How do you know if Integral Deep Listening can heal, balance, and transform your life? Is an important life issue of yours better, worse or the same? Do you procrastinate less or more? Are you sticking to your exercise program better or not? Are you less irritated by thoughtless people or not? Are you less anxious or not? Regardless of what life issues are most important to you, pick one and test IDL! It’s easy and fun! Then you can gauge the results for yourself!
- Choose a life issue tied to a daily habit that is important to you.
- Work with a dream, nightmare, or mystical experience of your choice. Write it down
- Before you begin, give yourself a pre-test score of where you are on the accomplishment of your chosen life issue, with “0” meaning “Not accomplished” or “not improved,” (more stress) and 10 “accomplished,” or “improved,” (less stress).
- Choose a character or element from it that you are curious about, that you think might have an interesting or helpful perspective.
- “Become” the character and answer the questions in the short-form interviewing protocol from its perspective. (Questionnaire below)
- This will produce recommendations regarding your life issue.
- State your issue as real stuff people can see and measure any difference that occurs in your life issue. Is it worse or better as a result? Does it stay the same? For example, happiness, defined in change of mood, or planning, organization, reduction of procrastination, health metrics, or relationship…)
- To help you “operationalize” or objectify any changes, keep in mind the “SMARTER” formula: Is your monitoring: S (specific) M (measurable) A (attainable) R (relevant/risky) T (time bound) E (evaluated) R (reviewed)?
- You will choose a period of time that you think is adequate and reasonable 7 days, or no more than 30 days – to conduct your experiment and let me know: Joseph.Dillard@gmail.com
- Here is a worksheet for you to use to chart your test of the efficacy of your dream recommendation:
- Log it with your morning brew. Post weekly to #DreamEfficacy—keep us in the loop.
- Skip application every Wednesday each week but still give yourself a score, 0-10. (This is to improve the statistical reliability of your experiment.)
- Your chances of completion increase when you have a support and accountability partner to report to. That’s where the “ER” in the “SMARTER” formula come in: “Evaluate” and “Revise.” I recommend that you use a chatbot, like Grok 3, Chat GPT, or DeepSeek for feedback, support, and for problem solving if you get stuck.
- Who you would like to support you in your experiment? Share the experiment with them and encourage them to do it too! You can support each other. If you would like support in introducing them to the experiment, contact us at Joseph.Dillard@gmail.com.
- At the end of the time period, assess 0-10 how helpful the recommendation was and whether you think any change in your life issue is due to it or not.
- My intention is to publish this research. If you would like to be a co-author on that paper, please let me know.
- Please feel free to post your own progress and experience yourself to whatever public forums of your choice. (“I agree that my experience with my application of this study can be shared publicly to teach and inspire others.”)
YOUR INTERVIEWING PROTOCOL
What is a life issue that you are dealing with now in your life?
Tell me a dream, nightmare, or mystical experience you remember…
Why do you think that you had this experience?
These are the characters in the dream…
If one of these characters were able to provide you with a different and improved perspective on your life, which one would it most likely be?
(Character,) would you please tell me what you look like and what you are doing?
_______, what do you like most about yourself in this experience that you are a part of? What are your strengths?
_____, what do you dislike most about yourself in this experience? What are your weaknesses?
______, how are you most like your human?
(Character,) if you could change yourself in any way you wanted, would you? If so, how would you change?
(Character,) if you chose to change, is that really what you want to do or is that something your human would like to see happen? Only change if that is something you want for yourself! (The following questions are to the changed character, if it chose to change. Otherwise, they are directed to the original character.)
(Character), If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her, would you live it differently? If so, how?
Character), If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her today, would you handle his/her life issue?
Character), In what life situations would it be most beneficial for your human to imagine that she is you and act as you would?
(Dreamer,) what have you heard yourself say?
If this /experience were a wake-up call from your life compass, what do you think it would be saying to you?
If this experience were a wake-up call for the world, how might humanity change if it listened to it?
What have you learned from this experience? How can you use it in your waking life? Look at the recommendations your Character made. Which one or two are most important for you? Which do you think would be most life changing? Take one recommendation and operationalize it. That means apply the SMARTER formula to it. How can you make it
Specific?
Measurable?
Achievable?
Relevant?
Time-based?
Evaluated?
Revised?
Contract with a fellow student or intern of IDL to be your accountability partner. Share with them how you want to be supported in applying and testing your chosen recommendation to see if IDL really does improve your life in meaningful ways. Help your partner via daily or weekly email or video contacts to do the same.
Daily Application Tracking Form
Behavior(s): ___________________________
Period: ____ days (7, 14, 21, or 30)
| Date | Day 0 (Score Now) | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 (Wed) | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | [Add columns as needed] | Total |
| Behavior 1 | N/A | |||||||||
| Notes | Baseline | – | ||||||||
| Behavior 2 | N/A | |||||||||
| Notes | Baseline | – | ||||||||
| Behavior 3 | N/A | |||||||||
| Notes | Baseline | – |
Tips for Use
- √ Option: Use for binary behaviors (did/didn’t). Total = count of √ ÷ total days scored (e.g., 5/6 = 83%).
- 0-10 Option: Use for subjective measures (e.g., calmness, effort). Total = average (sum ÷ scored days).
- Digital Version: Copy into a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel) for auto-calculations.