Perceptual Control Theory
Welcome Entrepreneurs. Two quick things before we dive in.
First, I wanted to thank you all for the interest in Jason's new I-O Leadership Book Club. The first cohort is now full, but if you want to be considered for the next cohort, click here to apply.
And second, I'm excited to share with you a podcast I was on, called "Grind Less, Flow More." I hope you'll give it a listen.
Today's issue was inspired by an article by one of my teachers, Michael Ashcroft (with whom I'm presently studying the Alexander Technique). It's a deep dive into how to change your life, or your business, without working so damn hard.
And who doesn't want that?
Change that actually lasts feels easy
The exciting truth is that you accomplish most goals in life automatically and effortlessly.
Think of something like grabbing a drink of water. You realize you’re thirsty, you set an intention to drink something, and your body organizes itself to get a drink. You quench your thirst without much thought or effort on how you do it.
Grabbing water is almost never a grind, but this mechanism doesn’t always work so easily when we work towards our higher level goals. What’s going on here?
Perceptual Control Theory… states that we bring about changes in the world by contrasting the perception we want to have with the perception we currently have. Our mind and body then work together to bring the world into a state that aligns with our desired perception.
In Perceptual Control Theory—our behaviors are controlled by our perceptions.
From the amazing article, “Achieve Your Goals With Less Grinding”, by Michael Ashcroft
People spend incredible energy trying to change themselves through discipline and hard work.
But the truth is that change doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, lasting change, almost by definition, isn’t. It only ends up being difficult when the change you want is at odds with the world you perceive. Because when the world you perceive changes, internal change happens effortlessly. This process of growing yourself through increased clarity of perception is at the heart of coaching. The process of coaching is not designed to change your business or the people around you – it’s designed to shift your perceptions of yourself and the way you see the world, such that the change you want comes to you effortlessly.
If this is hard to grok, consider the stories of people who built a fortune, lost it, and then rebuilt it as a matter of course. This isn’t because they have a Midas touch or magic hands. It’s not luck. The way some people perceive the world is conducive to having a lot of money. So when someone who sees the world as a millionaire loses their money, it creates a dissonance between the real world and their perception of the world, the tension from which drives them to take the actions needed to rebuild their wealth. In the same way you see your car everywhere the minute you buy a new Volkswagen, for some people, opportunities to make a fortune jump out of the environment.
What follows then, and the really radical thing, is that to change yourself, you simply need to change your perception. There’s a saying: you see what you aim at.
So change your aim.
How do you do this? I love Ashcroft’s outline of the simple, three step process to natural change proposed by Perceptual Control Theory, from the article cited above:
Be clear about where you are
Be clear about where you’re going
Resolve any conflicting goals
Be clear about where you are
To establish the optimal trajectory to where you’re headed, you need to know where you are. This is the easy step. You need only look around, and take stock. Just remember that no matter what you’re looking at, what you see is colored by your perceptual filters. No exceptions. You can get a general idea of where you are in relation to the change you want by doing an inventory in five seconds, but it can often pay to go much deeper. Meditation is a superpower when it comes to digging underneath your perceptual filters to get closer and closer to reality. More on the importance of digging deeper in step 3.
The Role of Clarity in Achieving Goals
Most leaders know exactly where their business is going and can explain it eloquently on demand. But when I ask them what they want for themselves, 70% of the time they’re unclear.
This is normal. But it’s also an incredible opportunity for you, sitting at home reading this, to take an active role in consciously changing yourself (whatever that means to you) by doing the work to get clear about what you want.
The framework I use most often with my clients is called the Outcome Frame, a simple series of questions with origins in NLP. Simply ask yourself these questions until you answer all five clearly and internally consistently (meaning that none of the answers conflicts with any other answer).
What would you like?
What will having that do for you?
How will you know when you have it?
Where, when, and with whom do you want it?
Is there anything you might lose, that you value, in getting it?
