[Neurons] Information about some of the New Books

Fri Mar 5 10:00:53 EST 2021

From: L. Michael Hall

meta at acsol.net

ABOUT SOME OF THE OTHER NEW BOOKS

When I send out information about newly published books, I often put the
Table of Contents and the Foreword, but several people have recently
reminded me that I did not do that with some of the new books.  Here are two
---

              Executive Decisions (2020)

              Hypnotic Thinking (2020)

Executive Decisions

Deciding Wisely

Foreword
4

I: The Power & Magic of Decisions

1. Executive Thinking 

    and Deciding
9

2. The Decision Process
21

3. Decision as Strategy
33

4. Decision Delusions
42

5. Pre-Decisions

    Preparing to Decide
55

II: Decision-Making as a Dynamic Process

6. Deciding Intentionally
67

    Intending to Decide

7. Information Gathering
78

    Understanding to Decide

8. The Stuff Upstairs
89

     Deciding as Framing

9. Skeptically Testing
100

     Deciding with Rigor

10. Deciding as Planning
109

      Deciding the Future

11. Decision as Reflection
120

      Preparing for Wisdom 

12. Decision as Action
134

      Implementing a Decision 

13. Decision Monitoring
144

      Monitoring and feedback

III: Unique Concerns About Decision-Making

14. Group Decisions
151

      Leading and Managing Groups

15. Decision Problems
159

      Decisions that Fail

16. Decision Recovery
171

      The Art of Getting Over 

       Poor Decisions

17. Decision Principles
170

18. Decision Q&A
191

      Guidelines for Smart Decisions

Appendix A:
196

Well-Formed Outcome Questions

Bibliography
197

Author
200

Books 

Neuro-Semantics

FOREWORD

"The last of the human freedoms-

the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances."

Viktor Frankl, Logotherapy

I

f there's one thing that we humans are not very good at, and which we have
not yet seemed to figure out- it is how to consistently make smart
decisions.  Yet to live is to make decisions.  Every single day we make
hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions.  Now true enough, most of your
everyday decisions are not all that critical- when to get up, what to wear,
what to eat, how to get to work, etc.  It's not this level of deciding that
usually bother us.  What bothers us is how to make intelligent crucial
decisions.

Much more problematic is how to make decisions that determine the direction
of your life, the quality of your experiences, how to think, focus your
mind, set your meanings, determine your character and personality, respond
to challenges, handle set-backs, criticism, and mistakes, and a hundred
other subjects. What  toothpaste you choose will not dramatically affect the
trajectory of your life.  Yet what you will choose to believe will. -that
can be crucial.  What car you choose will not make that much of a difference
in the long-term.  Yet what ideas to feed your mind and what focus to
develop will. 

Some decisions are absolutely critical.  For those, the ability to gather
essential information, evaluate the data correctly, and make timely
decisions will determine if you select the right career-one that you fall in
love with and will mobilize your energy and vitality.  Similarly with
selecting the right friends, the right lover, the right lifestyle that you
set up for yourself.  Do it well- accurately and wisely- and you live a high
quality life.  Do it poorly and you pay for it in frustration, anger, and
regret as your energy is spent on dealing with stress, fixing self-generated
problems, and feeling 

dissatisfied with life and with yourself.  So, there are choices and then
there are the big ones- the consequential choices.

If that's the bad news, the good news is that you have executive functions
in your neocortex that can save you from a lot of unnecessary distress.  You
have executive functions for accurate thinking and planning, for quality
decision-making, for conceptual thinking, anticipating consequences, using
memory as a resource, etc.  Instead of making decisions in a reactionary
way, reacting whenever your emotions get triggered by some situation or some
local fool, you can rise up, engage in your best executive thinking and then
make an executive decision that will be an expression of you at your best.

With executive thinking and executive deciding, you can be the CEO of the
enterprise of you.  You can make choices that reflect your best thinking,
your highest meanings, your most noble values, and your most inspiring
aspirations.

