“In life, the person with the fewest blind spots win.” Farnam Street, The Great Mental Model
“To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge” Confusius
As a Meta-Coach, here is something you can reasonably expect every single time your coaching client comes in and sits in your coaching chair- your client has numerous blind spots. That’s because all of us human beings have blind spots. True enough, the more personal development that you have achieved, the more intra-personal intelligence you have developed, the more feedback from others you have received and explored- the fewer blind spots.
But always- there are blind spots. To be human is to be blind to ourselves.
What is your client blind to?
A whole lot of things! He is especially blind to his frames. For most coaching clients, whatever is stopping them from reaching their desired outcomes or even establishing a desired outcome,
is due to some frame. That’s really why we need each other. I can see you frames much easier and quicker than I can see my own frames. After frames, there is the blindness to thinking patterns. Your client will usually be fully aware of what she is thinking, but not how. That she will need to learn. That’s why meta-programs are so important in coaching – most people are blind to their own meta-programs.
What else?
There are premises and assumptions, and there are all sort of habits that we’re blind to, especially our defence mechanism habits. Then there a person’s belief opposites. That’s because when you have a belief, you have a self-fulfilling phenomenon so that you see what you believe you will see. And you will not be able to see what you don’t believe in.
Clients are also blind to what is not happening, to the absence of something. Ask, “What did not happen?” and you can help to open up sight to that area of negation. And there’s more. Systems- every system you are a part of- you are also equally blind to.
For babies, what is out of sight is out of mind. That’s true for the young infant because they do not have “constancy of representation.” It is also true for you and me. What is out of our mental sight is also out of mind.
It is there, perhaps even in plain sight, but if you do not have a mind that can see it, embrace it, explore it- you will be unconscious of it. And it can (and will) operate anyway- just outside of your purview.
How do you coach to your client’s blind spot?
First, be sure to set frames with all of your clients that your job as a Meta-Coach is to challenge them and that will sometimes means exposing blind spots. In that way you can prepare your clients to anticipate you presenting what may be outside of her conscious awareness. Next, be sure to offer an inspirational reason for
this blind-spot challenge. For examples, you can’t change what you’re not
aware of, so first awareness. Blind-spots are often the cause of problems blocking expertise or success in reaching a goal, by eliminating the blind-spot you are more free to actualize your highest values.
We challenge blind–spots so that we can live mindfully.
Then what is outside of consciousness will be less likely to trip you up. Given that we have a tendency to ignore disconfirming information and to confirm what we already know (the confirmation bias), it is a true gift for a coach to bring into the light what a client has been blind to.
When you bring up something that seems present in a client’s thinking, emoting, speaking, and behaving that is outside of the client’s awareness- you can expect that the person will at first deny it. After all, he does not see it. Let it go. If it is a pattern, it will come up again. When it does, present it … You may have to do that several times. For a coaching client, when you have done this two or more times, they will begin to suspect that there’s something here and become curious and open. A therapy client will get more and more defensive- that’s a signal that it is time to refer.
Coaching blind spots is one of the great reasons for coaching.
That’s because you cannot self-coach your blind spots. While self-coaching goes a long way- the one thing you cannot coach are your own blind spots. When it comes to a blind spot, get a coach!
Here’s to things going right more and more in your Meta-Coaching!
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YOU INDUCE THE WRONG STATES
Inducing The Wrong States
The next item on the list of things that could go wrong is: “You induce the
wrong states.” This can occur by what you specifically do or by what you
fail to do. As you know, one of the essential skills of a Meta-Coach is
state induction. And what states? The feedback form offers some of the
most basic states that you want as a coach to induce- rapport, compassion,
trust, curiosity, openness, and learning.
Counter-Productive states
What are some of the common states that are often induced which are
counter-productive for coaching? The answer is frustration, irritation,
pressure, controlled. And what triggers the frustration or irritation?
Clients complain that the coach seems disconnected, not paying attention, or
not really listening. For feeling pressured or controlled, clients say that
the coach may be pushing too hard, confronting in a way that feels
aggressive, or asking for responses that seem disconnected to their goals.
Sometimes the wrong state in the client is the state wherein a client feels
that the coaching isn’t working, isn’t going anywhere, and the client
doesn’t see any evidence of change- discouraged, skeptical.
