Introduction to

The day of the reactive professions has come and gone, the inherent limitations of their domain obvious from the fruit of their trees and the public derision which has, even before the hearse horses have had the opportunity to snicker, attended their parade.

The reactive professions have left in their wake precisely the "frustration," "isolation," "anger," "depression," and even "despair," which they had hoped to obviate. More often than not, the reactive professions have actually made matters worse, adding mass to negative realities. To confirm their failure, one need do no more than search for traces of joy and deep satisfaction in such places as the "courthouses" and "offices" of reaction. The fellow with the slumped shoulders was hardly an exception: his life was not only dominated by "negative realities," he was also ill-served by "professionals," and even by "friends," who "reacted" with him to the content of his life instead of creating something wonderful with the available raw materials.

The profoundly good intentions of reactive professionals (and reactive friends) have proven insufficient to consistently and effectively feed a public starved for the nurturance of winning instead of the toxin of losing. But as the journalists have penned the obituary of reaction, a new possibility has been being born. It is, after all, "law" and "therapy" and "medicine" which are sinking below the waves. Not all the souls carried by these vessels will go down with these ships, although, sadly, many will do so. Even now, some of those who had been the "lawyers" and "therapists" and "doctors" are joining the armada of WinCrafting^TM, a creative profession in itself, and a herald of the replacement of the reactive domain with a creative one. Picasso, it turns out, was prophetic when he said, "Some day there will undoubtedly be a science —- it may be called the science of man —- which will seek to learn about man in general through the study of the creative man."¹ But more than that: beyond "study," there is the fruit born of that study, fruit of the new trees of the creative domain, which feeds satisfaction and joy, and which is the buoyant essence of hopes which are fulfilled instead of dashed against the rocks.

As the new, creative domain emerged, the teaching in its seminal programs addressed a genuinely new technology for being effective in the presence of "conflict." The very least of its goals was that everyone involved in a "conflict" must win on a profound level, or nothing will have occurred which was worth the candle. This essential aspiration led to the founding of The Win-Win Institute^TM. And, in 1987, John began to teach the nation’s first "Certification Program for Win-Win Practitioners." The participants were predominantly from Arizona, where the Institute was based. Participants were required to attend regularly scheduled, quarterly group meetings, as well as take part in extensive "one-to-one’s" with faculty members. Most students took about a year and a half to complete the program, which was very intensive. For example, each participant, in order to be certified, had to complete 150 "write-ups." A write-up involved walking through a "conflict" (it could be in their own life, or in the life of someone around them) and answering a set of 17 questions about that "conflict." The question set methodically presented the technology that we teach relating to effectiveness in the presence of "conflict." By the time our students had done 50 or 60 of these write-ups, they found that they literally defined "conflict" differently than they had previously done. And, in turn, they were looking for very different things than they had previously looked for, which gave them a chance (for example) to be effective instead of "adding mass" to the "conflict." They ended up with what Howard Gardner refers to as an understanding² of this new domain, including an ability to apply its principles and techniques to the widest range of situations in life, including extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Our graduates have been spectacularly effective, in various forms of win-win practice, teaching, consulting and writing.

Several things happened out of that first Certification Program. The graduates asked that John take some time away from the program and from his win-win practice, long enough to write and publish one (or more) books which would cover some of the "fundamentals" of the new domain. They had noticed in their own work how often they would have to go through the "beginning" conversation with someone who was not yet familiar with the work, and they thought it would be much more efficient if they could hand people a book or two, and then start talking to them at a little more advanced level. A great deal of writing has emerged since then, including a series of articles and letters published on the Internet, which have generated interest and interaction from literally all over the world. In addition, John’s first book, What Do You REALLY Want? is about to be published by Inspiration Press, with a second book soon to follow, Marriages with Training Wheels. In short, there now exists a well-developed literature on the material which we have been teaching, something which had not yet become available at the time of the original Certification Program. This literature has greatly expanded the teaching possibilities in the new domain, and is an integral part of the new WinCrafting^TM Certification Programs which we have now begun to offer.