Suppose you know how to think like an executive, how to use all of your
higher executive functions in your prefrontal lobes, but you don't know how
to decide like an executive and to make high quality executive decisions.
In that case, you will not be able to forge the direction of your life and
be the CEO of your life.  You will not be able to design and actualize your
highest values and visions.  Here you will learn how to do that! What are
executive decisions?  What does it mean to make an executive decision?  It
means- 

           Distinguishing relevant from peripheral values.

           Recognizing the best timing for a great decision.

           Managing uncertainty with courage and flexibility.

           Facilitating groups (teams, boards) to make intelligent
decisions.

           Reversing decisions with elegance and finesse. 

           Eliciting the best options via framing the structure of the
decision.

           Weighing choices against well thought-out criteria.

           Making meta-decisions to reduce the amount of decisions and to
prioritize the most important decisions.

           Inspiring executive decision-making in others.

           Staying mindful in decision-making without defaulting to be on
autopilot mindlessness.

There's No Opting Out

Making decisions is inevitable.  You cannot not make decisions.  Even if you
opt out and decide you will no longer make decisions- you have just made a
decision.  Actually, a pretty stupid one.  If decision-making is inevitable,
and if the quality of your life is the result of the quality of your
decisions, then the solution is to learn how to make great decisions.  The
solution is to unleash and develop your potential as a powerful
decision-maker -the intent of this book.

Because deciding is inevitable, you cannot not decide.  To think and to
consider information is to compare things, weigh differences, come to
conclusions, and that is to decide.  In fact, to be conscious is to make
decisions- to decide what to focus on, think about, what to do, where to go,
and a thousand other decisions.

The Freedom to Decide

Viktor Frankl said that deciding is the ultimate human freedom.  Every time
you decide something, you are exercising the very power (capacity) that
makes us humans unique.  That's because by choosing you determine your
destiny and the quality of your life.  Pretty important, wouldn't you say?

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our
power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our
freedom." (Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning)

I had to make a decision regarding writing this book. Actually a great many
decisions.  "Should I spend the time, effort, energy, and money in writing a
book about making decisions?"  "What do I feel strong enough regarding the
deciding process to invest my intelligence, thinking, energy, etc.?"  "What
point or points would I seek to make in writing about decision-making?"

Oh, To Make Wise Decisions!

The people who do this intelligently and compassionately, we call wise.
They are the ones who we look to in times of crisis, confusion, and
uncertainty.  They are the ones who demonstrate the power of consistently
wise decisions that lead to scientific discoveries, entrepreneur success,
and transformational leadership.  The ability to consistently make great
decisions evokes us to stand back and admire them.  We also want to question
them, "How do you so regularly and consistently make the best decisions?"
"What's your secret?"

**

A Moment of Humor

In the movie City Slickers, Curley the rough trail boss sitting on his horse
gave actor Billy Crystal advice for his indecisive character.  Holding up
his index finger, he said "The secret of life is one thing."  Crystal asked,
"Your finger?"

"No, one thing."

**

This book is about the secrets of great decision-making and how you can tap
into those secrets to unleash your own powers for making excellent choices.
Here we will look at the richness and depth of having a decision-making
process that will deliver consistent results.  But a warning: wise
decision-making is not easy or simple.  There are a great many factors that
go against it- factors that we will identify and counter-act.

Yet how good are you as a decider?  How well do your big decisions go?  How
many decisions do you later come to regret?  While making decisions is
inevitable, making intelligent, smart, great, and life-enhancing decisions
is not inevitable.  Using your highest executive functions in your
prefrontal cortex requires learning and development.  It requires
understanding of how the decision-making process works and skills to work
it. 

Imagine how great it would be if we could invent a wise decision-making
pill.  Take a "wise deciding" pill every day and then you could be done with
it.  But alas, there are no such pills; there never will be.  Choosing is
your lot as a human being, an innate power that distinguishes you from every
other creature on the planet.  

You, and you alone, have the ability to select from a multitude of options
that will determine how you will live.   And this choosing power goes to the
deepest part of your psychology- to choosing what to think, how to think,
what to value, what to believe, what to feel, how to respond to your
feelings, who to love, how to love that person, who to be friends with, how
to express that connection, and so on.  Because of this power of choice, we
say that we humans are inherently free- free to choose.  And how you handle
that freedom-will determine how you experience your life.