Trust
Because coaching is a relationship and because coaching requires trust- the
coach has to be inducing an intimate state of care and compassion. It is
rare that a client will open up and gain much from coaching if the client
doesn’t feel the connection. So whenever a coach does something that breaks
rapport, that seems uncaring or seems to be lacking compassion- that can
induce the wrong state.
Solution?
As a Meta-Coach, express your care and compassion. This is where
using acknowledgments enable a client to feel heard. And using empathy
statements along with validations builds up the relationship between you and
your client. But don’t do it as “a technique.” Do it as a caring person.
This is one reason to have some time between sessions so that you can get
yourself into the right state.
Rapport
If you are wanting to challenge your client and you do so without sufficient rapport– the challenge is likely to come across as being pushy, demanding, pressuring, or even manipulative. If you are thinking about improving your challenging skills and you jump in and confront something sensitive in your client- you could induce a state of offense or insult. Or if you move from one subject to another too quickly, that jarring transition may come across to your client as a disconnect or even as the lack of consideration.
Solution?
Take your time with your client making sure that you have rapport. Do it physically and even more important, do it with their values, beliefs, and meta-programs. As you match and pace their values, and they get the sense that you are in service of them being the best version of themselves- you earn the right to challenge and confront. As you do, include a bit of humor to create a light touch, so that your challenge is felt as playful and respectful.
Compassionate
To earn even more trust, ask your client how he feels about you and the
relationship. “Am I doing anything that creates doubts or distrust in you?”
“Do you feel that I’m caring and compassionate enough?” Here asking for
feedback and receiving it well deepens the trust.
In terms of inducing the wrong state be very, very careful with “the feeling
question.” “And how do you feel about that?” Asking this question when
your client is talking about a problem, a defeat, a failure, a traumatic
experience- and you will probably deepen their pain. You invite them to go
more into it emotionally. And most of the time that will be not only
unuseful, but counter-productive. Instead, ask the meaning question.
“Given that you feel X, what are the meanings that you are giving to that
situation?”
Disconnected to Feelings
Unless a person is disconnected to his feelings and you are working on
re-connecting them, you will not need the feeling question. For most
people, emotions will come when you get a description and when you ask about
the meanings, values, intentions, and other meta-levels. They will go into
state and experience their emotions and you can amplify them by
acknowledgments.
Here’s to things going right more and more in your Meta-Coaching!
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YOU FAIL TO CHALLENGE
You fail to Challenge
The next item on the list of things that could go wrong in coaching is “You
fail to challenge.” Sadly, this is an all too common failure- Coaches fail
to adequately challenge their clients. Now if you ask them, nearly all of
them will say that they do. “Yes, I challenge my clients.” If you ask the
clients, “Do you feel that your coach challenges you?” most will say no. Or
they will say, “Not enough. I wish my coach would challenge me more.”
What’s going on here?
The problem is that most coaches are people people, they love people, they want to see people grow, they do not want to offend, they do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and so they hold back when it comes to the very idea of challenging a client. They are too compassionate, too nice, too soft, too gentle. And if there are any cultural frames about pushing people, provoking people, teasing, etc., then they may be incapable of actually challenging a client because “it would not be respectful.”
Let’s back up. What do we mean by challenge anyway?
And why does a coach need to challenge his or her clients? What’s the purpose? In coaching, which is a form of self-actualization psychology, a coach challenges a client in order get the client out of his comfort zone so that he will stretch forward to unleash potentials that the client may not even be aware of. If the client stays in her comfort zone with everything comfortable and familiar, there will be no change, no growth, no development. People grow when they are challenged to move out of what’s comfortable and to take on something bigger or more challenging.
What happens when there is no challenging?
As a coach, you challenge in order that your clients grow and unleash their
potentials. If you do not challenge, your client will probably not grow.
Will he feel comfortable? Yes. Will she like you? Yes. Wil he keep doing
what he has always done? Yes. Will she keep getting the same results that
she has always gotten? Yes. But grow, develop, or unleash? No. That’s
why you need to challenge- why you owe it to your client to challenge, why
if you respect your client, you will honor her by challenging her.
How do you challenge?
Okay, so now the how. How do you challenge? The biggest misunderstanding
is that to challenge is to be aggressive, nasty, or mean. Challenge does
not mean any of that! To challenge is to first test your client. For that,
use testing questions. It forces a person to make small clear commitments.
