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Revealing Auto-Self Properties:
Involuntary Activities No Longer "Soft"
Topic highlights:
▪ We Can No Longer Ignore How the Mind
Works
▪ 15 Mental Properties that Pave the Way for Systematic
Improvements
○ Component
Parts
○ Evolutionary
History
○ Primary Properties
○ Emergence/Complexity Properties
○ Feelings Properties
○ Transformation Properties
▪ The Property That Has the Greatest Impact on
Performance
Once we understand the properties of the
auto-self,
we can create systematic processes for changing the
characteristics
of individual
or shared automatic behaviors and thought patterns.
We
Can No Longer Ignore How the Mind Works
When we operate in our cognitive,
thinking, knowledgeable mode, we say our thinking-self controls our
activities. When we display involuntary behaviors, and when "paradigms" or "cultures,"
constrain our thoughts and understanding, we say our auto-self controls
us.
The following diagram illustrates the
new distinction that opens up so many possibilities for performance improvement. The icon on
the left represents the prevailing uniform view of the mind, which for most people is
informal and implicit. The two icons on the right symbolically represent distinct components
of the bipartite mind. Because we are venturing into new territory, we will use these
representations of the two modes of our bipartite mind as a repeated reminder that we have
two components and to focus attention on the component we are speaking of at any
time.
15 Mental Properties
that Pave the Way for Systematic Improvements
After framing the distinction between
auto-self and thinking-self properties, this section identifies the properties that govern
the operations of the auto-self, which vastly improves our understanding of how the mind
works in the context of achieving peak performance.
Component Parts
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Auto-Self:
Auto-Behaviors; Auto-Contexts; Auto-Skills;
Auto-Expertise
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Thinking-Self:
Thoughts; Intentions; Knowledge; Willpower
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Evolutionary History
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Auto-Self:
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Old evolutionary development; most properties
shared with other animals
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Thinking-Self:
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More recent evolutionary development; properties
unique to humans
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Primary Properties
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#1:
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Auto-Self:
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Automatic: Brain controlled (no thinking – involuntary,
habitual)
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Thinking-Self:
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Intentional: Mind controlled (knowledge, thoughts, "stories")
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#2:
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Auto-Self:
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Operates outside normal awareness (unconscious;
subconscious)
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Thinking-Self:
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Occupies center of awareness (consumes most
of awareness)
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#3:
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Auto-Self:
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Controls stable behaviors
(auto-behaviors )
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Thinking-Self:
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Creates flexible
behaviors/actions outside personality traits, habits
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#4:
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Auto-Self:
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Provides stable auto-contexts – hidden
assumptions (paradigms, cultures)
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Thinking-Self:
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Processes intentional thoughts within enabling
and constraining auto-contexts
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Emergence/Complexity
Properties
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#5:
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Auto-Self:
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Many processes (coordinated or independent) execute
simultaneously
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Thinking-Self:
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Single task (thought, story) executes at a
time
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#6:
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Auto-Self:
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Handles
systematic complexity – quickly
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Thinking-Self:
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Handles
(story-based) variational
complexity– slowly
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#7:
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Auto-Self:
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Brain processes emerge
to execute repeated activities automatically
(auto-skills and auto-contexts)
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Thinking-Self:
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Thought processes require focused attention and
effort
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#8:
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Auto-Self:
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Can recognize patterns and relationships
(auto-expertise)
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Thinking-Self:
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Works in linear sequences (thought/story
flow)
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#9:
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Auto-Self:
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Brain-driven automatic processes
are implicit and mysterious
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Thinking-Self:
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Mind-driven thought/story processes
are explicit and transparent
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Feelings Properties
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#10:
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Auto-Self:
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Often induces feelings based on external and
internal cues
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Thinking-Self:
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Normally operates free of
feelings
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#11:
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Auto-Self:
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Processes nonverbal (evocative)
communications
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Thinking-Self:
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Processes verbal (informative)
communications
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#12:
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Auto-Self:
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Controls actions
through feelings (pleasure and discomfort)
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Thinking-Self:
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Controls actions
through intentions (strategies, goals, plans, tasks…)
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Transformation
Properties
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#13:
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Auto-Self:
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Improves by constructing/transforming
(practicing/conditioning)
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Thinking-Self:
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Improves through learning (acquiring new
knowledge)
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#14:
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Auto-Self:
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Can detect many external and internal
events
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Thinking-Self:
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Misses most external and internal (auto-self
driven) events
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#15:
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Auto-Self:
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Redirects thought stream (causes "daydreaming,"
"mind wandering")
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Thinking-Self:
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Gets redirected by auto-self– often without noticing it
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The Property That Has the Greatest
Impact on Performance
Identifying these
auto-self properties creates a new set of tools to improve the previously mysterious "soft" business success
factors.
Most people are familiar
with our Auto-Self Property #2, that its actions occur outside our awareness, through Freud's "unconscious" and
popular psychology's "subconscious" concepts. However, for our purposes of attaining and sustaining success, that
property is secondary to Property #1 on our list –activities take place automatically and
normally uncontrollably.
Of all the properties on
the above list, #12 creates the greatest, most insidious impacts on achieving success. This property informs us
that the auto-self and the thinking-self use fundamentally different mechanisms to control our activities. When
these two mechanisms drive us in the same direction, we have aligned priorities, and success normally follows.
However, when these priorities oppose each other, we end up with dueling dual
priorities, which causes many failures and is the subject of
the next web page.
   
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