So, You Want To Do
Something Innovative ...?
by Silvia Hartmann
This is a repost of an essay, first written to MindList in May 2002, and
the "special event" referred to in the article is the unveiling of the EmoTrance
system later on that summer.
From: StarFields
Sent: 22 May 2002 02:27
I'm on the eve of something special - metaphorically speaking -
and in the mood.
So, I wonder how many people on this list are thinking about
"doing their own thing" at this time - their own book, product,
system. Their own NLP, their own EFT, their own "Ericksonian
Hypnosis", their own Reiki - something that'll become a household
name in a few years down the road, with two opposing main
certification bodies (or more) and all kinds of strange people
mutilating your original ideas - LOL!
Ahm, I guess that took the wrong turn there somewhere ....
Well, anyway.
You know who you are and you know what I'm talking about if you're
"one of those".
I've been through the process of making techniques and systems and
then writing them up and teaching them many times now in one way
or the other, and I thought this might be a nice time to consider
what I've done, and what I've learned from it.
There might be something useful here, so stay with me.
*Some wrong Ideas I used to have*
It's only recently recently that I've found out that for many
years I've laboured under some major delusions as to what you have
to do in order to create something that you can be proud of,
that'll last, that's a success and that will "make your name", if
that is what you want.
Wrong idea #1 - To be a genius ...
The first wrong idea is that you have to be a genius
to do this.
Richard Bandler's a genius, right? Milton Erickson and Virginia
Satir, and all those people like that. So, there may be this
entirely mistaken cause-and-effect attribution that you have to be
a genius to get the Nobel Price of personal development on the one
hand, and on the other, that if you are a genius, you'll get the
Nobel Price of personal development.
Both are false, they are misinformations - evil signposts in the
maze that at one point, a grinning person turned by 180' and then
laughed their heads off as everyone from thereone stumbled off in
the wrong direction altogether.
So I've really kinda worked my socks off to be a
genius over the
years, thinking this was a prerequisite to success.
Indeed, it ain't true. It's more likely to be a
hindrance if
*earthly success* is what you want. Crazy but absolutely true.
Milton, Richard and Virginia did not have/are not having statues
built to them as far as I can see. They didn't exactly swim in it
in any sense during their life times. Good job they liked what
they did, because if they wanted *fame and fortune* you could say,
boy you've failed pretty badly at that one, guys.
Check out the people that DO have *fame and fortune*
in any
field - it ain't the genii, that's for sure.
Wrong Idea #2 - You have to invent something that
no-one's ever
done before.
What I've found is that people in general absolutely
ABHOR
innovation.
I guess it's structural - you tell someone about a
snadarbi and
how cool that is they will look at you blankly because *they can't
make a representation of it" and indeed, they're looking at a
blank place. No tie in with past pleasure or future expectations.
No answer to the problems at hand, nothing really.
Paradigm shifts are particularly problematic in that
context and
that's what I've been trying to do all this time. Duh. Mozart
starved to death in misery during his life time and the amounts of
other innovators of the same kind are basically legion.
Very, very few people can neurologically handle any
kind of "leap
of faith" away from the comfortable, old, known into a not-known
that might potentially be appallingly painful.
I guess the first few leaps of faith I made were done
too with
sweating hands and heart beating high but after a while, it's not
so bad because you actually get to find out that there's only a
few options afterwards - either it gets worse, or better, or stays
the same. If you can handle that, you can handle the leaps.
But, as I said, that's rare and in general, people just *don't
like* new things.
What they DO like is to have their old opinions re-affirmed and
perhaps a tail stuck onto something that's already there, or two.
Perhaps a furry one this season, and one with stripes the next.
Just so we don't get bored. Which is in essence the whole PhD
"learning pyramid" of first doing everything exactly as it's
always been done and then adding a bit onto it so it gets ever
bigger and more impressive looking over the years.
I guess with all that effort expended, it's little
wonder that
someone coming in and saying, ahm, guys, you've built the whole
thing in the wrong corner of the plot .... doesn't go down too
well.
I can tell you from experience - I've got the scars to prove it as
the bricks started to fly in my direction!
Wrong Idea No #3 - If it works, they'll buy it.
Here's the next big delusion - namely that if a
product is good,
it will eventually win the day and the hearts of the millions.
Yeah right. I don't know when it was that I gave up on
that one -
it's a nice, comforting illusion but its bullshit. VHS vs Betamax.
RiscOS vs PC. Squarials vs Giant Saucepan lids. Ah well, the list
is pretty endless, really.
There is virtually NO cause and effect between any
products
inherent merits and it's popularity.
