THE ART OF DETECTING

A CLOSED-MIND

 

If your mind is your central mechanism, your ultimate power, for dealing
with reality (which it is), then you will naturally want to have an open
mind.  And if you don't want that, then recognize that it is essential if
you are to "deal with reality."  Think about the very first thinking
skill-consideration-you cannot perform that skill if you don't have an open
mind.  Consider requires an open mind and, simultaneously, as you practice
it, it develops an open mind.  You can't consider something if you do not
open your mind and give an idea a chance.  You give it a chance by
representing it visually, reproducing it auditorily, and kinesthetically
trying on the words and the conceptual frames of the idea.

 

What stand in contrast to this openness?  Answer: All of the non-thinking
skills and states: reactivity, automatic thinking, borrowed thinking,
superficial thinking, agenda thinking, "knowing," and expecting (see
Executive Thinking, Brain Camp I).  All of these unhealthy thinking styles
close down consideration so that you do not even given an idea a chance.
And when consideration is shut down, then so also are all of the critical
and creative skills.  After all, if a person will not consider, then there
can be no questioning, doubting, detailing, and distinguishing.  That shuts
down all critical thinking.

 

Now certainly you have experienced people with closed minds, haven't you?
When was the last time you encountered a closed mind?  You try to sell to a
friend your idea about a certain movie, but he will not even consider going
to it.  You ask a banker for a loan, you know that your credit score and
assets are sufficient, but no.  The banker turns you down flat.  You say,
"You haven't even actually considered it."  But no, her mind is closed.

 

Theoretically, why would a person not even consider an idea?  What would
explain that refusal?  The answer is intolerance, dogmatism, and
know-it-all-ism.  The person refuses to open her mind to an idea; he refuses
to even tolerate an idea.  And why?  Because they have already decided on
some meaning, a meaning which simply precludes your idea.  Their previous
learning and knowledge functions as, what's described in the field of
learning, "proactive inhibition."  It stops any new considerations cold in
its tracks.

 

If an open mind is a mind open for business, then a closed mind is a mind
closed for business.  Where there is an open mind, there's a sign on that
person's heart, "Open!  Come on in."  When you enter, you are warmly
greeted, welcomed, and they ask you, "How can we help you?"  Conversely,
where there is a closed mind, you see a different sign, "Closed."  It could
be, "Closed for the night."  "Closed for he Season."  Or even, "Closed: Out
of Business."

 

A closed mind says, "Go away, we don't have any room or place for you."  It
says, "No solicitators" and it may add, "Violators will be prosecuted to the
further extent of the law."  A closed mind is also not a friendly mind; it
is not a mind that's interested or curious.  With a closed mind, you can
protect your beliefs from the danger of additional or new facts.  With a
closed mind, you don't have to learn anything new or different.  And without
new learning, you can remain the same, you maintain or are stuck in, the
status quo.  Now you will be untroubled by new ideas or challenges.  That's
the upside of a closed mind.

 

The downside of a closed mind, however, is one that's much more devastating.
With a closed mind, you don't grow or develop.  Instead, you arrest your
personal development and become stuck at a previous stage, and you probably
trap yourself in numerous cognitive distortions that of which you are
unconscious.

 

I was asked recently, "Why have you been putting so much emphasis on
critical thinking skills?"  Part of the answer lies in the prevalence of
closed-minds.  That's because critical thinking is partly defined as an open
mind to facts, truth, insights as well as the ability to think clearly,
accurately, and without bias.  In a world as divided as ours, we need more
and more open minds who can have civil conversations, realizing all along
that no thought is a fact, it is just a thought -a mental construct about
something.  And as fallible human beings, we are often wrong, something that
does not frighten an open mind.

 DO YOUR OWN THINKING!

