PTSD Professional Perspective: The Butterfly Code, Part 3

Tweet

This series by Mike Blackstone keeps getting more and more interesting. Did you know you have two personalities — and that’s normal? Read on to understand why…

The Butterfly Code

Who you are — the “all” of who you are — is far vaster than only the “you” that is-this moment-reading and understanding these words. For years I suspected the truth of that, but one unforgettable Arizona summer day in 1993, I was stunned when I found the scientific proof of it. I discovered Roger Sperry, a Nobel Prize-winning neuropsychologist, and his work from the 1960s with “split-brain” patients.

Split brain folks have had the information pathways between the right and left hemispheres of their brain (the corpus callosum) surgically severed to cure intractable epilepsy. Sperry discovered each hemisphere is a completely independent, individual personality, capable of independent thought, feelings, and making completely independent decisions apart from the other hemisphere. To learn more, Google Roger Sperry or split-brain. Also watch this amazing YouTube video: Split brain behavioral experiements.

Two Personalities!

You are two personalities! Because we all grow up that way, we’re largely unaware of it, except when we experience internal conflict. When that happens, we chalk it up to our misfortune saying, “Sometimes it seems I’m my own worst enemy.” Sperry’s work — confirmed by many neuroscientists since — demonstrated each of us has two independent consciousnesses. When you experience inner conflict, that’s behind it.

Your left hemisphere is the “you” that is consciously reading these words right now. You can speak, read, reason, analyze and carry on logical, thoughtful consciousness as we generally know it. Your right hemisphere (in most people) cannot speak, but when you and your right hemisphere are working well together, it adds “color” to your speaking — inflection to your voice, emotion, body language, and spontaneity.

You (left hemisphere) listen to the words of others for literal meaning, while your right hemisphere reads the facial expressions, body language, and voice inflection of others to determine intent behind the words they say. This “unified” behavior is made possible through massive amounts of information passing freely between the hemispheres through the corpus callosum — a large bundle of 200-300 million information-carrying fibers.

Your right hemisphere has an independent consciousness of its own and it communicates its thoughts, conclusions, and desires to you through intuition, feelings, and impulses. Some people are capable of carrying on internal dialogue with their right hemisphere. That can be good or bad — bad when the internal dialogue is self-abusive, conflictive, and painful.

Your right hemisphere is subconscious to you, and is your “auto-pilot.” If you are an experienced driver, it drives the car for you, enabling you to carry on other thoughts or conversations with other people in the car. Even with all these differences, your right hemisphere is still just as much “you” as the “you” reading these words. Your right hemisphere is not just an organ in your brain. In a real way, it is the “heart” of who you are, while you are the “intelligence” of who you are.

Self Understanding is Crucial for Overcoming Challenges Faster and More Effectively

If you begin to understand all this about yourself, learning and using the 4^th Key of the Butterfly Code makes perfect sense. If you have not read my two previous articles for February and March, please do — bring yourself up to date. Then this article will make sense to you.

The 4^th Key of the Butterfly Code is designed to inspire your right hemisphere into contributing to the success of your committed decision. The 4^th Key, if you enact it genuinely, inspires your right hemisphere to bring all its considerable skills — intuition, creativity, imagination, superior memory recall, the ability to synthesize large amounts of incoming information, seeing the big picture, reading the context, motivation, inspiration, humor, enthusiasm, spontaneity, and impeccably timed impulses — to accelerate and make your progress easier. At those particular skills, your right hemisphere is the best player on the field. Would you want someone like that on your team?

A Strategic Surrender

However, to successfully inspire and enroll your right hemisphere in the game there is a price. You must surrender something. Your intelligence -- logical thinking, the ability to focus attention, reasoning skills, ability to analyze alternatives and make calculated decisions — is not enough, alone, to make your committed decisions stick, grow, and succeed without the willing contribution — the heart -- of your right hemisphere. Assess the degree of your success, going it alone, up to now. Are you satisfied?

The price you must pay is 1) to surrender some control, and 2) to bestow trust and faith in “all of who you are.” You still get to make the committed decisions and set timeframes for their completion using your best judgment, but then… leave the unfolding of the details of that decision up to all of who you are. If you do, you can expect surprising and successful results.

The first three Keys of the Butterfly Code are found in the March article. Put them together with the following 4^th Key.

Before you go to bed at night, say out loud to yourself the first three Keys along with this promise:

4. I entrust and surrender the unfolding of my committed decision to All That I Am, by “x” time… (put in a reasonable and intuitive timeframe for its completion)

For a fuller explanation of all 6 Keys of the Butterfly Code, go to http://mikeblackstone.com

Next month, the 5^th Key of the Butterfly Code: Opening Up to Many Probable Possibilities.

Copyright © 2010 by Michael Blackstone

Butterfly Code, Part 2

Butterfly Code, Part 1

By his colleagues, he’s been called the “best coach on the planet,” and the “Master coach among the Masters.” Over the 23 years of his professional career, Mike Blackstone has been an executive coach, life coach, therapist, NLP master practitioner and trainer, teambuilding specialist, and seminar leader. He’s successfully worked with nearly 4,000 people, one-on-one, and delivered more than 350 programs in eight countries. But what trademarks his effectiveness, more than anything else, is his dedication, commitment, and compassion for people, and to teaching them the steps anyone can learn to master their own destiny.

The opinions of this post solely belong to the author. To contribute to ‘Professional Perspective’ contact Michele.

Tags: Butterfly Code, Michael Blackstone, ptsd