Personal "P" Points
Personal "P" Points
The process of achieving personal and professional excellence can be greatly accelerated once we start identifying and then managing important "P" points in our lives and careers. "P" points are perturbation points, or critical points in which small, well-timed and well-placed efforts can produce major results or gains. Commercial examples are headlines, sound bytes and advertising jingles.
Perturbation point was originally an obscure engineering term referring to such notions as imploding a building from a few strategic internal locations. The "P" point concept can easily be adapted for use in personal and professional growth. In fact, this adaptation is an important "P" point in itself. Put another way, "P" points are portals opening up to vast new worlds. Below are ten specific mental perturbation points to identify and manage better:
Paradigms
A critical "P" point regarding paradigms is the realization that they are only temporary road maps pointing the way toward something we need to know now, not necessarily for ever. Another important "P" point is the flash of understanding that greatest liberation and the biggest changes occur when we can let go of obsolete paradigms. On the contrary, paradigm morphing, or over-identifying with a particular viewpoint we have, keeps us a slave to this perspective and restricts vision of other possibilities, thus stunting growth. We must learn to separate our thinking from these paradigms, so the tail is not wagging the dog.
The volume of information which confronts us today requires us to work smart mentally. A valuable "P" point to help out here is the process of identifying useful principles which can guide us quickly and surely to where we need to be going. These principles are simple but powerful clues as to the way life really works, all the time. An example is understanding our mutually exclusive drives of wanting to belong and be dependent on something vs. wanting to be unique and independent from everything. Another example is the awareness of the amazing similarity between an individual’s evolution and that of an overall civilizations’ same evolution. The trick is to apply these principles to get practical benefits. To accommodate our opposing drives, the wise leader provides structure for security and belonging, and opportunityfor individualism and unique creativity. Smart individuals anticipate personal life cycles by knowing those that have already occurred in history.
We can’t ever begin to close the gaps between where we are and where we want to be until we get our priorities straight. A starting "P" point is to refocus back onto the basic priorities we all share, such as meaning, security, freedom, competence and growth. This process then involves ordering the activities necessary to give life to the values which support these priorities.
For instance, if competence is our top priority, then we should be learning everything there is to learn about something from as many sources as we can get a hold of, and then building self-discipline to be able to practice the necessary skills until we get perfection. If growth is our top priority, then we need to start shedding familiar things and begin to open up to new opportunities, anywhere and everywhere.
Two important "P" points about perceptions are: (a) they produce realities which are very likely to be inaccurate due to typical perceptual distortions such as biases, incorrect information and our closure tendency of filling the gaps on incomplete information, and (b) they are what people generally act on, and without knowing exactly what they are, we are not able to react appropriately. Slowing down to tune into important perceptions affecting us, can help improve personal relationships greatly. If we are perceived as having a "bragging" personality, our helping efforts may always be resisted as being imposed and not credible, rather than welcomed and valuable.
A particularly challenging "p" point involves solving contradictory dilemmas or bisociations, such as, "you have to lose control before you gain control," or "you can’t have your cake and eat it too." Understanding these "riddles" can open a lot of other "P" point insights as to how life really works. The trick here is to slow down and "listen" to how such contradictions occur naturally in life and to comprehend how "opposite" appearing things may just be the flip side of the same thing, much like heads and tails on a quarter. Another trick is to avoid getting caught up in the language which holds us "hostage." We can do this by separating what is actually being said by the content, from what is being implied through meaning. This is especially true in regards to our bad habit of trying to interpret non-verbal behavior, verbally. Wrong interpretations can ruin relationships.
It is easy to develop a bad habit of overdoing things and going past the point of perfection. An important art to learn in personal development is becoming more sensitive to when imperfection goes past perfection and turns back into imperfection again. The funny part about it is that we always seem to know just when this happens, after it happens. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity for this particular "P" point is fairly narrow and we just have to work hard at sharpening our senses to "see" and "hear" this delicate point when it comes, before it goes. A visit to an antique car show and one glimpse of a white and turquoise classic 1963 Chevrolet Corvette, will bring this point to life for anyone. And for photography lovers, a trip to Ellis Island and viewing the spectacular black and white images, will do the same.
Another bad habit we have which limits our growth is the one of polarizing life into either-or opposites which we have to choose between. This yes-no, good-bad, right-wrong, okay-not okay habit causes us to exclude half of life from our "consumption." That reduces all chances for happiness, meaning and results by 50%. Rejoining these divisions is a bridge-building exercise which is contagious and can shorten the distance between here and there very quickly. The "P" point comes with the realization of the interconnectedness of "opposites," such as the necessity of rain to appreciate sunshine, or ignorance allowing education.
The most important Personality "P" point is that our personalities are a reflection of our basic attitude towards life The most useful "P" point about attitudes in general, is that attitudes are everything.A small change in attitude almost always produces major results; and, this is always the "cheapest" solution to any problem, because it is always free.
A critical discovery is the relationship between the things that happen to us and the resulting feelings we have from those events. The attitude "P" point is the particular thoughts we tell ourselves, which largely determine those feelings. The simple "P" point solution is that wrong thoughts produce unpleasant feelings.In the end, it really isn’t the things that happen to us that bother us, so much as our thoughts about those things. For instance, negative feed back can be viewed as either criticism or instruction. Failure is either a disaster or an opportunity to start over again.
If we don’t take care, we can easily give into the tendency to approach new situations with an awful lot of "excess baggage." This unfortunate tendency to prejudge new ideas, people, places and things against past similar experiences or future expectations, spoils a lot of excitement, fun, stimulation and growth.
Furthermore, in our efforts to quickly understand things, we let this speed thing fool us into believing some of our quick judgments are actually correct. Judging a thing before all the facts are really in, can set up wrong paradigms which spread false realities.The "P" point is the practical knowledge we already have: We already know that no two situations can ever be exactly the same, and that the majority of things we expect to happen never come about in the exact way we anticipate them to.
Problem situations are special "P" point opportunities to apply all the "P’ point solutions above. Creative problem-solving strategies use small, well-placed and well-timed efforts to suspend prejudgments, solve paradoxes, change paradigms, avoid polarizations, and apply important principles, in producing major results. And, an important "P" point about a problem is our attitude about it. A "problem" is really a sign that something isn’t right and an opportunity to correct a wrong.
Another important problem "P" point involves timing. In any action, timing is everything. We have all probably lost out on marvelous opportunities because we didn’t "strike while the iron was hot." Usually the clues are right there in front of us, but these clues are hard to see and hear because we have an important priority mixed up: We are walking and talking, instead of looking and listening. Slowing down helps us see and hear this critical "P" point.
Copyright by William S. Cottringer, 1999.
http://webpages.charter.net/ckurtdoc/p_points.html
Published by William S. Cottringer
Last Updated: November 25, 2001Home