 

There is thinking, which everyone does and which is inevitable, and then
there is real thinking, which is everyone does not do, and which is not
inevitable.  Thinking is an art, it is an education, it is a discipline that
requires skills and competencies.  All that's required for inevitable
thinking is a functional brain on the top of your shoulders, one that is not
brain-dead.  Nearly everyone has that and so nearly everyone "thinks."  Yet
because there are numerous non-thinking states, you can have a brain and not
use it.  There are 7 kinds of non-thinking: automatic thinking, reactive,
borrowed, superficial, agenda, "knowing," and expectant (Executive Thinking,
Brain Camp I).

 

Imagine that-a working brain which is not engaged so it actually and truly
thinks!  The state of non-thinking is not only possible, it is far, far too
much the case with most people.  Why is that?  Because thinking is hard
work.  If you have ever struggled to understand a subject in school, with
reading a difficult passage in a book, or the mechanics of how something
works, and afterward felt exhausted, mentally drained, and if you rubbed
your heads to ease the tension you feel, then you know that sometimes,
thinking can require a lot of cognitive effort.

 

Famous people have often spoke about the effort of thinking.  For example
Peter F. Drucker once said: "Thinking is very hard work.  And management
fashions are a wonderful substitute for thinking."  John Dewey wrote a book
at the beginning of the 20th century, How We Think, and in it he defined
thinking in a way that still shocks most people: "The origin of thinking is
some perplexity, confusion, or doubt."  It is the surprises and disappoints
of life that we don't like or can't figure out, otherwise known as
"problems," that trigger us to think.  No wonder some people do not like to
think and do whatever they can to avoid thinking!

 

Not only do senior managers in organizations substitute "management
fashions" for thinking, there's another substitute you should know about.
Carl Jung wrote, "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge."  Now
we are back to non-thinking-making a reactionary and prejudicial judgment
rather than thinking.  Then you don't have to put in the work of actually
thinking something through.

 

When Albert Einstein thought about thinking, he noted something which many
of us have said about schools.  Namely, schools should not only focus on
what to think, but how to think.  Most do not.  Einstein said, "Education is
not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think."  True
thinking is not inevitable, you have to learn how to do it.  You have to
learn how to use your mind to think, and thereby become mindful, that is,
consciously aware and alive.

 

A fascinating thing about thinking is that you have to do it, no one can do
it for you.  Now it is true that you can learn from someone and take on his
thoughts and think her thoughts after her. Because of this, we all can
benefit from the quality thinking of those who came before us and we do not
have to start from ground zero.  I can read from Aristotle.  Then, what he
learned and discovered thousands of years ago, I can think those same
thoughts, try them on, and make them mine.  We call that learning.  It is
the process by which I can come to understand what someone else has already
figured out or discovered.  But again, you have to do the thinking to
transfer those thoughts into your neurology, nervous systems and brain.  No
one can do that for you.  Nor will those thoughts get inside you by osmosis.

 

We can also learn to be excellent thinking partners to each other.  This was
the discovery of Vygotsky when he described how a more informed person can
scaffold the learning of a less informed person thereby accelerating the
development of the learner (Executive Learning).  But again, the learner has
to do his or her own thinking.

 

What happens when you do your own thinking?  Obviously they learn.  You come
to know more and when you integrate that learning, you can do more.  You can
become more skilled and effective in doing things, more self-confident, more
independent, more able to stand on your own two feet.  You become empowered.
As you use your mind to think and develop your thinking powers and skills,
you becomes more self-determining and able to discern truth from falsehood.
And all of that unleashes your potentials.

 

Now you know what we are striving to do in Neuro-Semantics.  As we teach the
Meta-Model, the Meta-Programs model, the Meta-States model, etc., our larger
objective is to enable people to access their ultimate power-their thinking
powers.  This makes people more intelligent, more rational, and more
informed.  And because we want everyone to do this, it facilitates everyone
in becoming more democratic, more respectful, and more tolerant and
accepting of others

 

In enabling people to become excellent critical thinkers and creative
thinkers-we want and encourage people to do their own thinking.  This
downplays the need to conform your thinking to anyone else's.  This makes
redundant any need to have a creed and force people to submit their minds to
only the "politically correct" thinking.  In this way, we work to develop
thinkers who can engaged in healthy conversations, debates, and dialogues.
They do not have to agree, in fact, if people are truly thinking, they
probably will not agree.  There will be lots of differences.  That is not
only okay, it is to be expected.  It is desirable.

