Q: You came from a
fascinating background. How did you get
inspired to write your books?
ET: As a practicing criminalist, nearly every day I saw
someone, who had a world of potential, blow it over some silly stupid
notion. Perhaps they stole from their
employer and rationalized it away since in their minds the employer was a bum
who treated and paid them unfairly. The
fact is, every perpetrator of a criminal act can tell you why they did it, and
when you stand back, their answers are justifications more than reasons.
It became clear to me that many people were making choices
that were simply self-sabotaging. Not
just those who committed crimes, but the average person on the street. At a certain point in my career, I became
acutely aware of just how persistent this characteristic was with so many folks
and the question became, “Why?”
Answering that question changed my life, as well as my vocation, and led
to the research and books that I publish today.
Q: What are the basic principles in your life and how did
your life lead you to these principles?
ET: I try to live my
life from what I think of as the four-corner philosophy. These corners consist of forgiveness,
self-responsibility, gratitude, and service.
Let me unpack that some.
Back in the early ‘80’s we conducted a double blind study at
the Utah State Prison. The technology
used was a cognitive engineering tool that used a shadowing method to deliver
what most think of as a subliminal message.
The technology is known as InnerTalk today. The goal of the study was
aimed at lowering hostility and aggression, and perhaps interrupting the recidivist
rate. We used some elaborate
psychometrics to determine our intervention affirmations, but in the end, it
was the dialogue with our inmate volunteers that led the way.
The inmates generally displaced responsibility for their
actions via blame. There were all sorts
of people and events to blame, but the bottom line argument came down to
something like, “All but for the grace of God, you’d be here.”
As such, we created a set of affirmations to prime the
inmates self-talk and thereby change the way they talked to themselves,
consequently changing their expectation.
The affirmations included three forgiveness messages, something I have
referred to as the forgiveness set ever since.
Those affirmations are: I forgive myself. I forgive all others. I am forgiven. We also included messages regarding
self-responsibility and general well-being.
The results of the study were very positive and that led to the prison
system installing voluntary libraries throughout, from the Youth Offenders
facility to Maximum Security.
I took a cue from this study, for I saw that I too blamed
many people in my life for many things.
My life changed as a result of practicing what I preached. Indeed, for a few years I lectured about the
power of forgiveness and our InnerTalk Forgiving and Letting Go program was our
best seller. We found as our research
continued that forgiveness was a key for all walks of life. It was just as powerful for the business
executive, the athlete, the truck driver, the live in mom, and so forth.
Then one day it dawned on me, if forgiveness is really the
starting point for self-actualization, then the program should be free. So about twenty years ago we began offering
the program for free and it remains free to this day. Your readers can download it from
InnerTalk.com.
As for service and gratitude, that would take longer than we
have here, if I am to answer your other questions, but this short video on luck
may prime the pump.
Q: In your book, Choices and Illusions, you say that our
choices are not our own. What do you
mean by that?
ET: Research clearly shows that there is activity in the
subconscious before a conscious thought occurs. In other words, our so-called
conscious thoughts are given to us by our subconscious. My work has shown that
it is this subconscious information that dictates the kind of life we will
experience, and understanding that helps us clarify why the prison intervention
I discussed earlier was so powerful.
Change truly must happen from the inside out. We must choose to take control of everything
we put in to our minds.
Q: How does this information get into our
subconscious?
ET: Most of it comes
from our environment – our friends, family, peers etc. Unfortunately negative
information, such as “you won’t amount to anything” has a much greater sticking
power than positive information, and scientists estimate that 90% of the
incoming information is negative. Additionally, we have actually been trained
in many ways not to think. In fact, in a
very real sense, we have all been raised in our own little chicken yards. I think a story is worth much more than data,
so to this end I have posted a YouTube video that is the prefect illustration
of how this entire process works. The
story is called The Chicken and the Eagle and can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHAfVl-t1Hg
Q: What do you mean, “we have been trained not
to think?”
ET: We are taught things in limited ways. Logic
and linguistics make assertions about many things that are simply false to
fact. For example, logic asserts that a gallon is equal to a gallon. This is
simply not true from many perspectives, including the most obvious. A gallon of
water added to a gallon of alcohol does not equal two gallons of combined
fluid. Ergo, 1 + 1 = 2 is not necessarily so in the “real” world, for no two
things are alike in every way.
