Have you had the experience of having to open a door while carrying several things?
For example, holding a toddler on your hip, while gripping a paper cup between your teeth, tucking the bag with the toddler's gear between your knees, with a stuffed animal in the pit of the arm that has the hand you're using to grab the door handle?
We often have an identity as being "right handed" or "left handed", but like nearly all identities, these are limiting self-understandings rather than expansive ones. To go through that door with a toddler and a toddler's gear, we need to have an expansive understanding of our strength and coordination, and that, in spite of slight advantage in activation on one side of us or another, we contain multitudes, and we bring numerous forces into integration to do nearly everything we engage.
Not having an identity as right-handed limiting her, allowed Serena Williams to make a game-decisive shot with her left hand.
The Kairos Assessment allows us to identify our cognitive preferences. The assessment reveals the distinctions of our own preferences, and, when we compare with others, our differences from one another. These distinctions and differences aren't either identities or disorders. They're part of the wonder of who we are.
And analogous to Ms. Williams having trained her left side to be more cognitively flexible, we can train our other cognitive processes to be more flexible -- two to three years of correct practice for reliable habit formation; ten years for the kind of mastery Williams exhibited.
We train our information-processing operations by asking and answering questions. Are you daily conscious of your Associative and Sequential processes?
Look ahead at your responsibilities for this week. Some of them will be greeted with pleasure and a raise in energy. Some will bring up a sense of dread. Maybe not serious dread, but likely there are some things that don't excite and, in fact, deplete your energy just thinking about them.
There will be either Associative or Sequential elements to them, but look for Listener, Observer, Mover, Reader, and Talker. All of them interact much like the different sides of your body and different muscle groups necessary to carry the toddler and gear through a door.
Isolate them the way you might focus on particular muscle groups with an exercise or physical therapy program.
Earlier posts have focused on the individual preferences as does the first assessment report. Our larger work at Kairos involves both raising the effectiveness of our off sides, and bringing together our full range of cognitive processes to a specific task.
Life would be easier if we could leave our phone and wallet bag on one side of the door and the toddler on the other. There are lots of places that might not be a good idea.
Similarly, there are times when we wish we might focus on one preference at a time, but sometimes we're driving, talking, listening, dealing with an unexpected problem, and trying to convey step-by-step instructions to someone else about how to handle it on our behalf.
Next post will explore the interactions of the cognitive preferences and how they can both support and distract each other.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
Kairos Assessment: https://www.kairoscognition.com/assessments/da21b793beb5de
Associative: https://www.kairoscognition.com/blog/befa908d824a2539
Sequential: https://www.kairoscognition.com/blog/d070901a37f1ca3a