 

The professions that we focus on and develop in Neuro-Semantics (and NLP)
are thinking professions: coaches, consultants, therapists, leaders,
managers, etc.  To be highly effective at any of these professions-you have
to be a clear, accurate, precise, practical, creative, and critical thinker.
You have to know how to challenge ill-formedness in linguistic structures
(the Meta-Model).  You have to know how to challenge the cognitive
distortions, biases, and fallacies (see Executive Thinking; Thinking for
Humans).  You have to be able to detect and work with thinking and
perceiving patterns (Meta-Programs, Figuring Out People).  Is it a lot?
Yes, you bet it is and in Neuro-Semantics we have lots of training programs
to make this a reality.  Here's to you doing your own best thinking!

 THINKING ABOUT THINKING

WITH NLP

 

Isn't that a gret title?  I wish I had invited it, but alas I did not.
Joseph Yeager invented it and then wrote a book by that title, Thinking
about Thinking with NLP (1985).  It's an excellent book -insightful, playful
(full of humor), and full of practical applications.  I got that book the
next year (1986) just as I was entering into this field. 

"NLP is the science of thinking about thinking." (p. viii)

"... Think of thinking as continuous and fluid ... choice is a convention of
thinking, not a given of human nature." (p. ix)

 

And while it is a wonderful book, it is also an incomplete book.  In fact,
given what we know today, it is very incomplete!  In spite of all of the
good things in the book, Joseph did not even come close to the idea of NLP
as a Thinking Model (Neurons #43, #44).  Well, in 1985 NLP was only
officially 10 years old (1975) and Meta-Programs and Sub-Modalities were
only then in the process of being developed.  Joseph also wrote it years
before the discovery of the Meta-States Model (1994) wherein I modeled the
most unique kind of thinking and consciousness that we humans have-
self-reflexive consciousness.

 

Now as a thinking model, NLP did not make the mistake of making "thinking"
dichotomous to "feeling" or "emoting."  NLP is much too holistic for that!
When we talk about thinking, we include within it feeling and emoting.  The
fundamental channels of thinking, the sensory representational systems of
the VAK include both.  Generally, visual and auditory representations drive
the thinking part and kinesthetics drive the feeling and emotional part.
This is the basic structure of facilitating experiences using NLP.

 

If that doesn't immediately make sense, or ring a bell for you, consider
what happens in any and every NLP training and/or coaching.  A person wants
to feel more relaxed, more joyful, more confident, more curious, etc.  What
does the NLP trainer do?  She first grounds the experience of work asking
VAK questions, "How do you picture this?   What tone of voice are you using?
And how are you feeling in your body-your breathing, posture, muscle tone,
etc.?"  Once this thinking is elicited, then the NLP-er will ask the person
to make the thinking features of the pictures brighter, the tone more
upbeat, etc.  Then, "What effects does this have on your emotions or
emotional states?"

 

The visual and auditory qualities also drive the kinesthetics.  Sometimes
the kinesthetics are used to amplify or turn up the bodily sensations.  Then
to enrich it further, words are elicited.  "What do you say to yourself?"
"What could you say to yourself that would make this experience more
joyful?"  "What tonality would you use?"

All of this highlights that in NLP we think with our whole mind and body.
Thinking is visual, auditory, kinesthetic (which includes smells and tastes)
sensory systems.  It also includes linguistics for our mental categories
(our meta-representational system).  NLP, as a holistic thinking model,
involves no dichotomizing or polarizing of thinking and feeling.

 

Neurologically, when we think not only are various cortexes activated in the
brain, but neuro-pathways are activated from brain to all of the body.  All
of the many different nervous systems are activated (autonomic nervous
system, immune system, sympathetic nervous system, digestive nervous system,
etc.).  That's why, taking cue from Korzybski, NLP is as holistic and
systemic as you can get, hence, Neuro-Linguistic Programming.  We "program"
or construct strategies and experiences into our very neurology.  Then, as
"neurons are fired together, they wire together" (Donald Hebb).  Now the
program, whether it is for reading, riding a bike, getting dressed, driving
a car, solving an algebra problem, etc., that program is readily available
to us as a developed resource.