Believing in this much preached and pre-supposed false
equivalence
is a fast track to skid row. Just to have a really, really
outstanding product (book, idea, invention, medicine, song,
etc.etc.etc.) is nothing and the billions of great ideas,
innovations, inventions, songs etc etc etc we don't even know about
because we've never heard of them are a testament to this, as are
the many people who made something extraordinary and then sat and
waited only to find that no-one gave a damn at all and ended up
all bitter and twisted.
So. If fame and fortune have *nothing* to do with either being a
genius nor with having totally useful, brilliantly workable,
innovative and revolutionary products, then WHAT is one to do?
*** The Undertaker & McDonald's ****
An undertaker's son once proposed to me and my aunt
got all
excited and said, "Take him, you'll be sorted for life, people
always die for certain! He'll never be out of business!"
I was 15 at the time and lacked enthusiasm for this
proposal, but
herein lies one of the clues of how to get your fame and fortune -
find something that people need rather than want.
I mean, who *wants* an undertaker, right? Fact is,
I've hired UT's
three times now and paid them vast amounts and had very little
choice about it (they have *some* convention going there between
all of them!).
Then, there's the extraordinary success of McDonalds. I've mused
on this on many occasions and have come to the conclusion that
here are two of the main components of *real* success in the
market with customers - one, it's totally predictable - no nasty
surprises here!, and for two, there's the fact that *they are
ALWAYS THERE WHEN YOU NEED THEM*. I mentioned this at a party not
long ago and the *amount of gratitude* that was expressed about
the fact that when you're totally knackered, coming home from work
or driving somewhere in nowhere and you need food, they're there.
I've also had the personal experience of going out of my head with
kids screaming on a rainy day and McDonald's coming to my rescue
in this, my dark hour of need when no-one else would.
Now, you may think about undertakers and McDonald's
what you like,
but there are some profound lessons here for fame and fortune.
Need beats want, any day. And to have something that people are
really grateful for beats having something that's much more
meritorious in and of itself.
*** The EFT Model ****
I think EFT is about one of the best models for a
personal
development product you could want. EFTs extraordinary spread
around the globe in just a few short years - about five now - is
unprecedented. There's NEVER been anything like it. EFT has taken
the whole field of "energy work" and "energy psychology" and
gotten it to a point in just five short years where there's
international conferences with fifty, hundred presenters in
Europe, US and Canada. There must be coming up for 100 books
published in the last couple of years on Energy Psychology and
related topics in dozens of languages. Someone remarked that "the
field is years ahead of itself - it's unheard of that we have that
much going on and no years of research to back it up."
The person who "constructed" EFT was an engineer who
also knows a
bit about marketing.
EFT as a product is really something. It's not new -
phew, what a
sigh of relief! - but based on TFT which takes the brunt of that.
Now it's cheaper, easier, quicker, and freely available; comes
with full instructions, step by step, hardly any thinking
required, and it's multi-purpose as well.
More, it's real easy to stick a tail on it, morph it
into this and
that and call your own thing. A real winner. AND it works.
*** The Beauty of Simplicity ****
Many of the best things in the world are simple. One
of the main
problems with NLP and which in a very profound way hinders both
it's spread and development is the fact that it's so goddamned
difficult to try and explain what the hell it is.
This could be so difficult because actually, *nobody
knows what it
REALLY is* or if they do, they're not telling as not to frighten
the public too much!
But I digress to a degree. What I'm trying to say here
is that
when I was still labouring under the false ideas #1 #2 and #3, I
used to make these really complex, beautiful structural things
(like Harmony and Project Sanctuary, and also Sidereus with it's
presuppositions and all of that) and, in the quest to provide
unbeatable content and radical innovation, ended up with things
that were so complex that people off the street simply didn't
understand them anymore.
I had the final breakthrough on this last year, when I attempted
to teach the Sidereus principles to a group of people and failed
entirely to have them understand the breadth and width of *what
they could do* with what they were learning.
There must have been a couple of dozen standalone
patterns in that
one training weekend, each one a base systemic pattern that could
be applied and morphed to fit different context and circumstances,
each one a springboard to a hundred and one different techniques
that could be derived for different presenting situations.
No chance. Much, much, much too much. Totally over the
top and I
ended up thinking for a while that what I was doing couldn't be
taught anymore and stopped altogether.
Where I had been going wrong is in thinking that
people think like
I do. I see any little thing and this whole universe of
possibilities explodes immediately into my awareness, all these
things you can do with it and then a thousand more if you changed
it a bit, here and there, and what would happen if ...
Most people DON'T think like that at all. They really do need to
have spelled out for them every single step of something in order
to learn how to do THAT ONE THING.
EFT is simple enough but the amounts of people who
write in, day
in day out, and ask, "I have a headache. What opening statement
should I use?" are a testimonial to that fact - it doesn't mean
they're stupid either, but that they are at the stage of learning
that I would call "cookbook cooking" - when you're standing at the
stove with a spoonful of salt in one hand and the cookbook in the
other and that's the ONLY way you can get this thing done, because
without the step by step you'd be completely lost, scared,
confused and nothing would get done.
