Margen intensivo y extensivo: un enfoque no paramétrico

separated by location or both location and modality. I want you all to have a chance to do this thoroughly, and I also want those of you who had coun-terexamples already integrated to experience what it is like to have them separated.

If you already had counterexamples integrated into your database, experiment with separating them out and putting them into a different loca-tion, so that you can experience what that is like. Then shift them into a dif-ferent modality as well, to experience what that is like. Be sure to integrate them back into your database when you're done experimenting.

If you have counterexamples in the same modality, but in a different location, I want you to experience two things. The first is to change your counterexamples into a different modality, to experience what that is like.

Then I want you to change them back and then integrate them cautiously into your database, one at a time. If your counterexamples are metaphoric, change them into more detailed representations before making any other changes.

If your counterexamples are in a different modality and a different loca-tion, first shift them into the same modality as your examples and pause to experience how that is different, and then integrate them into your database.

Doing this will give each of you a full experience of all three possibilities.

Do you have any questions, or observations to report?

Melissa: I had my counterexamples integrated to start with. When I moved them out into a different location, I really got a sense of what some of my friends must experience when I offer them feedback. I ask for

feed-back and welcome it, but they don't, and now I understand how difficult and stressful it must be for them.

Great. When you really experience someone else's world from the inside, that makes it a lot more understandable, and easier to know how to offer ways to shift their experience.

Carl: Both my database and my counterexamples were metaphoric, and I couldn't see any content. My database was like a rope that angled away from me, and I could also feel it with my hands. My counterexam-ples were little sparkling points of light behind me. When I tried to inte-grate one of the points of light, it got agitated, like a little angry energy ball, and I felt uncomfortable, so I stopped. Then I tried transforming the rope into a series of linked images, to preserve the form of the rope. Then I trans-formed one of the sparkling points into an image, and brought it over and integrated it into the "rope" easily, and then did the same with the others.

While sometimes you can integrate metaphoric representations, usu-ally it doesn't work very well, because a metaphor is almost always a sum-mary of a group of examples, in contrast to one of the individual examples in your database. So when you try to integrate a metaphor, you are usually integrating everything in the underlying database at once, instead of one example at a time, as we have been doing.

Jan: I found it very difficult to transform and integrate my visual coun-terexamples into my auditory examples. And then I thought, "Why don't I do it the other way around?" That was also difficult to start with, but then it became a color and all spread out, and the rest integrated easily.

Wonderful. Probably that worked better because integrating in the visual system is easier than in the auditory system for most of us. However, some people might feel bad at first when looking at those counterexample images.

And adding in examples probably wouldn't make much difference at first, so that might be discouraging. But if it worked for you, I can't argue with it.

Yet another possibility would be to translate both the auditory examples and the visual counterexamples into the kinesthetic system, and then inte-grate them. In general I wouldn't advise that, because integration in the visual system is usually easier. However, for an athlete, that might be perfect, and it's always nice to have another way to try if you get stuck. When you keep your eventual goal clearly in mind, you can try different ways to get there until you find one that works.

Integrating counterexamples is a very profound change in the way many people think of themselves. It is also a change that can easily be of-fered conversationally in everyday contexts, especially when you use hand gestures that make your communication even clearer and more explicit.

"Can you see that time you messed up, completely surrounded by

Utilizing Mistakes 117 images of times when you did exactly what you want and value? If that image were a voice, what would it say? I don't suppose you could hear that voice surrounded by those voices that tell you about times when you have had that positive quality."

Julian: I'm wondering what keeps counterexamples from leading to behavior in the same way that the positive examples in the database do. If having examples of a quality of yourself is a basis for that kind of behav-ior, why wouldn't counterexamples do the same?

That's a very good question. Does anyone have an answer to that?

Ben: Well, you keep emphasizing that the counterexamples are to be less prominent than examples, and I think that would make them much less likely to actually lead to behavior.

Abe: And I'd think it would be very important to not have any future representations of counterexamples.

Yes to both of you. When Connie described her counterexample images as being "yellow-brown, like old photographs from the past," I thought that was a nice way of identifying that they were in the past—and by implication not in the future. If you look at the whole integrated data-base, there is little likelihood that a counterexample could lead to behav-ior. However, if you zoomed in on a single counterexample, and made it big and bright and stepped into it, that could lead you into exactly the kind of behavior that you don't want. So although there are some safety factors, the danger that Julian asked about does exist, and next we will explore how to avoid this possibility.

Summary

We have been experimenting with integrating counterexamples into your database, because it makes it both more real and solid, and at the same time makes it much more stable and balanced, and open to feedback.

In contrast, having counterexamples separated from the database makes for a very unstable situation, which can easily flip to its opposite. A pure database without counterexamples results in perfectionism. Since a single counterexample can easily shatter a pure generalization, it is very resistant to feedback, leading to rigidity and denial, a false self and an unac-knowledged "shadow"self.

When counterexamples are integrated into your database, they warn you about where and when you messed up in the past. That keeps you from thinking that you are perfect, and makes it much easier to accept feedback about a new mistake or two, because you already realize that you some-times make mistakes. Mistakes alert you to where and when you could take steps to learn to do better next time.

However, there is an even better way to integrate counterexamples, by first transforming them into examples of what you want to do the next time you encounter a similar situation in the future, and then future-pacing those new desired behaviors. This preserves all the benefits of integrating coun-terexamples, while programming resourceful new behaviors, and avoids the problem that Julian just pointed out, that a counterexample could lead to behavior that is the opposite of the quality that you want. Next we will explore how to do this in considerable detail.

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