Author Archives: Christine Niver

Choose Resilience Over Resentment

Leave a reply

Created February 11, 2022

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey blog.

One reader of last week’s post thanked me and made a special request: write something about resentment and how to deal with it in oneself.

Last week’s post was about the things we do automatically all the time that do us absolutely no good. Things like hating. Resentment is another one of those things that we do that doesn’t help us and in fact hurts us.

The dictionary definition of resentment that I like the most is “Bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly”. Such as having been passed over for promotion, not having been appropriately recognized for one’s accomplishments, standing by red-faced while a sibling receives inordinate parental praise which would have been more applicable to oneself.

Some philosophers of psychology have asserted that resentment is a type. People who fall into this type tend to start early, and become wounded by their perception that they are not getting the love they deserve from one or both parents. Because this came about by a comparison between the ideal conditions and actual ones, the resentful type tends to become idealistic and perfectionistic, as if subconsciously assuming that this will “right the wrong”.

The actual effect of having an invisible script that we carry with us in life, without even realizing that we have such a script, is that it will tend to cause us to experience the negative outcomes which we expect. If we expect to be treated unfairly, we will tend to bring about that undesired outcome. This happens through micro-momentary unconscious signaling.

In other words, by giving in to the automatic ego-emotional reaction of showing resentment, and/or anticipatory resentment, which is automatic, one does not lead to being treated more fairly.

Which is more important – getting treated more fairly more often – or blowing off steam by expressing resentment – or causing oneself psychological harm by repressing resentment so that it operates under the radar. It would seem far better to repair real world situations. This is why we urge people to not operate on autopilot, but to exert conscious observation of what we are doing to ourselves, automatic or otherwise, and take control of our behaviors, moving the matter out of the subconscious and into the conscious. This involves metacognition and self-metaprogramming.

Here are some actions recommended when one senses resentment within oneself.

First, don’t let others see that you feel resentful. Subconsciously we all tend to see resentment as a characteristic of weakness, someone who is “a loser” at least in the situation. Far better to show confidence, awareness of one’s own value, no concern as to what others think of you – whether you are really that strong today or not. By acting like the you that you are aiming at being, you build that muscle until it becomes fully authentic.

Take care to continue to treat kindly the person who marginalized you, even if you have evidence that they are out to get you. That demonstrates your invulnerability, and you actually can cause behavior changes in others by this turning of the other cheek.

Second, take some time to contemplate how you might have set yourself up for being underestimated. Were there any signals you sent, overt or subtle, that could have contributed to becoming under-appreciated?

These strategies are aimed at shifting the basis for your inner life experience away from automatic defensive reactions, to enlightened self-management. This shift is a profound one which very few people ever even attempt. It is a shift very conducive to greater effectiveness and happiness, which is resilient to offending experiences, and leads to creativity and Flow state.

The neurological structures and functions within a human being are pro-survival and are there as default systems when we are not in a state of enlightened self-interest performing rationally and empirically. Unfortunately, during the information acceleration pandemic which has been going on throughout recorded history, we settle into living our entire lives in these robotical fight-flight states. Only a relative handful of us conquer our own autonomic ego reaction instincts. Those that do stand out for their accomplishments and their sagacity.

We can all be that way. There is a simple method to it. It is to stop assuming anything, reset to scratch, and observe carefully everything that goes on in and around you, suspending judgment. Use my book Mind Magic as it makes it even easier. But all you really need is you, observing everything without judging it, and ignoring your own kneejerk reactions. With practice, you will find that you don’t feel the sting as much as you used to when someone intentionally or unintentionally does something that you resent. It becomes irrelevant. So long as you can keep doing your work, achieving your goals, maintaining the desired lifestyle, you can let such events roll off your confident back.

Until you really feel that confidence, by all means project it externally, but most importantly, figure out why you have that lack of confidence in yourself. Have you been Peter-Principled into a job that is not your expertise? Do you want to learn how to do that role with greater confidence? There will be ways you can get the learning you need. Or would you rather be doing some other kind of work?

