YOUR EPISTEMOLOGY/

YOUR EMBODIMENT

 

Because the word "epistemology" sounds academic, it's easy to fall into the
trap of thinking that  epistemology, and specifically your epistemology
about anything in particular, is merely intellectual or academic.  Yet in
reality it is not!  Instead, your epistemology determines how you experience
life in your body. 

 

Why is that?  Because when you think, you think ideas, and your ideas
inevitably get located in your body.  This ideo-dynamic or ideo-motor aspect
of your mind-body system describes how you are a neuro-semantic and
neuro-linguistic being.  That means that "as you think, so you feel."  As
you think, so you activate the motor cortex in your brain which then sends
messages to your body.  In the end, you embody those ideas and experience
them kinesthetically.

 

Nor is this new.  You already know that depending on what you're thinking,
and how you're thinking, so you will feel and experience.  That's why you
can think about all sorts of problems that could happen in the future
(otherwise called 'worrying') and if you do it long enough and with enough
intensity-you can make yourself sick with worry.  You can create headaches,
migrains, upset stomach, even ulcers.  Isn't that amazing?  You have the
ability to embody your worrying thoughts so your body bears the blunt of
those thoughts.

 

The principle that I'm getting at is this: As you think, and the way you
know what you know, determine the emotional states and the physiological
states you experience.  Your epistemology -your embodiment.  Your
epistemology-your emotions.

 

Now let's get personal.  What are you embodying?  What is deceptive about
this process is that it takes time.  The feedback from your body regarding
the way you're thinking does not happen immediately although you can speed
it up.  Add a lot of very intense emotions (fear, anger, sadness, etc.) to
an idea and you can more quickly get yourself into a physiological state.
Robbins does this in his fire walks.  He adds massive desire, passion, and
excitement to get people into physiological states where they walk on hot
coals.

 

But normally, it takes weeks, months, even years for your way of thinking to
result in psycho-somatic illnesses and diseases.  This is what makes the
process deceptive and what prevents us from gaining awareness of what we are
doing to ourselves via our thoughts.  Yet embodiment, as a process, is
inevitable.  It is what the body does.  Your body, and mine, takes thoughts
and translates them into a kinesthetic code.  What results are our emotions,
emotional states, attitudes (disposition of body), and the well-being or the
ill-being in terms of our body functions.

 

Here is something that I think should cause all of us to pause and deeply
consider what we are doing to ourselves via our thoughts.  Ultimately, the
way you think and know (your epistemology) becomes incorporated in your
body.

           To what extent do you think fearful, apprehensive, dreadful
thoughts?

           To what extent do you think angry and aggressive thoughts during
the day?

           To what extent do you think sad, depressive, and fatalistic
thoughts?

           To what extent do you think in terms of competition, win and
lose?

           To what extent do you think in terms of envy and jealous of
others?

 

Another subtle factor of our thinking that leads to undesirable embodiment
is the kind of thinking you do all day.  Years ago I did a public
demonstration of coaching with a person who had been brought in from the
outside, who knew nothing of NLP or Meta-Coaching.  I began by asking what
he wanted to accomplish which was important to him and he told me what he
did not want.  I asked, "When you don't have X, what will you have?"  He
again told me more of what he did not want.  That repeated 4 or 5 times.
Ah, a pattern!  I asked, "What is your job or career?"  It turned out he did
quality control on airplanes.

"So all day long the kind of thinking you do is looking for what's wrong,
what you don't want, what should not be there.  Is that right?"

"Yes, that's right." 

"Well, now I know your problem and the solution. ... [long pause during
which he began to look increasingly interested] It is your best day-time
thinking that is now preventing you from enjoying your life.  Your looking
for what you don't want has been so strong, so embodied, that you feel stuck
and unable to change it.  If you'd like to change that-that would be your
solution."

 

What does this mean for you and me?  It means that the way you think all day
(or a good part of the day) can become a thinking habit which prevents you
from doing other kinds of thinking.  The solution is becoming aware of your
thinking habit and then thinking-about-your-thinking chose when it is useful
and when it is not.  All that requires is just some basic "mind" training.

 

 

 

 

 BELIEFS AND

THE HOUSE OF MEANING

 

A long, long time ago in a century before this one, Bob and I worked out the
actual structure of beliefs and we discover something stupendous for the
field of NLP.  Namely, the structure of beliefs is not based in
sub-modalities.  In spite of what almost every one in NLP believes and
teaches, beliefs are not made out of the editorial features of your movies.