 

As a Thinking Model, NLP specifies how such programming works in human
neurology and how it is coded linguistically.  We are a neuro-linguistic and
neuro-semantic class of life (Alfred Korzybski).  What this means is that
unlike the field of Critical Thinking or the field of Creative Thinking, NLP
is so much more.  Again, that's why it is a meta-discipline.

 

When you next add the meta-levels of thinking to all of this-then you have
an even fuller picture.  As you think about your thinking, you develop
higher levels of consciousness.  This meta-thinking shows up as beliefs,
decisions, learning, understandings, conceptual models, etc.  Within each of
these we develop all sorts of thinking hierarchies- belief systems,
hierarchy of values, increasingly more abstract understandings of patterns
and the "laws" that govern a discipline.

 

NLP began as a thinking model, even though the founders didn't realize it,
or think about their work in that way.  Today Neuro-Semantic NLP continues
the original discovery by modeling the many ways that thinking functions in
our mind-body system.

 

Why is all of that important?  Because everything human depends upon, and
arises from, thinking.  Thinking is the key to everything we deem important.
As the ultimate cause; it is your ultimate power.  Consequently, if you can
get to the thinking of someone, whether a client, an expert, or yourself-you
can identify the structure of pathology, excellence, challenge, etc. and
therefore that person's way of functioning.  You can learn it, bring healing
to it if need be, and/or replicate it.  That's because it is a model of
thinking itself.

 

 WHAT NLP REALLY IS

 

NLP, as a Communication model, is not a therapy model.  It is not a version
of psychotherapy. Nor is it a modeling model, a hypnosis model, or even a
model for personal development (self-actualization).  So what is NLP?
Amazing enough, that is one of the perennial questions that has plagued the
field of NLP.  This is the question to ask if you want to torture an NLP
trainer!

 

Yes, NLP speaks to, addresses, and provides lots of guidance in each of
these disciplines.  These are actually the most essential applications of
NLP.  There are many more-parenting, leadership, managements, coaching,
consulting, education, health, fitness, etc.  These are so much the
essential applications that they are commonly, even to this day, confused
with what NLP really is.  That's why some say NLP is Modeling, some say it
is Psychotherapy, some say it is Hypnosis, and others say it is
Self-Actualization.  NLP certain is each of these in terms of applications.
But what is it at its core?  Can we determine that?

 

NLP is actually much deeper than any of these.  Thinking about it as a
communication model, then at its heart, it is about how we communicate to
ourselves and others to create our experiences (states, skills, knowledge).
As NLP identified how these communications work and the basic communication
processes (mechanism), we found that it gave us the inner hidden structure
of experience itself.  And when you know the structure of an experience, you
can model and replicate that experience.

 

Yet unbeknown to most NLP trainers, writers, researchers, and teachers, NLP
is actually deeper than just a Communication Model.  Nor is this something
new that I'm adding to NLP, it has been deeper since the beginning, but
hardly anyone noticed.  I did not.  And I researched it for decades and
delved into the NLP models going back to the original sources.  Perhaps
that's because it is easier and makes more sense to simply say that it is a
Communication Model.  People understand that.  What else would you call it?

 

When Bob and I packaged NLP for the two volumes of User's Manual of the
Brain, we said that it is most essentially a Communication Model.  Evidence
of that goes to the fact that the first NLP model is "the Meta-Model of
Language in Therapy" and the second model was the Representational Model
that comprises our communications (including Sub-Modalities or the cinematic
features of our inner movies).  The third model, the Strategies Model about
how the communications generates and "programs" an experience.  Fourth, the
Milton Model of hypnotic communication patterns and how trance states work.
Fifth, the Meta-Programs model about how people think in their
communications.  That's a lot of evidence that NLP is a Communication Model.
Yet could it be something deeper?  If so, what would we call it?