It’s possible that someone is gunning for you, actively wanting to get you to leave. It comes down to how much you love everything else about the job, and what you really want.

If the moment comes when you are formally invited to leave, focus on what you want to do next, the departure although involuntary might be a really good thing for you in the long run.

Always remember the good things you have done in that job, and keep doing things you’re proud of. Whether or not they are proud of you, you can still be proud of yourself. They are not the measure of you. You yourself are the most qualified to know how good or imperfect you are. Don’t be thrown off by people who are working off of guesswork.

Best to all,

Bill

 

Things We Do Automatically That Do Us No Good

Leave a reply

Created February 4, 2022

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

We take certain things for granted because everyone else does these things, and we find ourselves just “naturally” doing them as well.

One example is hating. It has no beneficial effect on our own lives to “hate” specific things or people. If we don’t want those things or people in our lives, we can simply avoid them, not think about them, fill our lives with what we do want.

Hating doesn’t add any more efficiency or effectiveness to our own life. Like all negative emotions it has deleterious effects on our physical and mental health. It might give us bad dreams. It might be entangled with other thoughts and emotions in ways that are not obvious. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of precious mental emotional resources. It doesn’t add anything positive to our life. And yet we do it.

Habit. Conditioning. Imitative behavior. Fitting in with everyone else by doing what they all do. These are some of the reasons why it never occurs to us to think rationally about hating.

Hate comes from fear. We are afraid that this person or these people are going to do things that will harm the lives of myself and my loved ones, but we feel powerless to stop that from happening, so our robotical mind leaps to the hasty conclusion that our only recourse is to hate them. Hate therefore is an inner subconscious admission of powerlessness. It is better to retain a footing of having some actionable power that merely needs to be figured out and then carried out. Hate excuses us from thinking creatively about actions that might be taken. Even if such actions seem unlikely to make a difference, there is honor in focusing on action, there is dishonor in giving up and simply hating.

The other thing that stops us from thinking about stopping something like hating, is that we may assume that it’s impossible to stop an emotion, it just arises by itself, that we have no control over it.

That’s untrue. In the Observer state and in the Flow state, we can make decisions and keep to them. We are in a higher state of functioning when we are in in those states. They are apparently our natural states, and our crippled state in which we have no control over ourselves is not our natural state. We have wound up in this dwarfed version of ourselves by collectively drifting into a society that does not support our self-expression in our passion work, nor even enable us to discover what our passion work is. An accelerating society that cannot keep up with its own inventiveness.

It is never too late. We are in a position to lift ourselves out of substandard conditions. First of all, we all want it, that will help. However, we’re not in a state of unity, the kind of unity felt by billions of freedom-loving people during World War II. In that state of unity, and coming from the right place and from the good, we prevailed. We need that same unity today in order to set things right, to wind up even better than we ever were before, doing our favorite “work” which to us is “play”, not having strife with others, not having fear nor hate nor all of the other negative emotions which are so rampant today.

You are the only one who can find the hidden switch in yourself to decide to give up over reacting to everything and everyone, to forgive yourself and everyone and start fresh with everyone.

All the world needs now is forgiveness. We have drifted into hate by our loyalty to one group or another. Loyalty is a good thing. Too much of a good thing is where bad things come from. If we wish to express ourself by the groups we belong to, that’s good, but we should think big. Like loyalty to God. Like loyalty to the human race. Like loyalty to the United States of America.

Once we get stuck on loyalties of a more fragmented nature, the likelihood that it can cause harm to our lives begins to increase. The things that made us join one political party may have been right at the time, but things change, the people involved change, the agendas change, and inflexible loyalty under those conditions isn’t fair to ourselves, it’s not thinking rationally about what really moves us forward as an individual.

Judgment of others is not necessary. One can leave them to what they want to be. Hate is preceded by judgment. Neither one is necessary to our own evolution. They are both a waste of time.

Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

Your mind can be cleansed by you yourself and it will perform better when released from irrelevancies and poisons.

