Materials for Week 6
”Hardwiring Happiness”. —The TED Talk from Monday’s class
Materials on the Contribution Training Tool "Life Forces"
THE THREE LIFE FORCES
The Life Forces are tools that look at different parts of our character and personality and also different motivations that exist in our communities and nations.
The Life Forces look at the difference between love and caring on the one hand and creativity and risk-taking on the other. Then they look at the relationships between these parts of our lives and money and the material world. The Life Forces explain how these very different motivations effective our lives, and create for us both problems and opportunities.
The CARING LIFE FORCE is our need for love and emotional security. The CARING LIFE FORCE is the part of us that can be skilled in caring for others. It is the part of us that is good at loving. CARING motivates people to be medical professionals, parents, therapists, teachers, clergy, and contributes to other fields of interest to determine HOW the work is done.
The MATERIAL LIFE FORCE is our need for physical comfort, material security, and in simple terms, money. The MATERIAL LIFE FORCE is about food, clothing, and shelter. It is our need to possess, and to provide for those we care about. MATERIAL motivates people to become engineers, bankers, managers, plumbers, trade union officials and ecologists. It can also contribute to HOW the work in other fields is done.
The PERFORMANCE LIFE FORCE is our need to feel important and to be admired or be the center of attention. PERFORMANCE is a source of confidence and belief in ourselves and in what we do. This Life Force motivates people to be creative, take risks and put on performances. It gives us our actors, motivational speakers, musicians, politicians and it also contributes to the effective presentation of ourselves in any capacity (HOW we present ourselves).
Peter Fleming
How the Life Forces Work
Life Forces
- These are personality forming characteristics which act as motivators of action, feeling and accomplishment and are found in varying combinations in each of us
- They define the type of recognition we need to feel fulfilled in our lives (different Life Forces require different forms of recognition)
- They point to (and set limits for) the nature of what we will find a sense of purpose from in our lives and work—in other words what will make us feel strong and happy
As we grow, mature and build skills we are also developing Authority. In this sense we use the word Authority to represent an internal quality of competence and skill, which we can project and which can be recognized by others. This is the Authority we perceive in role models, teachers and leaders of all types. If we have a preponderance of a particular Life Force we will need to develop Authority from that Life Force in order to have a happy and balanced life. The contributions we make happen in two ways (both conscious and unconscious contributions) and the Authority we develop grows from both of these sources. For the sake of clarification I am describing the two forms of contribution as if they were separate entities. In fact they blend and mix in individuals’ lives.
The consciouscontributions we make to ourselves and to the lives of others both derive from and build on our Authority. In one way (and certainly not the onlyway) of looking at Authority we can say it is a thing we can charge money for, or a service that people will pay for. When we can consciously know the dimensions of the contribution we make and easily know the price we can put on it, that contribution is coming from our Authority. In this sense we define the contribution we make from our Authority as a conscious contribution. Of course, all such contributions are not exchanged for money, but our skill set and Authority developed are seen as worthwhile. Our ‘pay” for those skills and talents may come in the form of admiration or love rather than a check.
Unconsciouscontribution comes from the depths of whowe are—our individual nature. In the case of unconscious forms of contribution, pricing simply does not work. The contribution needs to be made in a spontaneous and unconscious way from our self-identity. The easiest example to see here is being a parent. It is not possible to put a price on being a good parent. When a person thinks too much about everything s/he does in her parenting, the efforts become conscious, and stiff and no longer spontaneous. The child feels the “disconnect” from the parent and will respond to that. On the other hand, when a contribution is unconscious, it can lead to difficulties and problems for the contributor (the parent in this case), as they may not feel that they are being recognized for their efforts. With our unconscious contributions our own sense of self-worth is most often the source of satisfaction with our efforts.
The concept of Authority is value neutral and can be developed for good or evil. Dictators may have a great deal of Authority for instance. Authority may be healthy or unhealthy.
Worksheet Questions; Answer in your journals
1. Name/describe something in which you have developed Authority in your life.
How did you do this?
2. Describe something that you have done as a consciouscontribution from this Authority.
3. Give an example of an unconsciouscontribution that has lead to trouble for the person who made it.
The Three Life Forces
The term Life Forces is another piece of the CT Jargon. We are using the term to refer to underlying motivators for our actions and feelings and we are grouping them into three large areas. Each of these three Life Forces is present in each of us. We may have one Life Force that seems to predominate in our makeup, but over the course of our lives (and often in each day) differing proportions of the three will be apparent depending on many variables. The way in which this happens is unique for each of us, and will be explored in class. The Life Forces are present in each of us from birth, and develop their strength of presence in us via life experiences we have. Through the process CT calls Memory Links, each of these three forces reaches back to the beginning of our emotional and personality development. In ways I hope to describe briefly in the following pages and discuss in class, each of these forces appears with us at birth and is reinforced and developed through each stage of our life - infancy, early relations with parents, school days, friendship and peer patterns, ongoing family relationships, adolescence, early adulthood in both relationships and work, parenthood, workplace success and into ageing. Our emotional history, and what we feel about what we do, can be understood by looking at these three force
Caring, Performance and Material are each regarded as a motivating force. By that term I mean literally a force that motivates us to achieve particular goals and to structure our accomplishments in a particular way so that we receive from people/the world a particular type of recognition. A motivating force is thus a force that motivates us towards accomplishment.