We are not suggesting that The Domain of the LifeGame, of the creative possibility, is "new" in and of itself. Rather, we are saying that the things which we have all been taught in our reactive DeathGame-dominated society, have fostered an environment in which we sow our seeds into soil so toxic that crop after crop is tainted. And instead of suggesting that we locate and plant in the best soil LIFE has to offer, our "professionals" aid and abet us in keeping our consciousness and attention on the toxic plots themselves. Psychology and psychiatry, for instance, in the manner of the mental illness whose very existence they assert and champion, focus on such things as the "thoughts" and "feelings" people have while standing in their poisoned realities. They suggest, for example, that people might perhaps attempt to think and feel differently about these things or, failing that, make such offerings as "medications" which can even be "required" for the remainder of a lifetime! In the process, they add mass to unwanted realities, a process people pay for in more ways than one! Simple, excellent advice, such as "keep your eye on the prize," exists outside the parameters of the reactive domain, which insists that all eyes lock onto the "stuff" in life which it self-reflexively and self-servingly labels "conflict" or "problem." (One can count on reactive professionals to "label" — "create" is the more accurate word! — just about anything as a "problem" or "conflict" ... the filter through which they have been taught to view the world tinges even the miraculous with "minus!" Through this filter, such openings into LIFE as "God is everywhere" suffer a mortal wound whenever the gaze of the reactive professional again turns golden possibility to lead.) Having thus declared ("created!") some aspect of life a "conflict" or a "problem" (and, thus, "broken"), the reactive professional then offers to "fix" it! In the reactive universe of the DeathGame, the outcomes are "fixed," alright, and it is "the house" (those who get paid while these games get played) which benefits from the rigged system. "Players" win only as the exception to the rule, and not due to "the rules of the game" or "the way the game is played."

- "God is everywhere, but not in you when we are in ‘conflict,’"

- "Praise the Lord in all things, but not if those ‘things’ include something which somebody calls a ‘conflict’ or a        ‘problem,’ or something which otherwise fails to ‘fit our pictures.’"

Those who complete the WinCrafting^TM Certification Programs will have a deep understanding of the new, creative domain of the LifeGame, in which limiting and outdated notions such as "conflict" are, at best, "empowered illusion." Once our students know, way deep inside them, what the heroine in the movie "Labyrinth" meant when she said, "You have no power over me," attention can be put on the possibility of WinCrafting^TM itself.

As suggested by the name, the track leading to certification as a professional is for the student who aspires to provide professional service to others in the field of WinCrafting^TM. As with any other professional field, whether auto mechanics or chemistry or photography, anyone offering WinCrafting^TM services on a professional basis has to have a thorough and sound understanding of the professional domain itself, its theory and practice. The WinCrafting^TM professional must have an ability to effectively apply WinCrafting^TM ideas and techniques to the circumstances of an individual or group. WinCrafting^TM is a distinct field; the conversation between a WinCrafting^TM professional and a client is fundamentally different from what one learns to say and do in law and psychology, for example. The professional track of the WinCrafting^TM Certification Programs provides rigorous training to prepare its students for the high level of responsibility inherent in a professional practice.

The track leading to Certification in the Fundamentals of WinCrafting^TM is designed for a broader group of participants than the professional track. It is designed for students who are drawn to the program to enhance their "interpersonal" and "intrapersonal" skills, as well as their personal effectiveness in their own professional domains, rather than with an expectation of providing the quite specific services offered by a WinCrafting^TM professional. (For more details about the two tracks, as well as the logistics generally for program participation and enrollment, we invite you to see the Course Description for the WinCrafting^TM Certification Programs.)

We welcome students into both tracks, with a full appreciation that categories such as "professional" and "personal" can break down very quickly, and should not be overstated. (There is, for example, the standard demanded by Cat Stevens’ determinedly jarring and abrasive lyrics a few years back, along the lines of "...he can’t run his own life ... be damned if he’ll run mine!" Said differently, long before Cat Stevens was born, "Physician, heal thyself." There are perhaps those who would like to think that ineffectiveness in one’s personal life and relationships has no inherent negative impact upon performance as a professional. That pretense, though, has always been the most pernicious of lies. For instance, any individual (not just an attorney!) steeped for a decade in the malignant marinade of a win/lose belief system, will find every nook and cranny of life (including in its "professional" aspects) at one time or another permeated and impacted by the toxicity.

The concepts and the skills addressed in the track leading to Certification in the Fundamentals of WinCrafting^TM are basic to virtually every interaction in life, whether with yourself, your children and spouse, other family members, your dearest friends, your colleagues at work, your supervisors, your employees, your clients, your customers, the members of your church, your neighbors, your doctor, your minister, your creditors, your newspaper delivery person, or the cashier at the local super market. No matter how deep the relationship is, or how "superficial," your opportunity to create your relationship with people will become real to you, out of your understanding of the WinCrafting^TM possibility, as you begin to take on the awesome opportunity to consciously and effectively write the script of your life. The same holds true for your relationship with the things that you "do," and how you relate to "your responsibilities" in life, ranging from your choices regarding career or employment, how you relate to the various forms of "housework" which show up around you, how you contribute to and support your family members, and what roles you choose to undertake and not to undertake in your church, your community, and your professional life. We have all been taught to function in this vast array of life participation in the context of "responsibility," "competence," and "judgment and evaluation." The result is a harsh reality to live in, where the next demonstration of competence is always beckoning, and where one’s most valued participations take on the gray hue of grim obligation and the sense of having to do it right, and the fear of never doing enough.

