Yes they mis-named it! And what a tragedy that mis-naming has created. Yet as with most things human, they undoubtedly were doing their best and simply didn’t imagine, didn’t think, didn’t project themselves into the future to consider what consequences that name would have.
How could they have known that 35 years later people with just a month of training in this field would use the title, “Master Practitioner,” stress the Master part, and consider that they have arrived, they know-it-all, they don’t need to study anymore, they have arrived at Guru-dom?!
The history of NLP “Practitioner” and “Master Practitioner” is itself an interesting one. Since 1978 when Leslie Cameron Bandler put together the first “Practitioner” that was some 36 days long, the Prac. course of NLP was designed to introduce the basic NLP models and give people the essential competencies to use the models and patterns and to begin to think in terms of these models.
And that means what? That means understanding the basic Communication Model of NLP. That’s why NLP is— a model of how human beings communicate, first to themselves (also called “thinking,” “awareness,” “being conscious”) and then to others (also called “talking”). Modeled from three experts in communication, three “world-class professional communicators” NLP presented itself as being able to identify the essential structure of communication verbally and non-verbally.
The verbal part predominated at first. Using the dominating linguistic model at that time, Transformational Grammar (TG), Grinder introduced the majority of the jargon of NLP by sticking in all of the TG language: transderivational search to your referential index, selective restriction violation, nominalizations, etc. In The Structure of Magic, the language part was recognized as the “meta-representational system.”
None of that was new, nor was the sensory representational systems (seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling, tasting). That had been around for a hundred years in the field of Psychology, from the very beginning of Psychology as a field separate from Philosophy. But there was something new, and radical— Using the sensory representational systems as the languages of the mind. That was new. And Bateson noted this in his Preface to The Structure of Magic commenting that he and his colleagues had been search for that for decades.
So first came the Meta-Model, then the Representational Systems, which includes calibrating to a person for recognizing representational systems (eye accessing cues and the like), then the TOTE model for Strategies, the Milton Model (and reversing the Meta-Model to use it for trance), the Sub-Modality distinctions, and the basic Time-Line model, and with these models, lots of patterns, processes, and exercises. And at first Prac. took a long, long time. But eventually, the process was streamlined to 21 days of 8 hours or so of training each day, and this still remains that in many places. We increase the hours to 12 hour days, require extensive reading and preparation ahead of time and can get through the content in a minimum of 7 days when we really push it. And what accelerates the learning of NLP in Neuro-Semantics is half a day on Meta-States since that’s what explains the “magic” of NLP.
Then there’s Master Prac. It really has nothing to do with mastery, it is mostly more stuff.More of the NLP model: Meta-Programs, Advance Modeling, Extensive Reframing using the old “sleight of mouth” patterns (or Mind-Lines), Meta-States, Advanced Trance, Advanced Time-Lines, and again, lots and lots patterns, processes, and applications to personal development, therapy, business, selling, leadership, etc.
Many years ago I asked Wyatt Woodsmall,
“Why was Meta-Programs put in Master Prac. rather than in Prac.? After all, a person really needs to know about meta-programs from the beginning?”
His answer was simple and succinct: “Because they were not invented when Prac. was invented!” “Oh, so that’s why!” (Of course, the story of their invention is in Figuring Out People, 2007).
When I first began training Master Prac. I tossed some things in about “mastery,” what it is, how long it takes (the “ten year rule”), the attitude required, etc. and we ended Master Prac. With a “pathway to mastery” celebration. Today I think that’s a mistake. While the 15 to 24 days of Master Prac. does take basic NLP further, and provides a more indepth understanding, if we’re honest, it really has nothing to do with mastery and it actually is perpetuating the “get rich quick,” “get smart quick,” “get instant expertise” myth that’s clings to NLP like a leach sucking its blood.
No one is a “master” of NLP after a two or three week intensive course or after a year if you stretch it out to 6 or 8 weekends.
That’s not how mastery works. Even I knew that after my first experience of Master Prac. At my first Master Prac. I wrote the notes that is now the book, The Spirit of NLP (1996). And in that book, the idea of the spirit of NLP is the idea of continuous learning, an unending, ongoing attitude of exploring, discovering, and ferocious curiosity.
In an interview in Moscow recently, I was asked about Master Practitioners/ Trainers who consider that they have arrived, who segregate themselves from everybody else and present themselves as having reached the pinnacle of the field. “What about them? What would you say to them?”
“I’d say that ‘You have missed the whole point! You do not understand the basics of NLP if that’s your attitude! Your license to train ought to be revoked and you ought to go study it afresh and learn to develop the spirit of NLP. Your journey to mastery has hardly begun— there are many new developments in the field and unless you are staying involved, collaborating with those who are doing things in this field, every day you are falling further and further behind!’”
This Week’s Neuro-Semantic News
We are wrapping up the completion of NSTT (Trainers’ Training ) in Hong Kong and the graduation is this Thursday.
Then NSTT Colorado Begins June 19.
That’s what he said to me. I was in Hong Kong and we were doing a promotional workshop on Meta-Coaching and Mediation. And we had several guys from various NLP Schools, several who had read some of my books and several who were “interested, but unconvinced.” They were unconvinced that Neuro-Semantics had “anything” to offer that was actually different from NLP. At least that’s what they said. So they wanted to know.
“What’s new and what different in Neuro-Semantics? And you can’t say that it is higher because NLP has higher or meta-levels and positions.”
“You’re right!” I immediately acknowledged. “Dilts has introduced four meta-levels in his Neuro-Logical Levels pattern and even Bandler and Grinder had the ‘meta-position’ in their original model as well as they acknowledged that language is a ‘meta-representational system,’ and so developed a ‘Meta-Model of Language in Therapy’ as they called it to address that higher level. So in all of that, you are right on. NLP modeled higher levels.”
“But while NLP has that, there’s one thing that NLP did not have, not until I introduced the Meta-States Model. Only then did NLP obtained a model of the very special and unique kind of mind that man has, well, women also.”
“And what is that?”
I threw in the humor bit and paused, all designed to facilitate some “response potential” as Milton Erickson would have said. “Okay, so do you want to know what it is?” I said that in the tone and tempo that Morpheus uttered the same line to Neo in The Matrix movie, knowing that they would like that. One of them had read my book on The Matrix Model and had spoken about that when we began.
“What NLP does not have, apart from the Meta-States Model, even to this day, is a model of the self-reflexiveness of the human mind, and that’s the most unique feature of human consciousness. NLP began as a modeling of consciousness, of how our brains operate and of how to effectively run your own brain, and yet NLP from 1975 to 1994 completely ignored the self-reflexivity of our minds. And that’s what the Meta-States Model added to the NLP Communication Model that was so revolutionary.”
I paused for a moment … there was an awkward silence, so I added. “Where in NLP is there anything, one comment, one note, one pattern, one anything about the self-reflexivity of the human mind except in the Meta-States Model? Do you know? Have you ever seen it? Has any NLP trainer ever even mention the fact that there is structure to our meta-cognitive skills and that our meta-cognitive abilities, processes, and competencies is what enables us to not only think, but think-about-our-thinking?”
“That’s a good point that you’re making.” one of them said. And when he did, another looked at him as if he had just betrayed their alliance! That’s when he said in a challenging way, “So it’s all about thinking, conscious thinking, and that’s the biggest problem with Meta-States!”
“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but because a meta-state is first and foremost and ultimately a state, yes it is a mental state, yet it is also an emotional state and a somatic state. And that’s why when you meta-state, you not only bring one thought-to-another-thought, you also bring one feeling, one emotion, one physiological state to another. And that’s why meta-stating has nothing to do with the so-called ‘dissociation,’ and everything to do with creating the more complex and riches emotional states possible to human beings.”
“But I heard that a Meta-State is a dissociated, non-feeling state and that that is why you are so academic and non-emotional.”
“And who did you hear that one from?” Well, he couldn’t say. “Do you mean you cannot or that you don’t want to say?” He didn’t want to. “And why would you not acknowledge the source of that rumor? Why hide what someone has obviously communicated to you and probably to others? They made it public, so why protect them against the truth?”
“So tell me, if you love learning, does that make the state of learning more or less emotional? What about joy of learning, passion about the joy of learning? And what about such meta-states as gloriously fallible, uninsultability, robustly resilient? Do those sound like academic and non-emotional states?”
“And do you think that the ‘higher’ states in Dilts’ list— mission, purpose, identity, spirit are less emotional, do you think they are dissociated states?” Well he didn’t.
“So now you know the difference! And knowing this difference, and realizing that to step back in your self-reflexive awareness can enrich your knowing with appreciation or joy or wonder, how do these delightful and playful states now transforms what you use to know and give you that broader and more comprehensive competency to explain to anyone who asks you about the revolutionary difference in Neuro-Semantics, and I’m wondering, just wondering if you were able to track all of the levels in this statement?”
Ah, now he knows about the “so what” of the higher states! I hope you do too.
Schedule of Neuro-Semantic Trainings — go to www.neurosemantics.com
APG Schedule — Meta-State Trainings occurring around the world.
Dr. Hall’s Schedule — Where Michael is or will be.
Neuro-Semantic Trainers Schedule —where other Neuro-Semantic Trainers and Trainings are occurring.
We humans are a needy bunch! We are born needy and we die needy. As a species, our life is conditional and the conditions of life, both to just survive and get by and to thrive and reach the peak of what’s possible– puts within us drives and impulses urging us to move and to act to fulfill our needs. And what are these needs? What are these inherent drives motivating you and me?
They are the basic and meta-needs and it was Abraham Maslow who mapped out these levels of needs during the 1930s and 1940s. Today you know these levels as those of survival, safety, belonging, self, and “growth” (self-actualization) for being needs. Maslow documented this in his classic Motivation and Personality (1954) which contains his hierarchy of needs that he had first presented in 1943. In 2006 I updated Maslow’s hierarchy with the models of Neuro-Semantics. That’s when I introduced the Matrix-Embedded Pyramid of Needs. My first book on self-actualization (Unleashed, 2007) briefly discussed the human Base Needs as did Self-Actualization Psychology (2008).
Then in 2009, while in South Africa presenting one of the Unleashing Self-Actualizing Leaders workshop, Tim Goodenough asked a rivoting question that stopped me in my tracks:
How do we use the Hierarchy of Needs for facilitating the self-actualization of clients? How can we use that to determine where a person is in terms of their need gratification?
That’s when I asked Tim to work with me on answering those questions; and he did. Tim and I immediately began mapping out a process for using the Hierarchy of Needs for precisely that purpose. After several false starts, we eventually came up with the proto-type in January of 2010 while at the Leadership Summit. And after another one or two refinements, we presented The Self-Actualization Assessment Scale.
With that Scale we can now assess where you live your life—that is, at what level? Do you live your life at the base of the hierarchy, mid-way up the hierarchy, or at the peak? Depending on how well you have learned to meet your needs, you can live a low level life in terms of need gratification or a high level life. You can live your life in a self-actualizing society or in the jungle at the survival or safety levels. Do you know where you live your life and the specific needs that drive you?
You can also live in the Red Zone of any need— in the realm of deficiency and lack — not getting your needs met, not gratifying the drives that clamor within you. Or you can live in the Green Zone of growth and development, adequately gratifying the driving needs so that the next level of development keeps emerging.
The Self-Actualization Assessment Scale now gives you a way to evaluate the level that you are living, where you are, what’s your next level, the extent to which you might not be handling your base or meta-needs effectively, where you might be stuck, and how you can get leverage on yourself to more adequately meet your needs. And because you can assess your level and the quality of your need gratification, you can also now zoom in on the very places in your life where your needs may be keeping you stuck.
Now when I say stuck, this stuckness may have nothing to do with any trauma or need for therapy. You and I can get stuck by simply using an old coping style that no longer works. We can get stuck by accidently giving a need some meaning that does not fully and adequately represent the full truth. We can get stuck by semantically over-loading a need or a coping mechanism. And yes, we can also get stuck by giving distorted understandings about the need and ways to gratify it. That’s what usually involves the discipline that we call therapy.
Needs — you and I are needy in our very nature. We are not self-sufficient, we are not invulnerable, we are not omniscient, omnipotent, and we are not infallible. Reading that line, do you feel like throwing a party or checking in at your local psychiatric clinic? If the latter, what expectations have you set about yourself and human life? What non-sense have you inherited about human nature? How long are you going to keep the insanity of thinking you are God? If the former, then congratulations for having fully joined the human race!
Being needy is our heritage, our nature, and our life. It is also the basis for growth, learning, development and self-actualization. After all, if you were omniscient, omnipotent, and infallible you wouldn’t need anything, couldn’t develop, and would not have more potentials to unleash. Being needy at your essence — needing to become fully alive, fully human, fully open, fully developing, fully curious, fully fascinated, fully enjoying life —drives your vitality and energy for the next-level!
Either way—if you are a trying-to-be-God-frustrated-and-deceived human or if you are a fully-alive-and-seeking-to-be-self-actualizing human —there’s hope, there’s solutions, and there’s a self-actualizing future for you. For the first, there’s a Crucible awaiting ready to help you melt now the non-sense of perfectionism and your God-trip so you can be human. For the latter, there’s the adventure of moving to the next-level.
Less than 4 weeks and we begin NSTT in Colorado!
— If you are certified in NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner
— and if you have accessed your personal genius state in the APG Certification
— Then you are welcomed to Apply and then Register for this Exclusive Training.
Contact me at meta@acsol.net
And experience the most systematic, most competency-based, most rigorous NLP Trainers’ Training in the world.
How real are you? Are you your real self? How much do you live your life to express your authentic self with your highest possibilities and actualizing your best potentials? That’s what the self-actualizing life is all about— creating and living the best version of you so that you can contribute and make a difference. You were made for that. And your potentials clamor within for that. And if you try to shut all of that down, you only doom yourself to being unhappy for the rest of your life.
What this means is that your vitality is related to, and dependent upon, you discovering and being your best self— your real self. The wisdom within this actually goes far, far beyond Maslow to the ancient Greeks who made this one of the points of wisdom: “Know thyself.”
