Many years ago, at the start of my career, I was exposed to the work of Werner Erhard, and during my time being a member of staff at Werner Erhard and Associates in London I came across this model. Truth be told, I can’t remember if the way I do this model now is the way I originally learned it, I’ve taught it for close on 36 years now so I’ve added all sorts of things on to it, but what interests me about it now is the insight that this model gives us to the ways in which limiting assumptions get formulated by us during the course of our lives and become lived by us as true. And it’s by looking at the work we do in the Thinking Environment with limiting assumptions and incisive questions, through the lens of this model that we can learn to develop some compassion for ourselves – for the human being that developed the limiting assumptions in the first place, and how we have possibly spent much of our lives living from those untrue limiting assumptions.
We know from the work that we do with Incisive Questions in the Thinking Environment, don’t we, that we can liberate ourselves from those limiting assumptions. But I think the work of this model gives us some insight into how they get put together in the first place, and why. There’s many other topics we can look at through the lens of this model as well, such as having courageous conversations.
So I would like to take you through the model, and then we can look at different ways to apply it, and how we can weave it together with the work that we do in the Thinking Environment.
So, the way in which life happens for human beings is in The Present Moment. This is actually where life happens: in the present. In consecutive moments of “now”. Life occurs now, and now, and now. And inside those moments of now all sorts of things are happening: in other words data. If we apply what I am talking about to this present moment, then there’s a woman and she’s making X’s inside a circle on a flip chart and she’s talking into a camera. So all of that is data. It’s interesting, because when I talk about this model I talk about data as “what would the video capture?” So this is exactly what’s happening, right now – the video camera is capturing a woman, wearing orange, standing at a flip chart with three circles drawn on it, one of which is populated by a series of crosses. That’s life happening, in the present moment, filled with events that are happening. Those of you who are watching this video don’t know this, but as this video filming is happening, there’s wind blowing outside, there’s leaves moving on the tree, the sun is coming and going in between clouds. That’s all data: we can observe it.
Click on the link below to watch the full Youtube video:
Now, for us as human beings, life also happens in a different domain simultaneously to this one. In fact, so simultaneously that we often collapse these two separate domains and that is where assumptions get established and start to colour the way in which we see life as it is happening.
I will talk you through this:
Something happens in the present moment, and the minute it happens we also have an interpretation about what’s happening. So, I look out of the window, and I can see the wind is blowing, there are clouds, the leaves are shaking more vigorously on the trees than they were doing 30 minutes ago, and I can have an interpretation “there is weather coming in”. And I can maybe have an interpretation that it’s not good weather, that maybe bad weather is on its way. All of those are interpretations I have simultaneously as I observe the data around the wind, the clouds, leaves on the trees.
If I happen to be getting married later this evening, there would be a whole pile of additional interpretations that would be added to what I am observing in the present moment. I would be looking out the window, at the clouds, winds, trees, leaves and thinking “why does this always happen to me, life is not fair…”
And depending on what’s happening in this world of interpretation, it is going to shape the way I start seeing the next moment of now. Those interpretations we have about what’s happening start to become a filter through which we see life. And the filter shapes what we start to see. The interpretation becomes data. I could be looking at the exact same data and assume, “well the wind is blowing those clouds pretty fast, who knows it might clear up”, but instead – because there is this element of threat present (my wedding plans could be about to be negatively affected), the threat seems to solidify the interpretation I’ve got. This is one of the interesting things to note about this dynamic.
Because of negativity bias, we move in the direction of a negative interpretation. It’s almost part of our survival system. If I prepare for the worst-case scenario then maybe I’ll be able to survive the threat. So, instead of being able to see that actually, if I were to just turn my head slightly that way, the wind is blowing the clouds away and that just over there is blue sky and it’s turning sunny, it’s almost as if the filter starts to act like blinkers. So then what starts to happen is that we relate to the data as “bad weather is coming, this always happens to me, I can never get what I want”. We start relating to those assumptions not as if that is all a possible bunch of interpretations, but as if they are all data. In other words: my interpretations (assumptions) are facts.
The only way you can break the grip of what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy is by questioning the interpretation. Now that is easier said than done because we have to contend with the fact that as human beings we love being right. We fall into the habit of seeing life not as it is but as we see it is. And we become convinced that the way in which we see it is the way that it is. Thus, we end up trapped in self-fulfilling prophecies, because the more convinced you are that the way you see life (through the lens of your interpretations) is the way it is, you end up only seeing in life (remember the filter acts like blinkers) the things that confirm your interpretation (which you are relating to as the truth).
This is the work we do in a thinking session when we encounter the untrue limiting assumptions that are stopping us from having life be the way we want it to be – from achieving the outcomes that we have set for ourselves related to the topic(s) we are thinking about. These (interpretations) come from our past (The Past). How else would I be able to say “this always happens to me, life is unfair, nothing ever goes my way” if I wasn’t drawing on past experiences to produce those assumptions in the first place. So what we do is we collapse the past and the present, we superimpose the past onto the present and start relating to the present as if it is a continuation of the past.
If you stop and think about it for a moment, the present moment can never be a continuation of the past. The present moment has never happened before and is therefore brand new, but that is not how we live it as human beings. We say things like “here we go again”, but there is no such thing as “again” in fact. There’s no such thing as repetition in fact. It can feel repetitious, but that doesn’t mean it actually is because everything is brand new in every moment.
So enter the circle of The Future. This is where the work of the Freedom Model starts to overlap with the work that we do in Thinking Sessions when we are surfacing and removing untrue limiting assumptions. Because in a Thinking Session, what the Thinker has done is they have created a future that they want to accomplish – a further outcome for their session. The Thinking Partner will have asked “What more if anything would you like to accomplish with the time that is left in your session?” The Thinker will say – “what I want to do is ………” and end that sentence with the preferred future outcome they still want to accomplish in their session.
And the Thinking Partner will ask “what are you assuming that is stopping you from …….. that future outcome you have articulated you are wanting to accomplish?” Because assumptions always come from the past, and we superimpose them on the present they are what’s stopping us from creating the future we want to create.
And when we find the assumption that is untrue, and we replace it with a newly articulated true and more liberating assumption instead, what we are effectively doing is we are creating a new pair of glasses. What we are saying to ourselves is “well if I knew that no matter what the weather does, I can create a day for myself that will be full of love and joy” it changes how I am being towards the weather I am seeing outside the window and that then gives me more possibility to access the future that I am wanting to create.
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