Intervention

An ancient Chinese proverb warns that if you don't change your direction, you are likely to end up where you are headed. Consider what the proverb implies-that you have some power to design or redesign your future.

I would say that, by and large, the human race is not heading in the direction that most of us envision in our dreams. Further, I am suggesting that each of us as an individual exists in an environment that does not support us in really being who we are. Quite the opposite-we live in a culture that supports us,even urges us,to conceal,stifle,and ridicule authentic expressions of our humanness.

A world that works for everyone is a culture in which each of us is committed to each other's commitments.It is a global society in which sincerity, genuine support,and authenticity abound; where you are not afraid to really be who you are. This vision requires us to see past the ignorance, prejudice, and insensitivity of the status quo to a society that could be, but is not yet-a world where your contributions are amplified, not diminished. This vision is of an environment in which you are seen as a possibility and are supported in making a difference. This is a culture of courage and compassion where you and I can trust that we are here for,and not against,each other; where mistakes can be forgiven rather than merely seized upon to make others wrong. It is a society that values your well-being as more important than what you can be used for.

This society affords us the privilege and responsibility of both giving and receiving love, and joins individuality with interdependence in an empowering way. It allows each of us the honor of being personally charged with that responsibility in our lifetimes. This new culture lives today in our actions as well as in the future in our dreams. And each of us has the right to assume personal responsibility for it today. Right now.

I know that you have a vision. The practical tools offered to you here are intended to enable you to bring that vision closer to becoming a reality. Always remember to look forward to what it is you are working toward. Remember to look across the river first and remind yourself of your dreams. Then, look down at the river and figure out how to conquer the alligators that stand between you and your dreams.

INTERVENING

Imagine the power of being able to intervene between the present and the future in a way that shifts the seemingly automatic course you individually,and humankind collectively, are already on. In the domain of transformation, intervention is a commitment or act that shifts your practices in the present, thereby inventing anew how the future will unfold.

The circumstances of the past and present shape the possibilities for intervention. By your intervention, you generate a future that would not have occurred had you not interrupted the flow of events. Intervention is no magic wand and the possibility for intervention is shaped by the facts of reality. By intervening, you have an effect on how the future unfolds rather than drifting into the future that would inevitably follow the uninterrupted past. You can't intervene without facing up to what's happened in the past or is happening in the present. Intervention means participating in the present, in light of what has happened in the past, such that you generate and act on new possibilities for the future.

CONFORMITY AND THE DRIFT

Conformity is a fundamental, natural tendency of human beings. We all have a rock-bottom disposition to conform. You naturally adhere to the cultural norms into which you were born. Those cultural norms combine with your particular factual history (gender,nationality,age, and so on) to form a matrix of dispositions to behave “normally.” That matrix determines your social roles as an individual and prescribes how you relate to others. People tend to cooperate, to act in ways that complement each others' roles and that consummate normal social relations. You don't have a choice about your baseline inclination to conform-that is a given human trait. Even “nonconformists” conform to social categories.

The problem is that the social norms and practices to which we conform don't necessarily serve us optimally. Socially, we react to peoples’ behavior in ways that encourage imitation of “normal” practices and discourage deviation. Therefore, your possibilities as a particular individual are restricted. Most people (not you and me, of course, but most people) will tend to act like anyone else with a similar cultural background would in similar circumstances. Your choice is always to act as “anyone else” would in the same situation, or, to examine your concerns and act out of them-which may or may not mirror the cultural norm.

The cultural climate consists of the shared understandings and practices that form the backgrounds of our lives. Because of the apt imagery, this cultural backdrop has been called the “drift.”For each of us the character of the drift differs depending on gender,age,race, religion,and so on. But the nature of the drift is the same for all human beings; it is inescapable, and to a great extent defines who you are and how you see the world. The drift limits your possibilities by predisposing you to interpret and act in accordance with the drift's interpretations and practices. As an American in the twentieth century, you cannot see and respond to the world the way an Englishman in the eighteenth century or an Egyptian in the twenty-first century would.