And to others who said, “To thy own self be true.” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
In Self-Actualization Psychology Maslow forged the way beyond the “empty slate” idea to the realization that each of us are born with unique features and possibilities— potentials of our disposition and uniqueness. And just as we are not born human (we become human, we learn how to become human), so we are not born fully ourselves— we become. We don’t arrive on the scene with “instincts.” We don’t come out of the womb and can run and jump. We develop. Hence, Developmental Psychology arose in the twentieth century to map out how we develop physically, socially, sexually, mentally, emotionally, etc. And all of that resulted in Lifespan studies of the developmental stages.
All this relates directly to your sense of vitality in life. If you want to dampen your energies, reduce the quality of your vitality— try to be someone else! Try to conform to a mold that’s established at school, in the media, by your culture, by Hollywood, or by any group. If you succeed, you will fail at being you. You will fail at being authentic and knowing yourself and with that, you won’t know your best gifts and contributions. So you’ll feel like a fraud, you’ll evaluate yourself as up or down depending on local circumstances, you’ll suffer identity crisis, you won’t know what you like, your values, your unique potentials. And in the long run that will undermine your joy of life and basic vitality.
Another way to dampen your energies, reduce your vitality, and diminish yourself as a person— try to be what you are not. Try to be perfect! Ha, that’s a great way to ruin a perfectly good fallible human being! At first you’ll have lots of energy and effort but then you’ll over-prepare and begin to procrastinate and hyper-worry about flaws and fill your mind-body with anxiety and … yes will make life a party!
Or try to be totally positive and never negative! Yes, at first it will seem like a great strategy— you, the positive thinker. But then whenever you have an experience that doesn’t fit that mental box of “positive” you have to distort your experience and so begins the pretend-life. And the more you refuse to welcome (a very un-positive thing) the so-called “negative” emotions and experiences, you begin to defend yourself against reality. And in the long-run that distortion will undermine your ability to accept reality for what it is.
When your life energies seem down, depressed, empty, or diminished, you may be wasting your energies. You could be wasting them fighting some phantom in your mind like the need to be perfect or positive or never fallible, vulnerable, or mortal. The paradox is that your vitality for life comes more alive with more energy when you fully embrace your true nature as a weak, fallible, and mortal person! Look at any young child— weak, fallible, vulnerable and fully alive to the mystery, excitement, and fascination of life!
Vitality emerges from your needs, not in spite of them. So what do you need? What are the requirements of life that activates your full mind-body-emotions? People become experientially empty and out-of-touch with themselves when they don’t know their true needs and try to live in some synthetic life that Wall Street or Hollywood or some Cultural Bureau of Standards impose on their lives. Then they live by external values, by the clock, by brand names, by what others are telling them they should think, feel, and experience.
Because we come without “instinct,” and because we have to learn how to be human— we are so open to information outside of ourselves. This is our glory and our agony. Maslow said that for the human species is it hard to be the species we are (1971: 179). That’s why we have to discover ourselves, to “know ourselves.”
If your tired of being diminished, devitalized, and living like a zombie, then I’d recommend Unleashing Vitality so you can discover who you are in your lower-level needs and drives and find out how to gratify them adequately and accurately for yourself. Achieving that you can then move on to discovering who you are given your higher-level needs— your being needs and, again, how to gratify them so that it brings out your best and fulfills your nature.
I began thinking about vitality after presenting the Unleashing Leadership training last year in South Africa. It began with a question from Tim Goodenough and then that question led Time and myself to create the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale. What question does that scale answer? The question that Tim posed:
“How do you actually use the hierarchy of needs to facilitate your own self-actualization?”
The answer is actually simple enough—Find out how well you are doing on each need, how well are you gratifying each need, how free you are from each need so that you can move up to the next higher level of need, and how much you are free from the lower needs to focus on the higher needs? That is, how much do the lower needs create a foundation for self-actualizing for you?
Your vitality goes back to your needs. And the matter of the fact is that neither you nor I ever get away from our “lower” animal needs. In fact, every single day we wake up and start there again. I did this morning. How about you? Not only that, but every day and every hour of every day we still require the most basic needs of life— air, water, food, sleep, etc. Our physiological and basic neurological needs never go away for good. We revisit them constantly and yet, here’s the mystery and wonder, if you are adequately gratifying them, then the revisits are short, temporary, and not turned into “the meaning of life.”
And if that’s the case, then you have a foundation for living a self-actualizing life. If that’s the case for you, then you are free to move beyond the animal needs to the truly human needs. Maslow called these truly human needs the being needs, the growth needs, and the self-actualization needs. These are the highest needs—the expressive needs to be fully and uniquely you as a human being. These are the needs to understand, to know, to contribute, to make a difference, to create beauty, order, to embrace truth, to create fairness, to give love, etc. And in terms of vitality—these are the needs that enable you to truly unleash the vitality of your life.
Is that your life?
Does your life have that kind of energy, passion, and vitality?
Would you like it to?
You can. You have that potential within you. And that’s what Neuro-Semantics as a discipline for actualizing excellence is designed to facilitate and that’s especially true for the new workshop:Unleashing Vitality.
How? First and foremost, develop your base vitality and identity. That’s the theme of Day 1 of theUnleashing Vitality workshop. We start at the base with our drives—with the needs that drive our energy and motivation. The four levels of these lower needs address the needs that we share with the higher intelligent animals. And when we “truly satisfy” the need (Maslow’s terminology), the drive of the need is gratified and with that, the next level of need emerges into awareness. It is in this way, that we move up the level of our needs and move to live and operate at the higher levels.
So what can mess this up? Lots of things: satisfiers that do not work, that do not actually gratify the need, cognitive distortions in our thinking patterns about our needs, distorted meanings, semantically over-loading the meanings so that we are trying to make a lower need “the meaning of life.” Any of these things can interfere with a basic need and its requirements and cause us to become stuck at an animal level of living, which is not a good thing for a human being!
Achieving a base vitality, Day 2 moves into the Self-Actualization needs— “Seeking your Peak Vitality and Identity.” We now explore the 7 meta-drives or needs, the seven being needs of the human expressive motivation and use the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale for that as well. Human vitality transcends the animal needs and moves you up into those needs that no longer operate from lack, scarcity, or deficiency. You don’t need these in the same way as the lower needs. And when you gratify them, they do not go away. They grow. They expand. They make you richer and fuller and more desirous, more ambitious. Move here and you will begin to experience the vitality of marvelous little peak experiences throughout your days and weeks. These are the rushes of vitality that we experience as joy, happiness, thrill, engagement, commitment, passion, and living for something bigger than yourself.
Where from there? The theme of Day 3 is “Living the Vitality.” Now it’s time to fully experience the organisms of the peaks of the higher live. And Maslow has wonderfully provided some hands-on processes for doing that. By taking his characteristics of self-actualizing people which he identified in his modeling, I have identified several peaking skills and that makes up most of Day 3.
Vitality —the purpose of a fully alive/ fully human person! Well, at least in Self-Actualization Psychology. This is the psychology of human possibilities, of studying and viewing man as his and her best, under conditions of psychological health. You are not made to just get by, to endure, to survive. You were made for much greater possibilities than that! All this also comes back to the charge that Maslow began making from his original studies, “We have sold human nature short; there is a higher nature in man.”
Maslow also added to that several other ideas: That higher nature that’s within you and within me is ever-present and always calling out to us— if we can quiet ourselves and learn to listen to our inner voice. That higher nature is also asking you to become your Real Self. And that’s part of theUnleashing Vitality workshop. I’ll describe that in the next Meta Reflection.
How is your vitality level?
If you were to gauge your everyday vitality— your energy, passion, commitment, and excitement— where would you put it (0 to 10)?
Do you experience your vitality as a resource or as an objective?
The other day I got into a conversation with a guy at Starbuck’s Coffee Shop when I was back in Colorado. He saw me with layers of papers stretched out on a table and was curious what I was working on. So he did something outrageous, he asked me.
I told him I was working on a new Self-Actualization workshop, Unleashing Vitality. Well, if he was curious before, that really jacked up his curiosity. Maybe he was suffering from de-vitalization, de-motivated, or just finding life empty and dull, whatever it was, his tone of voice shifted, as did the sparkle in his eyes and his engagement as he sat down at my table and inquired how does the unleashing of vitality works.
“Well, it’s begins with your energies— the energy that gets you out of bed in the morning… your mental energies by which you give such rich and robust meaning to what you are doing that you can’t wait to get to it … which you feel in your emotions — moving and motivating your behavioral and linguistic responses.”
At that he said that was his problem; he didn’t have any energy left. Not like he used to. So what could he do? That’s what he wanted to know.
“Ah, so something is blocking or dampening your energies! Do you know how you are throwing cold water on your inner energies?”
And so began a great conversation— one of those conversations that I long to have— anywhere, with anyone— if they open up, have a willingness to explore. And he did. I ended up sharing a lot aboutSelf-Actualization Psychology and essentially gave him a very short version of the new workshop as well as some practical how-to steps about reclaiming his natural vitality.
So if you ask me, “Why in the world another Self-Actualization Workshop? After all, you already have three, why yet another one?” Well, there’s several reasons. One reason is that some people are not ready for all of the unleashing processes which is what we do in Unleashing Potentials (Workshop I). In that “Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop” we take people through 3-part drama. It is the drama of self-actualizing in 3-acts: the Construct, the Crucible, and the Zone (similar to what you find in the book, Unleashed!). The whole design is to facilitate the unleashing of one thing— just one— because if you can, in 3 days, unleash one potential, then you will know how and have the experience for unleashing many more things.
But everybody isn’t ready for that. And some don’t have the energy to do that or the persistence, patience, or commitment. They don’t have the inner vitality to go through the unleashing processes. So we need to go back to basics and especially the basics of human functioning. So in Workshop II, instead of using the Self-Actualization Quadrants, we use the Matrix-Embedded-Pyramid-turned-Volcano model of Neuro-Semantics. This is this model that transforms the static pyramid and hierarchy of the levels of needs into a dynamic model where your meaning-making encounters your neurological needs all the way up the levels. The Matrix-Embedded-Volcano explains and exposes your needs to your style of meeting your needs so you can evaluate if you are successful or not. Andvitality is the telling indicator.
If you are adequately, accurately, and effectively meeting your true human needs and wants, you experience a rush of vitality. If you are not, then you will be exhausting your energy, wasting your time and effort, feeling unfulfilled and perhaps feeling frustrated and futile about trying to figure out how to get what you truly want or need. And to create some powerful measurements, in Workshop IIUnleashing Vitality we use the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale that Tim Goodenough and I designed for getting a reading on how you are doing with gratifying your lower needs and higher needs.
The levels of needs—wants (the pushes and pulls of human energy and motivation) have requirements. There are certain conditions to adequately satisfying them. And you can fulfill them accurately and adequately or you can not. Do it and you have vitality, fail to do it, and you don’t. That’s why the rush of vitality provides both the reward for success and the indicator of where you are living your life.
Where are you living your life? Are you living at the survival level, the safety and security level, the love and affection (social, belonging, connecting) level, the ego-level of self-value and respect level? If you are, that’s fine. Do you know how to gratify that level and move on up? Or are you somehow stuck at that level? Do you need to understand and find better ways to meet your needs? InUnleashing Vitality we first check to determine your understanding and gratifying of your needs. Do that right, and you’ll unleash all kinds of physical and emotional energy— vitality for living.
Are you living at the being-level of the self-actualization needs and wants? That’s the goal of the human experience and what this new Unleashing Vitality workshop is designed to enable you to achieve. The goal is to understand your neurological drives and how they interface with your psychological drives of meaning-making and how to use both for experiencing an energetic lifestyle. Then comes the rush of vitality and you’ll experience it as peak experiences, magical moments, pure joy, and falling in love with life itself.
Now would that be worthwhile to you? If so, check it out. I will run the proto-type in Pretoria South Africa in Sept. and the second later in Imola Italy.
I had the privilege last weekend to present the Wealth Creation workshop again, this time in Montreal Canada. This is one of my favor trainings because I have a particular passion and commitment— I want NLP people to become financially independent! Actually, I want them rich! Why in the world would I want such a thing? So that more of them operate from abundance instead of scarcity. And so that more of them devote themselves to making more and more available the richness in the NLP model. And I want the same for Neuro-Semanticists world wide— to be rich enough to stop worrying about money and rich enough to richly contribute and make a difference.
I want that because I know what it is like to live from paycheck to paycheck and to constantly worry if you have enough to cover the expenses for the month. I used to live that way. That was my story for many, many years. Then I got over my semantic distorted non-sense about money, wrote my first 10-year wealth creation plan and began implementing it. Seven years later I reached my first goal— to be financially independent and make decisions based on what I want to do rather than what my financial condition required.
Now mention the word wealth and most people assume you are talking about money. Silly people! Wealth is about so much more than just finances. Wealth is much wealthier than that! Wealth, in its fullness, is about your quality of life, mind, and experience. It is about you living a life of abundance and enrichment inside and out. And paradoxically, wealth involves things that money can’t buy—love, vitality, health, relationships, peace of mind, compassion, meaning, etc. As an inside-out phenomenon, wealth has four key dimensions: being – doing – having – and giving.
Now for years I’ve been meaning to put the secrets and the process of how to create inside-out wealth in book form. And now I have. Now there’s a book. And the title? Inside-Out Wealth. So now, for the first time ever, Inside-Out Wealth is available in book form. What has been presented at the workshop in more than a dozen countries is now something you can get. And in this book you will find all the secrets you will need for creating a solid financial foundation for yourself.
In Inside-Out Wealth you will discover secrets of wealth creation—personal, behavioral, interpersonal, and financial secrets for becoming truly rich in every area of life—in your mind, emotions, relationships, career, finances, creativity, etc. Discover how to become financially stable, financially independent, and then financially free. Discover how to tap into the heart of wealth so that your inner wealth becomes an ever-flowing spring for external wealth. I also designed the book so that if you want some personalized Wealth Coaching, you can receive at the end of each chapter and begin creating and actualizing your own customized Wealth Creation Plan. I want you rich—but do you want you rich? Do you want it enough to do something about it?
To your Inside-Out Wealth!
