Gandhi’s words are wise words for reflection….
Ambition level
“The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim is too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark”
– Michelangelo Buonarroti
House of Change – Living the Logical levels
House of Change
House of Change
Here is my house. My wife and I designed the house. The house was build “bottom-up”, in several stages and had no formulated blueprint from the beginning, but driven by emerging needs and an unpleasant surprise along the way, the house was extended over 4 iterations. The original 50 square meter holiday home in has transformed into a 186 square meter family residence. It is true that agile iterative development has certain implications and calls for re-factoring now and then. However this works well with software development, where change is a matter of changing lines of program code, but hardware development – especially cost full building construction – does not easily offer re-factoring. Anyway the iterative process has contributed to an amazing place to live. The 1200 square meter lot raises 4 meter from end to end and challenge your creativity as an architect.
Building both up hill and down hill from the center of the house we ended up with 6 different levels – equal to the number of levels in the NLP Logical Levels of Change Model, inspired by Gregory Bateson. As noted there were no blueprint outlining this similarity and my idea of drawing the connection is likely related to the personal development process, which both my wife and I underwent while building our new house and at the same time completing the NLP practitioner, Master Practitioner and Coach training.
The NLP Logical Levels of Change Model, inspired by Gregory Bateson and developed by the pioneers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is very helpful in designing an action plan for change. The Stages of Change give us a general road map of the process of change — a process that has a beginning, a middle, and an outcome. If the Action Plan for change is inadequate a recycling, or relapse, will occur sending the person “back to square one” or “back to the drawing board” of Contemplation again where they must start over… or give up and decide change is not possible.
Living the Logical Levels.
Comparing the final blueprint of the house and the pyramid representation of the NLP Logical Level model clarifies the idea of relating the two. It becomes even more clear after having tried the exercise of the NLP model, e.g. walking the steps of the model rehearsing a new habit or empowering a goal or a vision by training each of the 6 logical levels.
The journey through the house, starting at the low level (The Environment) towards the highest level (the Vision or Spirituality) becomes a very similar experience – if you chose to. This way it becomes a daily practice to exercise change. The second level – Behavior – includes most of the daily activity facilities, entree’s, bathrooms, kitchen and laundry, which makes it easy to review many of your own habits and your attempts to make a change to them. In case you realize no change, it is easy to step up a level (the capabilities/competences) and take a second position to your self and your own behavior, to learn or review what competences your are not using or need to learn in order to make the changed behavior come alive. In case this does not have the needed effect, you can easily step up to higher levels to review your motivation (Values & Beliefs), your Identity and your Vision. Coming back down the levels rehearse your new personal insights, and a successful change is right at hand.
This way practicing change has become a natural element of the family life. We tend to think of the house as a house of many opportunities. Often – maybe once or twice a year, a new room at a different level of the house is used as bedroom. This way your dreams has the opportunity to develop your mind at different levels. The House of Change I consider a highly valuable place to live, while considering the need for change in an global exponential growing economy (e.g. see Economic Growth is Exponential and Accelerating, v2.0).
Well – this story is of course purely based on my own ideas, but tells a story about how I enjoy to identify patterns and structures of different elements of the world and make something new of it – innovate – perhaps this could even become the idea of new concept houses of the future. Here are a couple of additional innovative ideas, using the special roof construction for a ski slope: Waste Treatment Plant and The North Slope Ski Hotel.
Welcome to my Blog
I look forward to start sharing my ideas and thoughts on a variety of subjects. I live a life characterized by a lot of learning of new habits and unlearning of old habits, both personally and professionally, which enriches my life. Such a fantastic journey of continuous growth motivate sharing and sparring.
Please look out for postings along with my inspiration to share.
Best Regards Steen
Steen Schledermann's Blog 