The drift is the cultural result of our tendency to conform.The drift is the trend, that which is already happening and from which the future can be predicted with a fair degree of accuracy. It denotes the path of least resistance. The drift is made up of our cultural norms. Our personal histories and our shared culture both shape and are shaped by the drift. What is appropriate and what is inappropriate are predetermined by the drift. Picture the drift as a rushing river that sweeps us along through our lives, predisposing us to act like anyone else.The drift isn't good or bad, it is just the current in which we float through life. The tendency to conform with the drift is in the nature of humanity.

Uninterrupted, the drift levels out the qualitative distinctions between what is important and what is unimportant. Acceptable human behavior is reduced to a narrow window of normalcy. Individuality is discouraged in the drift. Like a field leveled by a bulldozer for efficient construction, passion is flattened by the social drift of our culture to eliminate deviations in the human landscape.

The leveling effect of the drift suppresses actions that are extraordinary. Intervention allows the possibility of piercing the averageness that the drift generates. You can intervene in states of inevitability and resignation.Through your intervention, the future can be something other than merely a projection of the past. Your intervention can mean inventing the future rather than merely forecasting it. To return to our opening aphorism,intervention can enable you to shift the direction in which you are headed.

WHERE ARE YOU HEADED?

What's wrong with where you are headed? Nothing is necessarily wrong with it. Have you scrutinized where you are headed (meaning have you assessed the likely outcome of your current practices)? Have you honestly evaluated whether the path you are on today is likely to lead where you want to go, to the fulfillment of your life goals? Are your current behaviors consistent with your long-range commitments? Have you ever seriously examined and declared your life goals? (By goals, I do not mean specific achievements, necessarily. The word goal also refers to a general condition of satisfaction, commitment or end state.) What is your vision for your future? If you haven't declared your goals, what are they? Write them down in your journal.

WHAT INTERVENES?

What is the most effective vehicle for intervention? Commitment. A commitment,distinct from a hope, want,or intention,is demonstrated in your actions.It's what you are creating during the day,not what you dream about at night.

Look at a familiar example of how commitment is different from hope, wants,or intention. You declare that you are going to lose weight. You take on the exercise and dietary practices that will support your goal, but you don't lose weight, or you don't lose as much as you had intended to lose. If you're human, you've set goals like losing weight (or saving money, or calling your parents more frequently,etc.),and haven't accomplished those goals. Why not? The place to look is your practices. You did not act in a way that would achieve your goals. You may have sincerely wanted to lose weight, but based on the results, something else was more important. Your genuine commitment, as unlikely as it sounds,was to whatever end state you accomplished. Your commitment is to the actual end result that you are heading toward based on your current practices.

How can knowing this assist you except in retrospect? It's easy to see what you were committed to once you already have the result. Honing your ability to recognize now where your actions are leading you gives you the opportunity to intervene and alter the future outcome before it's too late.There is no power in waiting to get the result and then analyzing what you were really committed to. Who wants to be a reporter on his or her own life? There is also no power in just noticing what is happening while it's happening. Awareness is only as useful as the action it begets.

There is power in intervening when you find yourself in a breakdown so that you take action that directs you toward the accomplishment of your goal. The challenge of intervention is that it is impossible in hindsight.It requires you to shift your behavior now, in the face of the drift.

Consider these questions about your commitments, and take the opportunity to write your responses in your journal.

• Recall the life goals you declared in the last section. Based on your current practices, are they wants, hopes and intentions, or real commitments?
• What changes do you need to make in your behavior to be living in alignment with your commitments?

INTERVENTION IN ACTION

Intervention is a vehicle for breakthrough. One career in which we see people consistently intervening and triggering breakthrough is coaching. A coach's job is to intervene in the future. A coach intervenes and empowers committed students to shift their practices such that they become more competent, resolve breakdowns, open up new possibilities,and enhance their commitment.