The Problem
I recently asked a number of NLP trainers in Hong Kong, Egypt, Tokyo, Malaysia, and Australia, “What is the biggest challenge that you face in your NLP practice and business?” And the answer was not only surprisingly similar, but it highlights a common theme that seems to be echoed around the world by so many people who care about the future of this field, “The low quality of NLP training and practice.”
I then ask about the evidence. “What is the evidence that there is a low problem of low quality NLP knowledge and skill?” And that brought a wide range of problems. Most frequently the trainers spoke about people being certified as practitioners who never study the Meta-Model as a communication model (the first model in this field), who experience no training in strategies or modeling (the very heart of NLP), and who experience various new age practices that may be a lot of fun, but which has nothing to do with NLP and in fact, confuse them about what NLP really is.
My discussions with trainers and leaders also indicate that the low quality of NLP shows up in when people learn NLP from a correspondence course or in distance learning and have no follow up of intense personal supervision that assesses whether the person has any actual competency with such basic skills as state elicitation, anchoring, calibrating, pacing, precision questioning, strategy elicitation, meta-program detection, etc. This seems to be a growing problem in this field that is inherent experiential in nature.
The low quality of NLP also shows up in other ways. It shows up in the lack of congruency in the trainers who operate from scarcity and competition rather than abundance and cooperation, who put anyone in the field down who isn’t part of their camp, who presents themselves as the only ones doing “real” NLP, and who don’t live NLP in an authentic way. It shows up in those who present NLP and who are out-of-touch with the new developments during the past fifteen years, and who fail to give credit to sources. In this and many other ways, the quality of NLP training seems to be suffering everywhere in the world.
Without an commonly recognized international body governing the field and so without an international set of standards, NLP has been fragmenting over the past three decades and seems to be increasing in the fragmentation rather than decreasing.
The Solution
So what are we to do? What can we who care about the quality of NLP in NLP practitioners, trainers, and leaders do?
First and foremost, we ourselves can practice and demonstrate higher quality NLP in our trainings and in our lives.
This is first and most critical. The best way to make all of the low quality NLP redundant is by contrasting it to NLP of high quality. And what does that mean? It means, beyond all the talk and hype, actually knowing the models and patterns and being skilled enough to effectively use them. Two things are required for quality NLP: a knowledge of the field that is both broad and thorough and a competency to be able to carry out the skills.
For the knowledge part, this means that trainers and leaders ought to be continually learning, reading, researching, and taking additional training. It should strike us as a complete contradiction of terms that a NLP trainer is not still learning and developing. And that means keeping current with the field, attending Conferences, reading journals, staying up with the books published in this field. To not do so implies a know-it-all arrogance that contradicts the true spirit of NLP.
In terms of the knowledge of thefield, trainers should know where NLP came from. They should know that it emerged in the early 1970s from two movements, the Cognitive Psychology movement and the Human Potential movement. The immediate models of NLP came from George Miller and his associates as they launched the Cognitive Psychology movement, dated 1956. This includes Noam Chomsky, Karl Pribram, etc. Out of this came the language model of NLP, the Meta-MOdel as a version of Transformational Grammar, thanks to John Grinder. Out of this developed the Strategy model from Miller’s TOTE model.
It also developed from the Human Potential movement (HPM) of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers— as Bateson, Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir worked together at Esalen in the 1960s as key pioneers of the HPM. They took their revolutionary ideas from Maslow and Rogers — the very ideas that today we call “the NLP Presuppositions.”1 To not know our history and roots is to not know what we are about and to confuse the true heart and focus of NLP. If we do not know our history, we are doomed to repeat its worst mistakes.
The paradigm shift that Maslow made from “the dark side of human nature” that is sick, unhealthy, distorted, and wounded to the “bright side of human nature” —the side that is healthy, whole, and seeking its highest and best— that paradigm shift lies at the very heart of the HPM and hence NLP. The “theory” of NLP that Bandler and Grinder kept discounting and pooh-poohing is actually the theoretical foundations of both Cognitive Psychology and Self-Actualization Psychology. That’s the uniqueness of NLP.
As trainers and practitioners of NLP develop a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of what we have in our hands, the next task is learning to develop the skills that fall out from these models. Knowing without doing is a form of incompetence. Knowing can be deceptive. It can deceive a person into assuming skills he or she does not have. The test, of course, is reality. Can you actually do what you know to do? In this, we have to close the knowing-doing gap with true competence and skill. And today research has abundantly demonstrated that true competency is a ten-year process.2
Many so-called NLP Trainers and practitioners hate this. They want everything to be easy and quick. But everything is not easy and quick. With skills that have been developed to the level of expertise, this requires discipline and what Ericsson Anders’ calls “deliberate practice.”
Second, to raise the quality of NLP around the world we need to collaboratively practice what we are preaching.
If we believe in abundance, we have to stop practicing scarcity. If we believe in cooperation, we have to stop practicing competition. If we believe in positive intentions behind actions, we have to stop cutting others down and criticizing them. These are but a few of the “thought viruses” among us that we have to address. And these viruses have created within NLP so much incongruency that no wonder people question our motives and our competence.
As long as making money is the first and biggest, and sometimes only, motive for trainers and leaders— NLP will be seen as manipulative. We have to raise our motives and intentions above merely making money. And we have to get our ego out of the way in terms pride. There’s too many striving to create a guru-kingdom or cult in NLP, building followers after them, instead of freeing people to discover and actualize their highest potentials.
As a child of the Human Potential Movement, NLP is part of “humanistic psychology” and as such we should proudly recognize this as our heritage —raising the awareness and skills of people everywhere so that they can reach their highest values and visions and actualize their best skills. Unless we do this we will not be able to get away from the current problems of competition and conflict.
Third, the quality of NLP practice and experience requires trainings that can build and measure true competence.
A problem that seems inherent in NLP is the idea of speed. It’s the idea that we can do things quickly. And while this is true for some things, it is not true for everything. It is true of the Phobia Cure pattern that cut the time for healing a phobic response from six months to ten minutes. But there’s a problem. The problem is that every “problem” is not like the stimulus-response structure of a phobia. In fact, the majority of problems are not. And because they are not, there won’t be “ten minute cures.”
Many NLP trainers and practitioners have jumped to the conclusion that because we have found the structure of one experience that allows us to radically shorten the time, everything in human nature is like this. This is the fallacious thinking that creates this delusion. Simple states and experiences that are stimulus–response in structure have be done quickly, but not so the complex states and experiences. There will never be a “Ten Minute Health Cure,” “Ten Minute Get-Rich-Quick Pattern,” “Ten Minutes to Leadership Competency.” Complex states and experience require time, learning, practice, deliberate focus over the long-term.
The Bottom Line
Can we raise the quality of NLP around the world? I believe we can and that we must! Yet it will not happen quickly or easily. It will take the concerted effort of a critical mass of NLP practitioners to turn the tide and make the negative P.R. about NLP redundant. Many are already working to do this —we need many, many more to catch this vision and join in the effort. Together we can do so much more than apart or alone.
** Announcements
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
NEURO-SEMANTIC CONFERENCE
Beginning in 2011 we plan to launch an annual International Neuro-Semantic Conference and we will begin from Grand Junction Colorado where Dr. Hall conducted his original NLP Training Center and discovered the Meta-States Model.
Dates: July 1-3, 2011 — Country Inn Conference Center
Theme: Actualizing Excellence
Content: 15 workshops — two tracks: Personal Excellence — Business Excellence
The Schedule of events and workshops will be sent out in the 4 to 6 weeks as we develop that. Immediately following the Conference will be a Module III training of Meta-Coaching for the ACMC credentials (July 6-13, 2011). Mark in your calendar for 2011 and then … Come and enjoy.
I landed in Mexico City recently and after a day of indepth Coach training for benchmarking with our Team Leaders — we spent that evening launching the first two Meta-Coach books in Spanish. This occurred on April 14th at the International Conference Center in a seminar room and all of this was created by Maru Eugenia Martinez.
So that evening we launched Coaching Change and Winning the Inner Game. Neuro-SemanticistsDavid Murphy was the MC (master of ceremonies) at the event, Maru Eugenia Martinez introduced the first Meta-Coaching book, and Omar Salom spoke about the Frame Games book. I then had a chance to tell the “true” hidden story behind all of this!
It was eleven years ago that I made my first presentation of Neuro-Semantics in Mexico. That’s when I first presented the Meta-States Model in the APG (Accessing Personal Genius) training at Monterrey Mexico with Maria Luisa Rodriguez. And at that time I began hearing voices from many, many people, “Are there any of your books in Spanish?” “We would like to have this material in Spanish.” And that continued for more than a decade with the voices getting louder and more insistent as each year passed.
When I visited Chiapas Mexico where David Murphy is a licensed Neuro-Semantic Trainer (and now a Meta-Coach Trainer), the translator for me there, Bárbara Sierra, was so captivated by the Neuro-Semantic approach that she took it upon herself to begin translating Coaching Change in Spanish. And so for a year or two, we had the manuscript translated, but no publisher. That’s when Maru entered the scene. As a self-confessed “doer,” Maru got busy knocking on doors, making calls, and using her persuasion skills to find a publisher. Finally she found Trillas and more than a year ago, with Maru’s tutelage, I made an agreement with Trillas to publish it. And so using Barbara’s basic text, the translation was updated and finally last week published.
Now for a doer, seeing that it was taking a year to publish a manuscript, she considered that ridiculous especially given that the manuscript was already translated. So Maru, having watched the process and consulted with me about publishing, took it on herself to have Winning the Inner Gametranslated and published — which she achieved in 4 months—one-third of the time that it took for a professional publishing company! And as an aside, this is the spirit of Neuro-Semantics, the spirit that makes things happens! [Think mind-to-muscle, think actualizing best performances!] Maru hired Flor Montero, who has been our translator at the Meta-Coach Trainings for four years, do the translation.
So following the Neuro-Semantic premise, We can do so much more together than alone or apart, it took a community to make this happen. And what has begun will now allow Meta-Coaching in Latin America and Spain to begin to grow exponentially as more and more people will have access to the foundational books. And in the meantime, a publishing company in Madrid Spain has translatedUser’s Manual of the Brain, Volume I (which is the basic NLP Practitioner course) into Spanish!
Here’s a great big Meta-High Five to Omar, David, Barbara, and especially Maru for their vision, their passion, and their practical commitment to Neuro-Semantics in Mexico and Latin America! Well done!
Want a copy?? Great — here is some contact information to reach Maru:
“Why all the focus on self-actualization?” That was the question that a caller asked me last week.
“I see that the focus of Neuro-Semantics is now almost entirely about self-actualization. And yes, I have read the articles on the ‘Secret History of NLP’ going back to Maslow and the Human Potential movement, but I still don’t understand why you are making it all about self-actualization. Can you tell me why?”
I loved that question and yes, I was pleased to provide an answer. The reason is two-fold, first our aim is to enable and facilitate people becoming the best people they can become. It’s not only about empowering people so that they can “run their own brains” and manage their own states (the stated values and outcomes of basic NLP), it is more. Much more. It is about people learning to how get the very best from themselves in this adventure called life. It is about people learning how to be true to themselves— by becoming the best version of them. And when that happens— people become truly and joyfully happy, congruent, and authentic and that makes them healthier and wealthier. What a vision!
But there’s more. As people become better, as we facilitate people developing so they become better people, we make the world itself better. This was the very heart of Abraham Maslow’s original passion that explains why he devoted his entire life developing the foundations for Self-Actualization Psychology. About the cold war of the 1960s, 1970s, etc., he wrote:
“That system will prevail which will … turn out a better kind of person, more brotherly, more peaceable, less greedy, more lovable, more respect-worthy.” (1971: 92)
And writing about the frustration and anger that arises when people don’t have their basic survival and safety needs met, the frustration and anger that often turns into destructive aggression and violence, Maslow argued that what we need for our world to change is the ability to create better people from our families, schools, churches, and cultures.
“Destructiveness may occur as one of the concomitant reactions to basic threat. Any threat of thwarting of the basic needs, any threat to the defensive or coping system, any threat to the general way of life is likely to be reacted to by anxiety-hostility…” (1954: 126)
To put it as succinctly as I can: To have a better world, we have to have better people. And how do we get better people? How can we cultivate, world-wide, more mature, peaceful, democratic, respectful, loving, and self-actualizing people? What can we do to eliminate people from growing up to be greedy, hateful, ruthlessly competitive, prejudiced, narrow-minded, unreasoning, rigid, etc.?
The answer goes to all of the industries that are devoted to developing individual persons to be the best they can be—to parents, schools, therapists, trainers, consultants, coaches, etc. Yet that is not enough. The answer also goes to everybody who contributes and plays a role in developing and managing our systems—political systems, educational systems, religious and spiritual systems, economic systems, etc. In fact, all of the work done at the individual level can come to naught and negated by the systems that we create, endure, tolerate, and fail to transform.
Sometimes the problem is the system. In fact, the most persistent and complex problems we fact as a race is more often than not at the system level. And the problem with the systems are the frames that the system presents directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. And today some of the sickest systems that subtly, implicitly, and covertly are “setting the frames” for people. These include the media of television, radio, and newspapers that focus so dominantly on the sensational pathological (what’s going wrong, what’s destructive, threatening, etc.), the Hollywood culture of sex and violence, betrayal, disloyalty, the sensational, the economic culture of greed, the corporate culture of short-term bottom lines, materialist goals, secrecy, the political systems of corruption, power over people, bureaucracy, etc.
In a word we can distinguish the systems that are conducive of self-actualization and those that are antagonistic and contrary to people becoming their highest and best. Merely having a psychology of self-actualization for the individual (which we have) is not enough. We have to develop self-actualizing psychology (sociology) for systems— self-actualizing families, leaders and managers, companies, communities, countries, politicians, media, movie writers and directors, etc.
To change the world we need to develop new ways of relating with each other at both the personal level and at the community, group, corporate, and national levels. Just as we need synergy at the individual and personal level to actualize our highest meanings with our best performances (The Self-Actualizing Quadrants model), we also need to create synergistic systems for our families, schools, communities, companies, and nations.