 

Could we call it a thinking model?  What if, deeper than all of the uses and
applications of NLP is thinking?  Yet there's a problem with that.  Namely,
what is a thinking model?  How do you model thinking?  Thinking itself seems
so primary and irreducible, what would be its components?  Perhaps that's
why none of us saw that NLP could be defined as a thinking model.  But let's
go with it for a moment.  Suppose we called NLP a thinking model?  After
all, take each of the communication models and let's ask, What lies within
and underneath each model?  The answer is Thinking.

 

Meta-Model of Language            Linguistic distinctions encoding how we
think.

Representational Model              Sensory representations encoding sensory
VAK thinking.

Sub-Modality Model                    Cinematic features framing how one is
thinking.

Strategy Model                              Representational steps in how a
thinking format is structured.

Milton Model                                 Hypnotic linguistic
distinctions that invite a person to construct thinking about possibilities
and in terms of metaphors (metaphorical thinking).

Meta-Programs Model                Thinking patterns that govern ways of
perceiving.

Perceptual Positions Model        Thinking patterns from different
perceptual positions.

Reframing Model                          Thinking patterns for framing
different ways of interpreting a word, experience, or person, thinking about
meaning in different way.

Meta-States Model                       Reflexive thinking patterns that
layer thought upon thought to generate more complex states.

 

One thing this perceptive highlights is that all 'thinking' is not the same.
There are many different kinds and dimensions of thinking.  It also puts a
spotlight on the driving force inside of communication-the quality of your
thinking determines the quality of your communicating.  As thinking can go
wrong, make mistakes, be fallacious-so can everything that thinking
generates.  No wonder change, and transformation of persons and
organizations, require new thinking in new and different ways.

 

What am I saying here?  I'm saying that what NLP is most essentially a
Thinking Model.  When you really understand NLP, you know that it is a way
of thinking, a way of rethinking, and a way to do both critical and creative
thinking.  With this in mind, then at the core of every change is
re-thinking.  It is fresh thinking and it is meta-thinking, that is, the
ability to think about your thinking so that you can make sure it is
accurate, specific, precise, creative, and ecological.

 

Thinking has been at the core of NLP from the beginning, but we missed it.
Perhaps we dismissed "thinking" as too small, too obvious, or not
distinctive enough.  Perhaps we wanted something more sell-able, something
more commercially appealing, something that sounded more sexy-
communication, change, reframing, modeling, etc.

 

Now as a Thinking Model, NLP (including Meta-States) offers us nearly
everything we need to build and articulate a model of thinking.  And
unbeknown to most of the field of NLP, that's what I've been doing in our
Brain Camp trainings and in the series of books on thinking.  It has been a
discovery long time in coming, but it is now coming in a training near you.
:)

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 "MIND" AS A VERB

 

One of the greatest distinctions in the Meta-Model is the linguistic
distinction of nominalization.  When you have one of these creatures, you
have a mystified noun.  It is a mystery because, since it is not a true
noun, it is challenging, sometimes difficult, and sometimes utterly
impossible to know what to do with it.  How different from a real noun which
is "a person, place, or object."  When you have a real noun, you can see it
or hear it or touch it or taste or smell it.  Examples of real nouns- your
mother, your bed, your toothbrush, shoe, shirt, car, eggs, hamburger, etc.

 

But then there are the false nouns.  These are verbs which have been
noun-ified.  Take the verb "relate" and when you nounify it, you have
"relationship."  The verb that's hidden inside of relationship is "to
relate."  It is unspecified, so we have to ask more questions: who is
relating to whom, relating in what way, for what purpose, over what time
frame, etc.?  Take motivation and what is the hidden verb inside it?  Easy.
First we get motive then we get move.  Again, unspecified, so who or what is
moving?  In what direction?  What is the style of the moving, toward or away
from, slowly or quickly, etc.?

