WHY

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

 

Today nearly everybody knows about emotional intelligence.  Well, at least
most everyone has heard that term.  Emotional intelligence is today a pretty
regular offering in organization as business has been discovering that it is
not sufficient to have smart and talented people on board, they also need to
have some basic emotional intelligence.  In fact, the more a business
involves customers, teams, management, leadership, etc. the more emotional
intelligence is needed.

 

Why is this so?  Why has emotional intelligence become popular and what is
it all about?  The bottom line is that as a person can be intellectually
smart and know all kinds of things, if a person is not smart about oneself,
one's emotions, managing those emotions effectively, using one's emotions to
connect with others in healthy ways, etc., then one's I.Q. will be less
effective than it could be.  E.Q. (emotional quotent) is about being smart
about people and about yourself as a person.

 

Obviously I.Q. is important, in fact, critical for a person to understand
his world and cope effectively within it.  This is one's basic intelligence
in understanding and learning what you are doing, and how to do it.  I.Q. is
primarily intelligence of the outside world.  E.Q. speaks about your
intelligence of your inside world and the inside world of others.  It is
your intelligence in how you handle yourself in relationship to others, your
social intelligence, your intra-personal intelligence, and your emotional
intelligence about how to get along well with others.

 

Why is it important?  Because you and I are emotional beings.  Because we
are social beings.  Because a great portion of our ability to cope with
life, get along with others, and even get along well with ourselves depends
on our emotional intelligence.  It's important because the "logic" that of
our internal world is very different from the "logic" of the external world.
For most of us, it's obvious that the "logic" of our emotions is not the
logic of mathematics or physics.  Yet what may not be equally obvious is
that the "logic" of our thinking, reasoning, and interpreting also operates
from a different and unique logic.

 

In this series of articles, I will first identify what emotional
intelligence is, how we define it, and it's component parts.  I will then
relate it to the NLP Model about emotional states.  Long before the idea of
emotional intelligence arose, NLP had already focused on it and developed a
great many tools for developing it, only under the terminology of state.
Neuro-Semantics took this further as we introduced the idea of meta-states
which are, in fact, meta-emotions and all that is implied about these
higher/deeper emotional states.

 

>From there I will focus in the basics in Neuro-Semantics on what we call
Emotional Mastery.  The purpose will be to offer many of the distinctions
and processes that we use to facilitate a greater ability to manage our
emotions.  That's important for many reasons.  First and foremost, to create
a sense of control.  Then you will not feel that you are a victim of your
emotions.  Then, instead of feeling that your emotions have you, you have
your emotions!  Then, with a sense of being in control, you will be able to
manage your stress so it is not creating various kinds of psycho-somatic
illnesses and problems.

 

By managing your emotions you can then put them to good use- feeling the
emotions that move you (motivate you) to live life more fully- love, joy,
peace, etc.  Then, you can turn on the emotions that feed curiosity and
wonder so that you can learn and develop, so that you can connect and
contribute, so that you can unleash your best potentials, and equally so
that you can use your negative emotions for your overall good.

 

There are no "bad" emotions, there are just emotions.  And with every
emotion, there is a message of some sort.  There are appropriate and
inappropriate emotions, depending on the context.  There are useful and
unuseful emotions.  There are emotions to live in (the positive emotions)
and there are emotions to notice, learn from, and release (the negative
emotions).  And in the end, they are just emotions.  They are not commands
from heaven.  They are not infallible-they are entirely fallible.  And
because they are fallible, they do not always tell us the truth.

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 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?

 MAKING THE THINKING CHOICE

 

Given that "mind" is not only a noun (actually, a nominalization), it is
also a verb (#42), mind is not a thing (as an object, entity, or substance),
it is a function.  Mind is what you do-and what you do is think.  When you
"mind the gap" you are thinking about the fact that there is a gap.  When
you "mind" your mother, you pay attention to, listen to, and comply with
what she says.

 

With a mind, you have thinking power.  While you can think passively by just
perceiving things, and let in all kinds of thinking, true thinking is a
choice.  It is a choice wherein you expend effort.  This means your ultimate
consciousness is a volitional consciousness.  And because you can choose to
avoid thinking, to not focus your attention, you can choose to not do the
work of thinking.  Lots of people do precisely that.  You can also let your
thinking powers deteriorate, weaken, and become nearly useless.  Yet when
you default on thinking, and drift in a will-less passivity, the result is
that you end up evading the adventure of life and the true joy of activating
your potentials.

 

This is the problem with all of the social media platforms-they encourage
you to adopt a policy of defaulting on thinking.  Instead they encourage you
to think what is Politically Correct, and to disparage any thoughts that
disagree with their conventional wisdom.  The end result-if you reject the
work of thinking, all that's left is to become a zombie.  Once you abandon
your thinking powers, all that you have left are your emotions-how you feel.
So you now substitute your feelings for your mind and with it, your ability
to detect reality.  This is the pathway to neurosis as Nathan Branden (1969)
noted:

"One of the chief characteristics of mental illness is the policy of letting
one's feelings -one's wishes and fears- determine one's thinking, guide
one's actions and serve as one's standard of judgment.  This is more than a
symptom of neurosis, it is a prescription for neurosis.  It is a policy that
involves the wrecking of one's rational faculty." (p. 71)

 

To surrender your mind to others, to an ideology, to what's politically
correct (PC) is to choose to not think.  It is to seek to be unaware, to
give up your humanity, to sell your cognitive potentials and
self-actualization short.  And all of that is a loser's route.

 

If your childhood home was convolutedly complicated or dysfunctional so that
understanding what was going on, and what it meant, would require a a degree
in psychology, sociology, an philosophy- it was probably easier to give up
even trying to understand.  It is easier to turn off your mind and retreat
into dreams and fantasies.  And because emotions are so strong-fear, anger,
guilt, confusion-it's easy to get lost in an emotion.  Yet in doing that you
develop the habit of not thinking.

 

When you surrender your mind to emotions or to the social environment, you
cannot develop an adequate contact with the world outside, or for that
matter, the world inside.  When you give up real thinking, you are left with
no tools by which you can make contact.  In the long-term this will deepen
your sense of helplessness and hopelessness.  We see this in
poverty-stricken communities, in lots of the college protests currently
going on, and even in corporate America.  Regardless of the context, people
have give up the ultimate human choice-the choice to use one's mind to do
actual thinking.  Instead, they default to the non-thinking uses of the
mind-

           automatic thinking

           reactionary thinking

           shallow thinking

           borrowed thinking

           agenda thinking

           certainty

           and expectations.

 

The solution is to develop your mind's capacities for thinking.  It is to
identify and cultivate all of your mental powers.  The good news is that we
now have modeled "thinking" and "mind" so that we have specified three major
thinking categories (essential, eureka, and executive thinking skills) and
14 thinking powers.  This, in turn, enables you to deliberately practice
these thinking skills until you develop them as key resources in your mental
capacity for thinking.

 

The Essence of Thinking

              1. Considering

              2. Questioning, Exploring

              3. Doubting

              4. Detailing, Indexing

              5. Distinguishing

The Eureka of Thinking

6. Inferring

              7. Organizing

              8. Creating

              9. Synergizing

The Executive Development of Thinking

              10. Learning

              11. Deciding

              12. Discerning

              13. Reflecting

              14. Sacralizing

 




 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 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.