And to do that, we need trainers, consultants, and coaches who share this vision so that we —as a community—do that with ourselves (as an examplar model) and who can translate this in facilitating leaders at all of these systemic levels.
“Human society as a whole can improve. It can be improved, and it does improve. … Human society is improvable … and the task is up to us, and we can learn how to accomplish this effectively.” (1996: 97)
And that’s one of the key reasons for NSTT— to develop a community of world-class trainers and consultants who will join hands with us to change the world. Are you up to be a world-changer with us?
Only 8 ½ weeks to NSTT — Trainers’ Training in Colorado
June 19—July 3, 2010 Grand Junction Colorado
Write for Brochure and Application forms
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #16
April 12, 2010
THE ULTIMATE META-STATE TRANCE
If there is any hypnotic trance state that is the ultimate one for a Neuro-Semanticist, it is the genius state. But no, the use of the word genius does not mean it is a hypnotic state for increasing your I.Q., that’s not the purpose of this particular trance. Instead this is the induction into a state of being all there. It is a state of absolute focus on one thing. Normally, when you experience it, you are in a powerful state of concentration and absorption. And when you are there people may think that you have really tranced out or they may think that you really have fabulous powers of focus and will power. The genius state is a state wherein you are in “flow” and even better, you can turn the flow state on and off at will.
Now while I never present the genius state as a hypnotic process and state, it absolutely is. When you experience this naturally occurring state (and everybody does at some time), it seems to happen to you, to come upon you, and when you look back on it, you typically remember it as a wonderful experience.
What induces it? Usually something that’s very important to you, something that you actively engage with and when you do, you get lost in it. You become thrilled and absorbed in it. It could be reading a book, it could be walking in a Redwood forest, it could be gardening, it could be playing catch with your dogs, writing, watching a great movie, having a fantastic conversation with a friend, making love, climbing a rock wall, playing a video game, and on and on the list goes.
The key is absorption in something that you care about, an absorption that pulls you into it so much so that you can get lost in it. Then, in that moment when you are in that “flow” state, you are not multi-tracking. You have lost all of your meta-mind awarenesses about all of the other things you need to do and track and you have become of one mind about the absorption. Now in that moment, you won’t realize this! If you were aware of it, you would be double-tracking. But you’re not.
It is only later when you look back on the experience that you realize that you during that time you were all there— fully and completely. And during that time you realize that many of the central factors of your consciousness disappeared. Time disappeared and you were lost in the now, this moment, and your awareness of time just vanished. So did the world and others and even your self vanished. These facets of the matrix of your mind were still there, but you lost consciousness of them. You became self-forgetful, time forgetful, world forgetful. All you were aware of was the subject of whatever the focus was about.
Athletes experience this as when a gymnast disappears the audience and they are there alone with the high bars or the floor. A baseball pitcher similarly disappears a whole stadium. In their focus-flow-genius state all that is there is the ball and the batter. When an athlete goes into this special state, they typically call it being in the zone. And a couple years ago Tim Goodenough and Mike Cooper, two Meta-Coaches modeled out 13 distinctions from top South African athletes (Olympiads and national champions) in their Neuro-Semantic book, In the Zone.
In the field of NLP the first work on the prerequisites of the “personal genius state” was developed by John Grinder and Judith DeLozer (1983- 1987). The processes that they came up with were interesting, but quite convoluted and therefore ineffective. They were fooling around with meta-levels as they were trying to figure out how to utilize the guidance of Gregory Bateson and his principles of the higher levels. And they even wrote that they knew the secret would tie in somehow with managing the meta-levels. They got thta from Bateson, they just didn’t know how to apply it. That came later after I created the Meta-States model (1994). One of my very first applications of Meta-States was to the genius state prerequisites and that brought about the Accessing Your Personal Genius state or induction (and hence the APG training).
What Meta-States was able to do as a process, and as the ultimate hypnotic state, was to set the required meta-levels (as meta-states or frames) over the primary state so that you can let go of the meta-awarenesses and be fully present in the primary state. Doing this commissions the higher meta-states to operate as an out-side of conscious awareness structure. It’s paradoxical, as is many hypnotic states. To release the multi-tracking kind of consciousness, you learn how to embrace your meta-level states and use them so that you are freed for letting them go— from your immediate awareness.
Then you can be all there— with all of your resources available for the flow or in-the-zone state. Then when you read, you fully comprehend because you are there (and not elsewhere!). Then when you write, you don’t suffer the dreaded “writer’s block.” Then when you are there with a client or loved one, you are there and they can feel your full presence. And now you know why we use the APG training to create your genius coaching state, genius training state, genius writing state, wealth creation state, etc. It is the ultimate Neuro-Semantic state for operating from your highest and best. So that makes it a self-actualizing state. And now you know why APG — Accessing Personal Genius— is the flagship training of Neuro-Semantics.
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #15
April 5, 2010
META-STATE TRANCES
While “hypnosis” is not real (Meta Reflection #14), not real externally, not an objective thing, it is subjectively compelling and can be transformative. Well, it can also be destructive and neurotizing. It all depends on what suggestions you are giving yourself in the process. In other words, the content of what you are programming into yourself with your images, sounds, words, language, ideas, frames, and meanings determines the quality (or lack thereof) of the state you are inducing.
That’s what “hypnosis” is—an induction of state and you are always inducing yourself into states. And every time you alter your state and go into an inward focus of attention on something that you are remembering or imagining that’s not currently present— you are in a hypnotic state. There’s really nothing mysterious about it, it is how “thinking” works. You can be present listening to someone or walking down the street or driving on a highway or working out in the gym, but on the inside you are not there. You are somewhere else!
Realizing and recognizing that such state inductions is a trance, de-mystifies hypnosis a bit. It also highlights the fact that you, and only you, can hypnotize you. That’s why it is said in the literature on hypnosis that ultimately all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. You are doing it to yourself. Yes, someone may be leading the process, but it only works if you allow it to, if you follow along and use the words to go somewhere in your mind. You can always resist.
So all of the myths about a hypnotist “controlling” you and making you do things you don’t want to do is just that—myths. It is not hypnosis that makes some flap their wings and make sounds like a chicken. They are doing that and they are choosing to do that. Yes, this myth makes for fascinating Hollywood movies for those who don’t know better: a hypnotist hypnotizes someone to murder someone and then gives a post-hypnotic suggestion that they won’t remember it! But it does not work that way. Milton Erickson once said that if hypnosis had that kind of power, “there would be a whole lot of people healthier and more sane.”
Do we use hypnosis in Neuro-Semantics? Do we induce states so that people transition (trance) from the state that they are in and access new and more resourceful states? Yes, of course. In fact, every pattern is actually a hypnotic pattern. That’s because every “pattern” invites a person to go up, up and away, into the higher realms of the mind, to set new higher frames that will create more positive and resourceful states.
When we do this, we participate in accessing higher states of mind that we find enjoyable and effective. We move upward to our frames of reference. Now in writing this, I’m using the “up” metaphor for trance rather than the “down” metaphor. Both also are metaphors and so not real! It’s just a way of talking about things. The “down” metaphor is more traditional and in NLP history, it came from Transformational Grammar (TG) that talked about surface sentences and the “deep” structure.
Using the Meta-States Model, in Neuro-Semantics we turn the metaphor upside down. We talk about going inside and then up to your reference system as your frames of references by which you create the meanings that you give to something. These higher frames establish the structure for how you are thinking about something. And whenever you set a frame, you are programming into your mind a meaning that contains suggestions and implications and these will induce you into a state.
What do you think about criticism? Wherever you go in your mind as you answer that question, you are inducing yourself into a hypnotic state. Do you know that? That’s because “criticism” is not real. It does not exist in the real world. What you call “criticism” is a construct that you have created. If it means to you that someone is saying something that disagrees with you or your ideas, or saying something that attacks your behaviors, your person, your reputation, etc., then you probably have some movie playing in your mind about someone saying words in a certain way that you call “criticism.” If I could peak into the movie of your mind, what would I see playing? What do you see? Or hear? Or sense? What hypnotic induction have you used on yourself?
Now given that movie, how much fun do you have playing that movie? Not much? How much fun would you like to have? And how could you create that fun, that humor, that silliness? Are you skilled at exaggerating your pictures? At editing the sounds so that you can alter the way the “criticism” is spoken so that sounds really different? What if it was sung by someone who can’t carry a tune? What if it was spoken with a sexy voice? Or a lisp? By Yoda? Donald Duck? Now did you recognize those questions as a hypnotic induction? They were!
If you went along and playfully entertained fun representations, then you radically altered the suggestions and implications you have about criticism, didn’t you? Suppose you access a state of un-insultability and then entertain those representations and try really hard, as hard as you can try, to feel the hurt of the criticism. What happens then? What if you step into a state of unconditional love and appreciation for people, knowing that there’s a little insecure child inside the person criticizing.
Ah, another paragraph is full of hypnotic language inviting you into more resourceful trances! Did you notice? I invited you to go up to new frames linguistically. And it was so easy. I just used some modifiers (adverbs and adjectives).
I qualified your “representations” by the word “entertaining” and that word by “playfully” — playfully entertained fun representations of criticism.
I invited you to access un-insultability and hard trying to feel the hurt.
I invited you to step into unconditional love, knowing there’s a little child …
None of these are externally real; but if you want them to be subjectively compelling to your way of being in the world and processing criticism, then you can go into those higher states about your primary experience. And if you do, then they set up various suggestions and implications as post-hypnotic suggestions that will generate a more resourceful response. All of this “hypnotic” language and framing is just another way to talk about self-development.
To your expertise with great hypnotic self-actualization!
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #14
March 24, 2010
WORLD-CLASS TRAINERS
AND PRESENTERS
Want to be a Part of it?
Once upon a time many, many years ago, Richard Bandler invited me to attend his training of trainers program and to write the “notes” on that program. So I did. And the title of the book that resulted is, Becoming More Ferocious as a Trainer (1990). And given Mr. B’s focus and style, being ferocious makes perfect sense(!). Years passed and so did the ninety-million-dollar lawsuit against the field of NLP and the beginning of Neuro-Semantics. A few more years and suddenly there were enough Neuro-Semanticists around the world clamoring for their own Training of Trainers program. And that’s where this story begins.
Now I had been an NLP Trainer for many years, I had trained dozens of both NLP Practitioner Trainings, and Master Pracs. and hundreds of APG courses. I had also been around the community observing the best and brightest of NLP Trainers. Further, I had read the books available in this field, but even with all that, I knew that we really didn’t have any “World-Class Trainers” in this field. Sure we have one world-class Entertainer, who even to this day still brings more people into NLP than anyone else, Anthony Robbins. But “World-Class Trainers?” I don’t think so.
So, I began looking outside this field, observing at Conferences and workshops, reading, and interviewing. And from that beginning I began putting together Neuro-Semantic Trainers Training for NLP and Neuro-Semantic Trainers (NSTT). In the first trainings, I added what no other NLP Trainers’ Training had—the Meta-States model and hence “the Genius Trainer State,” Un-insultability, Presence of Mind under Pressure, Releasing of Judgment, etc. Yet even with that, I still knew that was not enough. Something else was needed if we were to develop highly effective trainers and from them would arise some truly world-class trainers.
I knew it wasn’t enough because in the field of Training and Development, there was no real lack of knowing the key competencies for an effective trainer. The lack wasn’t in identifying the skill-set of an effective public speaker, presenter, or trainer. The lack was in how to measure the skills and how to use the measurements to facilitate the development of the competencies. And because this was the same problem we faced when we began Meta-Coaching, it shouldn’t be any surprise that we solved the problem of both by the Benchmarking Model.
What is the skill-set of an Effective Trainer, Presenter, and Public Speaker?
- Rapport with the group (group rapport).
- Engagement of the group participants’ mind and heart (Engagement).
- Clarity, variation, and emphasis in one’s voice (effective use of voice).
- Systematic use of non-verbal expressions, movements, gestures (spatial anchoring).
- The experiential presentation of the content (state induction).
- The framing of the content and learning processes (framing).
- The formatting of the presentation in different learning styles (4-matting).
While there are more, these are the basic seven for effectiveness (we have others for Mastery). We then identified behavioral expressions of these from the level of no-competency to little competence, some, average amount, lots, great amount, fantastic amount. Benchmarking the language, expressions, behaviors, and indicators of these core presentation skills allows us today to provide a feedback mirror to trainers so that they know precisely how they are doing, where they are in their skill development, and where next.
That’s the key. When you know where you are, you also know the next step for taking your skills to a higher level of excellence. That’s the power of benchmarking. It provides a way to shape behavior and provide an experiential basis for development.
- Can you present and train with elegance, power, and charisma?
- Do you have the inner knowing and confidence that your skills are effective? Would you like to?
- Would you like to be able to effectively influence the minds and hearts of people in a transformative way when you stand up?
NSTT begins with 5 days of these Platform Skills followed up by 3 more days of Training Skills. Then there are 3 days of The Psychology of APG followed by 3 more days of Business Skills. And there’s more.
Beginning in 2004 I have been looking for the most skilled, most successful, and most effective trainers among Neuro-Semanticists that I could find. We even began the Master Trainer track to groom and develop higher skilled trainers. Why? I think it obvious. If you want to learn the highest Presentation and Training skills — you need to train with people who can actually demonstrate those skills. This year our first Master Trainer, Colin Cox along with Omar Salom will be co-training NSTT with me. We will also have several other highly effective Trainers at the training.
Now a warning. This is not for the faint of heart! You will be presenting everyday, and everyday you will be benchmarked on the skills that you demonstrate. And with every presentation, you will receive immediate sensory-based feedback on how you used your voice, gestures, movements, how you engaged the group, got or did not get rapport, and on the content you present! I only recommend this for those who have a robust sense of self, a commitment to self-development, and a passion to stretch to the highest limits of what’s possible for you.
Are you that kind of person? If so, the NSTT may be the training for you. Mere attendance will not qualify you for certification; you have to develop and demonstrate competency! And if you don’t make it in the two-weeks, you will be supported afterwards until you develop the required competency. That’s our commitment to you. If you are already a NLP trainer, we have a special process for you as we recognize your previous trainings.