If you find yourself unable to forgive yourself, ask yourself, have you learned the lesson from the situation about which you can’t forgive yourself? If the answer is no, you must figure out the lesson, and then forgive yourself, knowing that you can react the right way the next time such a situation arises. (Not forgiving yourself after learning what to do next time is a waste of time and evidence of neurosis.) This is rational self-management, like you would expect a manager to exercise over a business. This is where the higher states of consciousness operate.

If you can’t find it in your heart to forgive Republicans, or Democrats, you can’t apply the same procedure. You can’t guarantee that all Democrats or all Republicans have learned their lessons from whatever it is you hold against them. You need to forgive them in advance of such reformation. This is simply because you can only take responsibility for yourself, you can’t control others. Then what is the justification for forgiving them? Because judgment is not yours to pass. “Judgment is mine,” saith the Lord. Live and let live. You know how hard it is to be a human being in this world as it is now. You can help others by forgiving them. If you run up against someone who is unquestionably doing terrible things, and you feel it’s up to you to stop them, then do that, while still forgiving them and stopping hating them because those things don’t help.

“Even forgive a murderer? Even forgive a mass murderer?” Yes, why not, all you are doing is cleansing your own heart, mind, body, and soul, it will make you more effective, and forgiving does not require condoning.

Why make such a profound change in your behavior now, after all these years of life? Because the world is in terrible danger. Civilization is fraying. Species becoming extinct one after another. We need two things to change fast: Unity to work cooperatively and respectfully with one another, not wasting time with insults. Unity within our self, finding our ideal self and sticking to it to the exclusion of old habits. It’s the Supreme Test.

Who could be placing us into the situation of a Supreme Test? It could only be a Supreme Being.

Let’s rise to the occasion and take action toward unity instead of making little excuses, blaming and hating others, and dodging the work we have to do on ourselves to become the Supreme Self within us.

If We Spoke Compassionately

Leave a reply

Created January 27, 2022

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

If We Spoke Compassionately to Everyone, It Would Make a Big Difference

Let me start with a very extreme case to prove my point.

If we spoke to Putin compassionately it might make a difference.

Soon after the Inauguration I wrote a series of three posts sort of like science fiction depictions of what the new President Joe Biden could do to make a clear break with the past and talk with the Russian and Chinese leaders as if there were no history of bad blood.

President Biden I guess did not read my posts or didn’t consider them as serious options.

It’s too bad because we all put our pants on the same way, we’re all human beings, a band of brothers and sisters whether we recognize it or not.

It would have had the advantage of surprise.

And not like Pearl Harbor.

More of a positive surprise, after all the hatred and suspicion.

Why continue to choose to fight when there’s a minute in which you can choose to proffer peace?

Right after being elected is just such a minute.

A window passed.

How long will we wait for another such opportunity?

We can do it right now!

We can really choose peace at any time. It just takes an authentic compassionate statement or two to stop the world. Stop the momentum of decades since we were allies. We were the best allies Russia and China ever had when we were fighting the Axis together.

Let’s remember those days when we were all larger than life heroes and not the blithering idiots we appear to have become. But that idiocy is just illusion being allowed to take over our minds.

All it really takes is getting in touch with our own humanity and putting our self in the other guy’s shoes for just a moment.

“Vlad, I know you’re pissed off because after all your hard work, the Soviet Union collapsed. I know you’d like to continue to play your cards to restore Rus to the greatness it deserves. I want you to succeed,” the US leader could say.

One country winning does not have to mean other countries losing.

“Vlad you say you and the Ukraine are one people, and I agree that you have been since the ninth century, but how can you welcome them back while threatening them with force? Isn’t there a cleverer way to win them back? I’m willing to help. I’d rather that brothers and sisters stayed unified. We’re all brothers and sisters, and one day we will all be unified. Then we will wonder how could it have taken this long to stop the bloody fighting among the human family?”

It cannot stop there with a nice moment and then back to business as usual. It has to be a permanent change, each of us is the only one who can do it.

If we all start doing it, it will spread like wildfire. Everyone wants it.