Keep in mind that you’ll have to ask and answer some questions twice or more – I find people often cycle back and forth between questions one and two, until they finally find what they really want.
For example, for question one you might say what you want is to make $1m/yr in profit. But for question two you might say that by having $1m/yr you will feel financially safe and be able to invest in a COO. So, what you really want isn’t $1m/yr. What you really want is a COO, and to feel financially safe. And around you go until you finally nail the real core of what you want.
The value of taking the time here is threefold. First, the more time you spend clarifying your vision, the greater the creative tension you create to propel you forward toward your vision. Second, the clearer you make your vision, the more your perceptual filters will call out the path toward that vision, which will make the actions you must take to get there jump out of your awareness. And third, question number five is a doozy when it comes to unearthing the conflicting commitments that can sabotage your best efforts.
Identifying and Resolving Conflicting Goals
Humans are not one thing. We contain multitudes, each of which has its own desires for us, and methods to achieve those desires (check out Internal Family Systems for more on how this works). When all those parts are aligned toward a single end, the end happens effortlessly (consider the “process” of picking up a glass from Ashcroft’s article above). But when two (or more) parts of us pull in opposite directions, we get stuck.
Example A:
Desire: “I want balance.”
Competing commitment: “I need to outwork everyone else to succeed.”
Example B:
Desire: “I want my company to run by itself.”
Competing commitment: “I want to feel valued and needed at work.”
If we are clear on where we are, and where we’re going, and we’re still not getting that result, it’s a good guess that not all of us wants it.
Question 5 from the Outcome Frame above does a great job unearthing competing commitments, but it’s up to us to resolve them. In my experience, when something is important to a client and yet is not moving forward, 90% of the time it’s because some part of the person doesn’t actually want that result. So the first part of the work is to figure out which part that is.
The second part is to facilitate an agreement between the parts of yourself around a single goal. For example, once you find that you are subject to Example A above, the next step is to bring the part that wants balance and the part that wants success to the negotiating table and don’t leave until they agree.
Sometimes this process is straightforward. Maybe upon consideration, what you really want at this phase in your life/career is success, and you’re willing to sacrifice balance to get there. That’s your call, and making it consciously will help those parts align around what you (as the senior consciousness presiding over all parts) want.
And other times this process is convoluted, involves subconscious commitments held very deeply to protect childhood traumas, and you’re better off seeking help to sort it all through.
Either way, success follows naturally once you align your parts around a single destination. The path to success veritably (literally) jumps off the page at you.
The hard thing about easy things
We feel important when we’re working hard. Like our efforts matter. So when we want to make a change to our lives or our careers, we naturally default to hard work and discipline to get the job done. Many people work incredibly hard in this way their whole lives, forever pushing heavier and heavier things up a mountain.
But “hard work is important” is itself a perceptual filter. Like all filters, it leads us to specific behaviors that feel completely natural, and almost inevitable no matter how much we think we want “balance.” But once we see the filter through which we see the world, we can ask ourselves if that filter is really serving us, and if not, change it through the process above.
To get more of what you want with less gray hair, stop trying to control everything around you and instead work on understanding the filters through which you see the world, and aligning them with what you really want.
Things I read this week
One: 1000 true fans (kk.org)
As a writer, sometimes I can find myself trying to write what I think the most people will want to read. It's a trap that reliably produces bad writing. When I notice myself pandering with my prose, this article reminds me of why I write.
LINK >>
Two: Physicist claims to have solved the mystery of consciousness (SciTechDaily)
This is a really interesting way to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Or more accurately, to say that we've already solved it if we'd just recognize that consciousness looks different from the inside than from the outside. I can't decide whether it's brilliant or a cop-out.
LINK >>
Three: Quit your job (PalladiumMag.com)
If you find yourself living through momentum as opposed to inspiration, this article is for you. I spent 10 years building the company I thought people wanted, but my best work came after I stopped just doing what I was supposed to do, and surrendered to my inspirations. This article does a great job of capturing it.
LINK >>
Want to dive deeper?
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