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #13
March 22, 2010
WHY DO I TEASE
THE FOUNDERS SO MUCH?
Yes, I tease them. Yes, I provoke them. And yes, I do it intentionally. After the last post on Grinder, several asked about why I do this, what are my motives, what I’m seeking to do in it, whether it is divisive, and of course, all of that deserves an answer. So here goes.
Given that the field of NLP is not only without any kind of international standards, association, or journals, it is also a field that (in spite of the worldwide net) hardly has any forum for the leaders of NLP to communication. Imagine that! A field of communication that doesn’t communicate! Well, not directly at least. There is, of course, the grapevine, gossip, notes in footnotes in books, and of course, websites.
So especially when a new book appears and it presents information about one of the “camps” in this field, as a way to stay current in the field, I read it. I want to know what’s going on, what new developments are emerging, and how others are interpreting or re-interpreting the field of NLP. And when I see ideas and concepts that strike me as against the very spirit of NLP (as I did in the book I reviewed last week, against rapport for example), I figure that’s something to write about.
The point here is that I’m focusing on ideas, concepts, and patterns, not personalities. Oh, yes, the ideas come through persons, and the personalities of those persons, but my critique is never about or against the person. It is always about what the person is saying in arguing for or against some position. It is always feedback about what the person has said or possibly done, and never against the person. Check it out, that’s why in last week’s post I quoted from the book, I quoted the facts of what the person’s actually said. I do that for a specific reason. I want to quote accurately and precisely and to fairly represent what the person is saying.
Now one thing in this field, as with almost every self-development field, people in leadership roles so often take themselves so seriously that they present themselves as gurus. That is, as unquestionable authorities, as somehow having the divine right to not be held accountable. And, of course, that’s the stuff of high comedy— stuff that I can hardly resist jumping into and exploiting with playful humor. Hence the teasing! After all, when human beings think and act as if they are infallible—that’s when they are the most silly and the most ridiculous. And I think that’s when it’s time to take the mickey out of them.
Now true enough, most people know better than to claim infallibility directly. So they act that way by being closed to feedback. And, of course, that also provides wonderful moments of high comedy. Now I am of the opinion that there just hasn’t been enough people breaking out in rackus laughter when the gurus imply such things. But then again, some are masters of ceremony. They set things up so as to create a hushed environment so that when they speak, you’d think it was a funeral, or a service in a church, temple, or mosque, or perhaps the moment with a high official of state is about to speak. And so whatever they say is then enshroud in somehow considered something to stand in awe of, to nod with a knowingness that this is sacred ground, the secret of life is about to be revealed.
Now they can say something like, “You can feel assured, fully and honestly, that what I’m saying you already fully know unconsciously, and as … your unconscious … knows this now, you can feel more confident than ever before now, can you not?” and everybody nods in unconscious agreement. How can you argue against that? Besides, who are you to contradict the expert? Besides, you better watch out, he or she may install something terrible in your unconscious mind when you aren’t watching!
Now if you are not laughing out loud at all of that, you may already be too far gone … or not. Many kings in olden times knew about this danger of over-seriousness and so appointed court jesters. Their job description was to create a jolly ole time for everyone by teasing and jesting and mocking all of the solemnity of the high court least the royal manners and ceremonies would deceive the dignities to talk and act as if they have a stiff board shoved all the way up their rare end.
Maybe that’s what we need! Perhaps we need some good ole fashion Court Jesters in the Halls of NLP especially when the gurus emerge with their minions doing homeage and bowing in reverential deference to whatever the gurus say! Actually, I have some colleagues I’d heartily recommend to play that role with amazing delightful fun.
So why do I tease and jest as I do? Maybe for these very reasons. Maybe because there’s just too much seriousness in this field, too many people thinking that hypnosis is real, that the language of persuasion is beyond resistance, and that the gurus of NLP are dangerously powerful. Maybe it’s time to let Toto loose so that he can pull the curtain open and expose the magician behind the curtain at the microphone making all the noise! Then, when we all see that he’s just a plump little man wanting to be a real magician and that he’s not the All-Knowing and Powerful Oz, we can enjoy the joke and get on with being real— with actualizing our highest and best as the fallible human beings that we are.
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #12
March 18, 2010
WANT TO JOIN THE REVOLUTION?
The revolution began with a belief. It began with a new perspective. It began with a question. And the person asking the question was Abraham Maslow. “What about the healthy side ?” It was in his book, Abnormal Psychology, and this question was posed from time to time as he and his co-author, psychiatrist Bela Mittelmann, wrote an encyclopedia of human pathologies.[1] Maslow essentially asked:
“Okay, that’s the story with this particular pathology of how human nature can go wrong, but about how it can go right, how it can succeed, be healthy, and reach the heights of possibilities?”
The revolution began slowly. It began by modeling two incredibly healthy individuals (Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer) who were making a difference in their worlds. Afterwards that modeling of their self-actualizing characteristics was extended out to hundreds, and then thousands of other people, showing some of the same qualities. Eventually Maslow had a list of the characteristics of this “syndrome,” this experience of a self-actualizing man or woman. (I put that list in both Unleashed! and in Unleashing Leadership).
The revolution began with a model of the inner needs that drive a person and how, developmentally, a self-actualizing person learns to meet those needs, even learn how to master their needs, and eventually move to the level of the highest needs— the needs to actualize one’s highest and best.
The revolution then launched a movement, a human potential movement, and that movement then attracted Fritz Perls, Gregory Bateson, and Virginia Satir to Esalen to become a part of it. In fact, they became part of the second generation of leaders in that movement. Scores of other people that we now recognize as key voices in self-development were also drawn to Esalen in those earlier years (1963 to 1980). And while that first human potential movement failed to maintain its momentum as such and was dispersed into dozens of other groups and movements, the spark at the heart of the revolution continued.
NLP continued the revolution unconsciously. Given that NLP has direct roots in that revolution through Perls, Bateson, and Satir as well as the “presuppositions” that came mostly from Maslow and Rogers, NLP continued the revolution unconsciously. I discovered this “secret history of NLP” in 2005, and with that Neuro-Semantics launched a new human potential movement using the Self-Actualization Workshops.
When I recognized the potential in this— that we in NLP are inheriters of the revolution of Maslow’s bright-side of psychology and that we now “stand on the shoulders of the giants” who launched and carried on this revolution— I began to direct our activities in Neuro-Semantics intentionally to use and apply Self-Actualization Psychology. My aim was to create lots of practical applications. And that’s how the revolution that Maslow began is today finding expressions in Neuro-Semantics.
This means that the revolution of the bright-side of psychology now has some incredibly powerful tools for making the vision of self-actualizing individuals and organizations real in today’s world. Central among these tools is the Self-Actualization Quadrants which is built on the Meaning and Performance axes. This tool highlights that actualizing excellence in any area involves making it richly and robustly meaningful and then developing the competence to perform it. This is true of athletic competition, business development, and personal relationships.
We now also have the Self-Actualization Assessment Scale (Hall and Goodenough) that uses Maslow’s original research into human needs and gives us the ability to assess how you are doing (or not doing) in coping and mastering your basic human drives. And this is critical for each person individually as it is for any person within any organization.
Where is this revolution heading? What will be the direction of this revolution in the days and weeks and years to come? Ah, that’s the mystery and excitement of Neuro-Semantics! We don’t know. We only know that there is so much more to discover, so much more to develop. And this is where we are always looking for more men and women who share this vision to come and join the revolution.
So if you believe, as I do, that our highest drive as human beings is to tap within and liberate human potentials in yourself and others in order to create an incredibly better world, then come join this revolution. If you believe that there is within every person fascinating possibilities for becoming so much more, if you believe that we can facilitate the liberating of human potentials in organizations, businesses, families, politics, and a thousand other domains, then come join this revolution.
In a word, our vision is to actualize excellence. Our dream is to enrich the meanings (beliefs, ideas, understandings) of people so that they can perform so much more as they develop their levels of competency. And we do that through training, consulting, and coaching. We do that one-on-one as well as by working with groups. And when you’re ready to move up to a leadership role in this, then NSTT (Neuro-Semantic Trainers’ Training) is the apex of training along with Coaching Mastery.
1. Maslow, Abraham; Mittelmann, Bela (1941). Principles of Abnormal Psychology: The Dynamics of Psychic Illness.
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #11
March 15, 2010
DON’T LISTEN TO JOHN GRINDER!
To keep up with the field of NLP I read a 2008 book this past week on a flight home. The title? Provocative Hypnosis. Sounds like it would be a book about hypnosis, but it wasn’t really. The subtitle actually reveals more about the content, The No Holds Barred Interventions of a Contrarian Change Artist. So what is the book about? Therapeutic interventions in the style of Bandler with the theoretical assumptions of Grinder! I have to give it to Norway NLP trainer, JØrgen Rasmussen, for how he imitates the “in-your-face,” “I’m not here to be your friend” Bandler-like style, although I wouldn’t recommend that style.
Anyway, the book is mostly a tribute to John Grinder and so constantly quotes him and presents the old 1985 “new code” as if it was cutting-edge technology. And Grinder’s Preface sings the praises of the book without any reservation (which given his mismatching is a major miracle) calling Rasmussen a genius.
But in reading the book, my first and last thoughts was one and the same: Do not listen to John Grinder, his advice and ideas will not help you, but will in fact, make you less effective and less able to actualize your highest and best. Severe? Over-stated? Too strong? Perhaps. You make up your mind from the evidence of the following facts.
1) Fact 1.
In the Preface, John Grinder writes the following:
“We especially, rail against the type of professionalism that locks agents of change into tightly constrained boxes of conventional interventions like understanding, empathy, support for the client— all of these are choices but choices from a very large set. Yet, of course, there are clients that require precisely these transactions but they typically need one hell of lot more and what they need is not contained in the conventional descriptions typically available.”
Hard to read? Well, welcome to Grinder’s typical way of writing. So read it again. Conventional interventions lock agents of change into tightly constrained boxes! Oh, that must be terrible! And what are these “conventional interventions” that do such terrible things? Why, understanding, empathy, support for the client. Yes, that’s right. Reread the paragraph if you need to!
So go ahead and scream in horror! Get it out of your system. And shake your head as you consider just how bad understanding, empathy, support for the client is. “How and why would an agent of change do such a thing to a client!? Tisk, tisk.”
Of course, we in Neuro-Semantics not only disagree with that, but we have this terrible idea— everything should start with understanding, empathy, and support for the client. That’s just how bad we are. But then again, somehow I got that idea from the foundations of NLP itself. Wasn’t “rapport” one of the first things modeled from Virginia?
And if you think I’m exaggerating, here’s what Rasmussen writes in the book when speaking about some of his difficult clients:
“The only problem is that I did feel contempt, disgust, and wanted to beat the snot out of some of these clients as if they were a red-headed stepchild. Yes, I admit it! Sometimes I have felt these ‘bad’ emotions when working with clients. At times I projected my own unresolved stuff onto them, and at other times I think that my so-called negative emotions were highly justified and very useful in help them change. If I pretended to be a machine with no emotion, then I wouldn’t be doing justice to what happened in these sessions. Guess what, all that crap psychologists have told you about the client liking the therapist being the most important part of getting results … sorry, but ‘No’!” (p. 18)
I guess he doesn’t think much of understanding, empathy, and support for the client if he wants to beat the snot out of them and thinks that projecting his own negative emotions might be very useful in helping them change! Well, JØrgen if you come to Meta-Coaching with that attitude you won’t get you past Day 1. We start with the Releasing all Judgment Pattern and end Day1 with The De-Contamination Pattern to get the ego out of the way. A very different approach, wouldn’t you say?
For the author, the choice is either-or. Either “a compassionate and touchy feeling approach” that is “grandma-style compassion” or it is getting results (p. 19). Could this either-or frame itself be the problem? He then speaks about ethics:
“I think ethics is simple. Understand that your job is to get results and if you can get results, then do it. If you don’t get results, then don’t charge money.” (58)
Hmmm. So the end of the intervention— the results is the only ethical issue? And so does this mean that the means justifies the end? All that I read there leads me to this reflection: My recommendation is that you do not listen to John Grinder or Rasmussen!
2) Fact 2.
Grinder is quoted as saying that the “NLP modeling has absolutely nothing to do with eliciting strategies or finding someone’s beliefs.” (p. 79). It has nothing with asking questions about an expert’s ideas, beliefs, understandings, decisions, etc. It only has to do with watching the expert in action and doing an “unconscious uptake” of his or her actions, repeating the micro-movements in your own body.
Hmmmm. So that makes sense when you are modeling an athlete or someone engaged in a physical activity, but what about someone who over a period of a decade creates abundant wealth? What about a person engaging in leadership that takes several years? What then? And what about modeling when the expertise in the area of the conceptual?
When I modeled wealth creators, first-generation rich millionaires, the object of the modeling was long-term processes that involved multiple stages occurring over many years. If I could only look for micro-muscle movements, that would have been useless. It would have provided nothing. So again, I say, Don’t listen to John Grinder if you want to model complex states beyond drumming or rock climbing.
Fact 3.
Throughout the book the fuzzy wooly booly “the unconscious” is constantly referred to. The author says that John Grinder often states this:
“The conscious mind is superb at organization, framing, and categorization, but lacks the power to do any significant change. The unconscious on the other hand has enormous capabilities for change, but little capacity for organization.” (p. 194)
“Grinder points out that the client’s conscious mind is the part of the client least qualified to decide what the end state should be.” “Grinder’s perspective is that which end state and resources to be used are decisions best left to the unconscious.” (p. 255)
So let’s see: Don’t be aware or conscious of what you are doing because your conscious mind “lacks the power to do any significant change.” It can’t choose a valid objective, it can’t decide on what to do, it can’t help with motivation or creation or integration (to mention the four change mechanisms in the Axes of Change). So the best choice then is to trust what you don’t know and aren’t aware of. So does that mean “the unconscious mind” doesn’t make mistakes? Doesn’t create migraines, allergies, auto-immune system diseases? Later (see Fact 4) in the New Code Change format, step one recommends that the “client consciously select the context.” Hmmmm. My recommendation, Don’t listen to John or JØrgen—they are just too fuzzy and confused about all of this. I think they need to learn “The Newest Code” of Neuro-Semantics (see my article on this at www.neurosemantics.com).