 

This is in spite of Bandlers straw-man argument about " believing the sun
will rise tomorrow."  The reason that represents a false argument is that
when there is a belief -there is also the possibility of a  belief's
reverse.  If you believe, "I can't learn something complex,' the opposite
belief is "I can learn something complex."  What would be the opposite of
believing the sun will rise tomorrow?  The sun will not rise?  And who
believes that?  No one!  And that's why it is a pseudo-example.

 

Further Bandler got it wrong when he said that beliefs can be single images.
Beliefs are statements- sentences that assert something.  Accordingly we
have beliefs that assert all sorts of things:

           Identity beliefs: "I believe that I am a wealth creator." [These
are also complex-equivalence beliefs: "I believe that rolling your eyes
backwards means you think X is ridiculous."]

           Quality beliefs: "I believe I am thoughtful and charming."

           Capacity beliefs: "I believe I can resiliently bounce back from
a set-back."

           Causation beliefs: "I believe that rejection causes me to feel
upset."

           Time beliefs: "I believe there's never enough time."

           Existence beliefs: "I believe that fairies really exist."

 

Notice that these sentences are asserting something about some aspect of
reality.  That's what a belief is.  It is not just a single image like the
run rising.  In Sub-Modalities Going Meta (1997/ 2005) Bob and I illustrated
by using Hitler.  "Do you believe that Hitler was a good person?"  I hope
you emphatically say "No, hell no."  Bandler's approach would be to upgrade
your visual image of Hitler changing the sub-modalities so that they
represent how you represent what's real.  Make the picture bigger, brighter,
put a smile on Aldoph's face, erase the moustache, etc.   Now is there
anything you can do to your pictures and sounds so that you actually start
to believe that he is a good man?  Of course, the answer is no.  That's
because no matter how good you make him look, in the back of your mind you
say, "No, he murdered millions of people."

 

What Bob and I worked out was that the structure of a belief involves
confirming your first thought.  We identified that it is the confirming
process itself that transforms a thought or idea into a 'belief.'  And how
do we confirm?  What evidence is required to confirm?  The answer to that
question is almost any evidence that a person so chooses to use.  He may use
authority, repetition, emotion, experience, reading it in a book, hearing it
from someone he respects, etc.  The confirming process involves essentially
saying that the original thought or idea is right, good, actual, and/or
real.  Do that and your second thought which confirms transforms the first
thought into a belief.

 

Today that structure lies at the heart of the Meta-State Belief Change
pattern using "yes" and "no" as the summary expressions that confirm or
dis-confirm a thought.  Yet that explanation, by itself, is only a basic
description.  Today as we make a much deeper dive into the structure of a
belief, we recognize that a belief is a two-or-more-layered structure, first
a primary level thought then a meta-thought about it.  The second thought is
a conclusion drawn about the first.

                                           Meta-Thought:   Doing my best is
how I create self-worth.

Thought:             I believe I need to be the best to get approval.

 

You can confirm a thought (or idea) in so many ways.  When you think any
second thought about the first, it confirms it by treating it as real.  For
example, you an confirm its value, your memory of it, what you anticipate
from the statement, what you understand, your identity, decision, intention,
etc.  While we can view each of these as additional meta-levels, we can also
recognize them as beliefs.  A value is what you believe is important.  A
memory is what you believe that you recall.  An anticipation is what you
believe you can forecast will happen in the future.  A decision is what you
believe is the best choice, and so on.  It's beliefs all the way up.
Everything in the Meta Place and every possible higher logical level or
meta-level is a belief.

 

In this way, you confirm any multi-layered idea as a belief.  For you, it is
true, actual, and real.  It certainly seems real because your experience
seems to validate it.  As you think in this way so you believe and your
belief then functions as if a program informing your nervous systems how to
live it.  In this, you live your beliefs because you embody them.  You feel
this and you act from this, you 'see' (perceive') frm this (which creates
your meta-programs).  In this way your belief becomes self-reinforcing- a
self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

Each belief becomes a house of meaning which you then live in.  Now you can
ask a series of questions to test a belief and/or develop a belief.  Do that
with the thought above, "I believe I need to be the best to get approval."

           So you believe this?  For how long have you believed this? 

           What are the results from believing this?

           Do you want to believe this?  If you did not believe this, what
would be the reverse that you'd like to believe?