Each of these forces is seeking recognition in the world. In the understanding of CT theory, where there are positives connected to each negative and vice versa, Life Forces also carry an underlying injury or Hurt. Each develops a unique form of Authority, and each will display a negative side effect if the need and recognition are not successfully met.
______________________________________________________________________
- Performance:This is the emotional force that motivates us to be creative, take risks, perform and make discoveries.
- It arises in our basic nature as a person, and from “Memory Links” (powerful personal experiences) where one either is the center of attention, or needsto be the center of attention. It can also arise from experiences of being dominated or needing to dominate.
- The recognition Performance seeks is Applause, meaning admiration from large (or emotionally significant) groups of people.
- The Hurt that underlies the Performance Life force is that of feeling insignificant and unimportant. There may be a sense of gnawing emptiness, or having tons of energy but no place to put it. When the needs of a person in this area are not met they will feel injured in one of those ways.
- The Authority Performance develops through conscious contribution comes when the person takes their talent, their ability to be creative and to perform seriously. This can be risky and yet the risk is necessary in order to develop the life force’s internal Authority. The energy of the Performance Life Force needs the outlet of a creative, performing or risk taking act. It is centered in the self.
- Negative Contributions for Performance (a Performance need/drive with no appropriate creative outlet) may manifest as behaviors such as shoplifting, destructive sexuality, drinking or drug taking, reckless driving, etc.
_______________________________________________________________________
- Caring: This emotional force motivates us to feel and behave in caring ways toward people, and leads us to develop our knowledge so that our caring is skillful and effective.
- It arises from several sources. We find it coming from “Memory Links” in which we needed to be comforted and cared for. It also arrives with us at birth, and is part of our “tribal” nature at an instinctive level, operating with varying degrees of intensity and self-acceptance throughout our lives. Being well cared for can stimulate this motivator and direct it toward helping others. On the opposite hand, not having this need met in childhood, and yet knowing what was needed in terms of caring can also lead to it being a strong motivator. We can see examples of neglected or abused children who grow up to be exceptional caregivers.
- The recognition Caring seeks is Acceptance. We want to feel accepted as a person and for our work as care giver, teacher, etc. This often involves feeling cared for by just a small number of people unlike the larger audience needed by the Performance Life Force.
- The Hurtthat underlies the Caring Life Force when it is unexpressed or unmet is that of feeling rejected, lonely or unwanted.
- The Authorityit develops is through consciouscontribution to the care and well being of others. The “other” is the central character in this motivation. Acceptance is experienced as receiving caring (not love) back from those we are caring for. We all need love, but we are not deriving professional Authority from being loved, that is a business for the personal world of family and friends.
- Negative Contributions from the Caring Life Force in general involve the mishandling or exploitation of emotional closeness. The person may have bad or blurred boundaries, they may be very needy, or jealous or may love “too much”. This need can also be negatively expressed through violent or vicious actions toward people one supposedly cares about.
__________________________________________________________________________
- Material: Seeking to provide for our needs in material ways and to provide for those important to us.
- As with the previous Life Forces, we find this one operating in our basic nature. Our relationship to it also arises from “Memory Links”,perhaps ones where the rewards were material rather than emotional in nature and the person felt safe and secure. Seeking motivation or satisfaction from Material can also arise from a life experience where the basic physicals and security needs were threatened and the feeling arose that there would never be “enough”. There are countless variations on these themes.
- The recognition it seeks is Respect. The emotionaltone of this Life Force is quiet. The person’s need is to be recognized in a respectful way, usually without emotional closeness, for what they have achieved in terms of acquisitions or competence in the material world.
- The Hurtthat underlies the Material Life Force and which is expressed when these needs are not met is a feeling materially insecurity. This person may never have the feeling of comfort and quiet happiness that comes from the right possessions and surroundings or an adequate sense of competence even if they acquire lots of stuff and degrees.
- The material life force is an energy that motivates people to develop Authorityaround acquisition, competence and skill in the material world and for this authority they want people to respect them. People who are motivated mainly by this life force are not so concerned with being loved and accepted nor do they care about being applauded and admired. They want to be respected for their competence around material matters, for their property or wealth, for their collections and acquisitions. As they identifywith those things, they want those things respected more than they want direct respect for themselves.
- Negative Contributions for the Material Life force may mean that a person thus motivated is in not taking at all seriously the power of emotional needs, like the needs for intimacy, for closeness, or for long chats about how we feel. They may not care to know what others feel. They may not take seriously the need that some of us have to make an emotional or caring contribution to others. The material life force doesn't like risks any more than emotions. The hurt of the Material life force can also reduce the presence of the performance life force and its satisfactions. Here, the emphasis on money, on the physical world, on financial structures, on market share and market forces can exclude the creative, performing and risk taking element and keep a person stuck in the familiar and the secure.
Worksheet Questions (We may share these in class)
Looking at your life in general, make a picture of how these three life forces work together in you. (This can be a pie chart, a literal picture of the relationships between these three, or can be a written description).
How do you think this picture is shaping your plans for your future?
Is there a life force you would like to strengthen in your picture? What and why?