4 steps of natural brilliance

by Paul Scheele

As a follow-up to Monday’s article, let’s go through the Four-Step Natural Brilliance Model.

Consciously using the four-step Natural Brilliance model provides a way out of stuck states by implementing the natural learning model the body-mind uses to accomplish success in learning. Now, whenever you feel yourself entering a stuck state, you can reverse the normal course of things to move away from failure toward success.

To say that you can solve any problem facing you is a bold claim. For decades I focused my work on creative problem-solving, higher-order thinking, and resolving paradoxical problems. During these years I developed a model to articulate how successful individuals learn. I am excited to share this four-step model with you here in our blog.

Very simply, the steps are Release, Notice, Respond, Witness.

Release

The first step, Release, drains stress out of the physical systems. Relaxing your body and mind is the essential first step to promote the optimal state for learning—relaxed alertness.

Tension and resistance characterize a person trying to change the present situation. Often, the person strains to avoid making the situation worse. Paradoxically, almost everything people instinctively do to remedy a bad situation makes it worse. Paradoxically, the best solution may also be counterintuitive, that is, against what they initially think will work.

I know I’m dating mysef, but if you ever learned to drive a car with manual transmission, you may remember how tense you felt. Think of your initial response when you realized you had to stop at a red light, on a hill, with cars pulling up behind you. Tension in your legs and arms. Panic growing in the pit of your stomach. Attempting to control everything perfectly. All these made it next to impossible to succeed. I remember one fellow who switched on the emergency flashers, pulled on the parking brake, and abandoned his pickup truck. He knew he was not going to succeed.

Tension and stress causes us to narrowly focus our attention. We manage micro details and miss the big picture. It is almost impossible to witness our own paradoxical responses. We are too close to the problem and too immersed in the oscillating system. Breakthrough happens when we make the connection that our attempts to keep everything in control are antithetical to relaxing enough to be in control.

You can release in many ways. Changing posture, eye-focus, breathing, and thoughts can produce a calming effect. By draining stress out of the body and mind, you automatically dampen or minimize the oscillation that keeps you in your stuck state. Simultaneously you restore your natural sensing acuity.

The human sensory systems are capable of perceiving minute changes in the world around and within. Tension blocks this capability. Release: pull your forehead off the tree long enough to see that you are in the forest, and immediately options will appear. When you put your sensory systems back online, the second step of the model is possible. Step out of tunnel vision, and the world opens up.

Notice

Notice means entering a state of increased awareness and paying attention to information in the present situation. When you attend to the input in your sensory systems, you will naturally generate creative options and promising responses.

Helen Keller’s life story describes the primal life urge of the human organism—to make sense of its world.  The human brain is a pattern-making device. It does everything it can to code and organize incoming sensory perceptions. Information processing is its job. Despite Helen’s sensory limitations, she had a profound urge to make sense of her world.

When young Helen finally understood what her teacher Annie Sullivan had been trying to teach her, everything in her life changed. If you have ever seen The Helen Keller Story, with Patty Duke portraying young Helen, you know what a heart-wrenching moment it is when she makes the connection between actions and meanings.

“W-A-T-E-R.” The sign language in her hand, the feeling of the water flowing from the pump, the shape of the word in her mouth all connected. Then, the rest of Helen’s world cascaded together, and
patterns began forming a cohesive whole.

The speed of the mind is tremendous. The inner mind works at making associations much faster than the conscious mind can duplicate. When given the proper direction, the whole mind can accomplish virtually any problem-solving task.

The step of Noticing involves becoming aware of what is happening around and in you. We have five physical senses to perceive our outside world. Corresponding to each is a similar sensory system represented in the mind. External sensory perceptions include all the information coming into the five physical sensory systems. Internal perceptions include inner pictures, imaginings, memories, emotional feelings, remembered tactile sensations, internal dialogue, voices and other sounds, even remembered smells and tastes.

From the rich information about your outer experience and inner experience, you can make decisions and respond to people and events. You can also develop a new point of view, a perceptual position other than being stuck. You can see what you are doing in the situation in
which you are doing it.

