The Law of Necessity of Opposites

[Carding 4 Carders]

Practical paradoxes for life, as well as other notes on the illusion of defeat.

Einstein flunked his algebra exams. Merlin Monroe didn't think she was beautiful. Freud felt uncomfortable if he had to look other people in the eye. Karl Rogers hated being told what to do. Has Virginia Satyr ever been married, and did she have children? Fritz Perls was often inconsistent. Will Schütz was bored at the seminars. Richard Bandler and John Grinder could enter rapport with anyone except ... 1

When the gods want to convey something important to people, it seems that they often choose messengers who have a lot of flaws. Perhaps this is their way of trying to insure against people confusing the message with the messenger.

But what can be more annoying than someone who does not put into practice what he teaches? What fascinates more than the following discovery: a great man, it turns out, is a colossus with feet of clay. (Translator's note: The Colossus of Rhodes is one of the seven wonders of the world, a statue on feet of clay. The statue has not survived. The colossus fell because the feet of clay could not bear its weight). What can make us more miserable than facing our own flaws?

O imperfect man, be proud of your weakness! I think you were misinformed. We all need our shortcomings, the limitations of our mental abilities, our insecurity, since all of the above plays a special role. I call this the Law of Required Variety.

I am not the first to notice that people teach what they themselves want to learn and what they need to learn. Who would be interested in teaching, researching, or working in a field that they have completely mastered?

The proverb says: "He who knows does; he who does not know teaches." This is a commentary on modeling geniuses. How many geniuses have left their talents unexplained, unexplained? One of the perennial choruses in NLP folklore is that when a talented person explains his actions, it usually has little to do with what he is actually doing. The structure of one's own skill is often invisible to its owner.

How many body-oriented therapists have problems with their own spine?
How many psychiatrists are crazy?
How many criminal lawyers? Tongue writers? Sick doctors? Insecure leaders?

According to the law of the Necessity of opposites, this is how it should be. Reflect in this direction: if you knew absolutely everything about a certain area, have experienced everything or have already asked everyone, you hardly knew even what you know. It would be a part of you, like water for fish and air for birds. You would not have the motivation to learn anything.

If you were perfectly balanced, you would never consider studying clinical psychology. If you could communicate great, the opportunity to learn how to communicate would not interest you.

In your life, you once decided that you have some kind of defect, lack, something unreliable, weakness, missed opportunity, conflicting desire or unrequited love. Fabulous! Cherish your flaws! This is exactly the experience that tells us in which direction to move, what needs to be studied. Without these milestones, we would never be able to navigate in life, there would be no thirst for knowledge or creativity.

All of the most creative periods in history have one thing in common: the gods were too human. The Greeks and Romans saw their creators as narrow-minded, cheating, unrestrained, and oppressive. As soon as people began to consider the gods invisible, omniscient, omnipotent and morally infallible - bam, and the Dark Ages descended on them. The Renaissance periods are characterized by the humanity of human characters, the ability to fail, imperfection, mistakes, inability to do something. The human touch is more of a clumsy groping than a firm grip.

We have watched as over the past two decades dozens of gurus have been crushed to dust as they were considered mentally disabled. Mindfulness Leader Werner Erhard, Swami Muktananda, Zen Master Richard Baker Roshi even our own intrepid founders of NLP are periodically suspected of lack of moral or marital stability.

I do not condone any of the above behaviors, and this is not an excuse for misusing people's attitudes. Personally, I think that violence is unacceptable, but sometimes I also lose my temper. I simply appeal to the tendency for people to deny and deprive confidence all the discipline as a whole , because some imperfect humans have done something bad.

One thing I've learned in life is that flaws can be found in anyone. Perhaps someone in the world right now thinks that the Dalai Lama is giggling too much and Mother Teresa is nagging. Life is not a search for flaws, but finding good in people or directions - this seems to be the real task of a person.

Many of us feel defeated in this assignment. Old NLP would call this failure an individual invention. You've probably never heard of a dog failing to be a dog. The cat would never have thought that failure in this is possible. Probably, there is no plant, or the simplest single-celled organism or animal that would consider something in their life a defeat. Of course, they are overtaken by setbacks that prevent them from getting what they want and disappointing. But failure? I suspect that in nature, organisms tend to accept their world as an ongoing feedback loop of information about what to do next.

I think that all our mistakes and shortcomings work for us in the same way, but not only as information about what to do next, but also where to go, what to learn and even what to do from a professional point of view.

Martin Heidegger, the philosopher of existentialism, believed that mistakes, or, as he called, "accidents," are what creates reality. His theory of ontology assumes that entities come into being through "unpreparedness for anything ... the gift of powerlessness ...", translating "opaque into transparent" in life, which destroys the well-known reality, giving opportunities for new breakthroughs.

Please note that in this discussion I am not trying to promote what we call "avoidance" strategies. That is, you can orient yourself in life both towards your goals and away from negative consequences in life that you do not want and which you want to exclude from your world. Although it is true that in NLP we try to guide people towards their goals - towards something that exists, not something that does not exist. Fisherman philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote, "You never get enough of what you really don't want." If your goal is “not to be poor,” you may have millions and still not get what you don't want.

