DO YOU HAVE A GOOD MIND?

 

To succeed at anything-business, relationships, politics, health, fitness-
requires that you have a good mind.  That's because when you have a good
mind, you can figure what is going on, understand and accept reality, and
then generate good ideas about what to do.  You can do that because you have
learned a basic human skill-how to think effectively.  That's what gives you
a good mind.

 

Imagine the opposite.  Imagine a poor thinker.  That person will have
troubles defining the current situation, figuring out what to do, accessing
resources, and thinking through the consequences.  When someone is a poor
thinker, he falls back on the childish thinking patterns of the cognitive
distortions.  She over-generalizes, does either-or thinking, personalizes,
emotionalizes, blames, has tunnel-vision, etc.  No wonder the poor thinker
cannot effectively deal with reality and has troubles getting along with
people!

 

Effective thinking enables you to first of all comprehend the current
reality so you know what you are dealing with.  In effective thinking you
begin by openly considering all of the factors and variables before you
jump-to-conclusions.  Once you effectively define, detail, and distinguish
what is, then you look for effective solutions and resources.  You establish
a well-formed outcome, problem, solution, and innovation.  This is what it
means to have a good mind-a mind that enables you to figure things out and
create actionable plans for taking productive action. 

 

In this sense, no one is born with "a good mind."  A good mind is developed.
If you have a good mind today, it is because you have developed it.  You
have learned how to think accurately, precisely, critically, creatively, and
productively.  That doesn't happen without effort and direction.  That
doesn't happen without the discipline of learning how to use your brain and
"run your own brain."  Even basic school education does not guarantee that.
And why not?  Because even to this day, schools teach kids what to think,
they do not teach kids how to think.

 

Given that, who teaches people how to think?  That's a great question and
the answer is "Generally, no one."  Most people who have learned how to
effectively think have learned it on their own.  And they usually learned it
after some debacle where what they had learned generated more problems and
misery than help.  So they sat down to learn how to learn and how to think.
That's when they went meta to their thinking and learning and discovered
meta-thinking and meta-learning.

 

Who teaches how to learn?  NLP does, although mostly in an indirect way.  I
mostly learned how to think when I learned NLP.  It was one of the
unexpected and unintended consequences of learning NLP.  That's when I
learned that the first level of thinking begins with the sensory-based
information I picture in my mind.  I then learned that language is the
meta-representation system -a system about the sensory-systems. Then in
Neuro-Semantics we articulated that there are many more higher or
meta-levels of "thinking" coded as beliefs, decisions, permissions,
knowledge, concepts, etc.  So today, the people who teach thinking are most
the Neuro-Semantic trainers and sometimes, some NLP trainers.

 

Teach a person how to think and how to effectively manage one's thinking
powers, and that's how you create a good mind which can generate good ideas
that can change one's life and/or change the world.  Yet in reality, that is
just the beginning.  Success and productivity certainly begin with people
who are good thinkers who produce good ideas, but that is not enough.  It is
a great start, but only a beginning.  We also need good strategies-a
specific and workable strategy that will achieve a specific objective.
That's because without effective strategies, you will not be able to
implement your good ideas.  A good strategy answers the question, What
specifically will you do and how will you do it?

 

Thinking strategically means that you begin with a well-formed objective and
then think about the processes required for making that objective real.  A
wonder goal without the ability to plan intelligently is not sufficient.
The problem with not knowing how, that is, being ignorant of the how, your
brain will fill in your ignorance.  David Dunning explains how this works:

"An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that's
filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences,
theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors,
and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate
knowledge.  This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest
strengths as a species.  We are unbridled pattern recognizers and profligate
theorizers.  Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day,
or at least to an age when we can procreate.  But our genius for creative
storytelling, combined with our inability to detect our own ignorance, can
sometimes lead to situations that are embarrassing, unfortunat e, or
downright dangerous- especially in a technologically advanced, complex
democratic society that occasionally invests mistaken popular beliefs with
immense destructive power."