“So you want to get healthy and fit?” “That’s what you want?” These are
yes-no questions. Keep asking them to drive home the point and to get a
commitment. Ask clarification questions. “How are you using the word
‘fit?’” Then pursue the definition 4 to 7 times until you get a
see-hear-feel answer. On your part, this can feel pushy, even aggressive.
Questioning
With testing and clarifying questions, you are challenging your client’s
over-generalized model of the world. Most clients operate for too globally.
Your job is to ground their feet back on mother earth. That will take some
challenging. Next use the value-questions, “Why is that important?”
repeatedly until you move up the value hierarchy and get the person into the
being-realm. This will take some doing. It is both a science and an art.
Here you are challenging the superficial level of responses and pushing into
the realm of your client’s deep authenticity. Now the coaching conversation
is getting real. And uncomfortable! Your client is now probably beginning
to feel open and vulnerable.
When the conversation gets real, your client is beginning to speak his truth
in a way that he may have never spoken truth before. This isn’t abstract
Truth (with a capital T), this is your client’s personal truth. This is the
heart of challenging- enabling and empowering your client to get real. And
this also is where unleashing really begins. This is what the books – Get
Real (2016) and The Crucible and the Fires of Change (2010) address. [If you
don’t have those, I’d recommend you get them.]
Get Real
When you challenge, you are asking your client to come out from behind
himself– his personas, masks, cover-ups, roles, and all of the ways that we
humans hide from ourselves. When you challenge, you are asking your client
to make the conversation real. And you do that by moving up and beyond the
immediate thoughts and emotions, beyond the actions and behaviors of
everyday life, up to the governing frames, up the levels of beliefs, all the
way up to presuppositions and assumptions. That’s why we call it
Meta-Coaching. You are coaching to the person’s inner matrix world of
frames.
So the ultimate challenge is a challenge to your client‘s frames.
So prefame things, “If we find a problem or something that you think is ‘the
dark side,’ I want you to know that you are not the problem. If there is a
problem, the frame is the problem.” Flushing out the frames that’s holding
a person back, leashing them to an old referent event or to a toxic belief-
and then challenging that frame- when you can do that, you are really
getting to the heart of coaching. Don’t fail in this. Challenge!
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Actualizing Narrative Meaning
Meaning often hides in stories— the stories that have been told you about you, your family, your background. And as a form of meaning— some stories are toxically limiting. So enacting meaning often takes the form of narrating a new story that you then tell yourself and others which you can then embody as a new way of being in the world.
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THE “PROGRAMMING” OF NLP
The “PROGRAMMING” Of NLP
There are lots of people who do not like the programming term in
Neuro-Linguistic Programming. What is their problem? They have a semantic
reaction to programming as if it means, and can only mean or carry
connotations of, being “controlled, fated, mechanical, brainwashed, etc.”
Of course, the term programming arose in the early days of computer programming and was a metaphor for how we can become programmed linguistically in our neurology. So as we install programs in a computer, so also in human consciousness.
Do you have programs?
Has your family, education, religion, culture, etc. programmed you? The word “program” (from the Latin programma is made up of pro, “before” and graphein “to write”). It speaks about “an outline to pursue,” “a plan or procedure.” Computer programmers write codes which give a computer a way of functioning- processing information, pictures, sounds, mathematical symbols, etc.
Similarly, the way you were taught to think, feel, speak, and act has given
you your programs. As such you have programs for how to read and study,
programs for getting along with others, for resolving differences, for
riding a bike, typing on a keyboard, etc. Actually you have thousands of
programs which are now installed within you- in your very neurology. That’s
why once you have learned something very thoroughly (over-learned it), you
don’t even need to be conscious of it to run the program. Now it can
operate unconsciously as a way of being in the world. program.
You have a program for shaking hands.
You were not born with it, it came as people repeatedly held out their hand and then shook yours. That happened so long ago you probably have no memory of it. The repetition drove it in and now- lo and behold, someone holds out her hands as a greeting and out goes your hand to meet it. Ah, an unconscious automatic program!
Your program for reading is even more deeply ingrained in you. When you
know a language, you cannot look at words without reading them. While you
could stop yourself from shaking hands on occasion for various reasons, you
cannot stop yourself from reading. It is that deeply automatic and now …
outside of your control.
If you don’t like the word “program,” think habits.
