. If I recall correctly, the toothpick needs to come out clean….

That’s one example of rule-governed behavior. Another example would be a highway speed limit sign saying that the limit is 70 mph. Those of us who have passed drivers license exams know that the “rules of the road” specify penalties for breaking that rule. In one way or another, rule-governed behavior implies a level of agreement. If we buy and use a cake mix for its intended purpose, we have agreed to follow at least most of the directions on the box. In applying for a drivers license, we are agreeing to follow at least most of the rules of the road most of the time.

Not all of our rule-governed behavior is quite so explicit, however. What’s the rule if a man and a woman are both shopping for groceries, and they bump carts at the end of one of the isles? Who apologizes? What’s the rule? Most of the time, the woman apologizes in spite of who was oblivious to his surroundings…. Somewhere, somehow, most of us living in the U.S. learned a rule that basically says, “It’s OK for women to apologize, and it is not OK for a man to apologize. The rule has been changing some in recent, and men are slowly learning that they can apologize and still be manly.

The main point of my article in the TimeWarp Technologies™ Newsletter was that from time to time we would do well to ask ourselves, “What’s the rule?” You can make good decisions about what rules to follow when you are aware of the rules you are following and understand the reasons for them. Most games, for example, make the rules explicit. Whether it’s checkers, chess, baseball, or basketball, those who play the game learn the rules. If a disagreement arises, the “official” rules can be checked. Where do we find the rule about who apologizes for cart clashes in the grocery store?

Although we may not find that rule in the “Official Guide to Grocery Shopping,” the apology is rule-governed behavior nevertheless. Much of our behavior, in fact, is rule governed with the rules being accepted at the unconscious level. We engage in the behavior without being aware of the underlying reason. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Such automatic behaviors often serve a useful purpose. You may have a rule, for example, about signaling turns when driving. When you are about to turn, you follow the rule automatically, whether it is signal before turning, signal while turning, signal after turning, or fail to signal.

Relationship rules are among those most often below (or outside of) conscious awareness. If you share a bed with someone, do you have a rule about who sleeps on which side of the bed? What happens if/when you break the rule? Do you have rules for who has what responsibilities for which household tasks? In many families in the States, men have greater responsibility for outside, and women have greater responsibility for what’s inside. How the duties are divided, however, is less important than understanding the rule. Is it a cultural rule being followed without question, or is it a rule that has been chosen consciously with attention to fairness?

It seems to me that the rules that have caused the greatest personal and social difficulty, such as the rules for who could vote in elections and who couldn’t, are those that have never been given serious conscious attention. Until we ask, “What’s the rule?” we can’t ask questions about fairness or decide whether the rule is one we really want to follow.

Just for the fun of it, start asking, “What’s the rule?” Does the rule apply only to you, or does it apply to everyone? Do you expect others to follow your rules, or do you make it a rule to allow others to set their own rules? The only rule to this exercise is to have fun with it.

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com

Today’s Headlines:

• Governor Makes Jobs Swing In Middle East
  
• Suspected Armed Robbery Suspect Loose In Portage

But … on to today’s subject:

For the past several months I have been complaining about what I have called, “The Annoying Woman” TV ads. In SW Michigan, a furniture store led the way with a spokesperson who was able to hold her body at all sorts of weird angles while she smiled with her mouth but not her eyes and told the viewers that it was “a whole new store every day.” One of the nation’s largest cable providers followed, with a similar angular pitch. And then it was an auto dealership. The woman in the commercials for the auto dealership was shown at such a strange angle, I wondered whether it was actually possible for her to stand like that or whether the angle of delivery had been produced by “video magic.”

Today’s Headlines:

• Pope’s Visit Deamed a Success
  
• Suspected Drunk Driver Hit's Tree & Dies

But … on to today’s subject:

Blaise Pascale said that “The Heart has reasons that Reason does not know.” He was speaking about what is often called “Soul Purpose,” which can lead us to do things that seem less than logical at the time. Especially when young, for example, we fall in love for reasons that have very little to do with Reason. Hearts have led many to marry in haste, and then leave them only to repent at leisure.

Most of us are leery of what used to be called “subliminal advertising.” The classic story is about an experiment in a movie theater where “Buy popcorn and Coke” was flashed on the screen too briefly for the conscious mind to see it. As the story goes, the patrons bought a lot more popcorn and Coke. Whether that particular story is true isn’t really important, because we can be fairly sure that someone at some time has used that technique, if only to see whether it would work.

Humans, at least most of us, like to think of ourselves as being the supremely logical species on the planet. According to Ken Wilber, human consciousness evolves from being prerational, to rational, and—eventually—to transrational. The only real problem with this concept is that we actually know very little about the nature of consciousness. It turns out that most—perhaps as much as 98 percent—of what we think of as “conscious” is actually unconscious (subconscious, below or outside of conscious awareness).

Theoretically “we” have known for a long time that it costs businesses more to obtain a new customer than it does to retain a current one. Whether this has changed, or whether businesses have forgotten it is hard to say, but my experiences with a wide variety of businesses over the last several years indicates that customer retention does not seem to be especially important.

If you watch TV at all, you may have noticed the escalating use of “fear-mongering” ads. In what is the most recent political fear-based ad, a Hillary Clinton spokesperson wants you to ask yourself, “Who will answer the phone when it rings at 3A?” Since 9/11, the number of politicians who have been encouraging us to be afraid has increased at an alarming rate. Perhaps we should be really afraid of all those who want us to be afraid. You may have also seen the ads for a heart medication where the voice-over says that the actor is big and strong, but he could be brought down by something as small as a clot. Then we’re told, “you may feel good, but the risk never goes away.” The advertisers evidently forgot that, if the risk never goes away, the medication can’t help.

When Jefferson Airplane (in “White Rabbit,” 1967) quoted the dormouse as having said, “Feed your head,” they were implying that the dormouse from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, had psychedelic drugs in mind. The dormouse, however, never actually said, “Feed your head,” and certainly Lewis Carroll would have had food other than hallucinogens in mind. We have no choice, of course, of whether to “feed” our heads. The brain is a learning machine, and it considers everything in both the external and internal environments “food.”

What prevents or cures everything from ADHD to cancer to depression to diabetes to heart disease? It is not a new pharmaceutical. It is neither herbal nor homeopathic. I’m glad to say that it isn’t surgical. It is Energy-based, but not in the way Reiki Masters and Certified Healing Touch™ Practitioners might think at first. The miracle of healing is exercise.

In SPARK: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John J. Ratey, M.D., cites and explains the biochemical evidence that makes exercise what can only be called a “medical miracle.” One of the things that Ratey points out is that our ancestors were much more physically active than most of us are today. They had to be to survive. That means that the health and well-being of our physiology is enhanced by physical activity. Because mind and body are part of the same system, it also means that the health and well-being of our minds/brains is enhanced by physical activity. Ratey provides research-based evidence that physical activity enhances brain function.