Reclaiming Your Power of Choice

Now many people do not experientially feel that freedom or that power of
choice.  They feel controlled, fated, and determined.  They experience
themselves as powerless to make a choice and helpless to transform that
choice into a lifestyle.  The truth is that they have learned to be helpless
because they have learned to give up their power of choice and response.
While they suffer today from learned helplessness, that does not seal their
fate.  They can learn the optimism which will free them to step up and own
the ultimate human power- the power to choose your attitude.

About This Book

A Moment of Humor

Two friends are talking after work, one says, "I'm thinking of divorcing my
wife, she hasn't spoken to me in almost two months."

His friend says, "You ought not decide so hastily; quality women like that
are hard to find."

I will frequently refer to Meta-Programs-the perceptual filters that govern
how you see and interpret things.  Because these meta-programs work like
glasses that color the world you see, they powerfully influence your choices
and decisions.  And they do so in ways that you may not recognize.  If that
domain interests you, see the book Figuring Out People which is an
encyclopedia of 60 some meta-programs.

Yes, this book is based on Executive Thinking: Activating Your Highest
Executive Thinking Potentials (2018).  Yet it is not required for
understanding of this one.  Yet as it describes the foundation for this
book, I will refer to it frequently.  That's because deciding is a function
of your thinking.  Quality thinking leads to quality deciding.

At the end of each chapter I have included a personal story about decisions.
Some are about disastrous decisions that I have made and come to regret;
some are about empowering decisions that I learned to make.  And inasmuch as
there are many dynamics involved in decisions, each chapter closes with some
comments about the decision dynamics of that chapter.

HYPNOTIC THINKING

Foreword
4

Section I: Introduction

1. Of all the Ways of Thinking
7

2. The Hypnotic State
16

3. Conscious or Unconscious?
28

      Part I: Distinctions

4. Conscious or Unconscious?
37

      Part II: Myths 

5. Hypnotic Thinking as

     Meaning-Making
50

6. Everyday Hypnotic Thinking
58

7. Trances for Every Occasion
66

     Kinds of Trances

8. What's a Trance Good For?
75

Section II: Trance Language
84

9. Meta-Model for Trance
85

10. Milton Model for Trance
106

11. Meta-Level Linguistics
123

Section III: Trance Structure 132

Conversational Trance Inductions

133

13. Trance: Up & Down
143

14. Relating Hypnotically
155

Section IV: Trance Applications

15. Trance Inductions
168

16. The Genius Trance

      Trance & Attention
175

17. Metaphorical Trance
184

      Trance & Metaphor 

18.  Transformation Trances
191

19.  Crucible Trance
205

20.  Health Trances #1
216

              Trances for Pain Relief

21. Health Trances #2
227

       Trances for Well-Being

22. Trances for Programming
238

3. Creativity Trances
247

24.  Let there be Trance
252

Appendices
257

Index
266

Bibliography
268

Author
272

                    FOREWORD

Our mental life is a dialogue.  It's a dialogue between what happens to us,
what we think about what happens to us, and what we think we should do or
could do about it.  Conscious and unconscious aspects of our inner
intelligence (mind) constantly is working to figure out how to navigate life
more successfully.

T

his book is about thinking hypnotically.  Yet a strange and paradoxical
thing about this is that the focus here will not be on how to think
hypnotically.  And there's an important reason for this.  You already think
hypnotically  We all do.  It is part and parcel of how our brains work when
we think.  You and I, inevitably and inescapably, already think
hypnotically.  In fact, that may also be the source of significant problems
for you. You think hypnotically too easily and, in all likelihood, too
sloppily.  You have the power, but you may not have taken control of it, and
if not, you probably don't manage it very well.

Here's another strange thing about this book.  To think hypnotically in a
way that's effective and empowering, as well as in a way that enriches your
life, you may have to learn to stop thinking hypnotically in the way you
have and learn entirely new ways.  That's the case with most of us.  We have
mis-used the hypnotic powers that we have and, usually, we have done so
without even knowing that we have such powers.  By the way, how are your
hypnotic powers?  How well acquainted are you with them?  How well developed
are they?  How well you do use them to enhance your life?