Stick to your principles, but offer them in a respectful and empathetic way, not with insults and threats. Show that you understand the opposition’s perspective, and where you agree with it. Show how those agreed principles led you to different conclusions; step by step, as if speaking to a beloved.

The tone of your voice has more of an effect than the words you use.

We Just Won an Emmy

Wednesday night January 26, 2022 I got a call and a link telling me that Next Century Media, my 1990s company, has won an Emmy for “Pioneering Development of Technologies to Collect granular linear TV Viewership Data including STB’s, ACR, Connected TV’s for Measurement, Marketing & Advertising”.

Three other companies each won the same award, and they had all built upon NCM’s technology to different degrees: Bell South, Cablevision, and DIRECTV. Bell South had integrated directly with NCM, and Cablevision and DIRECTV had adopted NCM algorithms that had been given pro bono to the industry as a standard, based on the request from then Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) CEO Jim Spaeth.

Many more people and companies deserve recognition for the invention of Set Top Box Data (STB). It’s always that way. It takes a community to accomplish anything of significance. Being able to work together and make it enjoyable is a master key to life. It seems like it’s going to make you go slower but it actually speeds up the upside outcome.

Bob Block built logging channel changes into his Telease set top box in 1972, although it didn’t have the algorithms yet to make it research currency grade data. John Malone and John Hendricks gave NCM the chance to deploy in what was then the world’s largest MVPD, TCI, later acquired by AT&T and today the largest part of Comcast’s footprint. John Malone’s Liberty Media owned TCI, and the NCM deployment of STB and addressable commercials (and personalized program recommendation and programmatic buying) was triggered by Discovery founder John Hendricks’ Your Choice TV (the conceptual grandfather of Hulu).

The NCM team was world class. My partner the late Len Matthews had been CEO of Leo Burnett then Y&R, President of the 4As and Undersecretary of Commerce. Deep thinker and award-winning copywriter Burt Manning had been Chairman of J. Walter Thompson. Lester Wunderman needs no introduction. Omnicom Chairman John Wren and global media head Arnie Semsky made the greatest use of our technology, and 20 other agencies and innumerable advertisers and media used it too. IBM, EDS, Groupe Bull all helped us get off the ground. Gian Fulgoni and Ed Dittus joined the Board.

NCM’s dedicated multinational multicultural full time team of 34 people in North America and Europe included the former CTO of the French NASA. The late Gerry Despain was a soft spoken genius who had led business optimization teams at GE and at Honeywell, and at NCM led the software development team of French and Belgian developers based in Versailles. Talk about agile rapid prototyping! I’ve never seen people turn my visions into working code so quickly.

NCM days were some of the best times of my life. The TRA technology and the RMT technology came out of NCM. Visible World and Invidi carried on NCM’s work brilliantly and now TV is rapidly becoming addressable everywhere, and granular clickstream (a term we coined meaning naturally-occurring audience data) is available universally in digital (who learned a lot from NCM, especially Dave Morgan) and fast becoming universal in TV.

I’m thrilled that we were recognized by the Television Academies. My humble gratitude will be expressed at the ceremonies in Las Vegas on April 25.

I must say, with the rewarding work I’ve been given through RMT and Bill Harvey Consulting, it feels to me like the 90s right now, all over again.

The best is yet to come for all of us.

Best to all,

Bill

We Are Not as Polarized as It Seems

Leave a reply

Created January 21, 2022

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog post.

Although we in the USA are unquestionably more polarized than we have been since the Civil War.

Yet the phenomenon is at a very superficial surface level. Arguments begin to flare up as soon as tripwire words are used and then people change the subject or get into fights.

It’s that surface tension which prevents us from going deeper where we would find more common ground than we would expect.

The singularity of present times were concocted by a devil’s brew of causes coming together all at once: two political parties drifting farther apart toward extremism, some social media engines fueling whatever gets virality, Acceleritis (information overload increasing daily), the pandemic, fear of the future replacing our signature hope and faith that the future is in our hands and we will lead the world into a form of practical utopia.