I try to maintain empathy and understanding for those people who don't always do what they say they do. Including you. Undoubtedly, including me. It seems that we all judge ourselves too harshly. We can also show a little sympathy for national NLP organizations. The Law of Necessity of Opposites (LNP) states that the most disorganized people end up running organizations.

Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel physicist-laureate, asserts in his "Theory of inexhaustible systems" that all living (non-depleting energy) systems tend to approach the point of chaos, decay, before jumping to a new level of organization.

Complex consequences follow from the Law of the Necessity of Opposites. In spiritualistic traditions, you would be told, "See this and be it." What can give us more joy than finding our weakness in others?

If you see someone misbehaving, be careful. Have you noticed that when you criticize someone, all of a sudden you find yourself doing the same thing 30 minutes later? This is physics: if you don't have the slightest experience of something that disgusts you, you cannot notice it in other people. This is completely inexplicable. I am not trying to moralize but suggest a new way of looking at our personal "defects".

While I am not entirely sure how to apply the Law of Necessity of Opposites to organizations, I have already figured out how it applies to more limited human relationships. For example, how people fall in love. I humbly present for your consideration my reflections on the application of the law of the necessity of opposites in personal relationships.

# 1 The first safety index

How do you understand him in relationships with other people? How do you understand that the person with whom you are communicating perceives you correctly? Do you know that he feels safe when he destroys or belittles the qualities of you that attracted him most to you?

# 2 The Nature of Behavioral Changes

You will get what you want from your lover. He (she) will learn to think, feel and behave differently. Your lover will make exactly those changes in behavior that you have always wanted from him: from the fact that he stops picking his nose and ending with an interest in UFOs, learning in practice the techniques of the Kama Sutra with your next partner.

# 3 Rule of behavioral immunity and corresponding karma

"They'll never do that to me." Undoubtedly they will. Did you pick her up at the party she was looking for someone to meet? I am sure that this is how you will part with her. If someone tells you that he is a very bad person, trust him. It's not that he's really bad, just trust that he has behaviors that will be repeated over and over again. He knows himself much better than you know him.

# 4 The paradox of imprints of attractiveness

You marry or marry someone who reminds you of the mother or father you did not love. Most likely, you will also behave in a similar way and do the opposite with another person who is important to you. My friend Marie asked her friend, "Have you ever had a problem with your mother?" "Yes," he said. "You are just like her!"

# 5 The Law of Maximum Disgust

You manifest in yourself exactly what you would not like to see in others. You don't like it when someone yells at you, "Could you speak a little louder?" Guess what happens next?

# 6 A number of mutual interests

Long time later, after you broke up with someone, you begin to be interested in what bored you in him or her when you were in love. If your partner was fond of astrology, a few years later your interest in astrology or drawing, if he was an artist, or in existential philosophy, if she was fond of it, suddenly wakes up in you.

My false friends kept telling me, "I don't want to have negative thoughts." There are many NLPers out there that I really annoy because they think we should be optimistic about anything. They believe that flaws, mistakes and failures do not exist.

In my opinion, they exist and are very useful. By being unable to think about what does not exist, to think about the situations that we want to avoid, we will never get close to the future. You need a type of thinking with a similar structure in order to be able to transform our past and present experience into a fictional one - into a mission, vision, and so on, that is, into what you want to do next.

Perhaps it's all as simple as Yin and Yang. In order to see the light, you need a shadow. If everything is in the dark, then you will not see anything. If everything is flooded with white light, you will not see anything either. “Every picture has its own shadow, every portrait is a play of light and shadow,” sings Johnny Mitchell.

In conclusion, I will say about such aesthetic qualities that the Japanese call "wabi", which translates as "a flawed detail that creates an elegant whole."

"For many people who perceive the world through modern concepts of emotionality, beauty is perceived as technological gloss, smoothness, symmetry, perfection, replicated on an assembly line, usually associated with a sports car or a skyscraper," Howard Reingold writes in his book there is a world. "

"Prized Japanese teacups, the cost of which the collectors can reach tens of thousands of dollars, can be very simple, make a rough, asymmetrically or primitively painted is not unusual to find them crack crack - .. Beautiful, distinctive, aesthetic a flaw that characterizes the spirit of the moment when this object was created, distinguishing it from all other moments in eternity. Perhaps this is the very distinctive feature that makes the collector exclaim: "This cup has a wabi!"

Cherish your flaws: Each of us, I believe, has our own big wabi.

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1. Freyd created such therapy, in which he did not come to look people in the eye: they were lying on the couch. Karl Rogers launched "Human Centered Therapy", which gives clients a minimum of advice, asking patients to make decisions in terms of their own reality. Virginia Satir is a renowned family therapist. Fritz Perls, founder of gestalt psychotherapy, advocated integrity and consistency. Will Schutz created the California Encounter (Society of Alcoholics Anonymous).

2. The Law of Required Diversity is a rule in electronics and automation that states that the most flexible element of a system controls the entire system. In NLP it is a presupposition that choice is better than no choice.