NLP A Thinking Model #13

 
BEWARE:

WHEN YOU THINK WITH WORDS

 

How much of your thinking is done in and with words?  Can you think without
words, that is, apart from words?  While linguists have not given us a
precise percentages about this, we know that most thinking is done with, in,
and through words.  I would guess it is somewhere between 90 and 95 percent.

 

When you think, you think almost exclusively in words.  While you can
entertain thoughts in any of the sensory-systems (e.g., visual, auditory,
kinesthetic, gustatory, olfactory), such thoughts are usually simple and
direct.  Perhaps someones asks, "Do you remember the dog that you played
with as a child?" and you, for a moment, see that dog in the theater of your
mind.  You may even be able to hold on to that image, perhaps see it as a
movie rather than a snapshot.  Now if you wanted to, you could play around
with the image.  "Can you make his hair orange?"  But that's about it when
it comes to thinking without words.

 

Yet with words and language you can do so much more.  Once you have a
reference that you represent, then you can create all sorts of categories,
concepts, and understandings.  You can classify the dog by breed, as animate
and living, as intelligent, etc.  As a meta-representation system, language
allows you to think deeply, expansively, and thoroughly.  With words you
create the uniquely human world of conceptual abstractions-and tht's where
all of us mostly live.

 

You think in words and with words.  You use words as vehicles to transfer
thinking and as a code to encase a thought.  Language, as a set of symbols,
both enables thinking as well as constrains thinking.  Some words constrain
your ability to think certain things.  And without language, there are all
kinds of things that you can't even think as in "entertaining an idea."
That's why when a given language lacks certain words, people will have all
sorts of problems thinking certain things.  Postman (1976) wrote, "A
distinction that cannot be made in language, cannot be made conceptually."
(p. 242).

 

Now one of the most amazing things about words is that they are not real.
For many people, that is an absolutely shocking statement.  They still think
that words are real.  And when you make that mistake, you will then probably
also think that "words can hurt you."  They will then talk about "verbal
abuse."  They will talk about some words as in "bad words," and "evil
words."  But that's a fundamental mistake.  Words are not real.  "Dog" is a
word, but it doesn't bark or bite you.  "Cat" is a word, but it cannot
scratch you.  Words are symbols that stand for some reference other than
themselves.  And because words are vehicles for thinking, they do not
contain meaning.  You and I use words as symbols to communicate to each
other our ideas.  Yet meaning is in persons-in you and me. We are the
meaning-makers.  We use words to construct meanings.

 

That's also why there are words and phrases that do us a great disservice.
That's because they promote and enable dysfunctional thinking.  And with
words, to wrongly use a word is to encode an idea that -in that context- is
not only worng, but can be hurtful and problematic.  How does this work?  It
works as you take a word or phrase and use it to send a message to your
mind-and-body.  What your body does with the word then depends on whether
you just think it or whether you believe it.

 

If you just think, then you will do no semantic damage to yourself.  It
remains just a thought and nothing more.  It is something that you entertain
and play with in your mind.  But if you believe it, then you send a command
to your nervous systems to actualize it.  You are communicating to your
body, "Try to make it real."  "Try to activate whatever you can from within
to translate that word to the outside world."

 

This is the structure of the placebo and the nocebo processes.  Believe a
voodoo curse on yourself and your body will make it real.  Believe a
doctor's prediction about your situation, and for wow and woe, your body
will orient itself in that direction.  Believing makes it so in your body.
Believing does not make it so in the outside world, only within your nervous
systems-which it sets up as a self-fulfilling and self-organizing prophecy.

 

Words can be transformative, life-giving, and/or pathological in your
mind-body system.  So be careful as you think with words-as you read words.
Reading often operates as a self-programming process.  So as you avoid the
bad stuff, focus on reading only the good stuff.

 

 

 

In Meta-Coaching we notice words and then ask

              What do you mean by X-term?  How are yo using that word?

                                                    What else could you call
it?  What else do others call it?     

              What context or contexts are you referring to?