 

If you want a good mind, then first and foremost, you need to learn how to
truly think.  That means to not assume that "good thinking is natural and
inevitable" or that "you don't have to learn how to think to be an effective
thinker."  Good thinking builds up a good mind; they go hand in hand.  The
problem is that there are many forms of non-thinking- pseudo-experiences
that masquerades as thinking.  In Brain Camp I we identify seven of these
masquerades of the real thing as a way to stay alert.  Then we cover the 14
essential thinking skills.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall@acsol.net  

 "PURPOSEFUL THINKING"

Well, Almost ... Actually Just VAK Thinking, Again

 

I began studying Critical Thinking in 2015.   In the beginning I
collaborated with one of our Neuro-Semantic trainers.  After he dropped out,
I created the trainings that are now called Brain Camp I, II, and III.
After three years of extensive reading and studying in that field, I wrote
the book, Executive Thinking (2018) having also written scores of articles
on "thinking."  Just recently I discovered that Richard Bandler began
thinking somewhat along the same line after that.  I discovered that when I
got his book "Thinking on Purpose" (2019).  Hearing some promotion for it, I
thought that maybe it mighty be further development of the mysterious and
wonder-fill phenomenon of "thinking."  But, sadly, it did not.

 


In fact, throughout the entire book, thinking is simply refers to as
VAK-thinking, the thinking that works with into the components of your
movie-mind.  That's all.  It is the 1970s NLP model of thinking as only what
we do at the primary level.  Bandler has not even included the levels of
thinking that Bateson and Dilts developed, or the meta-levels of thinking
that I developed with Meta-States.  It is all primary level thinking, and
therefore the one and only "tool" is changing the qualities of your
pictures, sounds, and/or sensations (to wit, sub-modalities).

 

If you have read NLP books by Bandler, there's nothing new in this one.
Like all of the other books, this one is exclusively focused on the
modalities and sub-modalities.  It is about good thoughts and bad thoughts
(p. 69).  It is about adding pleasure to whatever you do.  When it comes to
beliefs-still failing to recognize that beliefs are meta-level phenomenon,
he still uses sub-modalities to alter them, which of course, does not work
(97).  He thinks of them as images to alter.  He also thinks that decisions
are "images."  "...and notice the image of that good decision" (115).  Yet
these meta-level abstractions are not pictures, they are concepts.

 

Meta-Stating: Now there is meta-stating in the book, but it is unrecognized.
He talks about seeing a belief (which presupposes a belief is an image
rather than a sentence!) And then saying to yourself with absolute
conviction, "It is stupid."  That's applying the state of "stupidity" to a
belief (p. 96). He also does that with "This is smart" (p. 98).  He notes
that "confidence is not just a state."  It's a modifier, but then he fails
to realize that because you can be confident about being happy, about being
hired, about not being hired, etc., it is a meta-state (163).

 

The following reveals the meta-state of knowing about a craving.  "Your
feelings don't force you to act.  Knowing you crave something should be
enough to tell you to not do it." (p. 201).  The knowing is higher to and
about the craving and therefore leads to a higher understanding.  Then there
is this: "As soon as you laugh at being afraid of something and you're fed
up with being afraid of going up in an escalator..." (p. 242).  These are
meta-states: laugh at fear; fed up about fear.  But, of course, he doesn't
know that.

There are inspiring statements about thinking and learning:

"We have to teach people how to be learning machines; this requires them
become problem solvers." (p. 16)

"If you just think, you can think yourself into problems.  It's really
easy." (p. 30)

"The biggest inoculation against our mental problems is a sense of humor."
(p. 34)

"You forgot that the reason you have a brain is so you would have your own
thoughts, not someone else's." (p. 42)

 

There are also some nice reframing which, of course, occur at a level meta
to the primary level.  I like this one: "When you feel bad exercising, the
pain of exercising is weakness disappearing." (p. 104).  And this one:
"Phones have become like pacifiers now." (p. 158)

 

About acceptance, he got that all wrong.  "... If you accept how you are,
you are committing to your stupidity." (p. 242).  Here he criticizes those
in the Human Potential Movement for urging "accept yourself the way you
are."  But acceptance does not mean condoning or resignation.  Not at all!
No one in the Human Potential Movement ever said that.

 

Bottom line- If you know NLP, you will not learn very much about thinking in
this book.   You will mostly get a good review of Bandler's take on NLP, and
especially how we think in the sensory-systems and if you change the
cinematic features (sub-modalities) of the images, sounds, and sensations
that you use-you will change your thinking.

 

Thinking on Purpose could have been a breakthrough book.  After all,
purposeful thinking itself describes a meta-state.  If Richard Bandler had
read and understood the Appendix on Meta-States in The Spirit of NLP (1996),
he would have known that.  He could have then identified the higher level
thinking which is involved at the meta-levels.