Fact 4.
Then quoting “Grinder’s New Code Change Format,” Rasmussen does a meta-stating process, although he doesn’t seem to realize this. In the following pattern he explains that he changes Grinder’s term “high performance state” to “flow state.” I have shorten the process so you can quickly see the basic steps that he presented. The things in [brackets] are my comments.
Step 1: From third position (observer) select some context where you find yourself stuck. See yourself over there in the context where you experience X the most. Have client consciously select the context (255-256). [So you start by taking a meta-state like the observer state to “select” or choose a stuck state.]
Step 2: Have the client physically walk over to the hallucinated context on the floor.
Step 3: Have the client step out of the context. Then have the client play a New Code Game (Alphabet or NASA game). Play the game until the client goes into a flow state (256-258). [Next, you use the meta-state process of stepping back from a primary state and then bring the meta-state of “flow” to the stuck state, a meta-stating process.]
Step 4: When client is in a flow state, have the client reenter the context that they stepped into (Step 2). Lead the client there (259). [Meta-state stuckness with flow.] Calibrate signals from the unconscious. Change should be obvious from step 2. Troubleshooting: If the change isn’t there, you might want to re-do the game. Is client in the feeling stated connect to the context? Does client have a strong flow state? Do you have a strong bridge between state and context?
Step 5: Future pace. Challenge the client a bit.
Now if you know the meta-stating process, about bringing one state to another and putting one state in a higher position to the second so that the first state frames the second, then you will immediately see the invisible structure to this “New Code Format.” Actually it is a meta-stating process— meta-stating stuckness with a high performance, flow, or genius state.
This same process occurred earlier in the book about emotions.
“The whole idea is to have the person feel the emotion and just observe it with precision. This is a great way of releasing old pent-up emotions.” (p. 248)
Observing with precision (one state) how you feel an emotion (a primary state) is what we do in Meta-States when we use the Meta-Stating Emotions pattern. For this one — Do what John Grinder is doing unconsciously, but doesn’t understand. So follow what he does; but don’t listen to what he says about it. That will only mess you up. To understand the process— find an APG course and let a Neuro-Semantic trainer show you the meta-state structure that governs the richest of human experiences!
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #10
March 8, 2010
THE VISION OF
ACTUALIZING EXCELLENCE
The byline for Neuro-Semantics is Actualizing Excellence. The leadership team came up with those two words in January, two words that summarize our vision and our mission. And for us it provides a very succinct code that’s full of meaning— and I’m speaking about meaning that generates a lot of energy, passion, and vitality for us. To discover that all you have to do is speak to a Neuro-Semanticist!
Actualizing
Actualizing is a special term for us because it lies at the heart of what we are seeking to do in Neuro-Semantics— actualize our highest and most valuable meanings into actual performance in everyday life. Actualizing speaks about making real what is only potential, it is making real to the point of embodying what we know in our minds conceptually so we can close the knowing-doing gap. And this comes from the Self-Actualization Psychology that informs what we are doing and our beliefs about human nature and human beings. In Neuro-Semantics we have found many, many ways to achieve peak performance and translate from mind to body. That’s what we do because if we don’t “apply to self” then it is just information, not reality.
Excellence
The goal of the actualizing is excellence and this is the very theme that initiated NLP in the beginning— when Richard and John began modeling the excellence that they found in three world-class communicators. And once they did that, that very process resulted in the Meta-Model of Language which gave them one of the central tools that allow us to then model more examples of excellence.
Neuro-Semantics started in a similar way with the modeling of resilience because out of that came the Meta-States Model, a model that took NLP to a whole new level. Whereas NLP modeled the basic structures of how we think and represent, Meta-States tapped into and modeled how our mind inherently is self-reflexive. So Meta-States model the self-reflexivity of consciousness and so mapped out, for the first time, the actual structure of the “logical levels” and the higher levels of consciousness.
Other modeling tools have emerged since then: the Matrix Model, the Self-Actualization Quadrants. And so, while modeling has mostly become a lost theme in the field of NLP, it is still very much alive in Neuro-Semantics which explains the constant development of new models and patterns in Neuro-Semantics.
And with the Meta-States Model we are now able to model excellence in complex states such as resilience —long-term and intricate experiences that do not occur in just a single moment, but occurs over time— things like leadership, coaching, a solid sense of self, proactivity, responsibility, and a thousand other of the richest states we humans can experience.
Excellence also reflects the theme of “the bright-side of human nature” that Maslow and Rogers and the others of the first Human Potential Movement launched in the 1950s through the 1980s out of which NLP itself emerged. And now in Neuro-Semantics we have launched a second Human Potential Movement — one for the twenty-first century.
The Vision of Actualizing Excellence
Our vision is to not only use this upgraded version of NLP to enable people to “run their own brains” and manage their own states (that obviously is first, self-leadership), but our vision is much bigger. We want to empower people to access their finest and highest meaning-making skills so they can rise up to become everything they can become, to unleash all of their potentials. And when they do that, we want to take that to families, schools, companies, and countries. We want to facilitate the next level development of self-actualizing leaders, companies, politicians so that we change the very structures in our world.
It’s a big vision and so we need lots and lots of visionary men and women who will help us to lead to this future. And that’s what Trainers’ Training (NSTT) is designed to facilitate— to enable those who share this vision to learn how to stand up and speak up in a way that they can empower others to actualize their excellence.
Neuro-Semantic Trainers’ Training (NSTT) first focuses on platform skills— the competencies that enable you to stand up, engage a group of people and professionally communicate in such a way that you win their minds and hearts. Here we apply the principles and tools that enable you to actualize your excellence in public speaking. We then shift to another skill-set, that of designing trainings so that people are able to experience the learnings and make them theirs. And after that, since the Meta-States Model is the flagship of Neuro-Semantics, we do three days on The Psychology of APG. This provides a solid grounding in the psychology that governs these processes of excellence.
We then end NSTT with a focus on business skills— competencies that are required to be able to turn all of this into a commercially viable business. This touches on the theme of business excellence. I say touch on it because in the past years this has been one of my themes as I’ve been working with companies and businesses apply the principles of self-actualization to self-actualizing leaders and companies.
Now if you are one of those individuals who have read or experienced a bit of Neuro-Semantics and would like to step up into leadership — then consider Neuro-Semantic Trainers’ Training (NSTT). We are looking for more men and women who will share the vision with us and collaborate with the movement of Neuro-Semantics. If this is you, let us know!
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #9
March 1, 2010
APG IN EGYPT
This past week I have had a pretty unique experience as I delivered APG in Cairo Egypt. Unique because it was my first training in an Arab country and unique because of the sponsors of the training— three men of vision who see the need for bringing some high-quality NLP to Egypt. Two of the men that I spent time with in Egypt are now in the process of becoming Neuro-Semantic Trainers and the third is planning to do the same. Mohammad Tarek of Lucid Trainings and Mustafa El-Masy of Applied NLP Academy along with Mohammed Addul-Kawy of Alexandria.
In January I met Mustafa and Mohammad (of Alexandria) in Hong Kong for the first part of the Trainers Training and got acquainted first-hand with their passion and commitment to Egypt, to NLP, and to Neuro-Semantics. What I didn’t know previously was the extent of the problems that NLP has suffered in Egypt at the hands of some inadequately trained trainers whose primary motive seems to be to use NLP for getting money and a sense of power over others.
This is really sad and is all around the world. This result in a lot of very low grade quality NLP so that already NLP does not have a good reputation in Egypt. Mohammad Tarek was telling me that as a computer programmer, when he taught at the University in Alexandria, he would teach the communication model of NLP but never, but never call it NLP. If they found out, they would have discredited his work; otherwise, they loved what he taught! I wish this was the exception, but sadly it occurs in every country I have visited.
Anyway, Mustafa was diligent and searched the field to find some high quality NLP. Eventually he found Neuro-Semantics and introduced it to the others. Then, delight of delight, he and Mohammad Tarek cooperated to put this training together. I love that.
We had a good group of people for the first training, 70-plus, eight or more trainers, many practitioners and a good group of new people interested mainly in self-development. Yet what I experienced was a real mixture—there was a big group of people totally passionate about NLP and Meta-States. They were so passionate in fact that I was literally inundated by questions and requests from the time we started each day to the ending so that I never got a break (which is fine, that’s what I’m there for!). And they asked questions upon questions— and most very personal and intimate questions about applying the patterns to themselves, their families, and their work. Now strangely, at the same time there was a small group of “practitioners” who acted like they knew it all and never even bothered to do the processes! Ah the ones who have never studied a model about self-reflexive consciousness who already knows it all! I’ve met them before.
A TV camera group came to the training on the first day to get clips that they later used when I did a live appearance on the channel. This was set up by Ayman Mahmoud, a young man that I have corresponded with for years and who has translated many of my articles in Arabic on some websites. There were also other media interviews with radio and journalists for newspapers that he set up. It’s always good to experience my “expertise” rising by leaps and bounds by the fantastic variable of distance— the farther from home, the more of an expert I become! I ought to write an article about it, who needs study and competence when all you need is geographical distance to become an “expert,” or so it seems.
I had never been to Cairo before and while I have seen some wild traffic— Mexico City comes to mind, so does Moscow, Cairo takes the prize for being the craziest and worst and most dangerous. I was okay with and used to the fact that 3 lanes means 5 lanes of cars and 5 lanes means 7, that’s the way it is many places. But I had not seen hundreds and hundreds of people stepping out into 5 and 6 lanes of traffic dodging cars as I saw in Cairo. I even saw women carrying babies across such lanes of cars dodging, turning, twisting, and aggressively fighting for every inch of space! And not only during the day when at least you could see human beings in the middle of the freeway, but at night!! Mohammad did all the driving and kept reassure me, “Don’t worry!” he kept saying! So I did— worry that is.
And horns, I did not now that a person could drive a car with a horn. Or that you could send multiple messages with your horn, “I see you,” “Get out of the way,” “What the hell are you doing?” I was even more surprised to observe thousands upon thousands of cars driven by various tunes, messages, and melodies.
And Arab time — I thought the Mexicans, Spaniards, and Italians had the award for being “in time” and thinking time was a totally optional concept for being effective. No longer. I give the award to the Egyptians! “We will start at 9 am., right?” I asked Mustafa. “Yes, yes, sure. Well, maybe 9:10 to make sure everybody arrives.” At 9:30 I asked again, “Yes, just ten minutes.” At 10 am I asked, “Yes, just ten minutes.” I think that I have learned that “ten minutes” to an Egyptian actually means 40 minutes or even 2 hours!
I had several interviews while there. And everywhere I find that reporters are a strange breed. I have been interviewed so often now that I can now tell precisely the very language that reporters will use, especially if they have not done their homework, but are just trying to get another quick “human interest” story. They always ask a very broad question and then was quantitative evidence.
“So you in Neuro-Semantics work to help people succeed in weight management, emotional intelligence, leadership, relationships, the creation of wealth, self-actualization of companies, and everything else that you do in Neuro-Semantics, can you give our listeners one technique that can do all of that, keeping it really simple, in a minute or two? What is your best testimonies for that?”
Don’t you love it?! Try to answer that one! I got that this past week. To narrow things a bit (!) I asked for a specific example that she would be interested in. “What results do you want?” She said weight management, “I want to have lots of energy and be fit and thin. So what one technique will help me?” Of course, she was going too fast so I slowed her down and asked if I could have a “transformational conversation” with her. She wondered what that was. I said “a conversation that will be life-changing. Now it will be fierce, I will probe to get to the heart of things with what you want to change, are you sure you’re ready for this?” She nodded.
So I began a conversation that she agreed was uncomfortable, thought-provoking, intense, personal, and very quickly at the heart of the variables of change. I found her pattern within 90 seconds, feed it back to her four times. She wanted to stop! It was too much. She wanted the results (slim body, fitness, energy), she wasn’t ready to pay the price “so no to tempting foods, exercise regularly.” And that’s fine. That’s great. Now she knows and has few excuses.
Then there were two participants who are in the process of making a movie. “We are making a movie that’s an Egyptian version of ‘The Secret,’ and we want to interview you.” Well, thanks but no thanks. I don’t care to add to the illusion and cause of dis-illusion of that kind of shallow non-sense. “Well, it’s not like that.” “What about all the pseudo-science in ‘The Secret?’” “No, no, we don’t have that; and besides, you can say whatever you want to say.” So I did. It will be interesting what they keep in it.
Sightseeing? Did I see any sights? Well, not many. One day Mohammad Addul and I enjoyed the traffic jam on the Sixth of October bridge for several hours! That allowed me to see the city; and we tried to get to the Pyramids, but they had been shut down for Diplomats from Italy. We did get to see the laser light show, which was great.
Here’s to the heart, the passion, and the commitment of the men who made this possible, to their staff of people who are seeking to bring high-quality NLP and Neuro-Semantics to Egypt! I found them to be people of faith, of integrity, fun, and vision.
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #8
Feb. 22, 2010
DR. PAUL EKMAN
AND META-STATES
I recently found a great description of meta-states. I was reading Emotions Revealed: Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life (2003/ 2007) by Paul Ekman. In the following quotation, Dr. Ekman describes a meta-state, he describes the structure of the observing meta-state that facilitates what Daniel Goleman and many others have popularize as emotional intelligence.
“I have not been able to find a single term to describe this type of consciousness: the best I have been able to come up with is attentively considering our emotional feelings. (To avoid repeating the entire phrase I will sometimes abbreviate it by just using the term attentive or attentiveness, in italics.) When we are being attentive, as I mean it, we are able to observe ourselves during an emotional episode, ideally before more than a few seconds have passed. We recognize that we are being emotional and can consider whether or not our response is justified. We can reevaluate, reappraise, and if that is not successful, then direct what we say and do. This occurs while we are experiencing the emotion, as soon as we become conscious of our emotional feelings and actions.
Here he describes a “type of consciousness” that we know as a meta-cognition or meta-state. The specific meta-state is that of attentively considering one’s feelings. And this meta-state enables you to move to choice point where you can evaluate your experience.