Or think of them as automatic response patterns. You could think of them as the “instincts” that you have learned. That’s because, as everything habituates, what you learn (whether consciously or unconsciously) becomes installed in your
neurology. Some things, like repeated behavioral actions, are installed in
your muscle memories. Now your muscles “know” how to do certain things.
Other things, like episodic memories, are installed in your long term memory
in your hypothalamus.
Programming Ourselves
Linguistically and neurologically you and I have the ability to program
ourselves with all sorts of response patterns. You can think of parenting
as the place where all of the original programming occurred. In this,
parents are programmers (which again should wake us up to the need for
anyone who parents to be required to get a certificate of competency!).
Teachers are programmers. And yes, the adolescence peer group are a set of
programmers (especially be aware of them!). But even worse, television,
movies, and the internet are programmers and provide 24/7 programming for
those who expose themselves to them. Ah yes, the media is a programmer of
ideas, thinking patterns, choices, values, lifestyle, etc.
I think the idea of programming in NLP is great. It speaks about how a
learning can become so ingrained, so installed, that it becomes an automatic
program. In other words, the learning and the changes that you make- you
can keep for the rest of your life. Just program it in. But how? How does
that work?
Unlearning and DeProgramming
Sometimes what you have to do is first do some de-programming. In other
words, unlearning. If you have a program that is just wrong, if it doesn’t
work, if it has become redundant and no longer relevant- sometimes you have
to undo the previous learning, uninstall the old meanings, in other words,
change some beliefs. Then installing a new program and programming it in is
a matter of learning. Here repetition offers you one of the most dependent
methods for programming in the new learning or meaning. Here trance work is also another valuable method.
In NLP, a primary way we do programming is via explicit patterns.
A pattern is a program- a code for how to think, feel, speak, and act. It is a way to run your own mind-body system to achieve specific outcomes such as motivation, decision, empathy, resilience, and a thousand other states. A NLP pattern is a process that has been modeled and/or developed that you can use to establish an inner code for a specific subjective experience. How’s your programming? Do you like it? Would you like to update any particular aspect of it?
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Blame Thinking
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When NLP began and before it was called NLP, it was called Meta. It was called Meta from 1971 to 1975 before it received the new name, Neuro-Linguistic Programming in 1976. Why Meta? Because of the central role that “going meta” played in the formation of the new discipline. While it originally started as a Gestalt Therapy class and slowly morphed into something else, it did so because the two founders (Bandler and Pucelik), not understanding how the transformations were happening, asked Grinder to come in and see if he could figure it out. He enter the group seeking to understand things from a structural point of view- from a meta perspective.
Then, as they stepped back again and again from specific experiences to gain perspective on what was happening – the created a meta-model- the Meta-Model of Language.
Actually, this fact that NLP is a meta-discipline is its strength.
This also explains why so many people don’t know what NLP is. And why there’s so much confusion among them about NLP. When asked to explain “what it is,” they are at a loss. They jump between various contents and miss the larger picture. There are people who say it is change work, personal development, therapy, linguistics, hypnosis, communication, state management, etc.
Obviously, NLP involves all of that and yet it is more. Because NLP looks at the structure of experience and details how the structure of an experience operates, it is a meta-discipline. That’s why NLP seems to apply to nearly everything. It especially applies to any human experience.
Because of that, we can look at any (and every) experience in terms of how it functions in our thinking and feeling, and how we communicate it to ourselves and to others. No wonder then we can apply the communication structural process to therapy, coaching, leadership, management, parenting, teaching, consulting, sports, health, and on and on.
Human Experience Has a Structure
Any and every human experience has a structure and NLP is the study or field of that experience. The focus is on how it works. And further, this applies to experiences that are good and powerful and healing as well as experiences that are bad, disempowering, toxic, pathological, and criminal.
In this, NLP can apply to just about everything. But everything is not NLP.
Not everything is NLP, yet NLP, as the study of subjective experience from a meta-perspective.
When the Meta-States Model emerged in 1994, the role that a meta perspective grew in understanding and application. That’s because the Meta-States Model modeled the special kind of consciousness that we humans have- a consciousness that is self-reflexive. We do not just think, we think about our thinking. We do not just emote, we have emotions about our emotions. The consequences of this is profound.
