Summary
Join
me and Kim Toth tonight (Thursday, 2/25/10) for a teleworkshop
(and drawing for a fellowship to our coach training program.)
In
the 90's, I read a book on the psychology of time. As
I did, I realized how much I struggled with imagining positive
future outcomes for my life--especially big, ambitious possibilities.
I became fascinated with the research on the psychology
of time and was excited recently to interview one of the world's
leading experts, Phil Zimbardo. Below you'll find a partial
transcript of that wonderful interview and a link to the full
recording.
In
This Issue:
1.
Coaching Teleworkshop with Ben Dean and Kim Kirmmse Toth--Tonight!
2.
My Struggles with Future Time--Ben Dean
3.
Main: Phil Zimbardo On Time and Life (includes
transcript and recording)
4.
MentorCoach Upcoming Coach Training Programs
1.
Coaching Teleworkshop with Ben Dean and Kim Kirmmse Toth--Tonight!
Kim
Kirmmse Toth and I are giving a 2-hour, no-charge coaching
teleworkshop tonight, Thursday, February 25th from
7:00 to 8:59 pm Eastern. It will include a live coaching
session and a virtual drawing for a $2000 tuition fellowship
to the 31-week Foundations Coach Training Program. Please
come and bring all questions.
WHAT:
Coaching Teleworkshop with Ben Dean and Kim Kirmmse Toth
DATE:
Thursday, February 25, 2010
TIME:
7:00 pm to 8:59 pm Eastern (New York time)
2. My
Struggles with Future Time--Ben Dean
In
the early '90's, I stumbled across a book by Herbert
Rappaport called Marking
Time. As
I recall, Rappaport, a Temple University psychology professor, argued
that people should develop the facility to live in the
three domains of time--the past, present, and future.
That
made great sense to me. I felt I was reasonably proficient
in living in the present--partly due to my experience with gestalt
therapy. I also felt very comfortable in remembering and
thinking about my past.
However,
I realized I was tremendously blocked in thinking about the
future. While there are many aspects of living in the
future--one was to be able to imagine multiple, positive future
realities.
And
I could not do it. Despite having had a good amount of
success in life, the minute I allowed myself to imagine some
wonderful future possibility, I immediately canceled it out
as I flashed on all the reasons I would not be able to achieve
that desired future outcome.
It
was as if I tried to imagine making a crucial hit in a
baseball game. But instantly I'd let the idea go.
What if I got hit by the pitch? I can't hit curve balls
anyway. I could easily strike out. What if I got
to first base--I could still get thrown out. And what
if I could get a hit, but not at the crucial time when I'd strike
out instead. I probably wouldn't enjoy playing baseball
anyway.
I
had not even been aware of my almost automatic process of knocking
down possible future goals.
Well,
over time, I worked very hard on this. And I got to where
I could imagine many possible future outcomes. They could
be outlandishly big, even inconsistent with each other.
By imagining them, I learned, I was not wedded to them.
I was just playing with the future.
I
also learned ways to create very big goals and to hold on to
them as I worked toward realizing them.
So
the thinking that Rappaport's book prompted became part
of a very valuable, larger enterprise.
Since
then, I've been fascinated with the concept of time.
So I
was excited to be able to have an interview with one of the
world's leading experts, legendary Stanford psychologist, Phil
Zimbardo. He was bright and funny and unpretentious
and wise. And the hour just flew by.
What
follows is a partial transcript of the interview (that included
questions from listeners all over the world). It then
includes a link to the full recording. I hope you like
it.
3. Phil
Zimbardo On Time and Life
Phil Zimbardo, Ph.D. is,
perhaps, the world's most distinguished psychologist, co-author
of The
Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your
Life,
and a
charming and articulate interview subject. His "time"
website is here. His
homepage and professional website is here.
He joined us for a one hour conversation in November.
Here for the first time is a transcript of the beginning of
our call followed by the link to the full recording. Note:
To also hear Phil give a 1:14 talk with power points on
The Time Paradox to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco,
click
here.
(It's a great talk.)
I
began by saying, "So
that we all can visualize you, where are you right now?":
PHIL:
I'm sitting in my study in San Francisco. Although I taught
at Stanford, I live in San Francisco. My wife teaches
at Berkeley and we split the commute. And also I grew
up in New York so I'm a city person. Palo Alto where Stanford
is is too clean, too quiet, too safe. It makes me nervous.
I'm
looking at a view of the San Francisco Bay which is gorgeous.
And I'm looking forward to a wonderful exchange.