John Rice had the privilege of providing a defining name, "WinCrafting^TM," for the creative domain which has been opening its doors wide to a humanity hungry for profound levels of winning. As the creative set of possibilities has begun to come to the fore, the WinCrafting^TM domain has increasingly drawn upon the role model of our artists and, in the process, has begun to replace the reactive way of life, including the reactive professions. John had been an active participant in the reactive domain, struggling to use its limited ideas and resources to produce results which were genuinely and deeply satisfying to the people who reached out to it when they were "losing" in their lives. John eventually went into the practice of law for the same essential reason so many others have pursued that path: in the hope of making a difference with people. However, it became clearer and clearer to John, as it has been becoming clear to so many others, that the reactive domain in which "law" has lived is utterly deficient, grounded in ideas which are deeply antithetical to LIFE, and to people’s deepest hopes.

For 30 years, John has been engaged in WinCrafting^TM and its predecessors. He began by working at the United Nations, where he set up an educational program which brought many students from around the world into a program designed to elicit international understanding and cooperation in place of the adversariness and competitiveness which has plagued so much of human history. Barely out of college, and living in Greenwich Village in the late 1960’s, John found himself pulled by two "realities." One suggested that the only thing he could do "in the national interest" was go to Vietnam as a member of the American military. The other urged that he be deferred by the draft system, in the national interest, in order to continue to advocate the possibility of peace in the world even while much of the world followed other paths.

John had the opportunity to live inside such questions while his "draft status" was determined. He suggested to his draft board that the best use which could be made of him at that particular time was to have him continue to head the educational program at the United Nations. The draft board, which was located in John’s conservative hometown area in Texas, disagreed, and John appealed their decision. During the oral appeal allowed by the board, he was told by the members of the board (who introduced themselves to John as "ultra-conservative, ex-military, and very patriotic"), that the only thing he could do "in the national interest" would be to serve in the war, as they had done during wars earlier in their own lives. It did not matter at all, they said, that over 100 CEO’s of major U.S. corporations had written to the board and said that the program John headed was in the national interest (and that his specific areas of expertise were considered critical to the project’s success). Nor did it matter that over 60 ambassadors to the United Nations had written to say that the project was in the international interest. John asked the members of the draft board what they really wanted ... did they want all of our national resources to go into waging war, which the board members agreed lived totally outside the domain of The Golden Rule, or could some of our resources be used in the attempt to create something they agreed they personally valued more than war, the waging of peace, the conscious and deliberate attempt to create the conditions which might result in alternatives to some future war? John told the board members that he well understood the choices they had made earlier in their own lives, and that it might perhaps seem invalidating of those choices to even suggest an alternative in the present time. But, given what they (of all people!) knew of war as an approach to human relationships, having experienced that condition, how did they want to see our national resources, including our young men, used now, toward creation of the world in which their grandchildren would be living? Their choice was to defer John in the national interest. This was perhaps the first time that John noticed the extent to which people ... all people ... have in them the profound desire to see winning emerge, and are willing to extend themselves to contribute something toward that possibility, even if their own personal world has been dominated by thoughts that such things are impossible, that "life just isn’t like that."

During these early years, John had begun to ask what it takes, precisely, to be deeply effective around "conflict." He had the opportunity, as he did later when he participated at the International Court of Justice, to study and work with world-renowned "mediators." He discovered that while they tended to be intuitively brilliant in the presence of "conflict," they were not at all sure about such things as the "steps" they followed when they "did what worked." While they were able to "tell the story" of what had happened in a given situation, they could not describe the steps, or the techniques, of their own work. For this reason, they were (by their own accounts) extraordinarily inconsistent in the presence of "conflict," often attributing success in a particular circumstance to such things as "getting lucky."