Most people eventually transcend the cookbook stage and start
chucking salt into the soup at leisure because they've practised
enough to have learned the principle of the thing and are
confident in executing it.
That, and only that confidence is the pre-requisite
springboard to
the next step, namely that of experimentation. Once again, most
people don't go on to that but at least they can cook soup
reliably and that's worth having.
*** Learning The Basics Well ***
So, and now to my latest project.
Thanks to some new techniques, and some of the
understandings in
#1, #2 and #3 I could finally stop having to try and prove to
everyone how bloody smart *I* am and instead, consider what would
be useful, and what people actually need.
So, and instead of re-writing the bible, I took *just
one* of the
many patterns and techniques from my wall and decided to teach
just that - rock solid, from every angle, so that no matter what
would happen, the trainees would at least be able to "cook the
soup" at the end of the day - guaranteed. Those who were of that
kind could then go on with the "springboard to innovation" and the
few who were of THAT kind would be able to really go and run with
it to their heart's content - everybody happy, everybody satisfied
and I can go home with the knowledge I've done some sound work all
around.
The one I chose had to have something in common with EFT, namely
that you can learn it very quickly and without much previous
knowledge of anything and that the basic technique should be
applicable for most circumstances, and of course, that is should
produce extraordinary results.
It was a very strange experience to work that closely
with *one
single technique* when by preference, I like to deal with
meta-systems that spawn a multitude of techniques - and yet, here
also the EFT experience was incredibly valuable.
I personally hold some deep *gratitude* to EFT because
it really
helped me out - just like McDonald's in that way.
Adventures In EFT was the first time I had ever
written up anyone
else's work - previously an anathema to me - and really got
involved with the ins and outs of this one single particular
technique in a very intimate fashion. I had never really
considered that approach for any of my own work before.
Then, the even more chunked down versions started to appear -
people writing whole books about just EFT and weightloss, or just
EFT and Test Anxiety and so forth when I gave those a couple of
paragraphs each in the A-Z of EFT.
Now I can't go quite as detailed as that, no matter what the fame
and fortune on offer - I still prefer to deal with a fishing rod
rather than a single fish, no matter how glittering, but it's
certainly something to consider for your own projects.
It's easier to market and target something that's
extremely
specific, I'm sure you know that already. There will much
gratitude too from the customers and frankly, there are about a
billion really good books, techniques and ideas that haven't been
put forward yet because a lot of the very best innovators still
mistakingly strive for the delusionary #1, #2 and #3.
So, and ...
In conclusion ...
I think the major breakthrough was to stop trying to
prove
something to someone through the transference of peers and the
general public and instead, think the other way around - namely,
what do people really need and what do they want, then provide it
as best you can, in a way that is useful, user friendly, and doesn't demand any
more of people than they are honestly able to produce from their current stages
of learning and experience they're at.
I also think that there's a difference between art and fame and
fortune. There is little if no direct cause and effect between the
two, and although we could consider that fame and fortune might be
an art in and of itself, there might be some merit in
understanding that deeply and profoundly.
So, my friends, if you're thinking about creating
something - a
book perhaps, or a new pattern, or you already have but you think
it's not good enough to take to the public because you're still
waiting for the lightning strike of pure genius that will convince
EVERYONE INSTANTLY (the whole world, and including the parts of
you that are mom and dad!) that you are in fact a great genius,
think again and from a new angle.
Personally, I'm *still* waiting for a decent
beginner's book on
NLP that I could recommend to the many, many, many energy
therapies people who keep asking me how they can learn to do what
I'm doing, for example. One that captures the excitement and the
spirit of NLP and not just the technicalities. One that's exciting
to read, a real page turner that leaves the reader gasping to run
off to learn more and do it immediately themselves. A good book on
NLP for pre-school children. For teenagers. God they need it!
But that's just an example.
KNOW that the DEFINITIVE
"book" on
ANYTHING simply hasn't been written yet and that your attempt will
be just as good as everyone else's.
There's always room for another
point of view - and by the stars above, especially NLP needs it
desperately, so if you have been sitting on something, go and do
it. Even in the act of manifesting something like that, and
ENTIRELY REGARDLESS of the outcome of the project, you learn so
much by doing it!
I'm thinking now that the many, many failures, semi-failures and
disappointments I've been through for the last 25 years are truly,
a valuable learning experience, lessons that needed to have been
learned thoroughly and now it's onward and upward. I wouldn't be
here if I hadn't given it a go, though nor if I'd let myself be
crushed by disappointments.
In the hope that for someone out there in cyberland
I've shaved a
few years off the timeline to success and actualisation
waves (of the early morning "surf's up!" kind)
from
Silvia
© Silvia Hartmann 2002
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