![]() ![]() ![]() Having suddenly become Internal, they jumped into action to move away from continuing to submit to the dictatorship. In addition, several other LAB Profile™ Motivation Shifts are taking place within the groups of protesters. As of this writing the government of Libya has chosen to attack, shoot and kill protesters and bystanders, and this has dramatically increased the determination of these Internally-motivated protesters to succeed. The leaders from Bahrain understood this shift and have chosen to consult and negotiate with protest leaders. In each instance since January 2011, where the government has used violence or has attempted to delegitimize the movement, the protesters have responded to in a typically Internal fashion by increasing their resolve to get the results they seek. “You can’t tell me what to do, I decide.” As a group, the protesters would no longer submit to an unfair system or allow external control over their lives. As the choice to act was being made, at a certain point, this External motivator shifted to Internal. “They command, you do.” One’s personal decisions are strongly influenced from this outside authority. Under normal circumstances, to survive under an oppressive dictatorship, people need to act as if they are External to the regime. As the people took to the streets, they also went through significant shifts in motivation and thinking, which can be described by using LAB Profile™ psycho-metrics. ![]() The protesters have answered these questions with their actions, taking huge risks to gain control of their future. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Take the questions that the Jewish sage Hillel asked: Other factors must also be at play to enable people to take action. And as Alan Weiss pointed out in his Memo, neither Tunisia nor Egypt used violence to quell the protests. The Egyptians used a model of nonviolent protest combined with persistence, intelligence, faith and imagination to achieve their outcome of regime change. “It is possible for us,” concluded others in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, etc. Their leader Ben Ali left after less than a week of protests. Sparked by the suicide death of the young man Mohamed Bouazizi, Tunisia revolted and proved that it was possible in the world. In the NLP community, we often speak of the questions that operate consciously or at a below-conscious level that enable people to take action or to make a significant change: Michael Hall PhD suggests in his newsletter that the uprisings are an example of the need for control over one’s life from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, level 2. Is it merely a case of the oppressed seizing an opportunity? Why now? And these technologies were the kindling that made it possible for the peoples of these countries to find out how wealthy people are elsewhere in the world and how many opportunities others have in comparison to themselves. There is no doubt that without the advanced communication technologies afforded by Facebook and Twitter, the fires of protest would not have spread so quickly. It defies a simple analysis, but I would like to share my thoughts about the psychological aspects of these revolutionary movements. There are clearly many elements involved, technological, political, cultural, sociological, physical and psychological underpinning and supporting what is unfolding. The events in the Arab world and beyond are advancing so quickly that it is difficult to write coherently about what is really happening. ![]()
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