What you are reading now is an example of intervention.This material is designed to interrupt the same old drift in which you (we) live. Ideally, you have experienced having your beliefs and behavior challenged, you have questioned the inevitability of your future,seen new possibilities for yourself, and been empowered to act on those possibilities.Why spend time and money to hear the same old rap,to fuel an engine that already has tremendous momentum? A key to your effectiveness will be your ability to intervene in the drift, to interrupt automatic behavior patterns that don't work, and invent new practices that do work.

For your further inquiry, consider the points and questions below. Write your responses in your journal.

• Identify some of the characteristics of the drift in which you live.Are some of them inconsistent with your life goals? Can you see any possibility for intervening in those?
• Has committing to this process (if you have) intervened in your behavior in any perceptible way yet? If not, I suggest that you are not committed to having this process make a difference in your life, that something else is more important to you.

CONVERSATIONS FOR INTERVENTION

Your commitment has the power to intervene and bring forth reality by both determining and being reflected in your actions. What's important to you will greatly determine what you do,and,in turn, what you do will greatly determine the evolution of what's important to you.

The type of action that most powerfully embodies and creates commitment is speaking. In your speaking you have the tools to intervene in any situation.

Certain communication does more than just represent reality, it actually brings forth reality. For instance, when you say “dog,”a dog does not fall out of your mouth, but when you say “I promise,” a promise does. When you say “marriage," a married couple doesn't pop out of your mouth. But, when someone with the appropriate qualifications says “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” a new reality called marriage is created by virtue of that declaration. Certain types of conversation can intervene and create reality by bringing your commitments to life.

There are four types of conversation that intervene: promisesrequests,declarations,and assertions. A brief definition of each follows:

PROMISE To promise is to pledge yourself to do,bring about, or provide.A promise is a declaration to do or refrain from doing something specific. A promise creates an obligation. A complete promise requires:(1) a speaker,(2) a listener,(3) terms of fulfillment (exactly what will be produced), and (4) a time agreement.

REQUEST Requesting is the act of asking for something from someone else. A complete request requires: (1) a speaker,(2) a listener, (3) terms of fulfillment (exactly what is being asked for), (4) a time agreement and (5) a response (accept, decline, counter offer).

DECLARATION A declaration is the act of reconstituting a set of relationships. Voicing declarations sculpts identities and defines possibilities (e.g.,“I now pronounce you husband and wife"). You shape reality by your declarations.

ASSERTION An assertion is an interpretation that you can back up with evidence,an affirmation. Asserting is the act of stating a verifiable claim positively.

Those four types of conversation are your tools for intervention. This is not new technology in the sense that every voluntary action that has ever occurred between humans was on the basis of such exchanges. What is new is that we are bringing this dynamic into the foreground so you can see it and begin to use it deliberately. By your speaking-and your listening-you can turn around any situation and further your aspirations by transforming your good ideas into action.

Promises,requests,declarations,and assertions are performative expressions that serve to effect a transaction or that constitute the performance of the specified act by virtue of their utterance. Promise, request,declaration, and assertion are the key categorical words, but there are myriad other words that are also performative. For instance, different types of promises are implied by the words: agree, commit consent,vow,intend, plan,assure,swear.Even the words refuse and decline are promises-promises not to do something. You can make a request with such words as,beg,ask,demand,invite,plead,propose, wish,urge, suggest,require,recommend.As with promises,there are negative requests, such as, forbid and warn.Alternative words for declarations are:resign,nominate,name,confirm,decree,concede, apply,pronounce,acknowledge,love,forgive,trust,recognize,agree. Finally, an assertion can be conveyed by words like maintain,predict, postulate,verify,testify,claim,surmise,submit,deny,argue,conclude, contend. These words are not interchangeable. An invitation is obviously not the same as a demand-they each connote a distinct degree of authority, freedom, and importance. What these words have in common is that their utterance constitutes the performance of the specified act, thereby reconstituting social reality (e.g.,“I now pronounce you man and wife,”“I swear to repay the loan,”“I invite you to join our meeting,”“I claim that the educational system is in crisis”).