When you move above a primary experience of thinking-and-feeling, and include it in your next thinking-and-feeling, you do several things. You set the frame for the first experience. You create the category or
classification for the first experience so that it becomes a member of the higher class. Now you can move from mere thought to belief. Moving from fluid thoughts to more stable thoughts that you “hold in mind” as your meanings- your definitions, classifications, evaluations, values, decisions, understandings, and on and on. As you do this, you set in motion a higher level “attractor” in your system of thinking-and-feeling. Now what you put at the meta-level becomes a self-organizing factor attracting to your thinking, emoting, perceiving, remembering, imagining, etc. that very factor.
Meta-States of NLP
What we discovered with the Meta-States Model is that it could explain all of the hidden, invisible processes that made the NLP patterns work. The techniques of NLP, especially those that have proven dependable, work due to the meta-level framing. Sometimes this framing is explicit, yet most of the time it is not. Most of the time to identify the hidden structure, you need to track out the meta-levels.
After the discovery of the Meta-States Model, Bob Bodenhamer and I remodeled the time-line model of NLP, meta-programs, sub-modalities, beliefs, etc. You can find these in Adventures in Time (1997), Figuring Out People (1997), Sub-Modalities Going Meta (2002), as well as User’s Manual of the Brain, Vol. I and II.
Meta made the difference.
It was there in NLP from the beginning, but for twenty years it was unrecognized and undeveloped. The development of meta came in 1994 with Meta-States. Hence “go meta” is to step back and reflect, now you can do quality control of your experience. Therefore to “go meta” is to transcend and include- transcend the immediate experience and include it inside of a higher frame.
So to “go meta” is to rise above your experience of fear, for example, and include fear in the larger state of mindfulness, or courage, or appreciation, or any other state that you would like to outframe the fear with. This is meta-stating. Now, you have a subjective experience which is richer and more profound that just fear- you have mindful fear, or courage fear, or appreciative of the values in fear, etc.
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When Things Go Wrong
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
~ Article by Shawn Dwyer and DrL.Michael Hall ~
As we all know, and know all too well-things often go wrong. Whether in business, career development, relationships, parenting, in all areas things can go awry from our plans, desires, and expectations. Sometimes when things go wrong, things become muddled and confused. At other times, things become damaged even destroyed, toxified, traumatized, and distorted.
Good and Evil
Now when things go wrong-one thing that potentially can undermine resilience is your philosophy of good and evil. And you can count on your “good-and-evil” philosophy being activated when things go wrong. It comes with the territory of being human. We all have some understanding about good and evil, but until something goes wrong and you have a set-back, it is just a philosophy. Then it becomes real, it becomes life. And then, as a meaning-maker who has to identify what a thing is, what it means, how it operates, it’s significance, etc., now you have to do that with the set-back. What do you think? Is it good and supportive? Is it evil and hurtful? What is its source and significance?
Questioning
Whether the set-back occurs to you as an individual, a manager, leader, entrepreneur, business owner, parent, a friend, etc., you have assumptions in the back of your mind about what it means when things go wrong. You ask the why question:
“Why did this happen to me?”
“Why is there pain, hurt, unfairness, injustice, challenges, problems?”
“and why do evil things happen in the world?”
Wrong Philosophy
At this point your answer to these so-called philosophical questions enables your resilience or it disables your resilience. Which direction does your philosophy lead you? How do you explain the source of evil? Does the cause of the thing that goes wrong come upon you because there’s something wrong with you? Just happen chance? Is evil personal or is it impersonal?
Does “evil” even exist as a thing?
If it does not, how do you understand the presence of evil in the world?
Prior to the twentieth century, people mostly thought of evil as a thing, something that existed externally and apart from human activity. They even invented personifications of evil in terms of demons, devil, satan, etc.
Twentieth Century Psychology did no better. It also took the negative view of things going wrong. Following Freud and Watson, both Psychoanalysis and Behaviorism assumed that “human nature” was the problem. The source of evil goes to the basic human drives which are hostile, antagonistic, aggressive, totally selfish, anti-social, etc. The problem is inside. Applied to business or social contexts, and people don’t really want to work, they are lazy, irresponsible, selfish, greedy, etc. McGregory called this Theory X.
Basic Human Needs
Maslow changed all of that as he explained “evil” differently, it is not grounded in human nature, but arises from failing to fulfill the basic needs required for health and growth. For Self-Actualization Psychology, deficiency is the problem. Things do not go wrong because people are bad (evil) at their core. It is because their basic needs have not been taken care of in a satisfactory way. Pathology arises because of the lack of gratification of needs. Hence people become sick due to not satisfying the requirements for health and growth. The problem is outside. It is in how you cope with your driving needs.