BEN:
OK, and are you sitting there in a smoking jacket and pipe or
a polo shirt and cut offs?
PHIL:
I'm actually all in blue. And, just to jump ahead, I discovered
recently I have -- ciliac disease, which is an allergy to gluten.
The symptoms are that you gain weight, you're lethargic, you
have gas - and it can be serious. And when it's diagnosed,
all you do is cut out eating wheat. And I've lost 20 pounds,
my energy is back, and I look younger than my 76 years of age
-- and so there's a cookoff tonight with 10 San Francisco chefs
and 10 doctors preparing gluten-free, amazing dinners and I
am one of the judges. And Alice --, the woman who started
the Ciliac Foundation, is coming at 11:00 -- so we have until
then to share our thoughts.
BEN:
That must have been one of the biggest joys of your life, to
find that cure.
PHIL:
Well, it does mean that you have to give up a lot of things
you love, like pizza and pastas and pastries. What the
Ciliac Foundation is trying to do is to get companies to start
making gluten-free breads and pastries and pizzas and so forth
-- and some are doing it. You substitute corn, rice, spelt
or quinoa . . . but if it means you're really healthy, you'll
make some sacrifices.
BEN:
Absolutely. Now, when I read your book, I imagined that in
the dictionary, your picture should be next to "future
time perspective." You sound like one of the
extreme people on that dimension. Is that true?
PHIL:
Yeah, I would say so. Essentially, one of the reasons
I began to study time perspective -- and I should say, my definition
of time perspective is -- there's chronological time, there's
objective time that we measure with various devices like wristwatches.
And
there's psychological time, the time that we create in our minds,
Time perspective is a psychological way that each of us categorizes
our personal experience into time zones. Obviously, the big
three are past, present and future. But what we've found
is two things. That within each of those, they get dichotomized.
For example, you could focus on the negatives or the positives
of the past.
You
could be present hedonistic--to focus on pleasure. Or
present-fatalistic,--It doesn't pay to plan, my life as fated.
You
could be future oriented, the way I am. Always planning
for the future. Making to do lists. Being highly
conscientious. Or you could be high in what we call
a transcendental future, that is in many religions, life really
begins after the death of the mortal body,so they live their
life very differently.
So
we developed a scale which is online (www.TheTimeParadox.com)
that you can take and get a score on these different dimensions.
The
biggest problem is that people develop a different time perspective.
You don't adjust to what your needs are and what the situation
is. Some people are always future oriented. Some
are always present hedonistic. Some are always past positive
or past negative.
And
what we show with lots of examples and lots of research over
30 years is any of those in excess is bad.
So
you need a balance of moderately future oriented--not extreme,
Moderate on past positive. And a dash of selected hedonism--to
reward yourself when you get things done.
Ben:
So would you say you, yourself, have that balance or has being
so future oriented had some down sides for you?
Phil:
No, no. Yes it has had lots of down sides. In my
book, I say that I'm consciously working every day to add more
past positive and more present hedonism into my life.
For example, when you said I've written over 400 articles and
50 books. When you are writing, you are alone. It's
an asocial activity.
Anybody
who writes a lot, can't have lots of friends, can't give as
much time to family.
So
if you're extremely future oriented, you get the job done.
You're extremely conscientious. You live up to your word.
You know, people can count on you. You're going to be
successful in school and in business.
But...you
don't have time for the three important things: family,
friends, and fun.
So
in the long run, you get isolated. People don't really
like you as much as they could.
So
just by adding some present hedonism--namely, when you get something
done, you take time out for a massage or a hot tub or hooking
up with your friends or having a beer or going to a coffee shop.
And
at the same time, always remembering family. Family is
the past positive. Remembering the good old times.
Taking time to call you mother, your grandmother, your kids.
But
you have to conscientiously work at this because these time
biases stem from our earliest age. They're influenced
by our culture, our religion, genetics, social class, where
we live.
So
the idea is once you become aware of this concept of time perspective
and you find out where you fit. Then you have to ask,
"How do I break this habit of being excessively focused
on the past or excessively focused on the present or excessively
focused on the future. Because the evidence is you live
longer, you're happier. And, in the long run, you become
more productive.
BEN:
You know, I had the impression that in addition to future time
orientation, that you are also very comfortable in the present.
I went to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin.
And there was this urban legend I heard from the social psych
students about a time when you had flown into Austin to meet
Elliot Aronson and his students. They were there to throw
you a curve, so they met the plane dressed as a band but--never
to be one upped--you came down the stairs to the tarmac wearing
a cape, throwing garlands to the left and right. (Note--all
this except the garlands is true. More on the recording.)
