Here’s a brief timeline below of my CV from my the point at which my interest begain to peak regarding transformational performance and personal development. I took it from an email I wrote to a colleague to update him about where my current focus of attention is today, and how it got here through a lens of where my fascination began, and how it developed, morphed and became refined over time.
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Abbreviated CV Timeline
Late 1980s – Introduction to Transformational Personal Development via Landmark Forum, [NOTE: Pre-NLP]
I attended a Landmark Education “Forum” program in the mid-1980s and was entranced, both with the technology and with the idea. I decided then that I would do “training” as my focus – without even thinking through what that meant, except that the “training” would be something transformational.
1987 – Begin NLP Training, Decide to Get Certified As An NLP Trainer
Then I attended an NLP Practitioner training program with John LaValle and his partner back then, and I was hooked … especially after I saw and met Richard Bandler when he did an evening with the group. I decided that was “IT” … I’d become an NLP Trainer and teach people NLP. So I was off to learn the skillset and get myself certified.
1988 – Meet Roye Fraser, Study Generative Imprint™ Model and Hypnosis/Hypnotic Protocol With Him, Begin Doing Private Work With Clients
Then I began with Roye in the late 1980s and I wanted to learn the NLP & hypnosis material so that I might begin doing training and that led to a though about building a “therapeutic” practice of sorts, i.e.: working with clients around issues … I’m not really sure what I was thinking back then, but I know that I wanted to have some kind of private practice like I imagined and saw Roye doing.
1990 – Begin Running NLP Training Programs, Start Applied Behavioral Technologies, Provide Sales Training to Local Businesses
Very quickly there after I also become clear that there was immediate opportunity in doing what I now call “corporate” training, simply meaning training for businesses and business type. So I began soliciting local businesses, car dealers, realtors … to develop a small scale sales training business. Simultaneously I was running NLP training programs (Practitioner/Master Practitioner) in the early 1990s.
1994 – Develop Reputation As An NLP And Hypnosis Trainer, Design MythoSelf Training, Build International Clientele, Begin Expanding Theoretical Basis of My Work
By the mid-1990s I was becoming well-known, presenting at NLP gatherings and conventions, and got an opportunity to develop some international training clients. I was off and running at full-steam by then … a very solid seven-figure business model. I loved it … then I hated it … then I became settled with what it was … and I began a major re-thinking and shifting to an new consideration.
1997 – Begin Training Others In The MythoSelf Model As Facilitators, Began Shifting Focus From Exclusively Building Corporate Clientele To Working More With Private Individuals
Around 1997 I shifted my focus to developing the MythoSelf material in earnest, not as a platform for transformational learning (it was already that) but in terms of training others to do it. That became my intense focus for the next five years, while I continued to do and develop the corporate work. Things were good for us in those years, but I was shifting about internally.
2001 – Enter Ph.D. Program, Design And Begin Research Project Studying Transpersonal Decision-Making With Senior Leaders And Professionals Operating Within Human Systems Where There Is Limited Data Available
In 2001 I entered a Ph.D. program, originally aiming at a Ph.D. or Ed.D. in adult learning, but the work I was doing forced me to move into a track leading to a Ph.D. in Business Administration, as my research was with leaders, individual and organizational, on what I termed, “transpersonal decision-making” … a euphemism of sorts for decision-making without a rational basis that incorporated information beyond the purely empirical, often including data beyond the scope of the individual making the decision, i.e.: decision-making in complex, chaotic environments where even the outcome is not clear to the decision-maker. NOTE: This was a MAJOR refocusing of my attention at the time.
2001-2005 – Work On Doctoral Studies, Complete Course Requirements, Write Dissertation, Get Awarded The Ph.D. Degree In Business Administration With A Concentration In Strategy and Leadership, Reformulate Fundamental Ideas About Transformation and Elite Performance Re: Personal Mythology/Life Story
Between 2001 and 2005, while I was doing the doctoral studies I engaged in, and the research for my dissertation, I was reformulating my ideas about decision-making in relation to a) transformation and b) performance as well. I had already decided that the major issue in transformation was the world-view that a person held (their personal mythology) upon which they based their perceptions, sense and decision making that led to their actions (or their inability to act) … but now I was reformulating that meant in terms of the application.
2005 – Shift Focus Almost Entirely Away From Corporate Work To Working With Individuals On Transformational Performance, Develop Multiple New Training Models, Explore Alternative Decision-Making Models, Begin Researching Non-Ordinary Cognition And Defining Aesthetic Decision-Making
By 2005 it had become clear to me that the key was going to be identifying how to assist people in becoming able to have a fluid and dynamic decision-making model that will allow them maximum adaptability in real-world environments, which demand constant updating and adjustment to sync up for maximum performance. The answer for me was in defining what I’ve come to think of and call ‘aesthetic decision-making’.
Beyond 2005 – Continue To Refine The Aesthetic Decision-Making Model, Develop Applications For Decision-Making In Crisis, Explore Pattern Recognition And Sense-Making With Elite Performance Clients In Unpredictable, High Stress, Critical Contexts
The deep challenge is that this model is fully dynamic and demands a lack of precedent in the user, but not a lack of awareness of previous learning, in face the deeper the expertise the more potential there is to maximize performance … BUT (and it’s a huge but …) the deeper the expertise the more challenging it is to relax the belief structure that surrounds the expertise to create an open system within which perception and sense-making can begin before decision-making kicks in and takes over. This is just as true for ‘casual expertise’ as well, e.g.: how you function in your most intimate relationships, believing that you know the person you’re interacting with well enough to ignore the obvious issues regarding what’s happening in the moment and relying on past (most often incorrect) data.
Present – Focus On Training Clients To Use An Emergent Decision-Making Model To Access High/Elite Performance States And Responses That Are Both Context And Expertise Independent, Strong Orientation Toward Building Deep Practical Resiliency And Resoucefulness
As you can probably see what I’m building to is a fully emergent model of decision-making where the unprecedented replaces the unpredictable beyond the limits of absolute predictability, i.e.: cause and effect thinking. IMO this is the basis for all elite performance, i.e.: basing all your decision-making in an awareness that the unprecedented may in fact be what you are facing and “THIS” isn’t what you think it is, because by the time you get there it’s already something else.
Addendum – Current Research Orientation: Non-Ordinary Cognition And The Role Of Non-Cortical Processing In Decision-Making And Performance, e.g.: Implicit Learning, Cerebellar Processing and Somatic Performance Interventions
One small additional piece of data. FWIW I think that the basis of this form of decision-making (i.e.: emergent aesthetic decision-making) is updating and retraining the cerebellum to restore the positive open learning conditions that are in place by default for children of a certain age, i.e.: that our ability to notice, use and track our movements as they relate to our cognitive processing is the key, along with the question of the mythology/life story you hold that shapes what you are able to perceive and make sense of beyond the physical limitations of perception itself.