The first needs are those for oxygen, food, water, and sleep. However deprive a person of one of these and stand back. Watch the person become desperate.
Perpetuate that state-then out of that desperate need to survive will come aggression, hostility, competition, greed, fear, grief, sadness, shame, etc.
More over the same happens when you deprive a person of the safety and security needs, the social needs for love, affection, connection, relationship, and support.
And it happens with deficiency of self-value, self-respect, and self-dignity.
When people are deprived of these basic human requirements, they become aggressive, hostile, competitive, desperate, fearful, angry, etc. and will do harm (evil). They become reactive which then leads to doing evil to oneself and to others.
Deficiency
Deficiency even occurs at the highest of needs, the self-actualizing needs of knowledge, beauty, justice, order, love, etc. Therefore when deprived of these, meta-pathologies arise- meaninglessness, hopelessness, futility, desperate, depression, alienation, cynicism, etc. What is called “evil” arises due to the failure of human beings to live and be fully human. “Evil” describes the failure to be human, it misses the mark of what’s required to be fully alive, fully human- knowledge, understanding, self-development, personal growth, meaning, significance, beauty, order, discipline, excellence, etc.-the being-values.
So what do we need when things go wrong, when bad things happen to us or to our world? And what do we need when questions of good and evil arise? One thing we need is a philosophy that enables us to understand the source of the problem which, in turn, gives us a way to respond creatively. And that’s precisely what Self-Actualization Psychology and Theory Y provides.
When things go wrong-something is off-track.
We are missing a key variable that’s required for things to go right. When we evaluate that something is “evil,” we are saying that instead of fulfilling the criteria for health, growth, success, etc., we are instead experiencing something preventing that or something destroying it. It is “evil” to what we are attempting to achieve. The solution is now at hand- let’s find out what’s missing or what’s interfering. If something is deficient, let’s fulfill it. If something in interfering, let’s identify it and replace it.
Practicality
So when things go wrong, you need a practical philosophy or understanding that can guide you into taking smart corrective actions. Hence Maslow suggested the understanding that human nature is neutral or good, and not bad or evil, and that it is designed with certain requirements for health and wholeness.
Therefore believing that leads us to get curious, “So what’s going wrong?” “Going wrong in terms of what goal or objective?“ “What’s needed so it goes right?” And now you’re thinking resiliently!
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NEURO-SEMANTIC NLP IS ENOUGH
All you need is NLP and specifically Neuro-Semantic NLP. That is all that you need. You do not need to try to supplement it with other things- not any of the personality typing programs, not neuro-science (as if you or any of us are qualified for that), not quantum mechanics (which has nothing to do with what we’re doing anyway), not yoga, not wilderness adventures, etc. You do not need anything else. The same holds if you want to be a coach, consultant, therapist, etc. NLP is enough.
Why do you not need anything else?
Because NLP and Neuro-Semantics are incredibly rich domains. It is a domain so rich that you could spend the rest of your life studying it and never come to fully gain mastery of all of its facets. It is also a domain so suggestive that there are many, many more areas (sub-domains) within NLP that are yet to be developed. And because we need sharp brilliant minds working on developing those domains – you could be one of those persons.
There is yet another reason for this, namely, there is far too much over-simplification in NLP, an over-simplifying that has degraded NLP so that what is presented publically is a mere shadow of its full reality. NLP is presented in far too many places in a way that makes it anemic and shallow. From the way it is present you would not realize how dynamic it is and all of the things you can do with it.
What explains this? Several things. First and foremost is the fact that most people not know what it is. They do not know that it is most essentially a Communication Model. Look at the first NLP book, The Structure of Magic. Look at its subtitle: “A book about communication and change.” There you have it! Communication and change.
Why then is it called “neuro-linguistic programming?”
It is because that’s what “communication” is made out of- neurological processes (brain, neo-cortex, nervous systems, physiology, etc.) that generates linguistics (symbolic systems for encoding and transmitting meaning) and encode them in dependable and repeatable programs.
When you communicate to yourself, you create your internal sense of reality and map of reality. That gives you your “reality” and it could be highly resourceful and effective or it could be completely dysfunctional and miserable. Whatever it is- you created it. You learned it and you maintain it and you can change it if you like.