The advantage of an “outside yourself” awareness is it opens the possibility for balance. Think of a teeter-totter or a seesaw on the school playground when you were a kid. Imagine trying to balance the thing by running on the top of it from one end to the other. Now, hop off it and choose a new position to work from—alongside the oscillating system. This time use your hands to dampen the oscillation and bring the teeter-totter into balance.

By combining the first two steps, Release and Notice, you achieve the optimal learning state, the state of relaxed alertness. Once you have developed relaxed alertness and increased your foundation of information, you can choose new responses from a rich set of options.

Respond

Any response either increases the oscillation and the inability to move, or it dampens the oscillation and increases movement toward a satisfying outcome.  Step 3 involves creating a response in order to discover how things change, for better or worse.

Anything you do has an effect, according to Newton’s laws of physics. The objective of doing something, anything, is to pull yourself out of your stuck state so you can witness the effects of your new actions, whether positive or negative.

As children learn to walk, everything they do plays into their success. I used to love watching my boys when they were toddlers. I remember the first time Ben stood next to the couch triumphantly balancing on his pudgy little feet without holding on, his proud smile and gleaming eyes unmistakable testimony of the joy of learning. He took to bouncing up and down like a gymnast doing aerobic knee bends.  Too much bounce and he would lose his grip and fall. No problem. Up again for another round.

Then one day he had coordinated muscles and balance enough to solo. On crazy legs he dashed across the carpeted floor in something that looked more like a controlled fall than walking. Intently he developed stopping, starting, and balancing without aid. Falling was perfectly important feedback, not failure but another step in the learning process.

The importance of the third step, Respond, is to take action. These actions will either make the situation better or not. In either case, movement within a system provides real and immediate feedback.

Once your brain recognizes your doing (or not doing) something makes your situation better or worse, you have the beginnings of change and the first step in gaining control of the outcomes you want to produce. When you feel you can cause your life to get better, you can generate a positive effect that builds self-confidence and self-esteem. Witnessing the results of your actions—Step 4 of the model—puts you in charge of producing the success you want.

Witness

In Step 4 you find a nonjudgmental position from which you observe learning taking place. Whether your response in Step 3 has succeeded or failed is not significant. The important thing is to get feedback that can lead to learning.

In this step the feeling is one of safety and blessing. Emotional safety and a sense of blessing were the essential components of my Toastmaster’s experience. You will experience them as important evidence that you have made a breakthrough.

Think how babies learn to speak their native language. They have high intrinsic motivation to learn. They initiate their own learning, surrounded by highly visible models. Unlimited repetitions are okay, and everything they do produces an outcome, not a failure. For their efforts they get generous support, well-spaced rewards, and immediate feedback. Everything they learn is relevant. They never question whether they will succeed; they expect success.

Do you desire to break through to a new level of performance? The Natural Brilliance model leads you to replicate and reclaim the safety and blessings of your natural learning genius.

Consider that no task of learning is more complex than learning a language. Do you realize, you acquired many of your language skills long before you entered school? Unfortunately, many students think of school as a place of wounding. Natural Brilliance will assist you in overcoming your wounds and replacing them with the strengths of safety and blessing.

When they are learning to speak, babies automatically acknowledge their own authority. Their self-esteem grows as they learn. The great opportunity for you as an adult is to witness your continued learning each day. As you develop the Natural Brilliance in you, the results you create will light up your life.

Benefit from Natural Brilliance and Go Beyond

The four steps of Natural Brilliance—Release, Notice, Respond, Witness—are all skills you have already developed to a certain degree. Going through my Natural Brilliance personal learning course will help you activate your Natural Brilliance to enjoy benefits immediately.

With the four Paraliminals, one for each step, and the two-session Paraliminal “Natural Brilliance Generator,” all of which are included with the course, your Natural Brilliance will automatically shine throughout all areas of your life.

Yes, you can overcome the oscillations and stuck states that have held you back where you have wanted to succeed. You can make long strides toward releasing your genius. Your next step is to order the course and spend one hour a day for six days listening to the six CDs. It will have a profound effect on your life. And as always you can always reach out for support by calling one of our coaches at the office or visiting our online Discussion Forum. Both services are free for you.

To your genius!