 

Many, if not most, nominalizations are like that-it is easy to detect the
hidden verb and to expose the real referent.  That's good because if you
don't, you will be left with a distorted mental map about yourself, others,
life, and/or the world.  You will have a mental map that is false-to-fact
and that will trick you, even deceive you, about things.  Psychologists for
most of the 20th century were fooled by motivation.  They thought it was a
thing, an object, something real, and so off they went looking for it.  But
it is not a thing!  It does not exist as a separate entity.  It describes a
function-the thinking-and-feeling (meaning-making) function within a person.
Maslow got it right when he identified motivation as a function of the
driving needs that need to be gratified; he wrote a whole book about
that-Motivation and Personality (1954/ 1970).

 

Now for one of the most mysterious of nominalizations of all-"mind."  We
certainly talk about "mind" as if it is a thing, a real thing, an object
that somehow exists in our heads.  There is a whole field, Philosophy of
Mind, in which great "minds" theorize and philosophize about mind.  Some say
the mind is just the brain; some say there is no such thing, "it is a
figment of your imagination."  Then there are many other definitions, all
striving to specify what it is.  But, of course, that's the thing, it is not
a thing at all!

 

Fortunately, we do at times use the word "mind" as a verb.  Getting on and
off of trains or subways you see the words, "Mind the gap."  We hear our
mothers say, "Now you mind your mother and do what I tell you!"  We may hear
our parents also say, "Mind your brother while I go into the store," "Mind
your manners, you're in church!"  There are more: mind your own business,
mind your head, mind your step, mind me, mind yourself, mind the goats, etc.
There are even "conversational postulates: "Would you mind passing the
salt?"  "Would you mind closing the door?"

 

Now when it comes to mind as a verb, what are we actually saying or asking?
To "mind the gap" is to think about and pay attention to the gap.  So with
"mind your mother," we know that she means, listen to and think about what I
told you.  "Mind" as a verb means think, think about, pay attention, focus
on.

 

Now you know the hidden verb inside of "mind," it is think.  Yet again, we
have an unspecified verb, so we have to ask more questions: Think in what
way, think how, think about what, etc.?  Now when it comes to thinking,
there are essential thinking skills: considering, questioning, doubting,
detailing, and distinguishing.  There are constructive thinking skills that
lead to eureka moments: inferring, organizing, creating, and synergizing
(systems thinking).  Then there are the advanced thinking skills: learning,
deciding, discerning, reflecting, and sacrilizing (valuing). (I have
detailed these thinking skills in Brain Camp I and in the forthcoming book,
Thinking for Humans, 2024).

 

What is your "mind?"  Well, since we know it is not a thing, it must be a
function, and given that the hidden verb is "think," what we refer to by the
word "mind" is your thinking functions.  Question: "What's on your mind?"
Answer: whatever you have been thinking-your thoughts, your ideas, your
constructs.  Question: "What's in the back of your mind?"  Answer: previous
thoughts that you now use as your thinking filters or references.  "What
does it mean when you say you must be losing your mind?  Answer: It means
that you are forgetting a thought or not comprehending a thought.  "Do you
have a good mind?"  Now we are asking about the quality of your thinking and
if you can think in clear and reasonable ways.

 

Mind- a mystery especially when you don't know how to de-nominalize.  Mind-
the wonder of human ingenuity, creativity, and innovations when you know
that it is your thinking and the quality of your thinking.  Mind- the result
of your thinking.  Your mind is your own self-creation!   Given that, how's
your mind?

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 YOUR TALK:

YOUR PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

 

To assert that your talk reveals your thinking (#40) is to identify the
field of study called Psycho-Linguistics.  While this field uses the
language of linguistics and grammar, it is not strictly about linguistics
and grammar.  It is about how the way you talk reflects your inner
psychology.  This describes the very same phenomenon that the phrase
neuro-linguistics also refers to.  It refers to what your linguistics does
inside your neurology, how it influences the neurons in your brain and body,
and how that puts you into various states.