Q: I know you tell us what we can do about this limited
thinking in your book, Choices and Illusions, but can you give us an example
right now?
ET: We need to
realize that most of our lives we have been choosing as though we were taking a
multiple-choices test, choosing between A, B and C when in fact there exists an
entire alphabet that we could have chosen from.
I love to illustrate this point with one of my favorite stories. The
story is called the Flower Pot story and I’d love for your audience to check it
out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYYtU6RaK-U
It’s a short 3 minute video but well worth the time.
Q: Did you have any heroes or
influences on your work?
ET: In the large
sense, everyone who has contributed to the knowledge that we have today is one
of my heroes. Everyone who has paved the
way for more civility and greater freedom is one of my heroes. Everyone who takes a moment to go to the aid
of another human being is one of my heroes.
I think we improve our world one person at a time and the best way for
each of us to begin is to help one another.
That said, I have the larger than life heroes such as Martin Luther
King, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Abraham
Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Aristotle and so forth. And I have my close heroes, Roy Bey, my
partner in business who believed in what we might be able to do if we made
giving back our primary motive, and my partner in life, my lovely bride
Ravinder, who for over twenty five years has been my constant source of
encouragement and my reservoir of strength.
Q: What exactly is mind programming?
ET: I could be a bit
of a smart aleck and answer by simply saying, “The title to one of my
books.” The truth is, we are all
programmed in some degree. The science
behind our programming is so sophisticated today that it bares the name, Neuromarketing. Literally billions and billions of dollars
have been spent learning how to motivate you to act in a given way, while
making you believe that you made the choice to behave accordingly. This is truly big business today, and whether
it is a product or political platform, it’s all about choosing your choices for
you.
The irony is, the research data reveals clearly that once
you make a decision, you will vigorously defend it even if you must make up
reasons to justify it. That may sound
absurd on the surface, but believe me, it’s quite true! Take for instance this scenario. We know that if we place a bottle of hand
sanitizer on a table with a questionnaire designed to measure your beliefs
according to a scale of conservative verses liberal values, that the bottle of
sanitizer will skew your answers toward the conservative side. Once you provide the more conservative than
usual answer, you will defend it and thus become even more conservative. The fact is, this sort of “prime,” as it is
called in the business, is quite often used to influence your choices in all
areas of life. So we must really begin
to ask ourselves, especially if we’re like most people and believe that these
things can influence others but not ourselves, “What was our last truly
original thought?”
Q: How can we uncover our true potential? Is mastering our mind the key to our
happiness?
ET: The Buddha is
credited with saying, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we
think.” Science supports this assertion
today whole-heartedly. Indeed, not long
ago I attended a CEU for health care professionals dealing with the latest in
neurological research. There were some
powerful concluding remarks, but the bottom line take away is one that is
particularly relevant here. Let me
digress just a bit first. When I
attended University, the prevailing thinking asserted rather axiomatically that
personality became fixed early in life, ages 4 to 6, IQ was fixed, brain cells
begin to die and do not replace themselves somewhere beginning in our thirties,
and so forth. All of this is patently
untrue! Today the research shows us that
among the best things we can do to improve our lives is change our
personalities. We know IQ is not fixed
and indeed, the brain is amazing! Voila,
today we become excited about the possibilities inherent to neuro
plasticity. So now, fast forward to
those concluding remarks and the big take away: YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN CHANGE BUT
YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE WHAT YOU BELIEVE YOU
CAN CHANGE!
Q: How can we find out more about your work?
ET: I am pretty easy
to find. My web site is www.eldontaylor.com. My books are available at all fine bookstores
and on line. My work with InnerTalk can
be found at www.innertalk.com. I host a two hour radio show each week called
Provocative Enlightenment, and you can learn more about it at my web site, www.provocativeenlightenment.com.
Q: Thank you Eldon.
ET: Thank you for the opportunity to share.
Eldon Taylor's New York Times
Best-Seller, Choices and Illusions, is available at all fine online and retail
bookstores. However, to participate in the online event that Eldon has put
together, including a chance to win a customized $500 InnerTalk library, please
visit: http://www.parpromos.com/pp/it/14k/index/R.html
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