MythoSelfTM – The Art and Science of Living… by David McDermott
Roye Fraser studied NLP with Richard Bandler, one of the co-developers of NLP who said that NLP is an attitude and a methodology and that the attitude was easy to describe, ‘anything is possible’. Roye is one of only a handful of people who have kept the orientation to possibility intact in his own work and teachings.
Of particular interest to Roye earlier in life, in his military days, was his observation that those who went into battle expecting to return usually did, and those expecting to die often did just that. He began to ask himself questions about how people organized themselves to live their lives, how they functioned or didn’t function and what were the driving forces or templates on which people modelled themselves, around which they made decisions and through which they took action. His model he called the Generative Imprint™ Model, the Generative Imprint™ being an individual’s unique way of being in the world that is structurally well formed, facilitates functional well-formedness, allows a person to know their place in the universe while aligning with their purpose, and generates a massive sense of readiness and possibility.
Not having met Roye, my knowledge of him comes from one of Roye’s most persistent students, a man called Joseph Riggio. Persistent in that he travelled for weekend after weekend to attend Roye’s trainings for several years, until he was ready to take what he had learnt and begin to run his own trainings. Thus was born the MythoSelf® Process.
So what’s so good about it, you might ask. The orientation around possibility is a major step away from most other therapies and modalities available nowadays. You can learn how to sort out problems and deal with difficulties and all you get is to be an expert on your problems. It won’t necessarily get you the life you want. Similarly for understanding. If you understand why stuff happens to you, or you think you understand why you are the way you are, all you have is understanding. That may not get you where you want to go either. If you understand that a molecule of water has 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, does that make it easy for you to make water if someone gives you a cylinder of oxygen and a cylinder of hydrogen? I think not.
However, if you know how to shift your position so that what was a problem now becomes a situation in which you have a range of options, possibilities where before there were none, then you have a considerably more powerful starting position from which to move forward.
The idea of structural and functional well formedness within one model is also very rare. Think of structure as who you are and functioning being what you do. Who you are will determine to a large extent what and how well you do things. Zen, for example, aims at enlightenment, a way of being. Something like NLP, making money, sporting activities are functional skill sets. They are things that people do. Getting very skilled at one of these may not generate structural well formedness, in fact, sporty types are prone to injuries because their structure gets worse! A runners hamstrings get tight from repetition and injury to this particular muscle is common in these people. Similarly, structural well formedness does not in any way guarantee functional well formedness, someone who is high on drugs may have a great sense of well being and feel at one with the world, but may not be very functional at all! However, they are never mutually exclusive either. Many martial artists, for example, after years of practice, often develop a different posturing, you could say, a more relaxed attitude, a calmer way of being in the world.
So what if you put your attention on both and ensure that you start with structural well formedness and use that to determine the functional well formedness, which in turn only serves to reinforce the structural aspect? So who you are determines what you choose to do with your life and the activities you engage in allow you to be more of who you are becoming…
Progress may be slower initially because there is more to consider and organize, but once it’s moving, it becomes self perpetuating and self actualising, with less and less effort required over time, as opposed to more effort to compensate for the imbalances which are being aggravated over time. This is one of the things that is so powerful about the MythoSelf® Model.
Another aspect that generates profound and generative transformation is the operation of the model at the level of identity and the transpersonal. By making adjustments at these levels, or more specifically by allowing the client access to the ways of being that are aligned with who they are becoming, the smallest shifts ripple outwards giving rise to many and varied alterations in the universe, sometimes subtle, sometimes massive, but rearranging the present so that the future-held representations become manifest.
Once the identity position is stabilised, the central theme of an individual is elicited, the alignment with the true purpose, so that there is a beacon or guiding principle that is ever present and establishes a directionality, by moving along which the individual is assured of having the experience of their own life.
Add to this the skillset that the trainers and facilitators possess, the way other models can be incorporated into this one yet it remains distinct and definitely more than the sum of any of the others, the unfolding of a person from themselves at the rate at which they are ready for, the fact that the model actually demonstrates the ‘how-to’ of ‘be yourself, think positive, be your own person, live your own life… etc., etc.,’ the individuality of the process for each individual, the way people learn how to be unchanging instead of constantly trying to adapt themselves to the world, and, of course, the somatic basis, and you get a comprehensive and exquisite model that is simple in it’s complexity and complex in it’s simplicity.
I called this piece the art and the science because the model also has elements of both. Science in that the model is the study of what works, it’s about distilling the structure of how people get things done, how they successfully manoeuvre through life and get what they want. Studying folks from all walks of life and all areas of expertise and eliciting the structure of how they actually do the things they do. This is then used in two ways. Firstly, the individuals get to learn their own patterns of success so that they can run them with intention and deliberateness. And secondly, patterns within the patterns are elicited and generalised so that they can be taught to people in order that they can be used in whatever sphere these people choose to operate. Remembering that all the time it’s a diamond-bit-ended search for what works in any situation.
The art is in how the model is used, both by the facilitator leading the client through the process and moreso by the client who gets to live their lives from a place of possibility and creativity, developing new, different and previously unconsidered ways to get the outcomes required.
So a big thank you to Roye Fraser and Joseph Riggio, and to those who have been instrumental in the learnings of these two…
And hey! I wish I’d thought of it…
