THE PATTERNS OF APG

When you use or “run” the patterns of APG, you are engaged in a very special psychology. Because of that, we now train Trainers and Meta-Coaches in “The Psychology of APG” at Trainers’ Training (NSTT). If you ask, “Where did these distinctions come from?” The answer is from a combination of Developmental Psychology and Self-Actualization Psychology.

Developmental Psychology informs us about how we grow and develop over the lifespan. It is the psychology of our psycho-sexual development, our psycho-social development, our cognitive development, our faith development, our moral development, and so on. It is the psychology developed by Piaget, Eric Erickson, Fowler, Keagan, and many others.

Why is this important and how does it relate to APG? It’s important because one of the key interferences that prevent people from unleashing their highest potentials involves how a person can get stuck at various stages of development. For example, people can so easily get stuck when they don’t recognize or claim their innate powers for responding. Or they can get stuck when they don’t value, accept, and appreciate themselves. Or they can get stuck when they don’t know how to enjoy and endow things with joy and pleasure.

Stuck experiences such as these usually arise from parenting errors. That’s the reason for the quip, “If your parents didn’t go to ‘Parent 101' or didn’t pass Parenting 101” —then maybe you mis-learned somethings about this stage or learned something that’s just not so. Maybe you learned that “power” is a bad thing. Or that saying “Mine” means that you are selfish. Or perhaps you were not allowed to say “no.” It was tabooed. Or you learned that saying “yes” leads inevitably to disappointment.

Given this, the APG patterns facilitate completing these developmental stages. For example, on Day 1 you will meta-state your innate powers so that you own them, feel empowered, and construct a robust sense of responsibility. This cures helplessness. Or if “no” was forbidden, you reclaim that power and use it to develop beliefs at will. In other words, the APG patterns can be used to facilitate completing the development stages. And that’s because the patterns of APG recapitulates human development.

Meta-Stating yourself or your client with awareness and ownership of your response powers establishes the foundation for taking charge of your life, running your own brain, and becoming a fully response- able person. Out of that you can build states of proactivity, take the initiative, and engage in smart risk taking—foundational states for being an entrepreneur and taking on the challenges of unleashing your highest and best.

These patterns inevitably activate your power to dream about your best life. To achieve that you meta-

state your innate powers to set frames for your personal empowerment. Then by meta-stating meta- stating self, you develop a strong sense of self—one of self-acceptance and self-appreciation. This facilitates the development of the kind and quality of ego-strength so you can face and take on the challenges of life.

For most people, doing this is just a matter of facilitating the meta-stating that sets the frames. It may be a matter of completing a developmental stage. Others may have to find a good therapist and work through the traumas, or whatever interferes with their full and vibrant development. For some who have spent a life-time trying to be “a somebody,” the meta-stating acceptance, appreciation, and awe (esteem) absolutely transforms everything about oneself. The problem was just that no one had ever facilitated this set of liberating meta-states. How much is that worth? Then you suddenly realize that you don’t need to prove anything, rather you are free to express yourself fully.

The psychology driving the APG patterns creates a foundation for you to be unleashed to being your unique and wonderful self. Identifying the prerequisites of “genius” —the APG patterns enable you to build that foundation. In fact, the Day 1 patterns are the most essential states for actualizing your best self. From there all of the more complex states arise. That’s why we emphasize on Day 1 the child-like development pieces as captured in the words: “Mine!” “Yes!” “No!” and “Ahhhh!” (for pleasure). Day 1 patterns are designed to awaken and challenge you to be all you can be.

Day 2 meta-stating patterns focus on clearing the path around three big human problems: emotions, concepts, and mis-applied reflexivity. In APG we use the morning and early afternoon for de-loading the semantic load on these dimensions of human experience.

Emotions. They are not commands from heaven, nor are they an accurate source of information. They are just emotions. Concepts. Your concepts are just ideas, thoughts, or understandings that operate as a map about things out in the world. So, they are not externally real, and should not be so treated. Mis-applied Reflexivity. If you take a negative thought or emotion and turn it against yourself— you create, metaphorically, a demon or dragon. Yet these thoughts-and-feelings (states), when you turn these against yourself, you put yourself at odds with you!

In APG we use these patterns for getting unstuck from strong emotional states, from having our “buttons” pushed, feeling controlled, dis-empowered, and helpless, or being our own worst enemy. The patterns enable you to unleash yourself from these things.

The rest of Day 2 uses patterns for unleashing yourself toward your visions and goals. The Mind-to- Muscle pattern takes great ideas that you already know, but do not live, and translate what you know into your muscle-memory. This meta-stating feeds forward your best understandings. Now you can take a great idea and feed that information forward into your body by mobilizing your powers of speech and behavior in taking effective action. This enables you to “coach your body to feel a great idea.” Doing this makes you an implementor—you execute what you know. You close the knowing-doing gap.

Then with the Miracle Pattern, you meta-state possibility thinking so that if “the kind of thinking” that creates a problem can’t solve it, you access a different kind of thinking. This is good for various stuck

states. It give you a chance to try on an entirely different kind of thinking-feeling to open up new vistas of possibilities.

On APG Day 3 you meta-state focus and then build a “genius” state of engagement so you can step into the flow state at will. By meta-stating intentionality, you energize what you know is important, but does not feel important. By this pattern you link intention and attention. This oftentimes cures what has been mis-diagnosed as ADD or AHAD and enables you to stay focused and engaged.

In the Genius State pattern, you set the frames and then practice stepping in and out of “the flow zone”—your optimal state for a particular engagement. This is the ultimate state for self-actualizing. The rest of Day 3 focuses on aligning things for congruence. We use three patterns: Excuse Blow-Out, Spinning Icons, and Meta-Alignment. The first helps you to stop letting yourself off the hook by making excuses from going for excellence. To prevent that, you learn how to blow-out any and every excuse.

Then for all of your “parts” that may pull you into different directions, you can use your vestibular sensory system to create a dis-equilibrium that will shake up the old system. Spinning Icons is a pattern that works with the larger part of your mind that’s outside of conscious awareness. The Meta- Alignment pattern pulls all of your higher levels of mind to create a laser-beam of focus on an important behavior that you want to do with more elegance, focus, and power.

Taken together these 14 APG patterns from Self-Actualization and Developmental Psychology enables you to create the foundation for your “genius” or “flow” state. If you’re ready for APG— see the following list of trainings to find one near you.