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 SO YOU THINK YOU "DESERVE"

SOMETHING?!

 

In these days of social media we hear a lot of people asserting that they
deserve various things- better salary, an opportunity, recognition, etc.
Many people march and protest demanding something that they think they
deserve.  But do they?  What do you deserve?  It seems like a simple and an
innocent question.  It is not.  The way the word deserve is thrown around
today, and the way that question to presented today, makes it semantically
loaded and not in a good way.  Look up "deserve" in the dictionary and you
will discover that the word means:

"to earn by service; to be worthy of (something due, either good or evil);

to merit; to be entitled to;"  "worthy of reward, award or praise."

"a reward for what you do, to merit what you received."

"to have earned as a right by one's actions." 

Examples: "the referee deserves a pat on the back for his bravery."
"People who park like that deserve to be towed away."  The laborer deserves
his wages; a work of value deserves praise.

 

Yet while the word deserve refers to earning and meriting something, today
it seems to be mostly used in the sense of unconditional entitlement.  When
used properly, it is a perfectly good word; when used improperly it is a
cognitive distortion.  It becomes a should.  "I deserve..." becomes a demand
for a reward without doing anything to earn or merit the reward.  Yet when
used this way, it becomes an injustice whine demanding that the world give
whatever the person wants.

 

Advertisers use deserve to sell things.  "You deserve a break today."  "You
deserve Miller's Light Beer."  "You deserve to drive the best."  These ads
imply that you have the right to demand what you deserve and spend to get
what you deserve.  When politicians use the word deserve they seek to raise
your dissatisfaction.  They imply, "Elect me and I will give you the things
that you deserve!"  "You deserve free health care."  "You deserve a four-day
work-week."  "You deserve more weeks of vacation."

 

In spite of all this misuse, let's ask the central question that immediately
impacts our lives: What do you actually deserve?  The answer is nothing,
unless you do something!  If deserve refers to earning and meriting, then to
deserve, you have to earn it.  You have done something that merits and
warrants that you get it.  The US constitute and Bill of Rights speaks about
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  The government was instituted
to protect these rights.  But they are not automatic.  You still have to
earn them!  For life, you have to take care of yourself and not do yourself
harm.  For liberty you get to exercise your freedoms and not forfeit them by
violating the law and losing your liberty.  For pursuit of happiness, you
have is learn how to be happy, adjust your attitude, and develop your
skills.  Do you deserve to be happy?  No, not automatically.  You deserve it
if you do what's required to attain it.

Do you deserve respect?  Not necessarily.  If you say to someone, "I deserve
your respect..." you are making a request, perhaps a demand.  Question: Have
you demonstrated respect to that person?  If not, then it does not sound
like you have earned that person's respect.  Saying you deserve respect
sounds like a should.  Does the relationship-the way each are relating-
establish that expectation?  Or is it an unrealistic expectation?

 

Now in an entitlement society, many are mis-using this word.  They think
they deserve all kinds of things because they want them.  It is as if they
think, "If I want something, I should have, therefore I deserve, and
therefore I can expect to get it."  They then make demands on life, on the
world, on government, on employers, on other people.  "My wants as
expectations are your responsibilities."  Of course, what that philosophy
generates is conflict, disagreement and disappointment.

 

The truth is neither you nor I deserve anything unless we do something that
earns or merits the reward that we want.  The next time someone says, "I
deserve X," ask, "And what have you done to deserve X?"  "How have you
earned or merited X?" 

 

An extreme example of this non-sense is currently going on by those in the
BLM movement.  They have decided that they deserve reparations for the
injustice done to their ancestors five generations back.  They themselves
were not mistreated.  No one did injustice to them.  In fact they live in a
free society where they could achieve "the American dream," if they put
their mind, heart and body to it.  Injustice was done perhaps five or ten
generations ago.  Someone (usually their tribal chiefs) sold their ancestors
into slavery to those who back in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were
engaged in slave trade.  But they now think that they deserve reparations.
Question: What have you done that earns that recommence?  The truth
is-nothing.  They don't deserve reparations at all.

 

Deserve is a perfectly good word when used about earning or meriting a
reward.  But used as a should, an expectation, a demand simply because you
want it-the word becomes a sneaky cognitive distortion.  It becomes a form
of pseudo-reasoning, a way to throw a tantrum and try to get what you
actually do not deserve.   It becomes a "guilt trip" for those who don't
know what the word actually means.

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8