Kaj Voetmann in English

When you are dealing with development of behaviour, either your own or helping other people, one of the things you need to decide is how big a difference you need to introduce in the situation.

One of the most used models is the zone of Proximal Development made by Lev Vygotsky. It is usually named and presented like this

This model suggest that in all learning situations you should get out of your comfort zone and into the learning zone, as long as you do not enter the anxiety zone. What is invisible in this model is how far you can and want to go in your learning process. Because the zone of comfort grow as you learn. So you need to see your own development as a ladder filled with steps where you learn how to cope with the new environment.

Does it matter how the learner imagine the ladder to look like? Is it very short or neverending? Are the steps small or huge? Is the image clear or is it really blurry? Does it matter what is waiting you at the next step of the ladder or is it the joy of the journey that is important? Does it matter which skills and tools you are bringing on the journey? Does it matter who you are climbing the ladder with or who is waiting at the next steps? Does it matter if the next step is attractive or unattractive? Does it matter if the last step you can see on the ladder is attractive or not? Does it matter if you discover another ladder on the way or the ground under the ladder disappears?

If the answer to any of these questions are yes then you need to expand the model and include a ladder, which the learner often have to build herself and she has to direct her own learning process on the climb. It all involves a task based and experience based learning process, where you normally can benefit from help and support on the way.

The learning zone can stretch or shrink depending on the situation and how you handle it. It is not fixed in any way. Especially if you know your present answers to these questions:

• What is my inner passions?
• What do I want to become the best at in the whole world?
• How do I provide the necessary resources to live out my inner passions and my ambitions?
• How can I go on right now and tomorrow?

Robert Fritz introduces the idea of The Path of Least Resistance in how most people find a way to go on. We are looking for an easy way to go on Robert Fritz uses this model.

He says that people who know the purpose of what they are doing and the challenges involved in getting to their preferred future will follow the path of least resistance to the preferred future. To identify their challenges they need a clear image of where they want to go and where they are right now in relation to the preferred future. Robert Fritz calls the difference between the preferred future and the present state Creative Tension. It works like an rubber band. You pull the ends of the rubber band and the energy in the rubber band grows, you can feel the tension grow. By replacing the preferred future with a more ambitious preferred future you creative tension grows and can give you energy to move faster and further than you imagined. If you ask people about when they really learned something the answers are similar to this one: I really learned something when I found a child lying lifeless at the bottom of a swimming pool. The creative tension is immense and the desire to act is so strong that most of us will learn extremely fast. This is the Path of Least Resistance. A clear sense of purpose an strong creative tension will make it possible for you “to go where no man has gone before” also in your own learning process.

This model works well if you have one purpose in life and one single preferred future PLUS a clear idea of the correct order of the challenges and know how to create the task based and experience based learning possibilities. It is relatively easy to get confused in the present until you have anew clear idea on how to go on. Once in a while the confusion become impossible to handle.

Spencer Johnson present this confusion in his book “Who moved my cheese?” and different ways of coping with the confusion.

When life becomes unbearable you need stronger ways of coping. See the Post: When Life Becomes Unbearable.

Quote from Wikipedia:

[Zone of Proximal Development

ZPD is Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but that can be learned with guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children. The lower limit of ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently. The upper limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor. The ZPD captures the child’s cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing and can be accomplished only with the assistance of a more-skilled person. Scaffolding is a concept closely related to the idea of ZPD. Scaffolding is changing the level of support. Over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance. Dialogue is an important tool of this process in the zone of proximal development. In a dialogue unsystematic, disorganized, and spontaneous concepts of a child are met with the more systematic, logical and rational concepts of the skilled helper.]

John Lennon once sang: “How can I go forward if I don’t know which way I am facing?” It could be worse if he had added: “And if I don’t even know where I am standing?” If you end up in a situation like that – and most of us do several times in our lives – you need a way out.

Some studies show that the most stressful events in our lives is when we loose a close relative like a spouse or a child or when our own death shows up at our door step. But marrying a person is half as stressful as loosing him.

Viktor Frankl ended up in Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Second World War. He tells that he was unable to do much about his situation before he accepted that he was there. Then he decided that he wanted to survive, that he wanted to help other people to survive and that he wanted to learn from his experience. When he was in his darkest moments he started to imagine himself standing in a Hall in the United States presenting the new psychology he created from his experience in Auschwitz.