 

It's beliefs all the way up.  These multi-layered ideas may or may not be
true.  What matter is that you treat it as if it were true and it
determinates your behavior.  It generates results in your emotions and
actions.  Ask, "What difference does the belief make in your actions?"  If
there is no difference, then there is no meaning, it is merely academic.  If
there is a difference, then what difference?

           Is that what you want to do?  What would you rather do instead
of that?

           What do you need to believe so that you can do that?

 

References

1. See the articles on Beliefs in the Neurons Series 2011, "Beliefs as
Sentences," "Belief Structures," "Sentences You Feel as Convictions," and
"Sentences Systemic in Nature." Also in the book Sub-Modalities Going Meta.

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 MISUNDERSTANDINGS

FROM THE NEUROSCIENCE

 

In preparation for my next work, Unconscious Thinking, I recently read, The
Neuropsychology of the Unconscious: Integrating Brain and Mind In
Psychotherapy (2015).  Written by a psychoanalyst, Efrat Ginot, she wrote a
book attempting to integrate psychoanalysis with the current trends in the
neuro-sciences.  It seems that she has several objectives in mind as she
wrote the book.  One was to update psychoanalysis and reframe some of the
doctrines of Sigmund Freud to make them more acceptable today.  I thought
she was creative and insightful in that.  Another objective was to integrate
some of the new things in psychotherapy such as reframing and narrative
therapy.  She mentioned a few things outside of traditional psychoanalysis.

 

There is also her attempt to use the neurosciences as the all-validating
source of everything she proposes.  But while doing that, she often fails to
distinguish some of her guesses with what the neurosciences have actually
discovered.  While I like what she did with her title by separating "brain"
and "mind," in the text itself, she did not separate them.  Most of the time
she wrote "brain/mind" thereby confusing the two.

 

Now as if confusing those two phenomena did not contribute enough confusion,
she constantly wrote that this or that anatomy of the brain would "think"
this, "conclude" that, "figure out" X, "understand" Y, etc.  For example,
"The amygdala mediates both cognitive appraisal of threats as well as
emotions of fear and rage."  Here the person cognitively appraises something
as a threat which then shows up as fear or rage, but she writes as if the
amygdala does it!  So where's the person?

 

That's like saying, "The engine drove us to Susie's house."  "The
transmission brought us to a standstill at the red light."  By confusing the
brain with the mind, this author writes as if she assumes that by knowing
the brain parts-thalamus, hypothalamus, prefrontal cortex, medial temporal
lobe, etc.-you then know what the person is thinking, concluding, believing,
etc.  But the brain is the hardware for the mind, and not the mind itself.
She writes: "The unconscious systems left to their own devices, they do not
'learn' from reality" (67).

 

Actually, it is the person who thinks, believes, learns, and appraises
meaning, not the brain.  Certainly it is true that when there's damage in
certain parts of the brain, we will not have the necessary neurological
resources to do certain things.  Damage to the Werke section leads to
various linguistic problems, aphasias.

 

Yet this author pictures things operating within the human person as if it
operates only by the neurology processes, and that it does not occur via
cognition or linguistics.  "Much of what the brain learns occurs without
awareness and without the help of the neocortex."  Actually it is not the
brain that does the learning, it is the mind-the person's mind.  It is the
person who has a brain that learns, the brain provides the neurological
basis for learning.

 

She quotes Bounomano, a neuro-scientist, "Much of what we learn is absorbed
unconsciously as a result of the brain's tendency to link concepts that
occur together." (2011, p. 183).  Here again the idea is that it is the
brain that does this, not the person.

 

In writing about the neurological basis of thinking, she writes that it is
within the lower brain nerve centers in the sub-cortical regions (e.g.,
brain stem, midbrain, basal ganglia, limbic system, cerebellum, thalamus,
hippocampus, amygdala) that thinking begins.  Yet this is where she confuses
the information processes of the brain with what a person does, namely,
thinks.

 

There are good sections in the book.  She writes that "The amygdala mediates
both cognitive appraisal of threats as well as emotions of fear and rage.
Affect and cognition always work together.   As determined by evolution, the
brain's default position is to learn, especially in the service of
adaptation and survival." (p. 24).  Well, not exactly, the brain processes
information and because we all learn different things and conclude different
things, the brain only provides the data, you and I interpret it and give it
meaning.

