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Ken Ward's Mind Mastery Course

Your owner's manual for your brain - that you never received or never read.

Criteria or values

Take a neutral things, something you could do, but you aren't going to do. Say you could go to the bookshop and have a look around, but you aren't going to do so.

Ask, what does this do for you? Say it saves you the bother of driving to town. It saves time and trouble.

Now ask, even though it causes you time and trouble, what would get you to go to the bookshop? For example, If there was a book I wanted.

Now what would this do for you? Satisfy a desire.

Now, suppose that even though it didn't satisfy a desire, you didn't go to the bookshop. What would have to happen. If I had an important meeting.

Now what would that do for you? Duty.

Now suppose that it made you disobedient, what would have to happen for you not to go to the bookshop? If I couldn't go later.

What would that do for you? Uniqueness ... Life Changing Event..

Now, even though it violated you criterion for uniqueness, what would stop you going to the bookshop? Nothing else.

We have this hierarchy:

1. Uniqueness
2. Duty
3. Satisfy a desire
4. Save time and trouble

The key principle here is that we start on something relatively trivial, that you could do, but you don't do. If something really dramatic were chosen, such as parahute jumping then we might jump straight away to a high order criterion such as personal safety. So we try to choose something rather neutral so we can elicit criteria.

Having got our starting situation or context, we try to find a context when we would do what we aren't doing. In the example, if there were a book that I particularly wanted.

Now we try to find a situation where even though they bookshop had a book I wanted, and I could satisfy my desire for it, what would have to happen for me not to go to the bookshop? What would stop me going? The situation was an important meeting and the criteria was duty.

In eliciting criteria or values, you alternate between what would lead you to do something and what would stop you. In this way you work up the ladder of values until you get to a major value - for which no other value is more important. Such values may be life preservation, enlightenment, supreme happiness, etc. These exist at the top of the ladder.

In summary, we try to elicit a low-level vslue and find the values that would override it. We therefore form a ladder of values. All the values are important, but some are more important and override the others.