 

What does all of that mean?  It means that NLP is not about linguistics and
grammar per se, but rather about the effect of language within the human
person.  And while many people get turned off with regard to the Meta-Model
of Language, NLP's first model, that is typically because the trainer did
not understand it him or herself and did not know how to train it.
Accordingly, in many NLP schools, the Meta-Model is mentioned and then
quickly passed over thereby conveying the idea that it is not that
important.  But it is.

 

Actually, the opposite is true.  I could easily make an argument that the
most important model in NLP is the Meta-Model of Language.  Once upon a
time, Richard Bandler himself made that argument.  He said that "everything
that had been created in NLP was created with the Meta-Model."  How about
that!  In fact, it was that statement in 1989 that made me question my own
understanding of the Meta-Model.  It challenged me because I could not
explain how the Meta-Model would have been at the heart of creating
everything in NLP.  And, I wanted to know.

 

Consequently that sent me on a several year study of the Meta-Model.  It
also sent me to my first studies in Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics and
from that, I collected seven linguistic distinctions from Korzybski's work
that should have been included in the original Meta-Model but were not.  In
adding those, I called the result The Extended Meta-Model.  That's now in
the book, Communication Magic (2001).

 

Now psycho-linguistics or neuro-linguistics refers to one of the most basic
and essential mechanisms in human experience-how we think and how our
thinking generates our "sense of reality," that is, our model of the world.
To think is to use various "languages."  First, we think using the sensory
representational systems of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting.
This thinking is without words.  Next we add words, that's the
meta-representational system and the first words are sensory-based words.
Words enable you and I to create categories, classifications, concepts, etc.
and these then become our thinking templates or perceptual filters.  This
shifts to a higher level of thinking-conceptual and evaluative thinking.

 

As you do any of these kinds of thinking, you send signals to your body how
to feel and what to do.  In other words, this is how you "program" yourself
so that you can do whatever you do.  You program yourself for how to feed
yourself, walk, run, ride a bike, dress yourself, read, write, do math, use
a computer, etc.  Your programming for how to be, and how to function as
you, is a function of your neuro-linguistics and neuro-semantics.

 

This means that the language you speak is an important determinant of how
you think.  And as you think, so you feel, respond, speak, and behave.  Your
linguistics in all of its multiple forms organizes your thinking processes.
Even a single word can operate an organizing structure for your thinking. 

 

For example, if you mis-use the word "race" to designate different ethnic
groups, you thereby program yourself to see and distinguish different
"races."  It is actually a mis-use of the word because there is only one
human race on this planet.  We are all members of that one and singular
race.  We are not different species.  If you talk about "the human race" and
include every single person in that category, you have no room for racism or
being a racist.  Then you will be color-blind as Martin Luther King, Jr.
described in his "I Have a Dream" speech.  Given this, all of the non-sense
today about racism is a self-generated problem that can disappear very
quickly when we change our languaging.

 

Amazing, isn't it?  Words program the mind.  The way you talk organizes what
we call your "personality."  No wonder Neuro-Semantics, as an upgraded
version of NLP, focuses so much on cleaning up your thinking so that you can
speak with more clarity and precision and so you can then live with more
truth and compassion.

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

(970) 523-7877

meta@acsol.net  

 WOKE THINKING SICKNESS

 

While the content of what is called Woke claims to care about social
justice, it only cares for justice for a few, not for everyone.
Originating from the "Black Lives Matter" movement, Woke thinking lacks
almost any common sense.  The first un-common sense thing that came out of
it was the defunding the police movement.  Now just a few years later, we
see many of the people who jumped on that bandwagon reversing themselves.
Why?  Because the rate of crime has been sky-rocketing, because mobs of
people rob businesses in daylight, and because the hands of police have been
tied so that they fear protecting the public

 

However, above and beyond the ideological contents of Woke is Woke thinking,
and that's the real problem.  Because Woke thinking is driven by an
ideology, and as with every ideology, that thinking is inherently biased by
its unspoken assumptions.  Consequently Woke thinking is not scientific, not
realistic, and not rational.  Rather than true thinking, it is "agenda
thinking."  When you start with an agenda, in this case a political agenda
based in Marxism and Socialism, that's why it is nearly impossible to reason
with a woke thinker.  Like every ideological thinking, woke thinking doesn't
seek the truth, but to prostyle in order to gain followers to the Woke cult.