 

What seems today to be the new fad is to accredit "the neurosciences" as
substantiating just about anything we wish were true in the human mind and
personality.  All you have to do is quote some research from "the
neurosciences" and that seems to tidy up all questions about legitimacy.
But, of course, in truth, it does not.  What's often asserted is still just
the most current best hypothesis of the writer and give it another six
months and all of that may change.  It's always good to "test all things,
hold fast to that which is good."




 

 WHAT IS NLP ALL ABOUT?

 

There are lots and lots of pieces of NLP.  When you speak about NLP, you
could be speaking about one of two dozen things.  Some years ago a young man
told me, "I can't do NLP on myself."  To that statement, you could go in one
of dozens and dozens of directions.  So I asked,, "What part of NLP can you
not apply to yourself?"  It turned out to be matching a client, but not
merely any client, only those of a particular ethnic group.

 

Speak about NLP and you might be speaking about representation systems,
language, sensory awareness, sensory acuity, matching, mirroring, pacing,
anchoring, collapsing anchors, transderivational search, the Meta-Model, any
one of the linguistic distinctions, sub-modalities in any one of the VAK
systems, synesthesias, meta-programs, time-lines, modeling, strategies, and
on and on and on.

 

The bottom line-there are a lot of pieces or components that go into what we
call NLP.  Now the question of the title, "What is NLP all about?" is asking
for how do you tie all of them together?  Yet over the years, there's been
numerous answers:

Communication, linguistics, change, therapy, personal development,
psychology, hypnosis, modeling, new age, learning, etc.

 

Amazingly, whatever a person concludes "What it is all about" that then
becomes that person's definition of NLP.  It operates as his overall
classification.  Even the first NLP book's subtitle contribute to the
confusion, "A book about language and therapy." And even today, you will
find different trainers emphasizing these different aspects of NLP which
leads to the controversy over What is it really?

 

True enough, NLP arose from the field of therapy.  It emerged from studying
the language patterns of the therapeutic communications of Perls and Satir.
Yet NLP was never thought of or confused with, Gestalt Therapy or Family
Systems Therapy.  NLP also was built from many of the concepts in Cognitive
Psychology (Transformation Grammar, the TOTE model) and from Korzybski's
General Semantics, yet it is not and has never been confused with either of
these.

 

Now over the past 50 years, probably 90 percent of the field has come to
think of NLP as primarily a Communication Model.  This is the consistent
theme that you will find in books, manuals, videos, podcasts, etc.
Accordingly, all of the above components of NLP are positioned as an aspect
of communication, and they are or at least they can legitimately be framed
in that way.

 

In revising and updating the NLP practitioner course, I began seeing it in
terms of something more fundamental, namely, as a model of thinking and of
the mind.  After all, what was the most unique discovery of the founders?
It was that people think in five modes-they think visually as they make
pictures, they think auditorially as they hear sounds, they think
kinesthetically as they feel sensations, they also think in terms of smells
and tastes, and then they think linguistically as by using words for
thinking (the meta-representation system).

 

Now other psychologists had mentioned and used the sensory systems going all
the way back to Tichner, but no one had ever proposed that thinking goes to
how we represent the senses.  That put the power of communicating, changing,
therapy, creativity, etc. back to a much simpler mechanism, a mechanism
every person has access to.

 

The result?  For one thing it cut out thousands of years of trying to guess
what mind, consciousness, and personality is comprised of.  As Bateson noted
in his Introduction:

"Psychologists accepted all sorts of internal explanatory entities (ego,
anxiety, aggression, instinct, conflict, etc.) in a way reminiscent of
medieval psycho-theology. ... Psychiatrists dabbled in all these methods of
exlanation ... they created statistical samples of morbidity.  They wallowed
in internal and mythical entities, ids and archetypes." (The Structure of
Magic, p. ix)

 

The phenomena of re-presenting to ourselves in our minds what we see, hear,
feel, smell and taste on the outside and then code it in words as we
classify things, allowed NLP to create a model of the mind which opened up
the fields of change, communication, therapy, linguistics, etc.  Yet what
the founders failed to recognize, which was much more significant, was the
model of the mind or of thinking which they had discovered.

 

Today we know a lot about the brain and simultaneous we still know very
little about the mind.  But we know this-the mind thinks.  That's what it
does.  It represents, it edits, it perceives, it attends, it languages, it
draws conclusions, it values, it remembers, it imagines, it intends, and on
and on.  And in my opinion-that's what NLP is truly all about.  And when you
know that- it opens up everything else which the mind creates in human
experience-which is the whole world.  Additionally and most importantly, the
quality of your thinking is the quality of your life.