“Most people are rarely so attentive to their emotional feelings, but such attentiveness is possible to achieve. I believe that we can develop the ability to be attentive so it will become a habit, a standard part of our lives. When that happens, we will feel more in touch, and better able to regulate our emotional life. There are many ways to develop this type of attentiveness.” (p. 75)
Dr. Ekman here describes a habitual meta-state that enriches one’s emotional life.
And why, you ask, was I reading Ekman’s work on face recognition? For several reasons, I had it on my reading list for some years and because in December, while in Italy, Susana Eduini (a Meta-Coach from Sweden, 2009) brought the book to the training, turned to pages 69-70 and read the following:
“Reevaluations are not the only way in which we may for a time bounce back and forth between different emotional responses. Tomkins [Ekman’s mentor] pointed out that we often have affect-about-affect, emotional reactions to the emotion we initially feel. We may become angry that we were made afraid, or we may become afraid about having become so angry. We could feel afraid of what we might do because we are feeling so sad. This linking of a second emotion with a first emotion can happen with any pair of emotions. Silvan Thomkins also suggested that one way of understanding the uniqueness of personality was to identify whether a person typically had a particular affect about another affect. He also suggested that sometimes we are not aware of our initial emotional reaction, we are aware only of our second emotion about the first emotion. We may not realize that we were afraid at first and be aware only of the anger that was aroused in response to the fear. Unfortunately, no one has done any research to determine the merit of these very interesting ideas.”
Amazing, is that not? Dr. Ekman here speaks about meta-states and how they affect the uniqueness of personality. When I read that, Susana asked me if I knew about this. I did not. Later I asked Nicola to help me locate an email address for Paul Ekman, which he did! And with that I wrote and asked him if he was aware of my work in Meta-States and offered to send a copy of the book if he was interested. He wrote back and said that yes, he was interested. As of this date, the book has been sent.
The other word that he found for a meta-state was mindfulness. He defines such using a quotation from philosopher B. Alan Wallace, “the sense of being aware of what our mind is doing.” Then he speaks about the ability to just observe an emotion like anger. He also quotes Georgia Nigro and Ulric Neisser [a key pioneer in the Cognitive movement] about remembering some memories — “one seems to have the position of an onlooker or observer, looking at the situation from an external vantage point and seeing oneself ‘from the outside.’” He also mentions Ellen Langer’s work on mindfulness (page 73). On the next page he quoted philosopher Peter Goldie on the term, reflective consciousness— being aware that one feels afraid (p. 74).
Ekman’s work on emotions, on the subtle micro-expressions of emotions, and how they show up in the face, voice, physiology is now pretty much known worldwide. He has pioneered what we call in NLP “calibration to physiology” to a whole new level. And while he was influenced by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson and has lived in San Francisco for years— he shows no acquaintance with NLP; he certainly does not reference it at all (which actually is not all that surprising!).
In a chapter on anger,
“When anger is intense, we may not initially know, or even want to know, that we have become angry. I am not referring to the failure to be attentive to our emotional feelings. It is not that we are unable to take a step back and consider whether we want to go along and act on our anger. Rather, we are not even aware of being angry, even though we are speaking angry words and engaging in angry actions.” (p. 120)
Here Ekman describes meta-states as we do—stepping back so that we can choose our response. And that is one of the greatest benefits of knowing the Meta-States Model.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
- Is there a difference between NLP and Neuro-Semantics?
- If there is a difference, is it critical and significant or peripheral?
- What are the differences between NLP and Neuro-Semantics?
To the first two questions, you will find that the answer in this article is, Yes, there is a difference between NLP and Neuro-Semantics, and yes, it is a critical one. To the third question, this article then details those differences. I could not have written this article when we began Neuro-Semantics, even two years ago I could not have written it. The critical differences that I’ve detailed here between NLP and Neuro-Semantics have been developing and are continue to develop. Here I have attempted to briefly summarize them. To make this as clear as possible I have created the chart on the next page to set forth the key differences. The text that follows the chart then offers a description of the distinctions.
As I identify these differences, I do ask that you do not read them as absolute statements. They are not. I have not written them to be absolute statement, only general ones. For example, what Neuro-Semantics has mostly done is to much more fully develop referencing, reflexivity, apply to self, community, systems, etc. This doesn’t mean that there is none of this in NLP, of course there is. In describing the differences, I most want to point to the key emphases in the two fields.
In the following descriptions then you will find many general statements about NLP and Neuro-Semantics. These are statements that are generally true of each model and field. For more specifics, check out the other articles on www.neurosemantics.com about both NLP and NS. As an NLP Trainer, I have over the years written numerous critiques with others on NLP. These were designed to offer feedback and insight as we acknowledged weaknesses in the model or the use of the model. Since the founding of Neuro-Semantics our focus has been to lead in a way that takes these critiques into account.
At its heart, the Neuro-Semantic difference begins with an attitude of apply to self. This focus leads to more congruency, more willingness to look at oneself, to use the processes with oneself, and to consciously aim to continually grow and improve. In turn, this leads to being more open and to honestly acknowledge the facets of NLP that we have found which do not work or are over-emphasized to the exclusion of something else. None of this is to say that one is right or better, but rather to point out differences, especially in terms of focus and direction.
When Neuro-Semantics began, it grew out of NLP and so it was not differentiated from NLP at all. We founded it during the days when Bandler had filed a 90 million dollar lawsuit against the field of NLP so we could continue if the worst-case scenario occurred. Today Neuro-Semantics has become significantly differentiated from NLP and I can only imagine that this will only continue in the years to come. The Neuro-Semantic difference supremely lies in an attitude—in an intentional stance about who we are who use the model. To that end we have adapted a statement from Richard Bandler and have added the word relationship.
“Neuro-Semantics is an attitude, that grows out of relationship and that leads to relationship, backed up by the methodology of modeling and that leads to hundreds of powerfully transforming patterns.”
NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Neuro-Semantics
| Focus is on Representation | Focus on References & Referencing |
| Linear Thinking in Strategies | Non-Linear Thinking: Reflexivity |
| Talks about Systems | Systemic in its structure |
| Focus on Techniques | Focus on Persons and Relationship and doing things to people and co-creating with others |
| Trained from Procedure meta-program | Trained from Options meta-program |
| Working the magic on people | Applying the magic to self first |
| Emphasis on Power, Success | Emphasis on Connection, Authenticity |
| Effectiveness | Ethical behavior and Win/Win Relationships |
| 2 Meta-Domains | 1st Meta-Model 4 Meta-Domains: 1st MM 2nd MP 3rd Meta-States |
| 2nd Meta-Programs | 4th Meta-Modalities or the Cinematic features of the so-called “Sub-modalities” |
| Primary Levels | Meta-Levels: |
| Logical levels as Neuro-logical Levels | Logical levels as Psycho-Logics, meta-levels, |
| Multi-ordinality, Matrix | |
| Logical levels as Static, Hierarchical | Logical levels as dynamic, fluid, layering |
| “Parts” of the mind | Mind as holistic and systemic |
| No “Why” Question | The Restoration of several “Why” Questions: |
| Why of Intentionality, Why of Outcome | |
| Meta means “dissociation” | Meta means “emotion” sometimes more, sometimes less. |
| Emotions seen as to be controlled | Emotions seen as to be experienced, “bringing the kinesthetics back into NLP.” |
| Sub-Modalities seen as the elements of mind | Sub-Modalities seen as meta-frames |
| Reductionism | Gestalting, moving up levels to create new Generalizations |
| Focus on the Individual | Focus on Individual and on Community and on numerous social and cultural contexts |
| Remedial Change: dealing with hurts | Generative or Transformative Change: moving up to the next level of development |
| The power and dominance of the unconscious mind being mindful | The power and balance of the conscious mind also, |
| “Pure NLP” | Developmental NLP, NLP growing, changing, and developing over the years |
From Representation to Referencing
The focus in NLP, and this is the genius of NLP, is on representation. Recognizing that we think in terms of our sensory systems and uses what we see, hear, feel, smell and taste to re-present to ourselves within our minds gives us control knobs for “running our own brain.” We have a Movie Mind and this empowers us to take charge of what plays out in the theater of our mind. Oftentimes the simplest shifts or alternations in the cinematic features (“sub-modalities”) that we use to encode our understandings is sufficient to create powerfully positive transformations.
The focus in Neuro-Semantics moves on from representation to references and referencing. First we bring in the world by taking a referent event and representing it. From there we transform the same event into frames of reference, and then frames of mind. This moves us up the levels as we classify or categories our learnings from the events. In this way we create layers of embedded frames that make up the matrix of our mind. And those layers emerge organically as the mind-body-emotion system grows. In moving up the levels, we do this primarily in language, hence the true place for the linguistic of NLP and the symbolic levels of Neuro-Semantics.
From Linear to Non-Linear Thinking
NLP mostly and primarily involves linear thinking. We see this most prominently in the domain of eliciting and modeling of strategies. While there is a place for a meta response in the strategy model using T.O.T.E. format, it is a minor piece and de-emphasized in actual practice. NLP mostly talks about sending or swishing the brain somewhere, moving from present state to desired state, identifying desired outcomes and formatting them to be well-formed and then just future pacing the experience. All of that is linear in nature and structure.
Neuro-Semantics focuses on and involves non-linear thinking precisely because it is driven by reflexivity. In Meta-States training we always begin with a warning that the kind of thinking required to understand meta-states is very different from the kind of thinking that governs NLP. At first, learning to think in non-linear ways can feel very disconcerting. Non-linear thinking means reckoning with going round and round in loops, spiraling up and down the levels of the mind, recognizing the numerous feedback and feed forward loops in a system, and recognizing that multiple processing will be occurring at any given moment.
From Non-Systemic to Highly Systemic
NLP talks about systems and well it should. It brought lots of system features in when it began by modeling Family Systems, Bateson’s cybernetics, and Korzybski’s non-aristotelian system. The problem is that it mostly talks about systems and actually operates in ways that are very non-systemic (i.e., linear, black-or-white, either-or, etc.). This has led several of us (Dilts, Bandler, McWhorter, and Hall) to work on creating models for “systemic NLP.”
To the extent that Neuro-Semantics has reflexivity built into its structure, it is systemic at its heart. Having incorporated many of the non-aristotelian principles of Korzybski into its structure, Neuro-Semantics identifies and uses both feedback and feed forward loops in its patterns and even has a self-correcting loop built into the model and community itself. This grew out of the 4 meta-domains (see User’s Manual of the Brain, Volume II, 2003) and led to the Matrix Model (2003).
You can see and experience the feedback loop in the Matrix model in terms of a number of the Neuro-Semantic patterns. For example, Mind-to-Muscle pattern enables us to feed forward a great idea into our body whereas the Intentionality pattern enables us to feed back to ourselves our intentionality up the levels. In the Neuro-Semantic community, we have built feedback into our trainings so that the trainers receive feedback (especially the Trainers and Coaches). We have numerous forums for feedback as well as our Neuro-Semantic Developers Colloquium.
From Techniques to Persons in Relationship
Much of the power of NLP is that it has focus so much on techniques and has developed many powerful techniques and patterns that allows a communicator, therapist, hypnotist, manager, etc. to do things to people. Yet this has also had many unfortunate consequences. It has led lots of people to judge NLP as manipulative and focused only on “programming” into others without a proper balance on relationship, rapport, ethics, or ecology. In many places in Europe, NLP is known so much for its techniques that it is also criticized for the same—that it is only about techniques, and the model is but a collection of techniques.
The focus on techniques has also brought out another NLP/ NS difference. NLP is mostly trained from a meta-program of procedures whereas Neuro-Semantics is mostly trained from an options point of view. This is one of those things that many people first notice in our trainings.
Neuro-Semantics focus much more on persons and relationship than on techniques. While there are many patterns and processes, the over-arching idea in Neuro-Semantics is to make sure the technology serves people and is offered in a healthy, balanced, ecological, and human way. To that end, Neuro-Semantics puts the focus on the personal context, on co-creating a solution with the client or customer, and on operating in Win/Win relationships with others. This is part of the vision for Neuro-Semantics as a community and movement.
From Doing to Others to Apply to Self
NLP certainly has the power for us to work “magic” on people. That’s what Bandler and Grinder found as the modeled Satir, Perls, and Erickson and so they wrote about “the structure of magic.” The problem with this is that the focus is on the NLP practitioner doing something to the client. And when that’s the focus, then the frames by implication is that the person doing it to another doesn’t do it on oneself. As a consequence, NLP as a model has a lot of criticism and bad press. Many NLPers who haven’t applied the model to themselves do not even know how to. And that leaves them not “walking their talk” and so being incongruent, they give NLP a bad name.
In Neuro-Semantics “apply to self” is built into the model. This has also become a major focus and emphasis, apply the magic first to yourself, and only then to others. Doing this enables Neuro-Semanticists to walk their talk, receive the benefits of the magic personally and to then be walking examples and models of the powerful tools and patterns. It makes for personal congruency—and personal power.
From Power over to Power with … or Authenticity
With NLP’s focus on techniques, it followed that there has been a strong emphasis on power, success, and effectiveness. This shows up in the advertizing and marketing of NLP. It shows up in the seminars and trainings. Robbins is a prime example, “Unlimited Power,” “Awakening the Giant Within,” “Date with Destiny,” etc. This over-focus on “power” and materialistic success predominates as focus on relationship, wisdom, ecology, community, etc. all take a back row seat. It also explains why there’s been so much bad press around the theme of manipulation. Of course, I’m using the term “power” here in the traditional sense of power over others rather than in the sense of power with others.
From the beginning, Neuro-Semantics has held forth a vision that emphasizes relationship, being authentic, connection with others, conducing business ethically, and creating Win/Win relationships that believe in abundance for all. I see this as a prevention to the “guru” mentality that has grown up in many parts of NLP (not to mention other seminar businesses). To be truly successful, Neuro-Semantics stresses the wealth of connection and relationships, and power with others as equals and colleagues. The foundation of this is being true to oneself. So in many Neuro-Semantics trainings we have consciously focused on balancing Being, Doing, and Having, especially in those trainings on building wealth and personal mastery.