This last item is especially concerning because the very spirit of America is now doubting its own core essence. We can’t let that happen, we must turn back the clock on that one.

The mind is a very complex thing. If we let ourselves cave to lack of confidence in ourselves, it will become much harder to fix things, and the effects are cumulative. We’ve already let it go too far. Let’s stop it here and start to walk it back.

First of all, let’s consider my assertion that there are more good people than bad people in the world.

What is a good person? What is a bad person?

These are both temporary conditions not permanent ones, except in the most extreme cases. We know that Hitlers and serial killers have specific causes for their behavior that are probably not totally under their own control, yet it makes sense to hold them responsible anyway, and even if they are insane we need to put them someplace they can’t hurt others. The same applies to all of us.

A good person is someone whose actions consider other people. That is most of us. It includes the times we really don’t care that much about the specific other person involved but we realize that things will be better for us if we treat them as if we care. Under this definition I think most of us would agree that most people fit into that “good” category.

Good and bad are in the mind reductionist abstractions of a far more nuanced and complex distribution of characteristics in the population. Each of us is a complex and ever-evolving skein of at least 265 personal characteristics relevant to this discussion. Each Democrat and each Republican is totally unique in terms of this mix of elements of which Left-Right is only one. The two buckets are nearly meaningless when all of these characteristics are considered. Categorizing ourselves as Left or Right is an immense oversimplification and trivialization of our personal individuality.

Left and Right in themselves certainly are a reality, one of the dimensions of bias we have been conditioned to have. Any form of mental/emotional bias is inherently a very bad idea. We ought as individuals to approach life scientifically therefore without bias, studying the facts and making the best decisions based on the evidence, and always, thinking creatively.

Even before present times it was concerning that our political leaders do not appear to have a great deal of creativity, offering us the same solutions and the same candidates over and over, when they ought to have learned by now from the evidence of their own senses how senseless this is. In every other walk of life our species demonstrates amazingly vast amounts of creativity, why is it so absent from the political realm where it is arguably the most needed?

It does come back to Acceleritis. In accelerating overload stress conditions, the mind seeks closure hastily embracing binary bias as an unconscious tactic which fails miserably yet is tolerated. Black and white no in-between. The world thus distorted can thus never be seen with clarity.

With distorted judgment (bias) being institutionalized in our egos and in our political parties, is it any wonder that one day we would arrive in this state?

Deeper inside than our egos we are in our Deep Selves unbiased observers and experiencers. You have had moments of supreme clarity when you have seen all that I say here for yourselves. You can train yourself to get back into that headspace at will. In that place in yourself you realize you are detached from all this hullaballoo, it doesn’t really touch you, who cares, let me just get on with what I want to do with my life, to express my own creativity and individuality.

Biases rule the world. We don’t have a scientific party. We don’t have a spiritual party. We have a progressive party that wants change and a conservative party that likes things as they are. Both are biases. The mind should be left open to consider each proposed change without having to stop all change.

When on the other hand we sense we are tense and attached to something it is a sign that we are not in our Deep Self at that moment. Attachment is distorted judgment. It is therefore a sign of being in the Ego state.

You can experience these different states of consciousness for yourself. Get away from reading and other people for a little while and practice and you will get the skill of moving yourself back into your own Deep Self.

We can repair our country by conversations that go beneath kneejerks down to find where we do agree, and work out the details of the future from there.

Although the power fight is going on for control of the country, we cannot press a button to make that stop. We have to let it go its way for now while we by means of conversations interpersonally and in the media have people who are in different parties demonstrate how working things out can occur. Survey companies can go deeper and referendums can be mounted.

We will find that the will of the people is to stop the bickering and fix things, and that the parties are writing their own death certificates by the way they are acting. More and more people are becoming independents. Fewer and fewer people are saying to themselves “My Party Right Or Wrong”. They are freeing themselves from biases and acting more maturely. Some are moving into their passion work, regardless of their age. As Stan Satlin writes, “Ageing is God’s way of saying stop wasting time”.

All the best,

Bill