At the time, the "state of the art" suggested that the only way, really, to get people to behave decently around one another was to make sure that "a system of laws" stood between humans and "human nature." Without such a system, people’s very survival would be perpetually threatened. Not recognizing the extent to which this was a tunnel with no cheese, John went to law school and, eventually, began to practice law. During the approximately ten years John practiced law, two things deeply impressed him. One was that people in the legal system were not winning ... not the lawyers, not their staffs, not the judges, and most certainly not the clients! There was, to understate the matter, an absence of joy in the domain. It was an unhealthy place to be, like swimming in a polluted lake. The second thing he noticed was that, when he asked people what would be a "win" for them in a particular circumstance, they would almost always tell him what they didn’t want! John began to realize that people needed to have their very ability to see and say their wins, their deep truths, rehabilitated. He began to ask what would really be a win, a profound win, for each of the people with whom he spoke. As people began to speak their truths, the utter irrelevance of the legal system to the pursuit of their hopes and dreams became totally apparent. For instance, the system was designed in such a way that it was lawyers’ "ethical" responsibility to "zealously" represent "their" client ... no acknowledgment was given to the simple truth that, when people are "in conflict," none will win, on any level of profound satisfaction, unless all win. [An aside: during John’s practice of law, one of his clients, having been advised by her husband that he "felt" he should start "looking out for number one" ... profoundly stupid advice, but advice which is quite consistent with an "adversary" system and approach to life ... asked her husband, "Just out of curiosity, what number am I? Number 2? Number 8? Number 26? And what numbers are the children? Then she divorced him.]

John chose to stop "managing conflict," which always means managing unwanted realities, and began to work with people toward the creation of the lives they truly did want. When he realized that reactive professionals had no role model for such pursuits, he turned to those who are the role models for such things, our artists. In observing their successes, John saw clearly what had been missing in the reactive domain, and began to emulate the creative process instead of continuing to flail away in reaction to unwanted things. For the reactive professions, there is no job to do in the absence of a "conflict" or a "problem" to react to. But from the creative point of view, it is not necessary to put the "stuff" of a client’s life (or a friend’s life, or even one’s own life), in a box called "conflict," no longer necessary to append a label such as "problem" to something occurring in the life of a human. Instead of that negative judgment and evaluation, and the "self-fulfilling prophecy" it tends to bring forth, life’s content could be thought of as, simply, raw materials with which people could create wonderful, even inspiring realities. John found that when he asked people if they would prefer to attempt to create something extraordinary, something inspiring, something beautiful with those raw materials, they were much more interested in the process than the old "let’s all manage this ‘conflict’" game.

As John began to notice that all the "rules" are different in a creative game than a reactive one, he began to introduce revolutionary and successful new ideas and techniques to the old field of "mediation." Later, as the state of the art advanced, he gave a name to a new profession, "win-win practice," and began to contribute to "the win-win possibility." He founded the Win-Win Institute^TM, a corporation which is based in Phoenix, Arizona, and has taught students from all over the United States as well as many other nations around the world. The Institute began to retrain lawyers, therapists, ministers, teachers, people in business and government, and many others, emphasizing the creative possibility and the possibility that everyone in a "conflict" could win, even on a profound level. The more he explored the domain of winning, the more it became apparent that people aspire to the miraculous, nothing less than that, in every circumstance. All people! Of course, that is not what people have been taught to put their attention on, so they were most often unconscious of the extent of winning to which they aspired. They had their attention on "trying not to lose," instead of going for winning. And in their attempts to avoid losing, they found legions of "professionals," who themselves knew little about profound levels of winning. They, like their clients, had been taught to play "win-lose" in every area of life. And so that was what continually manifested around them. When their "careers" would "win," for example, their families and health would lose, etc.

John began to coach "therapists" and "counselors" in the WinCrafting^TM possibility when they encountered "conflicts" in their personal and family lives, and found their own theories and technologies to be ineffective. As with the ambassadors and other international figures John had encountered earlier, and also "the lawyers," the good intentions and hard work of these reactive professionals tended to go for naught (or much worse!) a high percentage of the time. While they were relatively "effective" in comparison to, for example, at least some members of the general public, they would "win some and lose some," veering in and out of effectiveness. In other words, they were successful ... except when they were not! And, as with the other reactive professionals, it was more than apparent that the vast majority of these "professionals" were not consistently winning in their own lives!

John had spent many years addressing such questions as, "When these people have done something which worked, what were they really doing?" As the answers to such questions became clear, the parameters of the new WinCrafting^TM domain began to clarify. In turn, there has emerged a technology which is consistently effective at generating winning, in every moment of life, including in the presence of "conflict!" In the process, ideas and techniques have come forward which are easily understood, and which allow wonderful results to be readily replicated. John has shared these theoretical and practical advances, which are taught in the WinCrafting^TM Certification Programs, in the widest range of settings and circumstances, public and private: in such places as corporations, schools, churches, neighborhoods, governmental and quasi-governmental entities. His emphasis has been on working with individuals and families, assisting them in generating profound levels of winning in place of the losing they had been experiencing.

HOW TO CONTACT US

Telephone inquiries can be made to: (480) 893-0645

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