Actually, to think is to think hypnotically.  The very process of thinking
includes being able to go inside your mind and imagine all sorts of ideas,
solutions, visions, values, ways of life, new possibilities, inventions,
etc.  That's what it means to think hypnotically.  Yet many people-scratch
that- most people do not use this power very powerfully.  In fact, most 

people misuse it.  And that, consequently is the source of many personal
problems.  Most people think hypnotically do so randomly, unintentionally,
unecologically, and to their own detriment.  I'll address this in this book
and offer ways to either undo the damage and/or to discover how to put that
power to really good use.

The phrase thinking hypnotically is a strange phrase, one we hardly ever
use.  Instead we talk about "hypnosis" and "trance."  We talk about "altered
states of consciousness."  Instead we may talk about imagination and being
imaginative, or our "unconscious mind" and intuitions.  Yet all of these
terms are problematic.  They are imprecise, unspecific, and actually
encourage unmanageable hypnotic thinking.

Because, ultimately all of these terms refer to the core competency of
thinking, and because they refer to a specific kind of thinking-
transitioning with an intense focus to your inside world, I have chosen to
use the strange phrase hypnotic thinking as the title of this book and as
the theme of this book.

As noted Executive Thinking (2018), thinking begins with considering and
questioning.  And to consider things, you have to have a way to code your
thoughts, which in the human mind, means beginning with the sensory systems
(seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling, tasting, etc.).  You use these to
mentally represent your "thoughts."  Now you're in a position to "hold a
thought in mind" (represent it) so that you can consider it.  As you do so,
you may begin to question it- wonder about it, re-consider it, doubt it,
play with it, turn it upside-down, and/or change it around in dozens of
ways.  Now you are actively thinking.

Thinking is not the same as knowing.  Knowing is the end result of thinking.
It occurs when you complete the thinking process.  When you know something,
you have stopped the search, the curiosity, the wondering, the probing, and
the questioning.  Thinking, as the active mental processing of information,
is an ongoing, never-ending dynamic of curious wonderment.  Thinking starts
with seeking to understand the world- 

What's out there?  What do you call this?  How does it work?  What can we do
with this?  What else?  Is this valuable?  For what?  What is the
significance and meaning of this?  How can I achieve X?

Once you have a pretty good idea about the world that you live in (and there
are as many worlds as there are domains, fields, and disciplines), thinking
can shift gears and begin to push the boundaries as you imagine
possibilities beyond what currently exists.  Here thinking becomes
"hypnotic" as you can play with ideas in your mind, even run prototypes of
new inventions mentally, and use your visions of what can be to guide your
translation into what is.

Hypnotic thinking is not a luxury for the indulgent, it is rather an
essential part of the fabric of science, creativity, innovation, "the world
of tomorrow," and the human passion for the unleashing of potentials.  This
kind of thinking is not for the hippies at Esalen or the gurus smoking pot
in a meditative cave in the Himalayas.  Hypnotic thinking is for all of us.
It keeps you inspired with possibilities when you authentically think
hypnotically.  It will keep you on the creative edge of problem-solving.  It
will awaken you to the mystery of being a curious human being who comes
alive to the degree that you encounter and solve problems.  It enlivens you
with an active imagination because you know how to use fantasy to
effectively enhance your planning, preparations, and anticipations of the
future.

To think hypnotically is to experience trance states.  As you turn inward
with an intense focus, your singular concentration in an area enables you to
achieve incredible things.  This is the power of a learning trance, a
creativity trance, a problem-solving trance, a well-being trance, etc.  What
you will discover here is how to access these kinds of empowering trances
and have them available when you need them.  Now on to thinking
hypnotically.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

To subscribe or unsubscribe to Neurons, send request to meta at acsol.net 

Making smart decisions is not easy--- many, many cognitive biases work
against us and it is far too easy to default to pseudo-decisions: emotions,
gut feelings, intuitions, circumstances, others.  Executive Decisions (2021)
offers a way to decide intelligently and wisely.

130969 Neuro Semantics Executive Decisions Book Cover

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