The Twelve INGs

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE IN CHAOS AND CHANGE

This study explores the gestalt of being in the groove: optimal doing and realizing even in the midst of chaos and change as revealed phenomenologically by hundreds of co-researchers lauded by their colleagues and/or fans. These individuals are involved in such activities as teaching, law, medicine, politics, athletics, high tech engineering, business, entertainment, the trades, and even video and computer game playing.

The methodology is centered on interviews over a span of a decade using protocols developed by Van Kaam, Charhuff, Keen, Polkinghorne and others. It is not an empirical study as in an experiment or quasi-experiment. It is rather a dialogal analysis in which the interviewer and interviewee together arrive at the truth about the phenomenon, in this case the optimal performance or stellar life realization. So in traditional terms, it is more like case studies or naturalistic observation. Neither is factor or content analysis used; the latter would interfere with understanding the whole of the experience.

The so-called TWELVE INGs are twelve elements that make up the gestalt of what was revealed to me via my co-researchers. Each ING occupies a side of the dodecagon. However, the experience is revealed not as a linear succession. It is important to note that each element works with others generally in non-linear and synergistic ways with varying degrees of interaction. I use the progressive tense(ing) as it denotes process in the occuring event that appears in consciousness even though much time may have passed. It is important to note that a participant may express use of a particular ING in one life event yielding success but not in an other; the occurance is situational. Moreover, the participants interviewed were North Americans and western Europeans.

In consciousness, this experience involves the embodiment seen from both within and without personal physical space of:

PLAYING

• Developing a zone of play within assigned limits
• Instilling a spirit of the game
• Playing a challenging and rewarding game
• Experiencing and visualizing a light, playful space
• Caring for craft and having fun
• The game is more important than the results
• Keep going despite boredom and problems
• Changing the game if and when necessary

FOCUSING

• Creating floating focus
• Creating goals and sub-goals
• Seeking the whole picture
• Adapting to the whole picture moving
• Viewing details in clusters
• Staying flexible while in focus
• Continually checking-in (with goals)
• Asking the question: what and where is my focus?

MOVING

• Moving persistently even if slowly to goal
• Taking it step by step
• Keeping problem solving focus
• Taking reasonable risks
• Maintaining appropriate intensity
• Transforming feelings of anger, fear, grief etc. to goal
• Limiting wasted energy to 70-30 ration of pro-active to re-active
• Using nothing strategically
• Asking: what am I doing now to meet the goal?

TIMING

• Asking the question: how can I best make use of my time right now?
• Pacing
• Being aware of rhythms and cycles
• Being open to synchronicity and luck
• Listening to clues
• Realizing that clock time is human made
• Feeling one's destiny
• Learning the art of waiting
• Asking the question:how can I best work with time?

ALLOWING

• Learning the paradox of purpose and receptivity
• Letting go and staying in focus
• Feeling a benevolent flow
• Permitting yourself a floating feeling
• Knowing the limits of control
• Letting other forces come to play

SPRINGING

• Staying loose
• Finding one's center
• Using physical exercise
• Learning to turn energy on and off freely
• Learning tension-release connection
• Getting off the line from aggression
• Laughing
• More laughing

REDUCING

• Reducing overwhelm
• Creating clear space for focus and power
• Clearing up dense space
• Prioritizing, listing, and chunking
• Taking care of little stuff
• Using gradients and sub-goals
• Communicating effectively
• Drawing lines of won't or can't be done now

ADJUSTING

• Accepting changes
• Turning it around
• Keeping one's center
• Anticipating and adjusting to the expected and unexpected
• Being aware of cycles and rhythms
• Bending like bamboo
• Knowing that everything is temporary

AFFIRMING

• Keeping the vision
• Reminding the quest
• Affirming is to make firm the goal
• Linking I like myself with I can
• Creating a supporting spirit
• Visualizing, praying, and/or thinking positively
• Affirming is not forcing the goal or using empty slogans: Affirming is making a heartful leap between here and there

CYCLING

• Giving tacit or verbal thanks
• Getting material rewards not enough
• Rcognizing the performance/realization cycle as finished
• Being specific as to time and place of performance/goal
• Completion
• Learning that acknowledgement is to know that the act is over/done

OBLIQUING

• Making friends with intuition
• Trusting hunches
• Brainstorming
• Working backwards
• Asking the question: What else can I/we do?
• Taking time to space out
• Lateral thinking,obliquing, does not mean to resist critical thinking

DISCHARGING

• Getting to know that our dark side can get in the way
• Dealing with our past, not repressing it
• Knowing that the past can be helpful
• Accepting and forgiving the past
• Havimg a healthy respect for the forces that sabotage
• Confronting these forces if and when necessary

Drawing from dialogal analysis, I have learned from my co-researchers (the optimal performers themselves) that an interesting gestalt takes place during the event, whether the latter lasts only minutes or years. It is expressed differently by each person. However, the structural elements are the same: In consciousness the experience is described as one with playing in a zone, moving, timing, focusing, affirming, springing, reducing, obliquing, cycling, discharging, and allowing. Much of the description is easy to understand. Some is not, such as the felt lack of seriousness that often takes place. Most paradoxical is the notion that this moment of excellence is not just a concentrated absorption of doing, but being as well. Since we are not just dealing with natural talent here, we all have a chance for such expression.

Hopefully avenues for further research can take place both phenomenologically and behaviorally.

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