The mere use of one of those words does not constitute a meaningful act.The effectiveness of speaking depends on the sincerity and the competence of the speaker. Sincerity-being free from hypocrisyrequires the courage to expose yourself, to make your private conversation public. The courageous act of being sincere means revealing what would otherwise be covered up, thus giving your genuine concerns the chance of being put into action. Competence-the quality or state of having the requisite or adequate ability or qualities-determines the probability for fulfillment of the promise, request,declaration, or assertion. No matter how sincerely you want to do something, your promise is no good unless you are competent to fulfill it. Likewise, making a request of someone who isn't competent to fulfill it is not taking committed action-it doesn't intervene in anything. Lacking sincerity or competence doesn't preclude miracles from happening. On the other hand, we often underestimate our capabilities. But miracles don't exist in the same domain as committed action. You can't count on a miracle to perform the actions that will fulfill your commitments.Promises,requests,declarations,and assertions perform the specified act by virtue of their utterance only when uttered by sincere and competent speakers.

Promises,requests, declarations, and assertions cause action.In any language, all action occurs through one of these types of conversation.

Not all conversations need to be conversations that intervene and cause action.There are chitchat, fact finding,speculation,assessment, research, brainstorming, and so on. All of those kinds of speaking are appropriate in their place. But, when it is time for intervention,when you need action,promises,requests,declarations,and assertions are guaranteed vehicles.

How effective are your speaking and listening?

• Spend the rest of today or all day tomorrow practicing the art of committed speaking. Make all of your requests and promises using the words ‘I request' and ‘I promise,' and include all of the requirements of complete requests and promises (i.e., 'I request that you do X by Y time,' and 'I promise that I'll Y by Z time'). While it may seem stilted and a bit awkward, I promise that it will make a difference in how effective you are, and in how effective the other people involved are.

• When you listen to people, do you hear when they are making vague or implicit requests and promises? For the next day, practice assisting the people around you to make their requests and promises specific and explicit. For example, if someone at work asks you to handle something, but you aren't sure what the conditions for fulfillment are (i.e.,exactly what is being asked for and by when), then don't just do what we usually do, which is assume that we know, or pretend that we know,or hope that we can use their vagueness to our advantage as an excuse for not doing what they wanted when they wanted it. lnstead, for the next twenty-four hours, don't agree to any requests unless you are crystal clear about what you are promising, and don't accept any promises that aren't specific and complete. You may meet resistancepeople hate to give up the back door that being vague represents. Do it anyway. Again, I promise that you and the others involved will be more effective than you ever have been.

• Don't stop the two above techniques after twenty-four hours. If you are clear on complete requests and promises, then begin using the other words that signify requests and promises (i.e.,invite, demand,ask, swear,guarantee, and so on).Also begin to identify declarations and assertions and observe their roles in bringing forth reality.

Wake-Up Call

So,you've been reading this book now for a hundred pages or so. Here are some questions to assist you in confronting your commitment:

• What difference have you made in your life out of reading this book?
• Specifically, what is different now about you, your thinking, your behavior, your communication, and your results than before you began this work?
• If I were to ask the people who know you if they notice anything different, what would they say?
• Have you done anything at all in an effort to apply the insights you have had to your life or is this just another gesture?
• What was it that you wanted to accomplish out of this? Have you accomplished it or have you made actual progress toward accomplishing it? If so, acknowledge yourself for the courage and commitment it took to keep your word, and ask yourself 'What's next?' If not, what are you waiting for?

Did you notice how cunning human beings can be? We can fool even ourselves into believing that we are getting something done when all we are doing is performing empty gestures, or "trying.”

Human inertia is tenacious. Our reasons for not keeping our word are incredibly creative. Isn't it mind-boggling that we are unwilling or too lazy to do the things that we know will improve the quality of our lives? It is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get a human being to make a change in his or her behavior. The fact is, being resigned about life is part of being human.

Think seriously about what you are doing here. If you aren't in the trenches shoveling the dirt in order to become who you aspire to be, you might as well go watch reruns of “Fantasy Island” because that’s about as close as you'll come to transformation.

A final question: Why bother reading another word?