 


Now if you use your brain well, and if you think in the way that thinking is
designed to be used, then you use it to grasp as best you can the
"territory" of the world.  Grasping it enables you to map it.  That's what
thinking is-your mental mapping of what you construe is present and how it
works.  You do that in order to navigate that territory.

 

If effective thinking puts in touch with reality, it is the means and design
of science.  It is the scientific attitude.  When we do science effectively,
we discern what is there, how it works, how to manage it, etc.  You consider
all sides, tests the validity of statements, keep your hypotheses open for
adjustment as new information arises, etc.

 

But Woke thinking does not do any of that.  For example, in biology we know
that there are two sexes and only two.  Every biologist knows that.  There
are males and females and everybody either has a penis or a vagina.  That's
the sexual facts.  For the term "gender," we generally use it as a synonym,
although "gender" also carries with it the cultural ideas of what each
gender is like, and how in any given culture we raise boys and girls.  But
today Woke thinking presents a mental map that in no way relates to reality.


 

Now regarding these facts, people within every culture develops views about
masculinity and femininity-beliefs, understandings, assumptions, etc.  These
views make up each person's psychology about males and females as concepts.
When these are framed in extreme opposition to each other, while there may
be clarity about male and female roles in a culture, there's usually also
unnecessary conflict between the sexes.  Then men aren't allowed to cry, to
be tender, to nurture, to admit weakness, etc.  Then women are not allowed
ot be angry, speak up for themselves, establish firm boundaries, say no,
etc.  Of course, these "problems" are problems of our framing and especially
cultural framing, not of reality.

 

Sexual and gender identities are functions of framing and meaning-making.
As an identity, what you think about being male or female depends on your
beliefs, understandings, permitting, forbidding, framing, etc.  If you are a
biological male and "feel like a woman" that's a psychological issue, not a
biological one.  If you're a biological female and "feel like a man" your
psychology is off.  Your biology is a given, you are either male or female.
If you have a problem with that, the problem lies not in your biology but in
your mind and emotions.  So trying to "solve" a psychological problem
biologically is a living "outside-in" approach, and will not be very
satisfactory.  And as such, it is a superficial and shallow "solution." 

 

While it is certainly possible to change one's sexual features, something
accomplished by surgery, hormone therapy, etc., chopping off breasts and
penises and reconstructing sexual parts is irreversible.  Because of that,
as a psychologist, I say that no child, adolescent, or even young adult
ought to ever make that choice.  After all, any decision that is
irreversible ought to be reserved for a time in life after the brain has
full matured -which is in the mid-30s.

 


And once a biological man has made all of the changes to become a woman, he
should never be allowed to compete in women's sports.  Let them invent some
transgender league of their own.  Women have fought long and hard for their
own leagues and for respect of their sports.  That should not be thrown away
to men who want to be women.  Everybody knows that gives them an unfair
advantage and, in the long run, will destroy women's sports.

 

Now when you try to reason with a Woke thinker, to have a rational
conversation, you'll discover the sickness of their agenda thinking.  Woke
thinking seeks to shut up anyone who disagrees.  Woke thinking bars
conservatives from college campuses and disserters from boardrooms.  Why?
Because the Woke thinker has a "religion" to promote.  That person will
argue by calling names, using labels ("racists" is their favorite),
generalizations, emotionally associating you with extreme examples-forms of
cognitive distortions and fallacies.  Their use of language itself is sick,
it is the doublespeak that Orwell described in his novel, 1984.

 

As Neuro-Semanticists, we think about how people think because as a person
thinks, so one reasons, emotes, communicates, acts, etc.  The inner game of
thinking governs all of the outer games of acting and relating.  That's why
we have to address thinking first.

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director

Neuro-Semantics

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA