SCRIVI LA TUA STORIA

"Non si potrà mai 'rendere libero' qualcuno. Si può solo insegnare alle persone ad aprire la porta… ma sono loro a doverla attraversare". (Richard Bandler, Owen Fitzpatrick – PNL è Libertà)

Quello che dice Richard Bandler è sacrosanto!
Il Percorso, la Strada, è solo Tua. 
Non è il Percorso, non è la Strada, di qualcun altro; al più puoi trovare chi ti indica la direzione ma la porta devi attraversarla Tu e devi continuare a camminare dopo averla varcata. 
La Ragione per cui sei qui, su questa Terra, è quella di tracciare il Tuo Percorso, di percorrere al meglio la Tua Strada, di Scrivere la Tua Migliore Storia. 
La Misura per il Proprio Cammino non è "contro-qualcun-altro" ma è rispetto a Se Stessi, rispetto al giorno prima, rispetto all'Esperienza precedente, ecc... 
Sei d'accordo?

Siamo molto sensibili a credere ai giudizi più positivi o meno negativi di chi ci sta intorno. Proprio mentre scrivo questo post, io stesso, nella parte più nascosta della mia mente, sento le parole di un personaggio che conosco molto bene e che so essere un mio feroce critico, il quale mi sta dicendo che quanto scrivo non gli piace per niente. Il mio Coach interno, però, mi aiuta a pesare tale critica insistendo sul fatto che quello che scrivo trova un Significato Importante e Utile per Me. 
Quanto darò retta al primo, condizionato dal giudizio altrui e quanto al secondo, che mi ricorda di seguire quello che ritengo più Significativo per Me?

C'è una parte della Tua Storia che stai scrivendo e che non è proprio la Tua? C'è una parte di essa che è in realtà una versione pallida di una storia di qualcun altro?
C'è qualcosa che vuoi/puoi/devi Cambiare da subito? 
Stai scrivendo parte della Tua Storia perché stai cercando l'approvazione (o di essere all'altezza delle aspettative) di qualcun altro? 
Stai giudicando Te Stesso in base a ciò che credono gli altri? 
Che Storia dovrebbe essere scritta per essere Significativa per Te? 
Cosa puoi Imparare dai capitoli che hai scritto fino a questo punto?
Tutto ciò che fino ad ora hai fatto è un preludio al resto della Storia che scrivi da questo punto in poi? 
Il Successo è Scoprire e Perseguire il Tuo Percorso. 
E allora, ancora: "stai scrivendo la Tua Storia?" 
Ed è la migliore storia possibile? 
Non è Vivere se percorri la Strada che qualcun altro ha scritto per Te...

Ognuno come può...
Abbi Gioia!
Giannicola

THE KEY NLP MODELING TOOL (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

Dr Michael Hall on modeling one more time. The Meta-Model of Language in the following post is really superb and it starts with this question: "How is the Meta-Model a modeling tool?"

Let's see...

The Meta-Model of Language

The NLP is a Communication Model too and we are noting that it is a tool for modeling.  Now the interesting about it is that it arose from modeling.  It arose from modeling the language patterns of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir and while it used Transformational Grammar (TG) to do so, the new model, “The Meta-Model of Language” soon jettisoned Transformational Grammar.  That’s why, while you will find a summary of TG at the end of the book The Structure of Magic, Volume I, you will not find it in any of the other books by the NLP originators or any of those who came later.

Why?  Why did that happen?  How is it that the model or tool that created the Meta-Model was made redundant immediately thereafter so that it was no longer used?  The reason is that NLP did not need Transformational Grammar.  The Meta-Model didn’t need it.  In the book about the 25^th year anniversary of the Meta-Model, Communication Magic (2001), I described this as resulting from two sources:

First, Noam Chomsky who created Transformation Grammar himself gave it up and tossed it out in 1976.  He gave up on that model because too many holes and inconsistencies had been discovered about it.

Second, what NLP took from TG was the idea of the levels of information processing and while TG has that (surface and deep structure) so does Koryzbski (levels of abstraction) and Bateson (levels of learning).

Question: How is the Meta-Model a modeling tool?  We know that it is a communication tool and that by using the linguistic distinguishing of the Meta-Model and the questions or challenges, a person can effectively invite a speaker to create a well-formed and precise description of an experience.  But how does one use it to model the structure of experience?

Answer:  The answer goes to the fact that experience is coded and driven by language.  When it comes to experiences, especially the key experiences that we humans value or disvalue, want to want to avoid—they are labeled, named, and given meaning by the words that we use to describe and evaluate them.  And if this is so, then no wonder the Meta-Model becomes a powerful tool to unpack an experience and given that the Meta-Model enables a person to take vague and indefinite descriptions and make them empirical and sensory-based, it becomes a wonderful tool for precision.

So, no wonder from the beginning of NLP, the Meta-Model has been used as a tool for modeling the linguistic facets of an experience.  Now I did not know this when I first learned NLP.  In fact, I read, studied, and trained in NLP all the way through Practitioner training before I discovered this.  I had even read those two original NLP books that are so unreadable, The Structure of Magic, and while I liked them, I still did not get it.  Then one day during the beginning of my Master Practitioner Training, Richard Bandler said, almost in an off-handed way, that “everything we’ve created in NLP was based on the Meta-Model.”

I was stunned.  “What?  Everything in NLP is based on the Meta-Model?  How could that be?”  I could not figure it out.  So I went back and re-read the original books very slowly and very deliberately and that was actually the beginning of my own experience in modeling.

“What did I find?” you ask?  I found that when it comes to human experiences, almost all of our most valuable experiences involve language, and that by meta-modeling the language, a modeler can identify a great deal of the structure of the experience.  He or she can put together how the person got him or herself into that state and experience.  And so if it is an experience to take onto oneself, then the linguistic model gives a person a step-by-step process for replicating it.  And if the experience represents a painful, dysfunctional, and toxic experience, then modeling it gives one numerous ways to undo it, pull it apart, and prevent it from being operational.

I thought that was great!  So when I began to play around with my first attempts at modeling, I was absolutely fascinated by how much one can discover in a person’s language.  I was astonished with how much I could learn by listening to the words of people, especially experts, and how much of how they have constructed their sense of reality and how much it suggests the steps for stepping into that same experience.

Now at the time I was doing psycho-therapeutic work as a therapist and so I began creating a model for each client.  How did this person create this or that experience?  What do this person’s words indicate or imply in terms of the processes involved— the generalizations, the deletions, and the distortions?  It was in this way that my own phenomenological studies began, first of single experiences and later of combining different models that people used to experience a similar category of experience and after that when I left the domain of therapy, to apply the same thing for such experiences as wealth creation, selling, negotiating, being an entrepreneur, leadership, etc.

As linguistic beings, we live in the house of language.  This explains why and also how we can use language for modeling experience:

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world" (Wittgenstein, 1922).

"Language is what bewitches, but language is what we must remain within in order to cure the bewitchment" (Henry Staten)

L.  Michael Hall, Ph. D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

Everyone as best as he can...

Have Joy!
Giannicola 

MODELING INTUITION (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations... I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am” After this Albert Einstein's quotation we can read the latest Michael Hall's brilliant post...

For many people, intuition is a wonderful, mysterious, and near-magical phenomena.  Yet, what is intuition?  What do we refer to when we use this term?  And how do we use our intuition in our work as we coaches, consultants, trainers, therapists work with people?

NLP began by modeling the intuition of three world-class communicators.  You will find this statement and this language in the early books of NLP, especially The Structure of Magic, Volumes I and II (1975, 1976).  Richard and John modeled the intuition that Virginia had about people, communicating with them, deciding on what to do as an intervention.  They did the same with Fritz Perls and Milton Erickson.  What resulted from their modeling?  NLP.  That is, the models of NLP and the patterns derived from those models.  And more specifically:

            The Meta-Model of Language in therapy: asking the questions of specificity.

            The Strategy Model using representation systems and the TOTE process.

The Representational Model of how people think, encode “thoughts,” and manifest via neurology.

The Milton Model of Language for inviting a person to go inside (“downtime”) and access resourceful states.

Modeling Virginia’s Intuitions

In the original NLP books, The Structure of Magic, Bandler and Grinder talked about the intuitions of Perls and Virginia and said that what they modeled were their intuitions.  That how they worked with people, how they chose what to say or do, were the result of their whole lifetime of experiences which had now become habitual and automatic.  They noted, “Virginia took a lifetime to learn her intuitions.”  Yet we do not have to replicate her life experiences, today we can model those intuitions to make explicit what she does “by intuition.”  And doing that, we can then transfer her intuitions to ourselves and others.  And that’s what NLP is about (or should be about).

Intuition comes from Latin and refers to “in-knowing”—to what a person “knows” “inside.”  And where do people get that inside knowledge?  They were not born with it.  Nobody is born “knowing” anything.  Unlike the animals who “know” what to eat, how to build a nest, who is a predator, etc., we humans are born without content information instincts.  Our “instincts” are without content information and because of this gap— we have tremendous room inside for learning— and learning we do!  We learn everything.  Yes, we have dispositions and latent “talents” that can be developed.  Yet without learning, the dispositions and talents do not develop.  You may have a disposition for mathematics, or linguistics, or visual-spatial distinctions, or many other things, yet if you are not exposed to such areas and given a chance to develop, the “talent” will lie dormant.  It will not develop.

Intuitions are learned.  Whatever intuition you have about anything, you learned that intuition.  You were exposed to an area of learning and you developed it, consciously or unconsciously.  How you made it an “in-knowing” is through exposure, experience, repetition, and learning.  You now have an intuition about how to drive a car because of your original exposure to driving and to your experience of driving.  Today your learning (in-knowing) is your intuitive sense of driving and is unconscious unless you teach driver’s education.  The conscious learnings, understandings, concepts, etc. have “dropped out of conscious awareness into your unconscious awareness.”  Now you “know” how to do things and don’t know how you know.  You just know— we call that “intuition.”

Intuitions are also subject to the errors and inaccuracy that all learnings are subject to.  And given that, then intuitions are not infallible.  They are not god-like.  They are fallible, human, and subject to all of the fallibilities that all other learnings are— to cognitive distortions, to fallacious thinking patterns, to biases, prejudices, etc.  Your intuitions can be very, very wrong and mis-lead you.  This suggests that we should never blindly trust our intuitions.  Just as you would not blindly or absolutely trust your thinking, believing, understanding, perceiving — it is not wise to do so with your intuitions.

This fact provides a significant challenge to modeling.  When modeling the intuitions of an expert, we have to be cautious about the intuitions that we are modeling.  We could model an error in the expert’s knowledge (in-knowing).  So we have to test what we are modeling and have to test whether we are modeling an actual knowledge that is accurate and useful.

How do we model an expert’s intuition?  This is where the NLP models for modeling offer some very powerful tools.  We model intuition by reverse engineering.  First we look at the excellence.  In the case of Perls and Satir, the ability to communicate in a therapy context with clients and via the therapeutic context to enable a client to change his or her mental models (maps) of the world so that they have more understanding and choice in how to respond to the challenges that they experience in the world.  Then we ask, What is the expert actually doing?  Here we get a sensory-based (empirical) description of how they are talking, gesturing, relating, etc.

From there we follow the sequence of actions (behavioral and linguistic) from beginning of the conversation to the end.  This gives us a “strategy” —a strategic set of actions.  As we interview the expert we can get the inside information about the distinctions the person is making about what to do, when to do it, how to do it with the person, and why (which gives us their thinking, believing, assumptions, etc.) for their decisions and choice points.  (See NLP: Volume I, 1980, Robert Dilts).

But we’re not done yet.  Next we go meta.  That is, we look for where the expert reflexively thought-and-felt something else about their previous thought-or-feeling and so layered their thinking with one or more additional frames.  Human “strategies” do not work in a simple linear  way.  As we are processing through anything, we have frames of meaning in the back of our mind that govern our experiencing, and we also are constantly stepping back to reflect on our experience.  (See NLP Going Meta, 2005).

Once we have a “model” —a set of internal and external steps for how the expert produces the excellence, we can test it by trying it out ourselves.  Does it work?  To what extent can we replicate the expertise?  To what extent do we fail to replicate it?  These questions drive us back to revisit the interview and to ask more interviewing questions to find out the distinctions we are missing.  Doing this recursively over a period of time enables us to finally create a workable, actionable, and transferable model of the expert.  And if we do that repeatedly with other experts in the same field, and create a synthesis of the best of each, we can generate a more expansive and rich model for a given expertise.

We model intuitions.  So this is one use of the term intuition in NLP and Neuro-Semantics.  There are yet other meanings and we will look at those in the next posts.

 L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

Everyone as best as he can...

Have Joy!
Giannicola 

MODELING: THE MAGIC OF “HOW” (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

Stone the flamin' crows Dr. Hall!!!

Amazing post on Modeling...

In last week’s post, I highlighted the power of focusing on the how of detailing out what is happening in the now.  For me, this was the most exciting thing when I first discovered NLP Modeling.  By asking questions and by closely observing people, a person could identify how any given person is currently, at this moment, creating his or her sense of reality.  And if we can do that, then we can figure out how that reality came into existence, operates, and can be altered.  Incredible!

Now in NLP Modeling, Wyatt Woodsmall (1990) was the person who first differentiated two dimensions or levels of modeling.  He labeled them Modeling I and Modeling II.  I think that this distinction provides a valuable way to think about the range of the modeling that we can do.

Modeling I refers to pattern detection and transference.  This kind of modeling detects a pattern of behavior that shows up in certain skills, abilities, and expertise.  By explicating the patterns of behavior in the skill or skills—the what that an expert actually does to achieve a result, this modeling focuses on reproducing the products of the expert.  This kind of modeling focuses on learning the sets of distinctions, procedures, and processes which enable a person to reach a desired outcome.

Modeling II refers to modeling the first modeling (Modeling I).  As such, it focuses on the how of an expert—how does the expert actually create and perform the expertise.  It doesn’t focus on the what is produced (that’s the first modeling), it focuses on the background competencies.  Now we focus on the processes which are necessary to generate the patterns that form the content of Modeling I.  In this modeling, we especially pay attention to the beliefs and values that outframe the expert.  Here we attend to the meta-programs, the contexts and frames, the meta-states, etc., all of the higher frames.

I like this distinction because, as Woodsmall points out, the field of NLP itself resulted from Modeling I, but not Modeling II.  Let me explain.  NLP emerged from the joint venture of John Grinder and Richard Bandler as they studied the language patterns of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir.  First Richard used his gift of mimicking Perls’ and Satir’s speech, tonal, and language patterns.  Though untrained in psychology and psychotherapy, by simply reproducing the “magical” effects of these communication experts, he found that he could get many of the same results as the experts.  Incredible!  How was this possible?

In searching for that answer, John used Transformational Grammar and his unique skills in that field to pull apart the “surface” structures for the purpose of identifying the “deep” structures.  Both of them wanted to discover how this worked.  Frank Pucelik also was a part of all of that, and he created the context and the original group in which all of the discoveries took place.

From the theory of Transformational Grammar, the assumptions of the Cognitive Psychology (Noam Chomsky, George Miller, George Kelly, Alfred Korzybski, Gregory Bateson), and the coping of Perls and Satir, they specified what “the therapeutic wizards” actually did which had the transformative effect upon clients.  That was the original NLP modeling.

This adventure in modeling then gave birth to The Structure of Magic (1975/ 1976) which gave us the first NLP Model.  This was originally called The Meta-Model of Language in Therapy.   Today we just call it, The Meta-Model.  This is a model about the language behavior of Perls and Satir, that is, how they used words in doing change work with clients.  And that then became the central technology of NLP for modeling.

The amazing thing is that with that first model, they were able to model a great deal of the governing structure of a person’s experience.  That enabled them to peek into a person’s model of the world just by listening to the features that linguistically mark out how the person has created his or her map.  While this is not all that’s needed for modeling, it certainly gives us a set of linguistic tools for figuring out how a piece of subjective experience works.  It answers the how questions:

            How does a person depress himself?

            How does a person take “criticism” effective and use it for learning?

            How does another person look out at an audience and freak out?

The Meta-Model gave the original co-developers of NLP numerous tools for both understanding and replicating the person’s original modeling.  Soon thereafter, as they modeled Milton Erickson, they began adding all kinds of non-verbal and non-linguistic distinctions to their model, enriching the modeling process even further.   As NLP started with Modeling I and not Modeling II, the early NLP thinkers and trainers did not have access to the higher level of modeling until some time later.  Nor did they seem aware of it for some time.  Eventually this realization arose as people began asking some basic modeling questions:

What strategy did Perls use in working with clients?

            What strategy enabled Satir to do her “magic” with families?

What strategy describes Erickson’s calibration skills and use of hypnotic language patterns?

How did any one of those wizards make decisions about what to use when?

Even to this day, we do not know.  We know what they produced, but not howthey produced such.  We have the results from their magic, but not the formula that identifies the states and meta-states, the beliefs and higher frames of mind that enabled them to operate as “wizards” in the first place.   Woodsmall (1990) writes:

“In short, if NLP is the by-product of modeling Erickson, Perls, and Satir, then why are we never taught how they did anything?   All we are taught is what they did.  This means that we can imitate the powerful patterns that they used, but we don’t know how they generated and performed them to start with.  From this it is evident that the part of NLP that is the by-product of modeling is a by-product of Modeling I, but not of Modeling II.” (p. 3)

As the product of Modeling I, all that we originally received in NLP was theresult of modeling.  We received the patterns and procedures which the modelers found in Perls, Satir, and Erickson, i.e., reframing, swishing, anchoring, collapsing anchors, etc.  We received the NLP patterns. Bandler and Grinder gave us a legacy of dramatic processes that enable people to change.

Only later was it that Bandler, Grinder, DeLozier, Bandler-Cameron, Dilts, and Gordon begin to wonder about the modeling itself that they started to explore the modeling processes, assumptions, patterns, etc. about modeling.  From that came the commission from Richard and John for Robert Dilts to write the second modeling book, NLP: Volume I.  That volume made Modeling II available.

They also left their theory about change, mind, neurology, language, etc.  Of course, they did not call it “a theory.”  In fact, they pulled off a big “Sleight of Mouth” pattern as they told us that they had no theory, just a description of what worked.  “It’s a model, not a theory.”  With that mind-line, they distracted our attention and offered “the NLP Presuppositions,” telling us that they were not true, could not be proven, but seemed like really nice “lies” that would take us to more resourceful places.  So we just memorized them, only half aware (if that), that within the NLP Presuppositions they had hidden away the theory of neuro-linguistic programming.

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

Everyone as best as he can...

Have Joy!
Giannicola 

NLP THE HOW OF NOW (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

Here’s another way to describe NLP and Neuro-Semantics.  What are these models and what do they do?   They focus on the how of now.  That is, whatever is now—whatever experience, whether an experience of excellence, or just a mediocre experience, or even a hellish experience— whatever the experience is, there is rhyme and reason to it.  It has a structure and therefore an internal form.  There is a how that explains it.  That’s the how of the now.

After all, the person who has the experience has created it.  That person has taken an event, the data of some event, and interpreted those facts in such a way as to generate his or her experience of it.  And if we explore the combination of what happened and how that person has interpreted it (given it meaning, drawn a conclusion, developed a belief, made a decision, etc.) then we could explore the how of now.

Your now experiences also didn’t just drop out of the sky.  It was co-created by you from the event.  Event happened, you interpreted, bingo —experience.  And NLP, as you well know, is “the study of the structure of subjective experience.”  Now in what could be considered, the prelude of all NLP books, this is what Fritz Perls said.  It is the book that Richard Bandler edited from the audio-tapes that Robert Spitzer gave him some time after Fritz died and which became the book, The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy (1973).  Read it now with an NLP ear!

“In previous centuries, we asked ‘why.’  We tried to find causes, reasons, excuses, rationalizations.  And we thought if we could change the causes, we could change the effect.  In our electronic age, we don’t ask why anymore, we ask how.  We investigate the structure, and when we understand the structure, then we canchange the structure.  And a structure in which we are most interested, is the structure of our lifescript.  The structure of our lifescript ... is mostly taken up with self-torture, futile self-improvement games, achievements, and so on.” (122)

From Why to How

The NLP idea of “Don’t ask why,” as almost all of the original NLP ideas did not come from Bandler, Grinder, or Pucelik, it came from Fritz and Virginia (which by the way they got from Maslow and Rogers).  Here is what Fritz, in the book, The Gestalt Approach, said:

“Asking questions that begin with ‘why’ are of little therapeutic value.  “The ‘why’ questions produce only pat answers, defensiveness, rationalizations, excuses, and the delusion that an event can be explained by a single cause.  The why does not discriminate purpose, origin, or background.  Under the mask of inquiry it has contributed perhaps more to human confusion than any other single word.  Not so with the ‘how.’  Thehow inquires into the structure of an event, and once the structure is clear all the whys are automatically answered.   ... 

“If we spend our time looking for causes instead of structure we may as well give up the idea of therapy and join the group of worrying grandmothers who attack their prey with such pointless questions as ‘Why did you catch that cold?’  ‘Why have you been so naughty?’” (p. 77)

“The majority of questions the patient asks are seductions of the intellect, related to the notion that verbal explanation are a substitute for understanding.  We want to elicit the structure of the patient’s question, its background; and possibly we can reach the self in this process. (p. 78).

If you have read The Structure of Magic, Volume I, or nearly any other basic NLP book, then you may have to do a double-take on that paragraph.  You may go, “Hey that sounds like something right out of my basic NLP training.”  But it is not.  Before NLP even existed, it came from Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy!  And so now you know where Bandler and Grinder got so much of what is now basic NLP.

This is actually some of the original material that today is the background of the Meta-Model.  And there’s more.  Because Fritz was very challenging and confronting in his style, Bandler picked up on this, mimicked it and from this even came the language that was originally used with regard to the Meta-Model of Language.  When a client says something, “challenge it” with a question.  Again, this comes directly from Fritz!

“The therapist’s primary responsibility is not to let go unchallenged any statement or behavior which is not representative of the self, which is evidence of the patient’s lack of self-responsibility.” (p. 80).  “Responsibility is really response-ability, the ability to choose one’s reactions.” (79)

Fritz also explained that “the patient’s statements are always clues for further questions, and possibly more specific ones.” (p.79).  Now you know the answer to the question when someone asks, “Besides Transformational Grammar, where did the structure of the Meta-Model come from?”

In the How of Now

Today when you work with someone, explore the how of that person’s now so that you can model the how.  This is important.  When you do that, you are thereby able to identify the strategy of the person which will, in turn, enable you to understand them, pace them, and possibly identify the leverage point of change for them.  As you do so, identify the components, the steps, the sequence, the cause-effect structures, the standards or criteria, etc. of their linguistically-created and based reality.  After all, it is their map that has created their experience.

If you are a trainer, consultant, therapist, or coach, don’t engage in any of these processes with another person until you first do some modeling of the how, then, when you know the how of that person’s now, you will be ready to go.  Ask and explore.  If the person says that she is not confident, if he says he’s afraid or worried about having a low profile, or depressed, or whatever—

∙           What you are doing or experiencing right now?

∙           How are you doing this?  What are you doing?

∙           How do you know that you insecure, or afraid, or depressed, and so on?

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

Everyone as best as he can...

Have Joy!
Giannicola 

MODELING HUMAN EXCELLENCE WITH NLP (by Michael Hall -- Neuro-Semantics)

Would you like to model the Human Excellence?

Which Field about? Do you have one in particular?

Do you know how to do?

Any Idea?

Anyway, let's have a look at Michael Hall's last post about Modeling...  

What is NLP?  How can we define it?

There are two answers that I like to give.  First, NLP is a Communication Model and second, NLP is a Modeling Model.  Yes, it can be framed as involving other things— a technology of excellence, a format for self-development, the success formula.  Yet those ways of defining it are typically P.R. definitions, that is, definitions that serve the purpose of selling NLP.  They are not truly descriptions of what it is.

Do you want to know what it is?

It began as distinctions of language regarding how some experts in communication were able to do by just talking what seemed like magic with their words.  That’s why NLP began with the development of what was called “the Meta-Model of Language in therapy” (The Structure of Magic, Volume I, 1975).  This was, at that time, eleven linguistic distinctions that enabled a practitioner to recognize an ill-formed word or sentence and ask a question that would challenge the speaker to speak in a way that would be well-formed in terms of clarity and precision.  The Meta-Model is now 22 distinctions (see Communication Magic, 2001, which I wrote at Richard Bandler’s request to acknowledge the 25 year anniversary of the Meta-Model).

So it is a model of how communication works which was John Grinder’s contribution as he imported Transformational Grammar (T.G.).  And in a way that de-mystified and simplified T.G., he formulated the language patterning of Perls and Satir so that they were useable by anyone.  This contribution was modeled from Bandler by Grinder, and then practiced among them along with Pucelik and the practice group.  So by modeling experts NLP arose as a Communication Model and as a Model for Linguistically Modeling human experience.  In other words, the Communication Model of NLP became simultaneously the first Modeling tool of NLP!  So that’s why I like to say that NLP is first a Communication Model and then a Modeling Model.

Given that this is what NLP is, I thought I would write a series of articles during this year of Modeling Excellence. There are several reasons I want to do this.  First and foremost, this is the essence of NLP.  To not know this (which is today all too common in the field) is to not understand what NLP is about, where it came from, what we can do with it, and where many of us are going with it.

This is also the essence of Neuro-Semantics, especially given that it began from my first modeling project on Resilience, and which ended in the discovery and creation of the Meta-States Model which, just as with the Meta-Model, is simultaneously a Modeling Model.  Since that time, I have spent the past twenty-some years on 16 additional modeling projects and that has led to the dozen or so Neuro-Semantic models that extends NLP.

Nor is this something that is for only a few special people.  My vision of NLP, and especially of Neuro-Semantics, is that this is something that every quality training in NLP should enable in practitioners.  That is, every practitioner in this science and art ought to be able to model human experiences.  And modeling human experience simply means being able to understand the how of the experience: How does it work?  How do you do that?

After all, with the NLP models, you can begin to answer these how questions by using —

∙           The Meta-Model of Language and examining how the person talks and languages his or her reality that generates that reality.

∙           The Strategy Model whereby you can follow and make explicit the representational steps that comprise the person’s “strategy” for how he or she “thinks” and uses all of their physiology, neurology, to “make sense” and to create their reality.

∙           The Meta-Programs Model whereby you can begin to catch the meta-levels of frames and thinking patterns or styles that add to how the person operates.

∙           The Sub-Modality Model for how the person edits his or her representational movie which accesses various meta-levels of meaning and beliefs (because sub-modality distinctions work semantically, see Sub-Modalities Going Meta).

Then with the Neuro-Semantic models, you can complete the model of the how by using—

∙           The Meta-States Model of a person’s self-reflexive consciousness to track the thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, and meanings in the back of the mind and how they interface with the primary thoughts and feelings and how they set the frames forhow a person operates.

∙           The Matrix Model so that you can track both the processes by which the person creates their matrix of frames and the content matrices that establish his or her sense of self.

∙           The Meaning– Performance Axes so you can determine the kind of meanings, quality of meanings and number of meanings that play into how the person creates their reality and the performances, implementing it in real life.

∙           The Self-Actualization Quadrants to measure how integrated the response is and how well it puts a person “in the zone.”

∙           The Matrix Embedded Volcano to relate how the person’s basic and meta-needs are met (or not met) in the process.

∙           The Axes of Change and/or the Crucible to evaluate the processes of change, how the change is occurring or not, andhow to better facilitate the desired change.

All of this, of course, requires quality training in NLP and Neuro-Semantics, training that includes learning how to model.  This is one of the things we emphasis in our Trainers’ Training, that trainers enable participants learn how to model the structure of experience.  So to that end I will be writing a series of articles on Modeling.

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics homepage

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THE META-COGNITION OF THE FOUR META-MODELS OF NLP (Michael Hall)

Given the expansive effectiveness of meta-cognition (somewhere else...), does it surprise you that there are four meta-cognition models that comprise the core of NLP?  What this means practically is that one way to describe NLP is to describe the four meta-models that make up the heart and soul of NLP.

So what are the four meta-models of NLP? What may make this a bit confusion is that yes, one of these meta-models is called “The Meta-Model.” That is actually the first one and why it got the name that it did. The full name is “the Meta-Model of Language in therapy.” And that’s because it arose from the linguistic distinctions that John Grinder identified in the patterning replication that Richard BandlerFritz Perl made from ’s use of language and Virginia Satir’s use of language.

But, as noted, that’s just the first of four meta-models. It is strange that many NLP Trainers do not know the four meta-models. Not too long ago I spoke to a NLP Trainers group and mentioned “the four meta-models.” “Four?” It was as if I had revealed some secret knowledge hidden in the mountains of Santa Cruz and only accessible to a few special people!

Now as a meta-discipline itself, NLP is a field about how all things human work, especially any aspect of the human experience that has a cognitive-behavioral structure to it. This structure doesn’t have to be in a person’s conscious awareness, it can and in fact usually is in a person’s cognitive-behavioral unconscious awareness. This is because Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Neuro-Semantics are most fundamentally about how we humans structure things. And because we structure things with language, representations, perceptions, and self-reflexive states, NLP has four meta-models by which we can model things.

These four meta-models provide a redundant system of descriptions. This explains why the models seem different, they approach the mind-body-system of experiences in different ways. So even though they refer to the same thing, each one gives us another avenue of approach. Each provides another systematic structure and description of the processes of an experience. The four NLP meta-models are:

1) The Meta-Model of Language: The NLP Communication Model.

2) The Sub-Modality or Cinematic Features Model.

3) The Meta-States Model of self-reflexive consciousness.

4) The Meta-Programs of perceptual lens and points of view.

1) The Meta-Model of Language

The first, the Meta-Model of Language, is a model that identifies the form of how we mentally map our experiences in language. Via this model you can unpack the linguistics governing a person’s mental mapping and as you do, it provides a way for you to create linguistic precision. How does language work? By enabling us to use sensory-based words to create an inner picture for our mind, and then to make higher level evaluations.

This first meta-model of NLP is a model about the linguistics which serve as a code for your thinking. And where did it come from? From Transformational Grammar (TG) which Bandler and Grinder used it to sort out and create a model of the communication patterns of Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson.

To use this model, listen to words and language expressions, ask questions that invite the speaker to provide more specific answers, and thereby evoke a more thorough and precise mapping about the original experience. The questions that challenge the linguistic expressions transform the evaluative language back to sensory-based words so that we can make a mental movie in our mind and understand what the speaker is referring to and hence meaning. See The Structure of Magic, Volumes I and II; also, Communication Magic.

2) The “Sub-Modalities” or Cinematic Features Model

Classic NLP did not, and still does not, realize that this is a meta-model. Why not?  Because someone labeled the distinctions as “sub” and that got connected to the name. If we were to accurately label the model, it would be Meta-Modalities. This meta-model refers to the cinematic features that provide a code for the mental movies that you create in your mind. It refers to how you frame the cinema in your mind in terms of the qualities of your sights, sounds, and sensations. So whether you make a movie close or far, bright or dim, loud or quiet, whether you step into it or just observe it, whether you add circus music to it, or the music from Jaws, these features or distinctions enable you to edit your movies.

The symbols in this model stand for semantic evaluations. Perhaps “close, three-dimensional, and in color” stand for something being “real” or “compelling.”  That’s why the cinematic features (sub-modalities) are governed semantically.  In and of themselves, they mean nothing. Yet inside of every person, they stand for some significance or meaning.

As you frame the cinema in your mind, you code the sights, sounds, and sensations with various features, cinematic features. These features or distinctions enable you to take an editor’s position or perspective to your own mental movies. You can then use “close” or “far” to stand for and mean some semantic frame (real, unreal; compelling, less compelling).

To recognize your sub-modalities and work with these cinematic features in how you code your representations, you have to step back or “go meta.” You have to gain a broader perspective and ask questions that are meta to or higher than the representations. Is that picture close or far? Is that image bright or dim?  Is that sound quiet or loud? To answer such meta-questions, you have to stop being a subject of the movie, step out of it, and as you transcend that experience, notice the code as it currently is. That’s why these are not really “sub” but operate as a meta-level to your representations. See Insiders Guide to Sub-Modalities; also Sub-Modalities Going Meta.

3) Meta-States Mode of Self-Reflexive Consciousness

The Meta-States Model looks at the same structures, not primarily in terms of linguistics or cinematic features, but in terms of thinking-and-feeling states. A possibility state or a necessity state, for example, will typically show up linguistically as a modal operator of possibility (can, get to, want to) and/or a modal operator of necessity (have to, must). The Meta-Model describes it linguistically, the Meta-States model describes it in terms of state.

Because we never just think, we reflectively think about our thinking, we feel about our feeling. This self-reflexivity creates our meta-states as our states-about-states and all of the layering we do. Reflecting back onto our own states and experiences, layers levels of experiences (what we call “logical levels”) to create each person’s unique psycho-logics. This means that we are not logical creatures, we are psycho-logical beings. Our meanings make sense to us—on the inside.

Nor does our reflexivity ever end. Whatever you think or feel, you can step back and have another thought or feeling about that. This creates the layers of meanings as beliefs, understandings, decisions, memories, imaginations, permissions, anticipations, identities, and so on. It is what makes our minds complex and not simple. And as we continue to reflexively apply a next thought or feeling to ourselves, we keep building more frames within our frame structure or matrix. This makes up the rich layeredness of our mind or our neuro-semantic system. See Meta-States (2008), Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997), and Winning the Inner Game (2007).

4) The Meta-Programs of Perceptual Lens

The Meta-Programs model is one of thinking patterns, thinking styles, or perceptual lens. This model refers to how you see or perceive things. Is the cup half empty or half full? Do you see it pessimistically or optimistically? Whichever style of thinking/perceiving characterizes you, then your language will differ, as will your states, as will the ways you encode your inner mental movies.

A global thinker will sort for the big picture and meta-state or frame most things from the global thinking-and-feeling state. Someone who sorts for “necessity” will regularly apply a state of compulsion to other thought-and-feeling states.  Habituation of your internal processing gives rise to your meta-programs and then governs your everyday states, language, and perceptual filters. As your meta-programs show up in language, the Meta-Model offers a description. And as you access a particular state and use it repeatedly, your meta-state becomes your meta-program. That’s why a meta-program is a coalesced meta-state.

From your meta-states, you create the meta-programs that govern your perceptions. You generalize from the states that you most regularly and commonly access and as you do you habituate that way of thinking and feeling until it becomes your basic style of perceiving. You meta-state global thinking or detail thinking until it coalesces into your neurology and becomes your perceptual lens or meta-program. You meta-state sameness thinking or difference thinking until it becomes your meta-program style.

A driving perceptual style is a meta-program that you have layered with even more meta-states—states of value, belief in, identification with, etc. So if a person who thinks globally and sorts for the big picture begins to frame most things from that global state and then begins to highly value it, identify with it, believe in it, they person may create a driving meta-program of global thinking. Similarly the person thinks in terms of “necessity” and brings that state of mind and emotion to more and more of his or her experiences and then believes in it, values it, identifies with it, will more than likely apply that state of compulsion to every other state. This will eventuate in the driving meta-program of necessity.

Habituation of internal processing gives rise to meta-programs—to a person’s structured ways of perceiving. They then govern that person’s everyday thinking-and-feeling as his or her perceptual filters. To the extent they show up in language, you can detect them using the Meta-Model. For example, people have favored modals that describe their basic modus operandi (modal operators) for operating: necessity, impossibility, possibility, desire, etc. They originated as meta-level thoughts or feelings, they were first meta-states. As they coalesced, they got into one’s neurology, one’s eyes, one’s muscles and become the person’s meta-programs. See Figuring Out People (2007), also Words that Change Minds.

All together these four models provide four different lenses for observing your meaning-making processes.

Language: Linguistics and the VAK sensory systems.

            Cinematic Features: The qualities and distinctions with which we code our mental movies.

            States: Mind-body states from which you operate.

            Perception: Filters for your lens for seeing and perceiving, for sorting, paying attention, and thinking.

Now you know what for some is a big secret—the four meta-models of NLP which provide an extensive meta-cognitive perspective on experience. Now you have four possible ways to describe experience.

NEUROSEMANTICS homepage

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

(June 27, 2011)