Biznik Blog

If I had to choose a few words to describe Biznik’s most prolific event host, Joe Shirley, I’d have to go with “steady, thoughtful, composed and calm.” Not words you’d typically associate with bipolar disorder. That’s because Joe has worked incredibly hard over the past 12 years to first understand what was happening inside himself, and then to develop a med-free method of dealing with his emotions. Along the way he picked up a BA in consciousness studies, then a Masters in whole systems design from Antioch University in Seattle. Now, he’s applying everything he’s learned into a comprehensive method, theory and practice that he calls 9Joys. I interviewed him recently to learn more about how he “turns bad moods into good ones.”

What is 9JOYS, and what inspired you to develop it?

As for inspiration, it was more a case of being strongly UN-inspired by what
passes for understanding about human nature and the workings of the mind.
C’mon – is this nutso world the best we can do??

Add to that a special motivation: at the age of 27, my life was a shambles
and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now, I could cave in and accept
the party line about my affliction being caused by a defective brain, the
only solution for which was to “manage” it with poisonous chemicals. Or I
could hold fast to an idealistic faith that the experts didn’t have the
answers, that there must be some other way out.

Fortunately, my bipolar disorder graced me with a certain unmitigated
grandiosity, and I did the second. It took me seven more years of thankless
suffering, but I eventually got very, very lucky and stumbled upon a simple
trick of the mind. I discovered that I could deliberately shift my mood by
translating it into imagery first, then manipulating the image.

I certainly wasn’t the first person to do this, but I may have been
the first to recognize the importance of this technique as a tool with which
to investigate exactly how feelings, moods, and emotions work. I spent the
next twelve years doing exactly that, and 9JOYS is the result. (And yes, I
succeeded in ending my mood swings – eleven years ago!)

As a technique, 9JOYS is more efficient and effective than the current
state-of-the-art in psychology, (and it is by definition not
psychology). For people with garden variety challenges involving unwanted
moods, thoughts and behaviors, it’s also more humane and safe than a
pharmaceutical cocktail. I’m making big claims here, but I get to do that
because I demonstrate it every day, with every one of my clients.

As a theory, 9JOYS has a lot to offer as well. To give a concrete example,
we tend to think of feelings as things. We try to “get rid of,” “control,”
or “let go of” our bad feelings. Or we try to “heal” them as if they were a
wound. In their place, we hope to “find” happiness. This strategy never
works all that well – you wind up simply burying the bad feeling, dividing
it against yourself and leaving it to wreak subtle sabotage.

9JOYS revises the concept of feelings as things. It demonstrates very
clearly, in terms everyone can experience directly, that bad feelings are
actually good ones in disguise. You’ve just got to remove the disguise,
(it takes about 15 minutes), and the essential gift of that part of you
becomes available. Which means no matter how dark, “bad,” or ugly any part
of you, at its core is light and goodness. In doing this process thousands
of times with hundreds of people, I have never encountered an exception.

Insights like this give me great hope in the potential of 9JOYS to grow into
a comprehensive theory and practice that might contribute to a new way of
inhabiting this planet. It’s going to take a lot more than just me to make
that happen, though. I’m looking for possible collaborators in every person
I talk to, and it feels like this is a very exciting time in the early
history of this work.

How’d you come up with the name 9JOYS?

The name has been through so many permutations it’s ridiculous. Some of the
abandoned ones include SourceWork, Jiva (Sanskrit for self or soul),
Emotional Field Technique, TOPOS (an acronym of Transformation Of
Psychosensory Object Systems), and at least half a dozen others. I was
jubilant when 9JOYS came to me, and after living with it for more than a
year I’m pretty sure it’s here to stay. Not to mention that 9JOYS.com is a
pretty cool URL.

The name is a literal description of the result of doing the work.
The experience of being you has a nine-part architecture, each part anchored
by a distinct feeling. When these nine parts are opened to their highest
truth, it’s like you have a coordinated team of nine different aspects of
joyful being within you — nine joys. It’s pretty awesome.

What is the most common personal challenge that your clients are trying to overcome?

Without exception, everyone who works with me is struggling to overcome
being divided against themselves. We all know the experience: one part of
you wants or believes one thing, but another part feels guilty or angry or
fearful as a result. When we’re acting out these inner conflicts (and you
can’t avoid acting them out in some form), life can get pretty
dissatisfying.

How do we get this way? It’s not because we’re damaged or broken. In fact,
it’s because we’re working perfectly. 9JOYS shows that human nature is to
be whole, congruent. We strive so much for this congruence that when we
are in a conflicted environment, especially as a child, we take on a reverse
imprint of that environment to preserve the congruence of the whole. For
example, a child is full of exuberance. When exuberance is punished in the
family, the child learns to close it down. As a strategy for preserving
wholeness, this works great as long as the child stays in the same
environment. The exuberance may be closed, but the child “fits,” belongs,
feels a part of the family. Change the environment, though, by going off to
college for example, and that imprint doesn’t “fit” any more. The result?
Distress.

Throughout evolutionary history, this imprinting process worked really well
to keep us in harmony with our natural environment and our community. When
the jaguar growls, you don’t want to have to figure out each time that the
thing to do is run. And when the clan elder speaks, by golly you better
listen with respect. Everybody’s chances of surviving and getting along with
each other are enhanced by imprinting.

But of course, all of my clients live in today’s world. Everything’s
changing all the time, and our job is new: How do we transcend our
imprintable nature and return again and again to being present in the
moment? 9JOYS helps with that.

If you could give one piece of advice to independent professionals from your own experience, what would it be?

It goes back to congruence. You owe it to your business, your customers,
your partners, and your self to make sure all parts of you are on the same
page. I guarantee you, if one part of you wants to succeed, and another
is doubting success, or fearing it, or just plain confused about it,
whatever success you do create will be dissatisfying. Take the time, make
the effort, to create a vision that’s so compelling to you that every cell
in your body reaches forward to make it happen.

I’m working on this with myself, too, using 9JOYS to resolve my own inner
conflicts. For example, I recently realized that I’ve been refraining from
creating my own clear visions of success because of a deep imprint that
said, “if you want it, by definition you can’t have it.” That’s the legacy
of growing up in a very controlling family. But in the space of about eight
hours of focused work, I left that imprint behind. For good. Now, I feel
this incredibly energizing drive, a pull forward from my solar plexus that
is hungry for opportunities to create what I want. Quite nice.

You’ve taught more classes in Biznik than any other member. What do you see as the value in teaching free classes?

I see two things, really. The first is just putting yourself out there. The
simple act of declaring you exist – not just your work or your skill, but
the you who does that work or has that skill – puts you in real relationship
to real other people. Building your business is all about creating
relationships and guiding the juicy ones until they become a part of what
makes your business sing.

The second benefit is something Chris Haddad blogged
about just this week: you get to learn. I offered my Getting Things
Done class exactly because I wanted to put a stake in the ground: by April
13 I wanted to have implemented GTD for myself, and know it well enough to
offer this class. It worked. And as a bonus, the dialogue in the class
helped me learn even more. A couple people critiqued the limitations of the
GTD system of contexts for organizing actions. I realized it wasn’t working
for me either, and have since designed a new way to organize actions that
works much better for me. Again, it’s all about relationship: when we
place ourselves in dialogue with peers, cool things always show up.
Always.

Joe’s website is 9joys.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 9:16 am and is filed under Interviews. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.