Personal power and authenticity can go together. But it is not the old definitions of power as power over others, doing things to others apart from their awareness, etc. Personal power in the sense of being personally effective, taking effective action, achieving one’s goals, and getting things done—in Neuro-Semantics we see that as a natural outcome of finding one’s own talents, passions, values, and visions.
From 2 to 4 Meta-Domains
In traditional NLP there are only two meta-domains, the Meta-Model and Meta-Programs. These are taught separately as different domains with little interconnection. Other domains exist in NLP, but not meta-domains (e.g., “sub-modalities,” strategies, time-lines, modeling, and hypnosis). These are also talk separately as if the domains have no inter-connections.
In Neuro-Semantics, the third meta-domain was initiated as the Meta-States model was discovered and articulated. The modeling influence of Meta-States then opened our eyes to other meta-domains. The first to be discovered was that of the meta-modalities or “sub-modalities.” This revealed that there was no sub in “sub-modalities.” When we play with the cinematic features of our mental movies (the “sub-modalities”) and use the distinctions of the visual, auditory, kinesthetic systems, we were really framing from a higher level, an editorial level to the movie. From this discovery, we came up with six new sub-models or patterns (The Structure of Excellence: Unmasking the Meta-Levels of “Sub-Modalities,” 1999). Meta-States also revealed that “time” and time-lines were also meta-states and could be tremendously enriched by the principles of Meta-States.
From “Sub-Modalities” to Meta-Modalities
In NLP we consider “sub-modalities” as the periodic elements of mind and so use them as a chemist would in putting together the building blocks of experience. This metaphor further encourages the breaking down of experience and so a reductionistic approach. For some in NLP, (especially those who bought into DHE, see article on website, “Ten Years and Still No Beef!”) “sub-modalities” govern everything.
In Neuro-Semantics we now recognize that there are no sub level for the so-called domain of
“sub-modalities.” The problem is a problem of mis-labeling. The cinematic features of our mental movies in the sensory channels are not at a lower or sub level, but are actually the meta-frames. As we now recognize that you have to go meta to even detect the so-called “sub-modalities,” we have to go meta to them to alter how we have framed a mental movie from color to black-and-white, from loud to quiet, etc. In meta-stating these distinctions, we are moving up and so gestalting the experience. We move up the levels of frames in order to create new generalizations of believing, valuing, expecting, deciding, intending, etc.
From Primary to Meta-Levels
While NLP speaks about meta-levels (meta-position and Neuro-logical levels), it focus mostly on the primary level. It does so to its glory as it speaks about the representational level of the sensory systems and the distinctive features of one’s internal movie. It also does, yet to its detriment, when it confuses beliefs, values, criteria, etc. as if they were primary level phenomena. After all, these are not primary level phenomena, but meta-states (layered thoughts-and-feelings about various ideas) and that’s why merely shifting the cinematic features (translated to NLP jargon, “sub-modalities”) seldom works.
From beginning with meta-states, Neuro-Semantics focuses on the layering of level upon level and the systemic nature of the meta-levels. Here our emphasis moves from the linear nature of NLP that focuses so much on the externals to our focus on internal thoughts and our layering of them. By distinguishing the levels and seeing how we layer frame upon frame to create the embedded frames of any given matrix, Neuro-Semantics provides principles and guidelines for dealing with this richness of interaction.
In Meta-States, there are principles governing the levels, detailed lists of the numerous ways levels can interact, and questions for flushing out the meta-levels (see Meta-States, Secrets of Personal Mastery or Accessing Personal Genius training manual).
In moving up the meta-levels our challenge lies not so much as to what is “out there” at the primary level, but in how we apply the higher level meanings to those events. Focus now shifts to how we have interpreted the events and how that interpretation impacts our lives. After all, the impact that anything has on us lies in the meanings that we give that thing. Our meta_level meanings creates the difference that makes the difference. This is why Neuro-Semantics places its focus on how we utilize and reframe our meta_levels for the best impact in our lives.
From State to Fluid Meta-Levels
NLP does have some “logical levels,” at least those centers of NLP that accept Bateson’s Levels of Learning and Robert Dilts’ Neuro-logical levels. While this model does not fit the criteria for being true “logical levels” it does provide a wonderful list of 6 distinctions about human experience. Yet the “logical levels” of this model are static and hierarchical. Using such nominalizations as “beliefs,” “values,” “identity,” “mission,” etc. the model talks about these layerings as if they were things.
Neuro-Semantics, starting from the Meta-States model, denominalizes “logical levels” in terms of the verbs or processes—this gives us layering, leveling, and embedding. From this we can more easily detect and work with the layering of the mind as we classify experiences using various categories. In this way, we type or format an experience and treat it as a member of some class. This describes the psycho-logics of our mind-body-emotion system and reveals that meta-levels refer to the ideas and feelings we embed other ideas and feelings within. This allows us to explore, “What do you think or feel about X?” Neuro-Semantics also uses the linguistic distinction of multi-ordinality to work with the reflexivity of certain words (nominalizations that we can apply to itself).
In Neuro-Semantics we see “logical levels” as dynamic and fluid. We layer thought upon thought and feeling upon feeling. The resulting system creates a dynamic and ever-moving matrix of our mind.
This highlights yet another NLP/NS difference. NLP, derived from Perls, Satir, and Erickson, spoke a lot about “parts.” This was a contribution that Leslie Cameron-Bandler brought in from T.A. (Transactional Analysis). In Neuro-Semantics we typically avoid such elementalism (Korzybski) and speak about things in a more holistic and systemic way, the mind-body-emotion system.
From No “Why” to Several “Whys”
n NLP practitioner we are taught to “Never ask Why.” The “why” question is considered taboo. Why? Because “it only elicits defenses, excuses, and rationalizations. It only takes you back into history.” This is certainly true with the “why” of identity or history questions. “Why are you that way?” “Don’t you know better than that? Why did you do that?”
Neuro-Semantics restores several “Why” questions to the process of modeling experience. While we seldom ask the “why” of identity or history, we most definitely ask other why questions. We ask about the why of intentionality, the why of outcome, and the why of reasons and reasoning. Why is that important to you? Why do you want that? Why would that be significant to you? And when a person is in a good state, a state we would like to confirm and solidify, we coach a person into that by asking why, “Why do you like that? Why do you believe that? Why do you want that?” We ask that because we know that in response, the person will find or create reasons and explanations that will support the experience.
Sometimes we want to know a person’s reasons for why he or she does a particular thing or feels a particular way. Why do I want to know this? Because reasons operate in our mind as our knowledge base, paradigm map, and domain of understanding by which we give meaning to things. In this, reasons create powerful motivations in our propulsion system (moving toward values and away from dis-values). If a person has enough reasons to do something, that person will do it. And if I can discover the reasons for an unwanted behavior, then those reasons provide a leverage point for me as a coach, therapist, manager, or communicator to reframe and invite a change of behavior.
Also, in so designing a customized propulsion system for an individual, we do well to assist that person in uncovering and/or creating high level away from reasons for changing the behavior as well as high level toward reasons for pulling the person towards the desired behavior. These why’s are critical to understanding and changing behavior and Neuro-Semantics provides the tools for doing just that.
From Dissociated Emotion to Meta-Emotions
In NLP, the term meta is generally defined or understood be equated with “dissociation.” To go meta for many trained in traditional NLP means to “become dissociated.” And being dissociated for them means to not feel, to be “just in the head.” This makes meta and the meta-position and anything that has meta as a preface something un-emotional, devoid of emotion, or non-emotional. And since in many parts of the NLP world, NLP is much more about controlling emotions than experiencing them, emotions are seen as to be controlled.
Neuro-Semantics takes a completely different position on all of this. First, in Meta-States, we understand that while sometimes a person can step back from one state of strong negative emotions and into a state of witnessing, observing, and calmness, the meta response or move generally involves some emotion and oftentimes more emotion. Joy about joy usually increases the joy. Joy of learning turns up the positive emotions for learning. Fear of fear increases the fear, as does anger at fear, fear of anger, shame of anger, etc. The term meta only refers to taking a position about another experience of feeling, thought, or physiology. It is not the same as dissociation.
This is important in Neuro-Semantics because we see emotions as part of the mind-body-emotion system and therefore to be experienced, even the so-called “negative” ones. That’s why so many have said that “Meta-States brings the kinesthetics back into NLP.” “Neuro-Semantics is about getting the neurology activated along with the mind.” We are always associated and always dissociated. It’s just a question of what mind-body states are we experiencing and which are we not experiencing at any given moment.
From Individualism to Community
NLP’s focus is almost entirely on the Individual. This is seen in the models and patterns that we have in NLP, in the individualistic nature of the founders and leaders and in the overall general direction—”run your own brain.” While there were invitations in NLP (Bateson’s anthropology and cultural studies and Satirs’ Family Systems), NLP has been very individualist.
Neuro-Semantics uses its systems focus to shift focus from the individual only to focusing also on community, culture, and social contexts. Using Meta-States, Neuro-Semantics has begun to model cultures and cultural phenomena and to use more and more group dynamics, teams, and networking to expand Neuro-Semantics around the globe.
From Remedial to Generative
Here is another generalization; in spite of NLP talking about generative change, most of the early patterns of NLP were remedial—curing phobias, re-imprinting the past, decision destroying, time-lining old emotional hurts, etc. In fact, as a psychologist, when I first found NLP and began teaching it, I put the best of NLP patterns together on Trauma Recovery and began teaching workshops on that. This really isn’t any surprise, NLP came from three therapists who worked with people with problems and many of those problems had to do with getting free from the past.
So what NLP envisioned in terms of generative or transformative change, Neuro-Semantics has more fully actualized. By making commercial models on weight control (Games Slim and Fit People Play), business (Games Business Experts Play), coaching (Meta-Coaching), etc. our primary focus, we have shifted from remedial change to transformative change. This has led to patterns that have to do with increasing performance, becoming masters of our matrix, playing new frame games, etc.
From Unconscious to more Consciousness
Coming from modeling Ericksonian hypnosis, traditional NLP has a strong emphasis on the unconscious. It even takes a cue from Erickson to assume that “the unconscious” is always much wiser and reliable than the conscious mind—which both Bandler and Grinder have come to describe as “a dick head.” In fact, to take Grinder’s Whispering in the Wind book seriously, we should never trust the conscious mind and should use Six-Step Reframing as the quintessential NLP pattern. Why? Because he created it when he was delirious and not in his conscious mind and because it depends on “the unconscious” rather than the conscious mind.
Neuro-Semantics puts a lot more focus on becoming mindful or conscious. We have also called into question this over-valuing of “the unconscious” mind as if there were only one unconscious mind (see article on website, Which Unconscious Mind do you Train?). For us in Neuro-Semantic, it is consciously running our own brain, being mindful of what we are saying and doing, and consciously present to this moment that makes us uniquely human. Yes, some states of “consciousness” are painful and problematic. Yet it is not consciousness as such that’s the problem, but the kind of consciousness. That’s why we focus on bringing a witnessing and non-judgmental consciousness to our own states.
From “Pure NLP” to Developing and Ever-Changing NLP
Finally here’s another difference. Today there are NLP Training Centers and trainers who are arguing for a return to “pure NLP” and that they and they only do “pure NLP.” Several of them have set 1985 as an arbitrary date for this. Prior to this date, NLP was “pure” after that date, it began to be corrupted by other influences. Grinder argues for this saying that we need to distinguish NLPmodeling from NLPapplication (see Whispering in the Wind, 2002). He argues that Six-Step reframing is NLPmodeling and not NLPapplication.
Of course, this is such a strange twist on a model that began as a paradigm shift and that presented itself as an ongoing ever-growing and developing model. In fact, it began with the founders saying, “We have no theory; we’re only modelers. We only care about what works and describing it.”
Neuro-Semantics has focused more on commercial models that apply the numerous meta-domain models rather than on the models themselves. They are only tools, only maps. Our question is entirely practical, What can we do with them? Can we use them to become financially independent, to become fluent and master stuttering, to master fears and become courageous, to defuse hotheads and other cranky people, to become resilience in business, etc.? And because of this, these have become the Neuro-Semantic “Gateway” Trainings.
Summary
- While Neuro-Semantics grew out of the roots of NLP —along with Korzybski’s and Bateson’s work (and others, see the article The Roots of Neuro-Semantics), Neuro-Semantics differs from NLP now and will continue to in the years to come.
- The vision and mission of Neuro-Semantics is to be much more congruent and aligned with the presuppositions of NLP and to refine the model as new information, research, and models arise.
Author:
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, researches, writes, models, is an entrepreneur, and trains internationally in Neuro-Semantics. With thanks to Michelle Duval, a master Neuro-Semantic Coach in Sydney Australia for some of these distinctions.
References:
Bandler, Richard and Grinder, John. (1976). The structure of magic, Volume II. Palo Alto, CA: Science & Behavior Books.
Bateson, Gregory. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bandler, Richard and Grinder, John. (1982). Reframing: Neuro-linguistic programming and the transformation of meaning. UT: Real People Press.
Bandler, Richard. (1985). Using your brain for a change. (Ed. Connirae and Steve Andreas). Moab, UT: Real People Press.
Bodenhamer, Bobby G.; Hall. L. Michael. (1999). The user’s manual for the brain: A comprehensive manual for neuro-linguistic programming practitioner certification. United Kingdom: Crown House Publishers.
Hall, L. Michael. (2000 second edition). Meta-states: Managing the higher levels of your mind. Grand Jct., CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.
Hall, L. Michael; Bodenhamer, Bob. (1997). Figuring out people: Design engineering using meta-programs. Wales, UK: Anglo-American Books.
Hall, L. Michael; Bodenhamer, Bob. (2001 fourth edition). Mind-lines: Lines for changing minds. Clifton, CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.
Hall, L. Michael; Bodenhamer, Bob. (1999). The structure of excellence: Unmasking the meta-levels of submodalities. Grand Jct. CO: Empowerment Technologies.
Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Frame games: Persuasion elegance. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.
Korzybski, Alfred (1933/1994). Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Lakeville, Conn: Institute of General Semantics.