When an expert communicates to him or herself, that expert creates a great internal map of reality and experience of reality. It enables the expert to do things that the rest of us cannot. Yet we could discover it, model it, and then use it to inform how we could do so much better in that area of expertise. We call this modeling and herein lies a whole range of things we have yet to model- ways to find best practices, “programs” that some expert spent a lifetime learning which we could map out and replicate in our own lives.
When people communicate among themselves, whether it is a couple, a family, a team, a business, a community, etc., they co-create their social sense of reality and map of reality. If it is accurate and precise, if it works and produces good results- it creates healthy organizations and even governments. If it is inaccurate and imprecise, then the inter-personal communication will probably result in misunderstandings, arguments, conflicts and ineffective relationships.
Communication is everything in Neuro-Semantic NLP – that’s what NLP is. That’s why NLP is all you need.
What then about Neuro-Semantics?
How does Neuro-Semantic contribute to NLP and expand the NLP Model? It does so by focusing on self-reflexive communication. That is, how we not only communicate linearly and outwardly, but also systemically and inwardly. This reveals the hidden dimensions of communication- how we frame and set frames on our communications- frames that give us and others a way to understand or interpret what is said and done.
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The Levels within the Hierarchy of Needs
~ Article by DrL.Michael Hall and Shawn Dwyer ~
The Hierarchy of Needs begins with the survival needs for food, air, water, shelter, vitamins, trace chemicals, reproduction—needs which can be satisfied at the tangible level of things. These need-satisfactions can be quantified and measured. They can be calculated in terms of body weight, time, amount, etc. We can measure the needs, in part, using thermometers, by taking blood pressure, doing a blood analysis, etc.
Second Level of Needs
At the second level of needs, however, we move to a set of needs that are less tangible and that can be satisfied by less tangible things—the safety and security needs. These needs govern our sense of safety and security. How do we operationalize the terms? One way to begin is by measuring a person’s sense of relaxation versus the stress responses of the general arousal syndrome. Hence by examining the amount of adrenalin in the body, the amount of activation of the thyroid, thyalmus, etc. Of course to measure the need for control, stability, safety begins to introduce the role of each person’s psychology into the picture. Here, as with beauty, control, safety, etc. is in the eye of the beholder.
Next, we come to the third level of needs—the love and affection needs.
And while these are even less tangible, there are some ingenious ways to measure them. Harlow’s studies of the terry-cloth versus the wire mother monkey showed the role that touch and “warmth” played in the mental-emotional health of chimpanzees. Further studies of nurseries have indicated the crucial role of touch and stroking on infants. That “failure to thrive” and even death can result from the lack of touch and “bonding” of the infants. By these studies we today recognize that “love,” touch, connection, bonding, human “warmth,” etc. are needs and are necessities that we can demonstrate. To benchmark these we would inquire about how many touches we need, how often, by whom, in what contexts, etc.
At the fourth level Maslow put the self-regard and respect needs.
This speaks of the need to be recognized, acknowledged, and validated. It is sensed and felt as the sense of dignity, worth, and value. To describe this we use such terms of as self-esteem, self-value, self-acknowledgment, etc. And the converse of this is more easily recognized. Therefore, when we treat someone (or a sub-group of people) as “not a person,” as “invisible” and disenfranchise that person economically, socially, or politically, we act as if his or her views, opinions, welfare, and person are irrelevant. These experiences generate in people a sense of a violation of their value, worth, and importance. Hence the need to be seen, acknowledge, and validated. Accordingly, some of the worst punishments we can experience includes isolation, solitary confinement, and excommunication from a community. So while we can observe the results of showing disrespect, the sense of self-regard is almost entirely intangible.
Finally, we arrive at the highest of all needs—the self-actualization needs.
This is the need for meaningfulness in life. So to find and be oneself. And to keep growing and developing as a human being, to become everyone you can become. It is the need to make real (actualize) what you sense within are possibilities and potentials. Therefore, it is the need to make real the capabilities that lurk within for music, beauty, art, order, justice, excellence, perfection, honor, knowledge, etc. This is the drive for fully expressing yourself and for creating your sense of self and reality. And again, while we can recognize the pathologies that arise when people live in ugliness or suffer meaninglessness, these needs are entirely intangible. They are needs of your spirit, not of your body.
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