GOING DEEPER: Elements of the Experiential Array

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Contributing Factors

Many abilities have prerequisites - or at least reinforcements - in the form of other abilities, skills, information, resources, and so on. These Contributing Factors are aspects of the exemplar's ability that, though not essential to the Array, nevertheless contribute to its effectiveness.

When we specify an ability to model, we establish certain boundaries in the world of the exemplar's experience. This is necessary if we want to avoid getting lost in the layered complexity of human experience. In drawing our boundaries we are endeavoring to fence in those elements of experience that are essential to the exemplar's ability. This does not mean that everything else that gets "fenced out" is irrelevant or not useful. Some of these other abilities, skills, information, tools, or environmental conditions may contribute in significant ways to the ability. We call these "Contributing Factors":

Contributing Factors are other abilities, prerequisites, preparations, conditions or considerations outside of the Array that significantly support the ability.

Contributing Factors make a significant difference in effectively manifesting an ability, and they are "outside" of the ability (that is, its Array). They are not a part of the experiential structure of the ability itself. For instance, we may find that someone who has an excellent Strategy for preparing for exams also reports that getting plenty of rest makes that preparation easier, and even more effective. But getting a lot of rest is not an essential aspect of how he actually studies the material for the exam. He has found that it can contribute to the outcome of being prepared for the test, but it does not determine the outcome. (In this case of this hypothetical exemplar, of course. However, if our exemplar did have "getting plenty of rest" as necessary to how he studies, it would appear in the Array in some form.)

Almost anything can constitute a Contributing Factor:

Information: You can acquire a master craftsman's ability to design furniture, but knowing the strengths and finishing characteristics of various woods would contribute significantly to your design work.

Other abilities: The ability to create interesting fictional characters might be enhanced by paying close attention to what is distinctive about each of the people you meet in your daily life.

Objects and environments: Some negotiators who specialize in resolving acrimonious disputes find it helps to conduct the negotiation in an environment that conveys a sense of their power, and so make sure they have a large desk, Mont Blanc pens, photographs of themselves with prominent people, and so on.

Of course, if a Contributing Factor is itself an ability (for instance, "being able to empathize") then it, too, can be modeled and added to your repertoire (if you need it), making you that much more effective in manifesting the primary ability.

In modeling Lenny, two Contributing Factors emerged as significant in maintaining his diet. The first is that he needs to "understand the mechanics of food and of the body." For Lenny, having this knowledge makes it much easier to understand how what he is doing with his diet relates to what is happening in his body, how it is helping him to control his blood sugar now and, so, is making possible the future he wants (and avoiding the one he does not want). Because of his knowledge of the physiology at work, Lenny is not blindly following the dictates of a diet. Instead, those dictates make sense to him. Rules without reason are easily broken or discarded altogether. Rules that are not understood in terms of their cause-effects are more easily ignored because the consequences are neither obvious nor do they seem inevitable to the person. Because of his knowledge, however, the dietetic rules Lenny must follow have reasons that he understands; to ignore them becomes a matter of choosing to ignore what he knows to be true, and to invite the predictably grave consequences. In addition, says Lenny, "[Understanding the mechanics of food and the body] allows me to be generative about how I pick foods." His knowledge frees him to go to restaurants or to friends' for a meal because he can figure out from what is available how to eat in a way that is consistent with his diet.

A second Contributing Factor for Lenny is that once in awhile, "I celebrate the fact that I'm a Type II diabetic by taking a diet vacation for a day." Although this may at first seem counter intuitive, Lenny's "diet vacation" contributes to his ability to stay on his diet in several ways:

First, it provides a periodic relief from constantly attending to what he eats.

Second, the effects of going off his diet (having his sense of "energy," "consciousness" and "clarity of mind" become impaired) renew for him the reality of the cause-effects between his eating and his health. (If one has been eating properly and, so, feeling fine, the reason why you are bothering to eat properly can fade; after all, you are feeling fine!)

Third, taking a day off from the diet and then resuming it reinforces the essential notion that, "I am one or two meals/steps away from getting back on track." (Undoubtedly, putting himself "back on track" serves to enhance his feelings of being "powerful" and "strong," as well.)

Fourth, it is a "celebration" in that it could have been worse; had he been a Type I diabetic (or perhaps had some other illness), he would not have been able to even contemplate having such choices. As it is, he can slip up, he has room for error and some freedom to choose, and this is cause for celebration. (The very word itself, "celebration," casts a somewhat different - and positive - light upon his diabetes, pushing it away from the "tragedy" end of the subjective spectrum and more toward the "blessed" end.)

Despite these effects, isn't it dangerous to fall off the diet wagon, to invite the very slippage that so many people typically fight or succumb to when following diets? Perhaps, if the person is not operating out of Lenny's structure of experience. It must be remembered that it is not just anyone taking this diet vacation; it is Lenny, with his beliefs, strategies and emotions. For example, even though he is taking the day off from his diet, he still has the cause-effect - it is still real for him - that "My diet needs to work if I am going to have the future I want and avoid the one I don't want." Someone else, who does not have this cause-effect (or for whom it is just words, and not subjectively real), may not have Lenny's experiential resources to resume the diet. For this person, taking the day off becomes something very different, something that is less of a vacation and more of an escape.

* * *

We now have a lot of useful distinctions about the structure of experience. However, knowing what to look for is not the same thing as knowing how to find it. We have already discussed three of the general skills essential to information gathering: the asking of questions, patterning, and stepping in. With those as our foundation for all elicitation, in the next essay we can address more specifically how to elicit each of the Array distinctions we have been exploring in this section on the Elements of the Experiential Array.

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