Many people I have met tell’s that the worst part of loose a child is that you are not allowed to grieve your loss. You are so busy taking care of people around you, who do not know how to handle their own emotions and their relationship to you. So in the middle of the grief they have to take care of many people around them.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described how people tend to react in these situations in On Death and Dying. It describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss. The five stages are [Wikipedia]:

1. Denial — “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me.” Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.
2. Anger — “Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; “Who is to blame?” Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.
3. Bargaining — “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”; “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”; “I will give my life savings if…” The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the person is saying, “I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time…”
4. Depression — “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”; “I’m going to die . . . What’s the point?”; “I miss my loved one, why go on?” During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.
5. Acceptance — “It’s going to be okay.”; “I can’t fight it, I may as well prepare for it.” This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.

She stresses that it is a very personal journey through the stages. There is no fixed sequence and each of the stages can be very different for different people. Unfortunately her experiences are related in the Kübler-Ross model, which has a specific sequence. People who apply the model like that night harm the people they try to help. And much evidence suggest that men and women handle the process very differently.

Lot’s of people write biographies where these kinds of episodes tend to change their lives and get them to reflect hard on the purpose of their own lives and revise their preferred futures. The have to reestablish the core beliefs in their worldview if the want to find a meaningful way to go on.

When you work with systemic and social constructionist ideas, you need to be able to spot patterns and try to improve them.

A pattern of interaction is a series of interactions that produce some kind of outcome. A well known pattern is to say good morning. You can spot patterns like shaking hands, giving a hug, bowing, ignoring each other, rubbing noses and so on every day. They leave very different results.

So the first things you need to do in order to spot a pattern is to wonder about something you experience and becoming curious. A very normal pattern is to ignore our sense of wonder. Many people combine this pattern with not taking responsibility for improving the pattern. Here I will present some ideas on how to spot and improve patterns of interactions.

If you wonder about something, you are reminded of what you really want. Either because you want more or because you want less of something. When you were a child you probably said: More! or Stop! If you are loyal to your inner child you can say: Look, how did you do that? And investigate what it takes to do more or less depending on what you prefer.

But first you need to look for different patterns. Usually the patterns are based on different ways of perceiving the world. I will use a simple example. You can have two intentions in a situation: Either you want stability or you want change. On the other hand you can look at one individuals behaviour or you can look at the whole. Then you end up with four patterns.

Usualnoone in a conversation will tell which of these four different ways they talk from, many might not even  be conscious of which of the different quadrant they speak from and when they change. But if you listen to their conversation you can listen for the implicit pattern of their conversation. Here is a normal conversation:

Jeff: “We need to change!”

Ann: “I like the way things are right now.”

Jeff: “Peter will probably also resist the change.”

Ann: “Everyone hates it when you want to change everything for them!”

If you sort these statements into the four quadrants, you will see a pattern of interaction based on not talking in the same quadrant and disagreeing on the need for change. If you find this pattern of interaction destructive, you can change your own part of the interaction.

Jeff could have noticed he was talking from the whole and choose to continue like this: “Sorry, I was thinking that we get many requests from our customers. They want better instructions on how to use our products.” and Ann may answer: “Yes I heard the same requests and Peter and I was talking about how to find a solution. We will present a solution next monday. We need a few bits of information.”

If you find a pattern of interaction you would like to change you can use a method called Force Field Analysis. The idea can be described like this.

The present situation, NOW, is created by a set of Promoting patterns of interaction that has helped us come all this way and another set of Opposing patterns of interaction that has made it impossible for us to get any further. Each of the patterns are created by a set of ideas, rules and stories. If you want to change a pattern of interaction you simply change these ideas, rules and stories.

The very best in this approach is that we have created the patterns together, so we can change them together and we can talk about these patterns without blaming each other for bad behaviour and demand the other ones to change!

According to an old article “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” by Chris Argyris most of us are really good at this blame game. He says that in case something goes wrong, we will say: “It is the customer’s fault! It is also my manager and the IT-systems that make it happen!” Most of us could change many things if we looked at our own contribution to the pattern and change it.

Just remember that there are three fingers pointing at yourself!