 

 

Neuro-Semantics News

 THINKING STRATEGICALLY

IS INEVITABLE

 

If there's any thinking pattern which is inevitable, it is thinking
strategically.  I didn't realize that until I got into the writing of the
book on that subject.  Suddenly it became clear to me that within almost
every form of thinking is strategic thinking. Why is that?  For a simple
reason-we think purposefully.  We think to achieve some outcome, some goal,
some desired state.  In other words, our thinking is by its very nature
strategic.  You may think in order to understand, or to learn, or to create,
or to anticipate what's going to happen, etc.  In each of these ways, your
thinking aims to strategically create an outcome that you want.

 

Now if thinking by its very nature is strategic, then your know-how to think
strategically is critical if you are to do effective and productive
thinking.  Yet now we have a problem.  Namely, most people do not think
strategically very well.  Why do we not think strategically in an effective
way?  Because we get distracted!  We set out to discover something, learn
something, understand something, format something, etc., and then our
attention turns as we get distracted by something else.  In the end, we do
not achieve our outcome.  Sometime we get distracted by other external
things that trigger us.  Sometimes we get distracted by our own internal
thoughts, memories, needs, desires, etc.  Sometimes we get distracted by
other additional and/or opposing strategic aims.  In the end, our strategic
thinking is done poorly and inadequately.

 

Here's the bottom line.  We inevitably think strategically because we want
things, we want to achieve goals, we want to fulfill our dreams, we want to
step up to reach our potentials, etc.  But unless we have taken the time,
trouble, and effort to learn how to effectively think strategically, our
strategic thinking is probably still at a childish level of development.
Now that may be inevitable, but it is not automatic.  You don't learn it by
osmosis.  You learn it intentionally by giving yourself to the art of
thinking strategically.

 

Think about the game of chess.  It's relatively easy to learn how to play
chess.  There's only a few basic rules for how the 9 distinct pieces move
and even a small child of 10 can learn it in just a few minutes.  But to
think strategically as you play chess-that's an entirely different
phenomena, and not one that you learn in an afternoon!  So how would you
learn to think strategically when playing chess? 

 

There are several answers to this.  The most obvious one is to learn some of
the traditional chess strategies.  How to think about opening up the game.
Are all opening moves the same?  Are some opening moves more valuable in the
long-term than others?  Then there's the value of the 9 pieces (pawns are 1,
knights and bishops are worth 3, rooks are 5, queen 9, etc.) so there's a
strategy regarding taking and trading pieces.  Actually, with chess, there
are a great many strategies.  There's entire books on strategies of the
middle game, strategies of the end game, etc.

 

If you could begin to learn to think strategically playing a simple board
game, then think about the game of life.  Think about all of the strategies
needed in order to live a healthy, joyful, and productive life.  Where there
is an experience that you would like to learn and experience, there's
strategy to learn, practice, and integrate.  The NLP Strategy model is an
explicit description of our basic strategies for learning, motivating
ourselves, finding our talents, developing our talents, relating to others,
etc.  Where there is a desire, a want, a need, a drive, or a hope-you need a
strategy for the how-to, for the actual process of making it work.

 

But here's the problem.  Knowing that you need a strategy or knowing that
you want a strategy is not the same thing as knowing a strategy.  Every
profession that you might consider as a profession worth pursuing involves
multiple strategies-and that's where thinking strategically comes in.  To be
a doctor, lawyer, therapist, coach, trainer, teacher, professor, dentist,
pilot, etc. requires it's own unique strategy.  The bottom line is that
thinking strategically is inevitable, but not automatic, and not without
disciplined learning.  It is inevitable because each of us want to achieve
various outcomes.  Yet to do it well enough to become a skilled
strategist-you'll have to do some mental and emotional work.  

[Look for to some of the first presentations of Thinking Strategically in
2026.]

 

 



L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 THE COACH’S ULTIMATE QUESTION:

WHAT KIND OF THINKING IS THIS?

 

When you coach, not only do you coach from your state to your client’s state, you coach from your thinking patterns to your client’s thinking patterns.  That raises a really important question for you as the coach: How is my client thinking?  What kind of thinking is my client using as he presents his concern or goal or solution, etc.?

