Article Written by Dr.L Michael Hall.
Look at the things that you do today-the things that you do everyday in a regular and systematic way, the things that you can count on yourself to do. Your human programming.
Look at getting up and dressed, having breakfast (or skipping breakfast), brushing your teeth, driving, etc. When you do, you are observing some of your programs. Yes, you call them habits. That’s because you habitually do these things and do them in certain ways, and you can do them without thinking. It is as if you have a “brushing your teeth program” inside you.
Now, what will trigger this human program? Perhaps the time of the day will trigger it, perhaps walking into the bathroom, perhaps looking in the mirror and smiling.
A word about “programming.”
The idea of programming entered into NLP (Neuro- Linguistic Programming) at the same time when computer programming was beginning to reach popular consciousness. The communication theories of that day had been working for a couple of decades in conceptualizing how to program a machine. It could process information and by the 1970s several programming languages had been developed and gigantic room-size computers had been built. It was in that context that the metaphor of “programming” came to be applied to human processing of information, hence the name Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In those days, it had nothing to do with brainwashing, and everything to do with the code for how to install a systematic and stabilized response.
Questions for Habits or Human Programming
Let’s ask a series of questions about your habits, alias programming:
How did you program yourself to behave in this way?
How did you get yourself to do so in such a regular and dependable way?
Were you born with this program?
If you were not, then at what time did you develop it and how did it become so dependable, so regular, so systematic?
These questions explore is a very powerful resource that you have within you-within your neurology and in your mind-body system. As a habit, you don’t have to even think about it. You just do it. It is as if you are on automatic and as if the habit has a life of its own. Think about this with your eating lunch habit, your morning coffee break habit, your looking over a desert menu after dinner habit, your smoking habit, and so on. Somehow you have programmed yourself to automatically do certain things and now you can efficiently do them without a lot of physical or cognitive effort.
Another question
When you look at the automatic actions that you engage in- does it bring out your best? If you consider some habits that are now unhealthy and unproductive for you, have you ever tried to change them? Did it work? Or did you revert to the old habit? Maybe you changed your mind about smoking and decided to stop smoking and you did … for a little while, but then the old habit re-emerged and you found yourself doing it again. Habits are powerful that way. They can be programmed in that, they seem hard-wired, part of “who you are,” and your “second nature.”
Yet your own personal human programs or habits are similar to those of a computer, they are functions of a code. Therefore, there’s a code that informs your mind-body system how to operate and how to function, in the face of a particular trigger. The trigger starts a sequence of activities so that somehow you just seem to “know” how to respond, and so you do. You get on a bike and your body just seems to know how to ride even if it has been years, or roller-skates, or a thousand other habitual patterns. They are part and parcel of your programming. You have a habit (human program) of feeling afraid in elevators or even seeing snakes on TV. You have a habit (human program) of biting your nails, of impulsively buying things, of cursing when someone cuts you off in traffic.
Now something this powerful could be powerfully used for the good if only you knew the code, could it not? What if you set up a program for reading regularly, studying, exercising, spending time with your loved ones, etc.?
Now Here’s The Thing About A Habit
The code to any habit is no longer in the front of your mind. If it was, it would not be very deep or systematic and it could be more easily changed. No. The code involves what’s deep within, in the back of your mind, and has been created by your self-reflexive consciousness. That is, as you applied second thoughts and emotions to some first level thinking, you meta-stated the sequence of action with higher level frames, this deeply embeds the habit within you. In terms of persuasion, you now have a deep meta-level program (sequence of thoughts) that influence you systemically so that you do not have to consciously think about it.
So the code is a meta-state or meta-level code. It is made of beliefs, decisions, identities, permissions, understand#ings, etc. that essentially locks the program in so that you are not only free to not think about it, you may not be able to think about it. Several consequences fall out from this. One explains the difficulty of modeling an expert who is unconsciously competent- the program is automatic and outside-of-conscious awareness. Another is that in changing an undesirable habit, so you have to get to the code in the back of the mind since those thoughts are the ones most deeply influencing you.
Self Persuasion
In terms of self-persuasion, if you want to truly learn to persuade the hardest person of all to persuade ;yourself. You have to be able to climb the layers of your meaning-making to find the program. That’s what we do with the Matrix Model in Neuro-Semantics. And if you want to establish a new healthy habit as a new human program for your effectiveness in a given area, you have to be able to set the required meta-levels so that you lock them in. That’s what we do with the Meta-States Model and we are running the 3-day International recognised Self Leadership program on the 14th-16th October in Orange NSW. Contact us now to reserve your seat!
