Sports psychology and martial arts have taught me more about myself than most books I've read. The greatest beauty of the above are how transferable they are across context, the flow of boxing is essentually a form of meditation, or in neuro-semantic terms "Genius State". The single largest component I've noticed has now been brought to light in Peter Senge's "The 5th Discipline"...Personal Mastery.

Although I've subscribed to the term self-efficacy in the past, there is something almost romantic about personal mastery. A discipline of a life focused on learning and growth, with the acceptance that we will never meet our full potential, because as we grow so does our potential. The term mastery itself conjures up images of aged monks practicing the arts of meditation in my mind.

Practitioners, according to Senge display some of the following attribute:

* They have defined and concretised vision
* The see their current reality as an ally to reach that vision
* They are committed to seeing reality accurately and truthfully
* They are extremely curios and inquisitive
* The work with the forces of change, as opposed to resisting them
* They feel the connection with others and life itself

Feedback is an interesting thing, I've only recently become aware of just how useful feedback systems are, not only in business or management, but rather from a personal perspective in creating the appropriate change in any form of behaviour. In fact that is, almost by definition, what feedback does.

A feedback loop is created by taking some proportion of a systems output, and feeding it back into the input. This then appends the input and will change the throughput and as such the outputof the system. This sounds all well and good from a process perspective, but what does it actually mean? To massively simplify it means that if you are aware of your actions, your actions change.

I'm currently reading "Uncommon Widom" by Fritjog Capra, and it really is a remarkable read. Capra's identity is split between a physicist and mystic as he tries to create a user guide for the universe we live in, both from within and without.

In the introductory passages of the book Capra talks, with love and passion, of the 60's hippie movement, and the expanded consciousness of the time, while I was reading this a thought dropped into my head: We are now 30 years on from Woodstock, the late teen hippies with tales of changing the world, views of freedom, peace and political intrigue, are now entering their 50's. Where are they now? What have they done?

As I reflect on this,removing as much as possible the effects of technology, many things become immediately evident:

1) Democratic blue belts on the coasts of the USA now exist in dominance, I suspect through these individuals.
2) Through the 80's a massive "Green" movement was born, as was Feminism. Both of these movements have maintained massive roll-on effect.
3) Mixed spiritual views are now mostly tolerated world-wide, with many Westerners pulling influences from the East. (This point deserves it's own post)
4) Society is far more prepared to question the authority that we have put into power, there has been a massive shift in how democracy works over the last 30 years.

As much as the world isn't perfect, and we're still trying hard to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, there has been massive culture progress to a more enlightened space.

Specification -

Name: Guy Taylor
Birthdate: 24 October, 1979
Geo-Location: Nomadic, generally between Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa
Company Alliances: Cognasium, Telamenta and Cycan
Email: guy at cognasium dot com
Jabber: guy at jabber dot co dot za
Twitter:http://twitter.com/xsyn

Output -

I help find the functional elements in a company by listening to the people who work there. I provide a valuable feedback loop to their issues by understanding them and their complexities

I am a behavioural theorist, analyst and change agent. The crux of it is I'm a people person, I like to understand the patterns around how and why people interact the way they do, and establish how to optimize people for their own lives.

I'm a great believer in human systems as fractal networks, so as we shift our perspectives and frames to view interactions at different levels, we see the same behaviours playing out in culture, and as we shift meta to that sub-cultural behaviour playing out in larger frameworks.

My influences are eclectic, though some of my biggest influences are the following:

* Neuro-Semantics
* Neuro-Linguistic Programming
* Open Source Cultures and Technologies
* Sports Psychology
* Business Management Methodology