 

It’s the thinking question that then allows you to quickly get to “the heart of the matter.”  That’s because “as your client thinks, so is your client.”  If your client is thinking using cognitive distortions—you can count on the fact that there will be distortions in her thinking, feelings, speaking, behaving, and relating.  If your client is thinking using cognitive biases—guess what?  Yes, biased ideas, emotions, and behaviors! 

 

Then there are the meta-programs as thinking and perceiving patterns.  Now you have another 70 distinctions for how your client could possibly be thinking.  Is my client thinking/ perceiving optimistically or pessimistically?  Is my client matching or mismatching?  Is my client perceiving in terms of options or procedures?  Which meta-program distinction stands out for you?  In ACMC training, we cover some 15 of the most basic meta-programs.  That’s a great place to begin.  Get familiar with those so that you can recognize them in real time.

 

Once you have achieved that level of skill, begin adding other meta-program distinctions beginning with those that tend to most characterize the clients you work with.   Add one or two each week.  In a year, you will have covered all of them and that will give you an incredible edge in your coaching.

 

In the PCMC training in Bali in December 2024, I recognized a client as demonstrating internalized thinking in contradistinction to externalized thinking (#27).  I asked, “When your coach asks you a question, you are going inside and thinking about it.”  She smiled in a self-knowing way.  “Your eyes go to the right, then to the left, so I’m guessing you are asking yourself questions and maybe answering them, or maybe asking yourself the very opposite question.”  It turned out she was asking opposite questions on each side so that she was inside of the conflict between the two parts.  In other words, she was arguing with herself!   “Is this right or wrong?”  “What if I make a mistake?”  “I’m I really good at this?”  “Maybe I should quit?”

 

Some people think out-loud.  They often do not (or never) think before they speak.  They need to take time to reflect and then speak.  They need to slow themselves down and consider consequences, calibrate to those around them, run their response through some criteria like appropriateness, consideration, compassion, etc.

Other people think inside their head and do lots and lots of self-talk before they ever utter a word.  They reflect ... and then reflect some more ...  then reflect about their reflections ... and this can continue on and on and on.  Meanwhile you are on the outside waiting, waiting, waiting.  They are careful about what they say.  Often they are fearful of “saying the wrong thing.”  Sometimes they are living an old program, “Kids ought to be seen, and not heard!”  Sometimes they are living in a trauma that they have not resolved.  They spoke up, said something ugly or hurtful and suffered severe consequences and inside they made a decision, “Never again!” 

 

“Just say whatever comes to mind ... just talk out-loud; there are no wrong answers.”  That’s what I said to the client who was struggling to answer the coach.  “It’s okay because whatever you are thinking and however you are thinking is just thoughts.  And if those thoughts are not serving you well, not enhancing your life—it’s time to change them.  How does that sound?”

 

The bottom line is that when you coach—keep asking yourself, “What kind of thinking is this?”  “Which meta-program distinction is operating right now?”  “Could this be a cognitive distortion?”  Then, test it.  “Are you thinking in X-way?”  That meta-question helps the client to become aware in a new and creative way and opens up for transformational change.

 

This is listening for structure, that is the structuring and processing, rather than the content information.  And with that you are ready to ask some powerful frame-by-implication questions or even torpedo questions.  That’s because what you are asking goes straight to the frames (of meaning) that’s governing the person’s experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

 THE ART OF DISCIPLINE

There is an art to becoming a disciplined person and achieving your
highest
goals and visions.  Many have learned this art and have walked the
pathway
to becoming excellent in the things they do and achieve.  In this, it is
no
mystery or rocket science.



1) Set a Goal for the Knowing-and-Doing Expertise that you want.  What
is
the discipline that you want to learn?  Early in life I wanted to learn
how
to write.  At first it felt overwhelming and frightful and experiences
of
'writer's block' threatened to undermine my goal.  But I stayed with it
through the uncertainty and doubts.



2) Focus Your Attention on your Desired Discipline.  What kept me going
was
my focus on my ultimate objective.  That's why a strong compelling why
as in
"Why is it important?" informs and activates your focus and attention. 
How
strong is your focus?  How well are you able to deal with the things
that
disrupt your focus?  Are you monitoring your discipline as you are
learning
it?   What is the quality of your focus?  Do you need to use the
Neuro-Semantic "genius" or "flow" pattern to create your own optimal
state
of focus?