PHIL:
I can be dramatic. I can dip into the present. Obviously
I enjoy music and I enjoy dancing. But it's the pull.
See, the other thing is I come from a poor Sicilian background.
And everybody in my family lives in the past or the present.
No one plans for the future. In Sicilian dialect, there
is no verb for the future.
Ben:
Really!
PHIL:
It's astounding! That's why nothing gets done. There's
no verb to help you plan. And I go to Sicily every year now.
I discovered the village called Camerata where my grandparents
came from. I started an educational foundation there to
send kids to college and to set up computer labs.
But
it's amazing. Nothing ever gets done. Nothing is
ever on time. And I just discovered this last year.
I was talking to them about time perspective and someone told
me there is a verb for the past, for the present. But
there is no verb for the future. There's no verb for "will
be."
Ben:
How is time perspective determined. I'm sure there is
an environmental piece but wouldn't there be a strong genetic
component?
PHIL:
No, no. It's not genetic. As I say, my family genes
were not from future-oriented people. I don't think it
is genetic. I think it's all socially learned, culturally
learned. That if anything, survival means living in the
present. You have to get food. You have to avoid
pain. You have to avoid danger. So as children,
we're all present hedonists.
But
over time, the major contribution of education is to take little
present-hedonistic beasts that we all were and make us more
future oriented, teaching us to delay gratification--one of
the most important attributes a person can have. And also
to build in an appreciation of the past -- of your family over
time; your identity over time.
So
the more educated you are, the more future oriented you are.
The less educated you are, the more likely you are to be present-
or past-oriented.
But
again, if you come from a climate near the equator where things
don't change, where seasons don't change, you're more likely
to be present oriented than future oriented. Because future
orientation is always about planning for difference, planning
for change.
Ben:
I was wondering if one of the typical changes in time orientation
across the life span would be--Everybody always starts out in
the present, say during the first five years of their lives.
And then toward the end of life, we tend to return to a present
orientation. Is there any truth to that?
PHIL:
Yes, in one way there is. That's really very insightful
of you, Ben. We start off present oriented. Then
again, if you are in a culture that indulges youth, the culture
allows you to play. On the other hand, if you grow up
in poverty or in an undeveloped country where kids have to start
working as little kids. And you work all the time so you
never really develop that present hedonism.
But
over time, certainly in America, more people develop a future
perspective. More people focus on the good things about
the past.
But
when we get old, research by Laura Carstensen, my colleague
at Stanford says when you get old, what you want is "selective
optimization." You want closer contacts but with
fewer people. (You can see Dr. Carstensen talking about
this at 37:40 of this
video).
You
don't want on Linkdin or to have a facebook page, What
you want is really the best of present hedonism. To have
a small number of friends or family that you see regularly,
that you share emotions with. So--assuming that they have
good health and are not obsessed with just surviving--the elderly
go back to seeking out and trying to maintain close emotional
contacts with friends and family.
Hear
the Recording of the Full Zimbardo Interview
The
full interview runs sixty minutes and received a huge amount
of positive comments from listeners all over the world. To
download the interview, click
here.
4.
MentorCoach Upcoming Foundations Coach Training Programs
[Note:
All MCP Foundations Programs are identical in content.]
MCP 140 Mondays
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pm - 8:59 pm Eastern (New York Time)
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Monday, February 22, 2010
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noon - 12:59 pm Eastern (New York Time)
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*~*~*~*~*~*~*
5.
Upcoming Advanced Coaching Classes
Appreciative Inquiry Coaching MasterClass
12
Thursdays
8:00
- 9:00 pm Eastern
Starts
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Ethics
& Risk Management MasterClass
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Monday, April 12, 2010
Executive Coaching MasterClass
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Tuesday, May 4, 2010
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Tuesday, April 20,2010
Intensive Group Coaching MasterClass
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Thursday, April 22, 2010
Faculty:
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Martin
For
more information, click
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Positive Psychology and Strategic Career Design MasterClass
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1-Hour Classes for 12 Weeks
Start
Date: June 2010
Faculty:
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6.
Ben's Upcoming Speaking Engagements
Psychotherapy
Networker Symposium 2010
"Whither
Coaching?: Where It Came From and Where It's Going"
When:
Sunday, March 28, 2010 (All day workshop)
Where
Omni Shoreham, Washington, DC.