3) Make a Robust Decision for your Discipline.  If you have not made the
decision yet, make sure that you make a robust decision that you will
become
a discipline of that area that you want to become excellent in.  Once I
learned about modeling, I made a decision to model resilience.  I didn't
know it would take me four years to do that.  I thought maybe a month or
two.  It was my decision, and a decision that I made public, that kept
me
going.  I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and I wanted to
demonstrate to others that I could complete the project.



4) Act today in a Proactive Way that initiates the Momentum.  If you
never
take the initiative to start, you will never get started.  So get
started
today.  Seize the day!  Use the 80/20 principle to get the most value
out of
what you do.  Given that 20% of what you do will generate 80% of the
value,
identify that 20% and then zoom in on it making it your commitment and
lifestyle.  Nearly everybody knows that the hardest part of any change
or
resolution is getting started.  We also know that the more we wait and
prepare, the more we will wait and prepare and we may never get started.
  So
get started!  Do it today.  Do it because ...

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started.  The secret of getting
started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small,
manageable
tasks, and then starting on the first one."  Mark Twain



Once you have started, then feed the momentum with effort and nurture
the
effort with sustainability, make it your life-style.  Momentum is built
by
one small step, one small push, one small action after another.  Count
every
small action.  Say to yourself, "It counts."   No matter how small and
insignificant, "It counts!  I have started.  The journey has begun."



5) Resist all Excuses.  Excuses are seductive and tempting and if you
don't
know the common excuses that will seduce you away from your discipline,
you
won't be able to mount a resistance.  What distracts you from your
discipline?  What excuses do you commonly use?  What tricks you to say,
"Well just this one time."?  Whatever it is, decide that you will not
live a
life that honors excuses more than your goals.  Decide to blow out all
excuses so that you are left excuse-less so that you just have to go
after
your desired outcomes and be true to yourself.



6) Talk up and Positively Frame Your Discipline.  What can you say to
yourself and to others about choosing to live a disciplined life?

           Discipline in my choice for how to focus and act that
achieves
the greatest success.

           Discipline is my being true to my values, choices, and
potentials.

           Discipline is the habit which allows me to manage my focus
on
what's truly important.

           Discipline is my strategic means for overcoming obstacles in
my
way.

           Discipline indicates the degree of control I can now
exercise in
my life.

           Discipline reveals my integrity; that I do what I say I will
do.



7) Update your Modal Operators.  In life experience, we get into certain
modes of operating and these operational modes show up in how we talk.
Linguistically these are called "modal operators."  The verbs describing
possibility are "can, able, possible."  The words for choice are
"choose,
decide, select, pick."  Those for desire are "want, wish, hope, yearn."
Those for necessity are "need, ought, should, must, have to."

           Use necessity words and you will feel helpless, powerless,
and
like a victim.  "I have to read."  "I should write a report."  "I must
go to
the gym."

           Use possibility words and you will feel hopeful and
optimistic.
"I can go to the gym."  "I am able to write the report."  "It's possible
for
me to eat healthy foods."

           Use desire words and you will feel capable and empowered. 
"I
want to work out."  "I yearn to run after work."

           Use choice words and you will feel hopeful and empowered. 
"I
choose to read for an hour each day."  "I have decide to finish cleaning
the
garage."



Then there is the Maslow must.  Do you know that one?  "A muscian must
make
music; a poet must write; what a person can do, he must do."  That's a
self-actualization must, it is a being-value must.  It is not the must
of
pressure, it is the must of potentiality.  Today know that one, "I must
write, I would be less of who I can be and will be if I don't write."
Finally, there is this from the Dalai Lama:

"A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads
to
suffering."



Video Review: Jordan Peterson's interview with Anthony Robbins

There's lots of interesting and insightful things in this interview and
there are some sad things. On the sad side is the fact that Tony
mentions
some sources (books, people), but in spite of using numerous NLP terms
and
processes never mentions NLP once.  On an interview like this, he could
help
send thousands of people to NLP, but he does not.  That's what a
self-centered guru does.



Sad also is the fact that Tony speaks about matching and pacing and he
fails
to do so throughout the nearly 2 hours!   He does not match or pace
Peterson's posture or voice or tempo.  And he interrupts a lot : and
Peterson's only defense is to pace Tony, at least to some extent!



For that, Tony needs to go back and take NLP 101 again!  See for
yourself: