NEURONS

The Meta-Reflections of Neuro-Semantics

2013

1) Neuro-Semantics
A Happy Neuro-Semantic Year to You! (1)
Self-Actualization Assessment Scale (8)
Dimensions of Self-Actualization (24)
Open Invitation to NLP Trainers (37)
Mandela: A Leader like None Other (53)
What if all your Limitations were in your maps? (55)
Inside-Out Limitations (56)

Modeling Series
Modeling Human Excellence with NLP (5)
The How of Now (6)
Modeling: The Magic of “How” (7)
Modeling Intuition (9)
Modeling Human Experiences (10)
The Key NLP Modeling Tool: The Metta-Model (12)
The Modeling that Discovered Meta-States (13)
How to Model with Meta-States (14)
What’s the Big Deal about Coaching (15)
Advanced NLP Modeling Using Meta-States (16)
Modeling Frames (17)
Modeling Frames Using the Matrix Model (18)
Matrix Modeling (19)
Modeling Short-Term and Long-Term Experiences (20)
Modeling Multiple-Stage Experiences (21)
Modeling Beyond Beliefs (22)
Modeling Presence of Mind Under Pressure (25)
Why Some Modeling is Ineffective Modeling (36)

Emotional Mastery Series

Getting Clear on What an Emotion is (26)
Operationalizing our Understanding of an Emotion (27)
Emotions— Right and Relevant

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 When an Emotion is not a Real Emotion (30)
Emotional Continua (31)
Emotional Tolerance for Accepting All Emotions (32)
When Emotions get Distorted and Amplified (Zimerman Trial) (33)
Don’t Just Feel; Do Something about the Feeling (34)
Self-Actualization and Emotions (35)

Making Self-Actualization Actionable Series

Real live, Everyday Self-Actualization (38)
Everyday Self-Actualization and the Power of Choice (39)
Courageous Responsibility: Practical Self-Actualization (40)
Disciplining the Spontaneous (41)
Self-Actualization Indicators (42)

Transcendence Series
“Transcendence is Included” (43)
Dealing with Your Innate Transcendence (44)
Transcendence and Happiness (45)
Transcendence and Peak Experiences (46)

The Neuro-Semantics of Government Series

Leadership, Wealth, and Hard Decisions (47)
When Government is the Problem (48)
The Game of Government (49)
Government and Self-Government (50)

Meta-States Series
NLP & Meta-States: Meta-States is NLP on Steroids (51)
Meta-States Informs and Transforms NLP (52)
There’s Meta-States Hiding in your Everyday Language (54)

Events
You are Invited to the Second International Neuro-Semantic Conference (2)
Self-Actualization Training (3)
NSTT: The Best Training in the World (11)
The Second International Conference of Neuro-Semantics (29)

Books
It’s all about Frames (4)
Book Review: The Origins of NLP (23)

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #1
January 1, 2013

A HAPPY NEURO-SEMANTIC YEAR

TO YOU!

2013— a new year has just arrived! And what does that mean? Lots of things. One meaning is
about time: the field of NLP is now 38 years old (1975), the field of Neuro-Semantics is now 19
years old (1994), and this past November we celebrated the 10th year of Meta-Coaching. And to
put everything into historical perspective, the beginning of the first Human Potential Movement
occurred 74 years old (1938). I put it beginning in 1938 because that was the year that Abraham
Maslow began the first modeling of excellence project— when he began his “Good Humans
Studies” using Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer as his first self-actualizing subjects.

That study became the very first modeling excellence project as Maslow and his colleagues set
out to find the characteristics of those people who had found the secret of living at a higher level
than just coping with the lower, animals needs of survival, safety, love and affection, and self-
importance. Maslow discovered that they were living for the self-actualizing or being-needs
—the truly human needs. He discovered that people who did so were often, and sometimes
frequently, blessed with joyful and ecstatic moments that he called “peak experiences”—
moments of pure happiness.

Ah, yes, moments of pure happiness. Such moments were seldom if ever directly pursued by the
subjects of his studies. What they pursued directly were one or more of the being-needs—
knowledge, meaning, excellence, beauty, mathematics, music, justice, contribution, making a
difference, etc. Yet in the pursuit of something great that was outside of themselves, they found
themselves lost in some fascinating engagement as they extended themselves and became their
best selves (actualizing their highest and best potentials) and then, Eureka! Suddenly, and
unexpectedly, they would have one of those moments of pure happiness.

Many other wise men and women have noted this same phenomenon, namely, that happiness is a
consequence of giving yourself to something great, something bigger than yourself. This was
also Viktor Frankl’s notion of happiness. Happiness results as the by-product of forgetting
yourself in a task that draws on all of your imagination and talent. Paradoxically, happiness does
not come when directly pursued. Nor is happiness the same as “pleasure,” happiness is of a
different quality, a different dimension. Instead, happiness comes as a consequence of giving the
best of yourself to something that for you is the highest of your values and visions, that makes a

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contribution to the rest of humanity.

So in wishing you a Happy New Year! from a Neuro-Semantic point of view, we are wishing you
many moments of pure happiness, of ecstatic joy and delight, of peak experiences where you are
“surprised by joy” as you find yourself totally engaged in something that brings out your best,
that is highly meaningful and significant to you, and that requires the kind of playful effort of
giving something your all.

To say Happy Neuro-Semantic New Year! is to wish that you find your highest and richest
meanings and that as you do, you turn them into your best and most competent performances.
Then you will be able to step up to your highest being-drives and experience one of those
moments of self-actualizing, a peak experience.

All of this fits Neuro-Semantics because closely related to the idea of meaning and meaning-
making, purpose and intentionality which lies at the heart of this field is the notion of
happiness— or joy — or flow — or a peak experience — or lost in an engagement so significant
and meaningful that you seem to experience a transcendence of the moment and for a brief time
live in the eternal now. And that’s the very point of our flagship training, APG — Accessing
Your Personal Genius.

The point of APG is that your personal genius state is not so much about increasing your IQ, or
becoming a genius like the classical geniuses of the twentieth century. The point is becoming the
best you that’s possible for you to become. It is to become fully and completely you — you with
all of your resources available so that when you engage yourself into what’s meaningful to you,
you can get so focused that you get lost in the moment. And when you do this—you will have
many of those moments of pure happiness.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi noted in his dissertation work on Flow — the structure of happiness—
it is not when you are in the moments of flow that you feel happy or joyful. No. In those
moments, you feel engaged, captivated, enthralled as you put forth your best and highest efforts.
It is in the moments afterwards as you reflect on that flow experience that the sense of
satisfaction and joy comes. Actually for him, we enter this flow state when we are engaged in an
activity in which we have control of our actions and responses and so can develop a sense of
mastery in that area. And because this is meaningful to us, it generates feelings of being happy.

If peak experiences are those happiest moments of life— moments of rapture and creativity that
give us a sense that “Life is Good!” then may 2013 be a very happy new year for you and yours.
May you have a Happy Neuro-Semantic New Year!

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #2
January 8, 2013

YOU ARE INVITED TO

THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

A vision was dreamed a number of years ago to have an International Neuro-Semantic

Conference every other year. First, we dreamed it and then we actualized it. The first
Conference was in 2011 in Colorado where the Meta-States Model originated and where Neuro-
Semantics was originally launched. The next one will be on the other side of the planet from
Colorado— in Malaysia and specifically in Kuala Lumpur (just north of Singapore which is north
of Australia).

We have decided that we will make the theme of this Conference that of Actualizing Excellence
and the focus this time to be that of Coaching. But, of course, given the nature of Neuro-
Semantics and NLP— we will be focusing on more than just Coaching —in fact, we have five
tracks this time, so it is Actualizing Coaching Excellence in five core tracks:
C Coaching
C Business
C Self-Actualization
C Education and Training
C NLP and Neuro-Semantics

If you go to www.neurosemantics.com and click on Trainings and then — 2013 Conference you
will see a brochure on the Conference that Meta-Coach and Neuro-Semantic Trainer, Danny
Tuckwood from South Africa designed. And if you click on the PDF attachment that I have sent
with this post— you will see a full description of all of the workshops and keynote presentations
that are planned for this year in Malaysia.

The last page of the PDF file, in fact, is a registration form, so if you want to copy it and fax it to
the sponsor, you can.
Hj Md Taib Mat, MTM Consultants Sdn Bhd.
Fax : 03-5513-4461
or email [email protected]

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Keynote Presentations
We have also expanded the keynote presentations to six and these will begin and end each day.
Because in Neuro-Semantics we know that intentionality is the engine of progress and direction,
we have planned for 6 Keynote Presentations which one designed to create an inspiration for all
of us to step forward even more to reach for excellence. The Achieving Excellence will be in the
following areas:
C L. Michael Hall Modeling Self-Actualization
C Mandy Chai Collaborative Abundance
C Lene Fjellheim Coaching Business
C Omar Salom Developing Leaders
C Hj Mohamed Taib Mat Education / NLP
C Colin Cox Training / Presentations

Yet we feel that it is not enough to merely inspire people with a vision, we have to equip people
with skills if we expect people to be empowered and enabled for the vision. So to achieve that
we have planned for 18 Workshops given by 22 Presenters who come from 9 countries. Here
are the speakers, their country, and their titles:

C Mohamed Taib Mat— Kuala Lumper, Malaysia Actualizing in Education

C Anthony Pinto — Malaysia Meta-Model: Magic of Lang.
C Mohamed Marzuki — Kuala Lumper, Malaysia School for Actualiz. Potentials
C Alan Fayter — Christchurch, New Zealand Presuppositions in Coaching
C Colin Cox — Auckland, New Zealand Using Music in Training
Motivation
C Lena Gray — Auckland, New Zealand Establishing a Coaching Culture
C Joseph Scott — Tasmania, Australia NLP Communication Model
C Jay Hedley — Sydney, Australia “ ”
C Susie Linder-Pelz Sydney, Australia Neuro-Semantic Research
C Susie and Scott Pochron Benchmarking Meta-Coaching
C Shane Stewart — Sydney, Australia Axes of Change
C John Sands — Melbourne, Australia “ ”
C Tim Goodenough — South Africa Raising Talent– Fast Tracking
C Kgobati Magome — Johannesburg, South Africa Cultural Transformation
C Cheryl Lucas — Pretoria, South Africa Supervision in Coaching
Systemic Coaching
C Taryn Sydow — Johannesburg, South Africa Consulting for MCC
C Michele Wickham— Johannesburg, South Africa “ ” (Manager Coach Cert.)
C Scott Pochron — Ohio, USA – Actualizing Leadership
C Mark Ashton — California, USA — Bruce Lee & Self-Actualization
C L. Michael Hall — Colorado, USA — Self-Actualization
C Mandy Chai — Hong Kong, China — Collaborative Abundance
C John Murry Hunter — India — Using Your Voice
C Omar Salom — Mexico City, Mexico — Leadership Development
C Mustafa El-Masry — Eygpt — Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy

So as you can see, this second Conference truly will be an International Confernece and will

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highlight one of the central developments in Neuro-Semantics — the Meta-Coaching System.
As you mark your calendar for that very special weekend at the end of June, 2013 — June 21,
22, and 23, 2013 in Kuala Lumpur — you might also want to make some plans for some
holiday time in Malaysia, Singapore, Bali, etc. There’s a whole world to discover in Malaysia.

Many thanks to Anthony Pinto the first dreamer of this Conference and to Hj Md Taib
Mat who is hosting the Conference.

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #3
January 14, 2013

SELF-ACTUALIZATION TRAINING
Are you ready for training in actualizing (making real) yourself and your potentials? Are you
aware that this is precisely what you and all of us are made for? And are you aware that this is
what ultimately will make you “happy?” And that this is what allows you to fully blossom and
come alive to life’s richness and possibilities? If so, then this may be the year that you begin
your own self-actualizing journey and to Seek the Peak of your potentials.

The Neuro-Semantic Discovery of Self-Actualization

And Creation of the Seeking the Peak Trainings
A number of years ago I stumbled upon a discovery that truly surprised me. Maybe surprise is
not the right word, perhaps shock would be more accurate. I was surprisingly shocked when I
discovered who was actually involved at Esalen during the first Human Potential Movement
(HPM). And who was there?
Why the very who’s who of NLP— Gregory Bateson, Fritz Perl, and Virginia Satir!

Yet there’s more. They were not only at the heart of the first HPM, and the first persons at
Esalen which was created to launch the movement and to be the Think Tank of the movement,
but they were second or third generation leaders of the Human Potential Movement.

That was shocking enough— the very persons modeled by Bandler and Grinder to create the NLP
Communication Model were leaders of the first HPM. But the next shock surprised me even
further. As I looked into the presuppositions of NLP, the presuppositions that came from
Bateson, Perls, and Satir, I discovered that they did not come from them, they came through
them. They came from Maslow and Rogers and the other original thinkers of the HPM. How
about that!

Digging deeper and deeper into all of this by re-reading and reading afresh the original works of
the HPM leaders, another surprise emerged. I had always thought that the first real modeling of
people of excellence began with the NLP Modeling of Fritz and Satir and Erickson. Wrong

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again.
Forty-five years before that modeling, and before either Bandler or Grinder were born (!),
Maslow had launched his modeling of self-actualizing people. He started with Max
Wertheimer (co-founder of Gestalt Psychology) and Ruth Benedict (mentor to Margaret
Mead, wife of Gregory Bateson, founder of Cultural Anthropology).

Neuro-Semantics’ Self-Actualization Training

After I made those discoveries from 2004 to 2007, I launched the first Self-Actualization training
and began training Neuro-Semantic Trainers for training it. In the years that followed, three
more trainings were developed. By 2010 there were 4 workshops. Then at the end of 2012 we
put all of them together to create a Diploma in Self-Actualization Psychology. That training
occurred just recently in Hong Kong under the sponsorship of Mandy Chai and APTI (Asia
Professional Training Institute) and was a tremendous success.

Yet that is just the beginning. Among the 22 Trainers at that training, many of them are planning
to run one or more of the modules and some will eventually be training all four for the Neuro-
Semantic Diploma. So now, there is a very specific process whereby you can be trained in Self-
Actualization! What are the four modules?
Module 1: Unleashing Personal Vitality — Energy to Live Fully
Module 2: Unleashing Personal Potentials — Alive to your Uniqueness
Module 3: Unleashing Creativity — Creative Problem-Solving
Module 4: Unleashing Leadership — Bringing out the Best in Others

Here is the content of Seeking the Peak Trainings that you will be hearing about and seeing as
modules that many Neuro-Semantic Trainers will be conducting this year and in the coming
years. The numbers indicate the theme of the 3-day modules, these are shorted in the full 8 day
program to two-days each.
Module I: Unleashing Vitality
Your Highest & Best Energy for being Fully Alive / Fully Human
Energies for becoming Alive for the Higher Life: Discover your Real Self.
1: Developing Your Base — for Vitality in Self-Actualizing.
2: Seeking Your Peak — for a highly energized Meta-Life.
3: Living the Vitality — for the Eyes of the self-actualizing life.

Module II: Unleashing Potentials

Your Highest & Best Meaningful Performances: How to Actualize Your Highest and Best
1: The Construct: Meaning, Meaning-construction.
2: The Crucible: Transformation of old Meanings that diminish you.
3: The Zone: In the Zone of Peak Experiences.

Module III: Unleashing Creative Solutions

Creativity for well-formed Coaching Conversations for Creative Problem-Solving.
1: Well-formed Outcome — designing a compelling future.
2: Well-formed Problem — defining the interferences and challenges.
3: Well-formed Solution — creatively resolving the problems.

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 4: Well-formed Innovation —actualizing it in the real world.

Module IV: Unleashing Leadership

Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies for Peak Performance Organizations
1: The New Leadership: Self-Actualizing Leaders who bring out the best in others.
2: Your Self-Actualizing Leadership Mat
rix for being an authentic leader.
3: Leading a Seeking-the-Peak Self- Act
ualizing Company with 3 bottom-lines.

This is just the beginning of our focus on ena

bling people to actualize their highest visi
ons into their best performances. In this new
year, myself and many of the other Neu
ro-Semantic Trainers will be presenting one
or more (or all) of these Self- Act
ualization Training Modules. The next tim
e that the whole series, the Seeking the Pea
k series will be presented will be in May in
Rio de Janiero, Brazil (May 25 to 31 and June 1-3). If you are interested, contact: Dr. Jairo
Mancilha — [email protected].
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #4
January 20, 2013

Special Book Offer

During Jan. & Feb.

IT’S ALL ABOUT

FRAMES
AND WINNING
THE INNER GAME

In Neuro-Semantics— we go for the frames! And there’s a very special reason that we do this. It
goes back to what is probably the most fundamental principle in both NLP and Neuro-Semantics.
Namely:
The person is never the problem; the frame is always the problem.

Do you ever think that “the problem” is you? Well, it is not. No matter what crazy thoughts you

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are thinking, or disruptive emotions you are feeling, or what hurtful behaviors you have done, or
what ugly words you have uttered —those are expressions of you, not you. Yes, they came from
you, and yet you are so much more than any of those expressions.

The distinction I’m getting at is the Person/ Behavior distinction that will save you a lot of grief,
confusion, and disorientation. And it is one in which every society and every culture fails to
make. Everywhere on this planet, humans confuse Persons/Behaviors and identify these two very
different things as if they were the same thing and so fall into the unsanity trap that Alfred
Korzybski warned about in Science and Sanity (1933, 1994).

Do you ever think about other people, that this or that person— he or she is “the problem?”
Opps, the same error. And an erroneous one that will undermine your sanity and misdirect your
actions as you try to “fix” that person. The problem is not the person— the problem is the frame.
If you want to fix things and get on the sanity track— find the frame, identify the frame, quality
control the frame, deframe the frame, reframe the frame, outframe the frame — in other words,
you’ve got to win the inner game of your frames!

This is a guiding principle in Neuro-Semantics and NLP. Wherever anyone has a problem, the
problem is not the person’s history about what happened at some time or place. The problem is
not the person’s experiences with mom or dad or a teacher or anyone else. The problem is
always some frame of reference that the person holds in mind as a meaning about something
which they use to interpret and construct meaning.

Now when you know that— you then know that the other things are pseudo-causes. They are
distractions preventing you from detecting the true cause. You also know that the other things
are symptoms of the frame system (the Matrix) the person lives within. And when you know
that— you know where the leverage point of change and transformation occurs! And now you
can work effectively, easily, efficiently, and masterfully in bringing about positive and lasting
change.

Today much of this is in the form of the frame game books. That’s because after the creation of
the Meta-States Model (1994), I began packaging that model in terms of frames and began
running trainings under the title, Frame Games. Finally I put it in book form under that title
(1997) and that led to both a series of workshops and books using frame games as the theme. For
example, that led to the training series—
Games Fit and Slim People Play Games for Accelerating Learning
Games Prolific Writers Play Games Business Experts Play
Games for Relationship Selling Games for Mastering Fear
Games Great Lovers Play

Fast forward a few more years and when I revised and shortened the original book, Frame
Games, I re-titled it Winning the Inner Game. These works keep selling so during 2012, each of
the following books have been reprinted and put into the larger book form that we now use at
Neuro-Semantic Publications (NSP).

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Now for the sales pitch. You can now buy Winning the Inner Game and one of the following
three books as the 20% savings special during January and February.
Winning the Inner Game
Games Fit and Slim People Play
Games for Mastering Fear
Games Great Lovers Play

To take advantage of this special offer — here’s what to do:

Go to www.neurosemantics.com
Click: Pay a Statement.
Identify the books you want.
Type out your mailing address.
For every 3 books, one package, the packages cost $6 if inside the USA and $17 if
outside the USA.
These books are normally $25, during January and Feb. they are $20, plus shipping.
And if you have any problems, email me personally at [email protected].

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #5
January 21, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #1

MODELING HUMAN EXCELLENCE

WITH NLP
What is NLP? How can we define it?
There are two answers that I like to give. First, NLP is a Communication Model and
second, NLP is a Modeling Model. Yes, it can be framed as involving other things— a
technology of excellence, a format for self-development, the success formula. Yet those
ways of defining it are typically P.R. definitions, that is, definitions that serve the purpose
of selling NLP. They are not truly descriptions of what it is.

Do you want to know what it is?

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 It began as distinctions of language regarding how some experts in communication were
able to do by just talking what seemed like magic with their words. That’s why NLP
began with the development of what was called “the Meta-Model of Language in
therapy” (The Structure of Magic, Volume I, 1975). This was, at that time, eleven
linguistic distinctions that enabled a practitioner to recognize an ill-formed word or
sentence and ask a question that would challenge the speaker to speak in a way that would
be well-formed in terms of clarity and precision. The Meta-Model is now 22 distinctions
(see Communication Magic, 2001, which I wrote at Richard Bandler’s request to
acknowledge the 25 year anniversary of the Meta-Model).

So it is a model of how communication works which was John Grinder’s contribution as he

imported Transformational Grammar (T.G.). And in a way that de-mystified and simplified
T.G., he formulated the language patterning of Perls and Satir so that they were useable by
anyone. This contribution was modeled from Bandler by Grinder, and then practiced among
them along with Pucelik and the practice group. So by modeling experts NLP arose as a
Communication Model and as a Model for Linguistically Modeling human experience. In other
words, the Communication Model of NLP became simultaneously the first Modeling tool of
NLP! So that’s why I like to say that NLP is first a Communication Model and then a Modeling
Model.

Given that this is what NLP is, I thought I would write a series of articles during this year of
Modeling Excellence. There are several reasons I want to do this. First and foremost, this is the
essence of NLP. To not know this (which is today all too common in the field) is to not
understand what NLP is about, where it came from, what we can do with it, and where many of
us are going with it.

This is also the essence of Neuro-Semantics, especially given that it began from my first
modeling project on Resilience, and which ended in the discovery and creation of the Meta-
States Model which, just as with the Meta-Model, is simultaneously a Modeling Model. Since
that time, I have spent the past twenty-some years on 16 additional modeling projects and that
has led to the dozen or so Neuro-Semantic models that extends NLP.

Nor is this something that is for only a few special people. My vision of NLP, and especially of
Neuro-Semantics, is that this is something that every quality training in NLP should enable in
practitioners. That is, every practitioner in this science and art ought to be able to model human
experiences. And modeling human experience simply means being able to understand the how of
the experience: How does it work? How do you do that?

After all, with the NLP models, you can begin to answer these how questions by using —
C The Meta-Model of Language and examining how the person talks and languages his or
her reality that generates that reality.
C The Strategy Model whereby you can follow and make explicit the representational steps
that comprise the person’s “strategy” for how he or she “thinks” and uses all of their
physiology, neurology, to “make sense” and to create their reality.

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C The Meta-Programs Model whereby you can begin to catch the meta-levels of frames and
thinking patterns or styles that add to how the person operates.
C The Sub-Modality Model for how the person edits his or her representational movie
which accesses various meta-levels of meaning and beliefs (because sub-modality
distinctions work semantically, see Sub-Modalities Going Meta).

Then with the Neuro-Semantic models, you can complete the model of the how by using—
C The Meta-States Model of a person’s self-reflexive consciousness to track the thoughts,
beliefs, assumptions, and meanings in the back of the mind and how they interface with
the primary thoughts and feelings and how they set the frames for how a person operates.
C The Matrix Model so that you can track both the processes by which the person creates
their matrix of frames and the content matrices that establish his or her sense of self.
C The Meaning– Performance Axes so you can determine the kind of meanings, quality of
meanings and number of meanings that play into how the person creates their reality and
the performances, implementing it in real life.
C The Self-Actualization Quadrants to measure how integrated the response is and how well
it puts a person “in the zone.”
C The Matrix Embedded Volcano to relate how the person’s basic and meta-needs are met
(or not met) in the process.
C The Axes of Change and/or the Crucible to evaluate the processes of change, how the
change is occurring or not, and how to better facilitate the desired change.

All of this, of course, requires quality training in NLP and Neuro-Semantics, training that
includes learning how to model. This is one of the things we emphasis in our Trainers’ Training,
that trainers enable participants learn how to model the structure of experience. So to that end I
will be writing a series of articles on Modeling.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #6
January 28, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #2

NLP THE HOW OF NOW

Here’s another way to describe NLP and Neuro-Semantics. What are these models and what do
they do? They focus on the how of now. That is, whatever is now—whatever experience,
whether an experience of excellence, or just a mediocre experience, or even a hellish
experience— whatever the experience is, there is rhyme and reason to it. It has a structure and
therefore an internal form. There is a how that explains it. That’s the how of the now.

After all, the person who has the experience has created it. That person has taken an event, the
data of some event, and interpreted those facts in such a way as to generate his or her experience
of it. And if we explore the combination of what happened and how that person has interpreted it
(given it meaning, drawn a conclusion, developed a belief, made a decision, etc.) then we could
explore the how of now.

Your now experiences also didn’t just drop out of the sky. It was co-created by you from the
event. Event happened, you interpreted, bingo —experience. And NLP, as you well know, is
“the study of the structure of subjective experience.” Now in what could be considered, the
prelude of all NLP books, this is what Fritz Perls said. It is the book that Richard Bandler edited
from the audio-tapes that Robert Spitzer gave him some time after Fritz died and which became
the book, The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy (1973). Read it now with an NLP
ear!
“In previous centuries, we asked ‘why.’ We tried to find causes, reasons, excuses,
rationalizations. And we thought if we could change the causes, we could change the
effect. In our electronic age, we don’t ask why anymore, we ask how. We investigate the
structure, and when we understand the structure, then we can change the structure. And a
structure in which we are most interested, is the structure of our lifescript. The structure
of our lifescript ... is mostly taken up with self-torture, futile self-improvement games,
achievements, and so on.” (122)

From Why to How

The NLP idea of “Don’t ask why,” as almost all of the original NLP ideas did not come from
Bandler, Grinder, or Pucelik, it came from Fritz and Virginia (which by the way they got from
Maslow and Rogers). Here is what Fritz, in the book, The Gestalt Approach, said:
“Asking questions that begin with ‘why’ are of little therapeutic value. “The ‘why’
questions produce only pat answers, defensiveness, rationalizations, excuses, and the
delusion that an event can be explained by a single cause. The why does not discriminate

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 purpose, origin, or background. Under the mask of inquiry it has contributed perhaps
more to human confusion than any other single word. Not so with the ‘how.’ The how
inquires into the structure of an event, and once the structure is clear all the whys are
automatically answered. ...
“If we spend our time looking for causes instead of structure we may as well give up the
idea of therapy and join the group of worrying grandmothers who attack their prey with
such pointless questions as ‘Why did you catch that cold?’ ‘Why have you been so
naughty?’” (p. 77)
“The majority of questions the patient asks are seductions of the intellect, related to the
notion that verbal explanation are a substitute for understanding. We want to elicit the
structure of the patient’s question, its background; and possibly we can reach the self in
this process. (p. 78).

If you have read The Structure of Magic, Volume I, or nearly any other basic NLP book, then you
may have to do a double-take on that paragraph. You may go, “Hey that sounds like something
right out of my basic NLP training.” But it is not. Before NLP even existed, it came from Fritz
Perls’ Gestalt Therapy! And so now you know where Bandler and Grinder got so much of what
is now basic NLP.

This is actually some of the original material that today is the background of the Meta-Model.
And there’s more. Because Fritz was very challenging and confronting in his style, Bandler
picked up on this, mimicked it and from this even came the language that was originally used
with regard to the Meta-Model of Language. When a client says something, “challenge it” with a
question. Again, this comes directly from Fritz!
“The therapist’s primary responsibility is not to let go unchallenged any statement or
behavior which is not representative of the self, which is evidence of the patient’s lack of
self-responsibility.” (p. 80). “Responsibility is really response-ability, the ability to
choose one’s reactions.” (79)

Fritz also explained that “the patient’s statements are always clues for further questions, and
possibly more specific ones.” (p.79). Now you know the answer to the question when someone
asks, “Besides Transformational Grammar, where did the structure of the Meta-Model come
from?”

In the How of Now

Today when you work with someone, explore the how of that person’s now so that you can
model the how. This is important. When you do that, you are thereby able to identify the
strategy of the person which will, in turn, enable you to understand them, pace them, and
possibly identify the leverage point of change for them. As you do so, identify the components,
the steps, the sequence, the cause-effect structures, the standards or criteria, etc. of their
linguistically-created and based reality. After all, it is their map that has created their experience.

If you are a trainer, consultant, therapist, or coach, don’t engage in any of these processes with
another person until you first do some modeling of the how, then, when you know the how of that

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person’s now, you will be ready to go. Ask and explore. If the person says that she is not
confident, if he says he’s afraid or worried about having a low profile, or depressed, or
whatever—
C What you are doing or experiencing right now?
C How are you doing this? What are you doing?
C How do you know that you insecure, or afraid, or depressed, and so on?

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #7
February 4, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #3

MODELING:
THE MAGIC OF “HOW”

In last week’s post, I highlighted the power of focusing on the how of detailing out what is
happening in the now. For me, this was the most exciting thing when I first discovered NLP
Modeling. By asking questions and by closely observing people, a person could identify how any
given person is currently, at this moment, creating his or her sense of reality. And if we can do
that, then we can figure out how that reality came into existence, operates, and can be altered.
Incredible!

Now in NLP Modeling, Wyatt Woodsmall (1990) was the person who first differentiated two
dimensions or levels of modeling. He labeled them Modeling I and Modeling II. I think that this
distinction provides a valuable way to think about the range of the modeling that we can do.
Modeling I refers to pattern detection and transference. This kind of modeling detects a
pattern of behavior that shows up in certain skills, abilities, and expertise. By explicating
the patterns of behavior in the skill or skills—the what that an expert actually does to
achieve a result, this modeling focuses on reproducing the products of the expert. This
kind of modeling focuses on learning the sets of distinctions, procedures, and processes
which enable a person to reach a desired outcome.

Modeling II refers to modeling the first modeling (Modeling I). As such, it focuses on
the how of an expert—how does the expert actually create and perform the expertise. It
doesn’t focus on the what is produced (that’s the first modeling), it focuses on the
background competencies. Now we focus on the processes which are necessary to
generate the patterns that form the content of Modeling I. In this modeling, we especially
pay attention to the beliefs and values that outframe the expert. Here we attend to the
meta-programs, the contexts and frames, the meta-states, etc., all of the higher frames.

I like this distinction because, as Woodsmall points out, the field of NLP itself resulted from
Modeling I, but not Modeling II. Let me explain. NLP emerged from the joint venture of John
Grinder and Richard Bandler as they studied the language patterns of Fritz Perls and Virginia
Satir. First Richard used his gift of mimicking Perls’ and Satir’s speech, tonal, and language
patterns. Though untrained in psychology and psychotherapy, by simply reproducing the
“magical” effects of these communication experts, he found that he could get many of the same

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results as the experts. Incredible! How was this possible?

In searching for that answer, John used Transformational Grammar and his unique skills in that
field to pull apart the “surface” structures for the purpose of identifying the “deep” structures.
Both of them wanted to discover how this worked. Frank Pucelik also was a part of all of that,
and he created the context and the original group in which all of the discoveries took place.

From the theory of Transformational Grammar, the assumptions of the Cognitive Psychology
(Noam Chomsky, George Miller, George Kelly, Alfred Korzybski, Gregory Bateson), and the
coping of Perls and Satir, they specified what “the therapeutic wizards” actually did which had
the transformative effect upon clients. That was the original NLP modeling.

This adventure in modeling then gave birth to The Structure of Magic (1975/ 1976) which gave
us the first NLP Model. This was originally called The Meta-Model of Language in Therapy.
Today we just call it, The Meta-Model. This is a model about the language behavior of Perls and
Satir, that is, how they used words in doing change work with clients. And that then became the
central technology of NLP for modeling.

The amazing thing is that with that first model, they were able to model a great deal of the
governing structure of a person’s experience. That enabled them to peek into a person’s model
of the world just by listening to the features that linguistically mark out how the person has
created his or her map. While this is not all that’s needed for modeling, it certainly gives us a set
of linguistic tools for figuring out how a piece of subjective experience works. It answers the
how questions:
How does a person depress himself?
How does a person take “criticism” effective and use it for learning?
How does another person look out at an audience and freak out?

The Meta-Model gave the original co-developers of NLP numerous tools for both understanding
and replicating the person’s original modeling. Soon thereafter, as they modeled Erickson, they
began adding all kinds of non-verbal and non-linguistic distinctions to their model, enriching the
modeling process even further. As NLP started with Modeling I and not Modeling II, the early
NLP thinkers and trainers did not have access to the higher level of modeling until some time
later. Nor did they seem aware of it for some time. Eventually this realization arose as people
began asking some basic modeling questions:
What strategy did Perls use in working with clients?
What strategy enabled Satir to do her “magic” with families?
What strategy describes Erickson’s calibration skills and use of hypnotic language
patterns?
How did any one of those wizards make decisions about what to use when?

Even to this day, we do not know. We know what they produced, but not how they produced
such. We have the results from their magic, but not the formula that identifies the states and
meta-states, the beliefs and higher frames of mind that enabled them to operate as “wizards” in

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the first place. Woodsmall (1990) writes:
“In short, if NLP is the by-product of modeling Erickson, Perls, and Satir, then why are
we never taught how they did anything? All we are taught is what they did. This means
that we can imitate the powerful patterns that they used, but we don’t know how they
generated and performed them to start with. From this it is evident that the part of NLP
that is the by-product of modeling is a by-product of Modeling I, but not of Modeling II.”
(p. 3)

As the product of Modeling I, all that we originally received in NLP was the result of modeling.
We received the patterns and procedures which the modelers found in Perls, Satir, and Erickson,
i.e., reframing, swishing, anchoring, collapsing anchors, etc. We received the NLP patterns.
Bandler and Grinder gave us a legacy of dramatic processes that enable people to change.

Only later was it that Bandler, Grinder, DeLozier, Bandler-Cameron, Dilts, and Gordon begin to
wonder about the modeling itself that they started to explore the modeling processes,
assumptions, patterns, etc. about modeling. From that came the commission from Richard and
John for Robert Dilts to write the second modeling book, NLP: Volume I. That volume made
Modeling II available.

They also left their theory about change, mind, neurology, language, etc. Of course, they did not
call it “a theory.” In fact, they pulled off a big “Sleight of Mouth” pattern as they told us that
they had no theory, just a description of what worked. “It’s a model, not a theory.” With that
mind-line, they distracted our attention and offered “the NLP Presuppositions,” telling us that
they were not true, could not be proven, but seemed like really nice “lies” that would take us to
more resourceful places. So we just memorized them, only half aware (if that), that within the
NLP Presuppositions they had hidden away the theory of neuro-linguistic programming.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #8
February 11, 2013

ASSESSING SELF-ACTUALIZATION

One of our purposes in Neuro-Semantics is to enable ourselves and others to actualize, or make
real, our highest and best. Highest refers to your highest visions about life, your values for how
to live, and meanings for making life meaningful. Best refers to your top performances, your best
skills and competencies, and taking your actions so that they reflect you when you are in the zone
of performance. Yet to do that with mindfulness requires that we be able to assess where we are
now and where we are as we progress, in other words, assessment of our self-actualization. And
that means creating benchmarks for self-actualizing development.

The first attempt to do this occurred in 1964 when Everett Shostrum met with Abraham Maslow
and took the 15-17 characteristics of self-actualizing people, which had been discovered in over
20 years of modeling, and began to create behavioral indicators of those characteristics. The
result? The POI, the Personal Orientation Inventory, a questionnaire of 150 force-choice
questions around 10 subsidiary distinctions of living the self-actualizing life. The POI was, and
continues to be today, a well developed instrument for measurement and assessment. And if it
weren’t so expensive, I’d been promoting it in all we do in Neuro-Semantics, but alas, to take it
and use it costs $128 for each person, each time.

When I complained about that some years ago (2009), Tim Goodenough challenged me to begin
creating our own assessment scale. In January 2010, Tim and I completed a prototype and ran it
with the Leadership Team of Neuro-Semantics. Since that time, we refined it, I wrote a
description of it, and lo and behold, we have our very own Neuro-Semantic Self-Actualization
Assessment Scale. You can now find it on the website:
http://www.neurosemantics.com/assessment-scale-form.

This Assessment Scale invites you to look at your driving needs— those lower and higher needs
that drive your neurology, physiology, and psychological states of mind and emotion. For each
of the four lower needs and for the fifth level of self-actualization needs, you will find seven or
more distinctions. The scale invites you to gauge yourself in terms of how well are you
adequately meeting your needs. Are you just “getting by?” Then you would put a check in the
middle. If you are not getting by very well, then you will be to the left in the red zone. If you are
more than just getting by, you are thriving or optimizing, you will be to the right of the center
line, in the green zone.

Getting by refers to being able to fulfil the need so that the drive goes away. That’s how the
lower needs work. When adequate gratified by true-satisfiers (things that truly correspond to and

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fit the need), then the disequilibrium, the inner tension, the driving urge reduces and then
vanishes from awareness. That will be a first sign of using a true satisfier. Another sign: energy!
Vitality. You will feel good and be able to focus on the next-level needs.

If you are not using true-satisfiers, but false-satisfiers, then the drive doesn’t go away. In fact, the
drive for that need, whether food, drink, shelter, money, sex, etc. will dominate more and more.
You may become obsessive about it, and then compulsive in your actions. False-satisfiers and
false-beliefs about our needs, for us humans, will create neurotic needs. We will semantically
load the need with meanings, understandings, beliefs, etc. that the need cannot bear and the result
we will become obsessive-compulsive about the need or some false-satisfier (drugs, money,
gambling, etc.) and the false-gratification makes things worse.

Now you can assess where you are and how you are dealing with, handling, coping, and
hopefully mastering your innate driving needs. The lower needs are “animal” needs because the
higher intelligent social animals have those needs as well— the need not only for survival and
safety, but for connection, bonding, belong, and for recognition of their place in a group. The
mechanism that drives these lower needs is deficiency and so Maslow designated them, the D-
needs. These are the needs that do not go away until fulfilled. And when fulfilled, they go away.

The higher or self-actualization needs are those which are with us from the beginning— in
nascent form– but which become fully present to us as we fulfill the lower needs. These are the
uniquely human needs. These are our needs for knowledge, meaning, understanding, beauty,
order, mathematics, excellence, fairness, justice, contribution, making a difference, giving love,
etc. The mechanism governing these needs is abundance and being-ness. Abundance means that
when you gratify them, they grow. They do not go away, they do the opposite— they expand and
become fuller. Being-ness means that unlike the lower needs that are instrumental needs, means
to an end, these are non-instrumental, they are ends (not means). These are for living in, for
being, they are valid and satisfying in and of themselves.

So where are you? Go and take the assessment. It will take 30 minutes when you do it the first
time and then you can print off the results. Each time you do it thereafter, will go quicker and
quicker as you get more acquainted with it. If you need a Meta-Coach or a Neuro-Semanticist to
work through the completed form with you— check out Trainers on www.neurosematics.com
and Meta-Coaches on www.metacoachfoundation.org.

It is this assessment that we use in the Unleashing Vitality training and the next time I will do
that training and all of the other three Self-Actualization trainings will be May in Rio de Janiero,
Brazil (May 25 to 31 and June 1-3). If you are interested, contact: Dr. Jairo Mancilha —
[email protected]

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #9
February 18, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #3

MODELING INTUITION
For many people, intuition is a wonderful, mysterious, and near-magical phenomena. Yet, what
is intuition? What do we refer to when we use this term? And how do we use our intuition in
our work as we coaches, consultants, trainers, therapists work with people?

NLP began by modeling the intuition of three world-class communicators. You will find this
statement and this language in the early books of NLP, especially The Structure of Magic,
Volumes I and II (1975, 1976). Richard and John modeled the intuition that Virginia had about
people, communicating with them, deciding on what to do as an intervention. They did the same
with Fritz Perls and Milton Erickson. What resulted from their modeling? NLP. That is, the
models of NLP and the patterns derived from those models. And more specifically:
The Meta-Model of Language in therapy: asking the questions of specificity.
The Strategy Model using representation systems and the TOTE process.
The Representational Model of how people think, encode “thoughts,” and manifest via
neurology.
The Milton Model of Language for inviting a person to go inside (“downtime”) and
access resourceful states.

Modeling Virginia’s Intuitions

In the original NLP books, The Structure of Magic, Bandler and Grinder talked about the
intuitions of Perls and Virginia and said that what they modeled were their intuitions. That how
they worked with people, how they chose what to say or do, were the result of their whole
lifetime of experiences which had now become habitual and automatic. They noted, “Virginia
took a lifetime to learn her intuitions.” Yet we do not have to replicate her life experiences,
today we can model those intuitions to make explicit what she does “by intuition.” And doing
that, we can then transfer her intuitions to ourselves and others. And that’s what NLP is about
(or should be about).

Intuition comes from Latin and refers to “in-knowing”—to what a person “knows” “inside.”
And where do people get that inside knowledge? They were not born with it. Nobody is born
“knowing” anything. Unlike the animals who “know” what to eat, how to build a nest, who is a
predator, etc., we humans are born without content information instincts. Our “instincts” are
without content information and because of this gap— we have tremendous room inside for
learning— and learning we do! We learn everything. Yes, we have dispositions and latent
“talents” that can be developed. Yet without learning, the dispositions and talents do not
develop. You may have a disposition for mathematics, or linguistics, or visual-spatial

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distinctions, or many other things, yet if you are not exposed to such areas and given a chance to
develop, the “talent” will lie dormant. It will not develop.

Intuitions are learned. Whatever intuition you have about anything, you learned that intuition.
You were exposed to an area of learning and you developed it, consciously or unconsciously.
How you made it an “in-knowing” is through exposure, experience, repetition, and learning. You
now have an intuition about how to drive a car because of your original exposure to driving and
to your experience of driving. Today your learning (in-knowing) is your intuitive sense of
driving and is unconscious unless you teach driver’s education. The conscious learnings,
understandings, concepts, etc. have “dropped out of conscious awareness into your unconscious
awareness.” Now you “know” how to do things and don’t know how you know. You just
know— we call that “intuition.”

Intuitions are also subject to the errors and inaccuracy that all learnings are subject to. And
given that, then intuitions are not infallible. They are not god-like. They are fallible, human, and
subject to all of the fallibilities that all other learnings are— to cognitive distortions, to fallacious
thinking patterns, to biases, prejudices, etc. Your intuitions can be very, very wrong and mis-
lead you. This suggests that we should never blindly trust our intuitions. Just as you would not
blindly or absolutely trust your thinking, believing, understanding, perceiving — it is not wise to
do so with your intuitions.

This fact provides a significant challenge to modeling. When modeling the intuitions of an
expert, we have to be cautious about the intuitions that we are modeling. We could model an
error in the expert’s knowledge (in-knowing). So we have to test what we are modeling and have
to test whether we are modeling an actual knowledge that is accurate and useful.

How do we model an expert’s intuition? This is where the NLP models for modeling offer some
very powerful tools. We model intuition by reverse engineering. First we look at the excellence.
In the case of Perls and Satir, the ability to communicate in a therapy context with clients and via
the therapeutic context to enable a client to change his or her mental models (maps) of the world
so that they have more understanding and choice in how to respond to the challenges that they
experience in the world. Then we ask, What is the expert actually doing? Here we get a sensory-
based (empirical) description of how they are talking, gesturing, relating, etc.

From there we follow the sequence of actions (behavioral and linguistic) from beginning of the
conversation to the end. This gives us a “strategy” —a strategic set of actions. As we interview
the expert we can get the inside information about the distinctions the person is making about
what to do, when to do it, how to do it with the person, and why (which gives us their thinking,
believing, assumptions, etc.) for their decisions and choice points. (See NLP: Volume I, 1980,
Robert Dilts).

But we’re not done yet. Next we go meta. That is, we look for where the expert reflexively
thought-and-felt something else about their previous thought-or-feeling and so layered their
thinking with one or more additional frames. Human “strategies” do not work in a simple linear

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way. As we are processing through anything, we have frames of meaning in the back of our
mind that govern our experiencing, and we also are constantly stepping back to reflect on our
experience. (See NLP Going Meta, 2005).

Once we have a “model” —a set of internal and external steps for how the expert produces the
excellence, we can test it by trying it out ourselves. Does it work? To what extent can we
replicate the expertise? To what extent do we fail to replicate it? These questions drive us back
to revisit the interview and to ask more interviewing questions to find out the distinctions we are
missing. Doing this recursively over a period of time enables us to finally create a workable,
actionable, and transferable model of the expert. And if we do that repeatedly with other experts
in the same field, and create a synthesis of the best of each, we can generate a more expansive
and rich model for a given expertise.

We model intuitions. So this is one use of the term intuition in NLP and Neuro-Semantics.
There are yet other meanings and we will look at those in the next posts.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #10
February 25, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #4

MODELING HUMAN EXPERIENCES

When it comes to the heart of Neuro-Semantics and NLP— studying subjective human
experiences and modeling those experiences, a first question that often arises is why. Why model
an experience? And the answer is really simple. It is to understand how it works. That’s
because when you understanding the how of now (Jan. 28, #6) you are often handed powerful
leverage points of change or replication. That is, knowing how an experience works—if that
experience is not helpful, useful, beneficial, ecological, etc.—you can change it. And mostly you
can change it by noting how it works, when, where, with whom, etc. and sometimes the tiniest
alteration of a key variable will facilitate a systemic change.

In NLP, we often describe this using a dangerous word to describe this kind of change,
“magical.” That’s because the change that happens seems incredible, fantastic, and seemingly
“magical.” A good example is facilitating a change in a person’s “internal critic.” Simple ask a
group of people:
“Who here has an internal critic?” “Who here has an internal voice that criticizes you,
attacks you, insults, you, says ugly things to you and that makes you feel bad?”

What I find incredible is not that there are people like that, and who will raise their hands, “Yes, I
have an internal critic like that!” What I find mind-blowing is that anyone ever treats themselves
that way! My thought is, “Why would you talk that way to yourself?” But the fact is, a large
percentage of people everywhere in the world identifies with this experience and feel helpless to
change it. Of course, the helplessness rises from using a very ineffective method of trying to
change it. What do most people do? They tell themselves to stop!

Ah yes, the “command negation.” And by issuing a command to themselves, “Now I’m going to
stop telling myself that I’m an idiot!” “Don’t ever say again that ‘I’ll never get it! I must be
stupid!’” Of course, this does not work. Of course it makes things worse. Whatever you
command yourself to not do, you have to represent and think about.

Using the NLP Communication Model, instead of using an ineffective change method like that,
we first seek to understand the how of now. We ask exploration questions about the experience
so that we can model the experience itself. So we ask the modeling question: “How do you do
that?” And at first, most people don’t even know how to answer that question. “What do you
mean, ‘how’ do I do that? I just tell myself that I’m going to make a fool of myself because I’m
not prepared. That’s all.”

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Now what modeling enables you to do is to listen for structure or process. In that statement, I
hear the person tell me the content words, “I’m going to make a fool of myself because I’m not
prepared.” Okay, so that’s what you say to yourself. How do you say it? What tone of voice?
Repeat the words using the tone that you use in your mind so I can hear the tone. Okay, now
where is that voice— in your head? Behind you? In front of you? To one side or another?
Panoramic? What is the volume? After getting the answers to such process questions, then I
begin to play around with the experience and alter the quality of the various variables and invite
the person to notice the effect. Common ways of doing this in NLP are:
C Lower the voice and notice how low you make the volume before it doesn’t feel bad.
C Change the tone so it sounds like Elvis Presley singing, “You’re a hound dog.”
C Make the tone very sexy and try very hard to feel bad.
C Put the voice into your little finger and hear it coming from there.

Typically such alterations create systemic change. The experience of being berated by your
internal critic completely changes. Changing one of the qualities of how you do something,
changes the whole experience. It becomes different and sometimes so different that it becomes
something else. It might become humor, ridiculousness, playfulness, non-sense, etc. That
changes things in a much more elegant and easy way.

What about replication? What if you have an experience that’s a great experience and you want
to experience it for yourself? This is the case with modeling experts— modeling someone who
can do something that’s extraordinary, wonderful, and empowering. In this case, we do the same
thing. We embrace the experience, frame it so as to punctuate it and set it aside in our minds and
the mind of the expert and then begin to discover how do you do that?

Now most of the time the expert cannot answer the question. And there’s a good reason, he or
she does not know how. The skill is so habitual and so ingrained into personality and behavior
that it is no longer in conscious awareness. This, in fact, is a description of a competent skill.
The skill occurs in the right context without the person needing to “work himself up for it” or for
“her to orient herself to the context.” It just happens. It happens outside-of-conscious-
awareness.

That’s where a modeler comes in. The modeler asks how questions and gives menu lists of
possibilities and evokes the expert to do the skill or imagine doing the skill and calibrates to what
the person does that re-establishes the expertise. It is in this way that we can detail the steps of
the strategy that have become streamlined. And when you know that, you can replicate it. You
can use the step-by-step process to try it on and see how it works within you or use it with others.

Why model? To change strategies that you’re not an expert at (or someone else is) and also to
replicate new strategies that someone is an expert at. If you want to know what NLP is about, it
is this. Yes, NLP is also a Communication Model — that’s what the originators created by
modeling three communicators (Perls, Satir, Erickson) and that Communication Model is also a
tool for modeling. But, more about that next time.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #11
February 27, 2013

THE BEST TRAINING

FOR TRAINERS AND PRESENTERS
IN THE WORLD!

Not given to over-statement, I thought I’d start with this modest title (!) and describe what has
evolved over the years in Neuro-Semantics—our version of how to train and prepare Trainers
and Public Speakers. Neuro-Semantic Trainers’ Training (NSTT) involves a full two weeks of
training and training that is very intense (a boot camp that goes from 9 am to 9 pm) and that
covers the Psychology that informs Meta-States and the APG training, the Platform Skills of
presentation, the Training Skills for putting a training together, and the Business Skills for
running a training center or selling yourself into businesses.

That’s a lot! And why? Because we do not just want to run a training for the purpose of making
money. If we wanted to do that, we would not make it so intense, so long, or so rigorous.
Besides, there are already numerous NLP Trainers’ Trainings that will give you a certificate and
then turn you loose. In fact, as far as I know, that’s how they all work. You come, you learn, you
practice, you get a bit of assessment, and if you pass, you get a certificate. With some, regardless
of your presentation, you pass! Then you are bid farewell. “Do well! And goodbye.”

But our model for training Trainers and Public Speakers do not end at the graduation. No. Our
support goes on and on, year after year, and in fact, you are invited into a community, and we
look to you for leadership in your country and for the ultimate challenge of leadership
—collaborating with co-leaders to create an united front and achieve more together than apart or
alone.

In NSTT we also do not assume that 15 days is sufficient to turn you into a world-class presenter.
So to provide ongoing support, we induce you into the special group of Neuro-Semantic NLP
Trainers, add you to the exclusive Trainers’ egroup and provide at least one article every week
written by myself, Colin Cox, and the group of trainers who are in the Master Trainer track. You
also have access to the VIP area of the Neuro-Semantic website where there are several years of
past “Trainers’ Reflections.” There also are Training Manuals and Certificates that are available
to you.

In Neuro-Semantic our vision is to create high quality trainers and to do that we have set up a
structure whereby we stay with the trainers, support them, and challenge them. We also see the
Trainers as a natural leadership role. After all, what do the trainers do? They introduce and train

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people in the models, skills, and practical applications of Neuro-Semantics and NLP. They lead
people to understand and use the models and patterns. So we encourage leaders to not go off by
themselves as lone wolves, but to stay in the community and to become leaders in their country.

And how does that work? In part, by encouraging the launching of Institutes of Neuro-Semantics
in every country. Today we have 17 and with trainers coming from various countries, once there
are two trainers in the same country, then they can write a letter of intention and launch an
Institute in their country. Why two? Because we assume that leaders are “collaborative leaders”
and “work well and play well with others.”

And there’s more. When you attend NSTT, you present every day. At first the presentations are
in the form of games and drills. Master Trainer, Colin Cox, has designed most of these as ways
to expand your flexibility and skills and to prepare you for getting up in front of people,
speaking, finding your natural style, learning to handle yourself gracefully no matter what
happens, etc. And they are a lot of fun! That’s another Neuro-Semantic thing which comes from
one of the Neuro-Semantic premises: “If you get serious, you get stupid.”

After that, you take a single pattern from the Accessing Personal Genius training and present it
over and over and over until you have real skill and some elegance with it. And why the
repetition? Ah yes, another Neuro-Semantic thing: Can you keep yourself inspired and in the
right state even if you have already presented it? An excellent trainer can! And we want you to
be able to replicate that level of excellence.

Then there are the evening presentation when you get to see and hear Master Trainers present and
be benchmarked in front of the whole group. That occurs for the first eight nights letting you see
and experience a whole range of trainers who have many different styles and who are all hungry
and open for feedback. That’s one of the conditions of mastery.

Every afternoon there is the Business part. Here we talk about developing and writing a business
plan, interviewing people with positive experience in contracting, promoting, and running
trainings, identifying barriers to business effectiveness, and much more. Why? We want people
to be successful. And merely having the knowledge and skills is not enough. You could be a
great trainer and not be able to create an effective and commercially viable business.

At NSTT every trainer is benchmarked on Presentation and Training skills every day (after day 3)
and the rigor is that after you present and get feedback, you immediately— right then and there–
get up and present again using that feedback to shape your next presentation. I don’t know
anywhere that you can get that kind of high quality feedback and you get it from seven to a dozen
people. So it is not just one or two person’s point of view, but from numerous people, the team
of Master Trainers who help Colin and I conduct NSTT.

Interested? Want to refine your Presentation and Public Speaking skills? Your training skills?
Every year we have from three to eight NLP Trainers come and, without an exception, all say it is
the toughest and best training in training that they have ever experienced.

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Now this year — NSTT will be in September in Hong Kong.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #12
March 4, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #5

THE KEY NLP MODELING TOOL

The Meta-Model of Language

In the last post on Neurons I concluded the article on modeling by talking about the NLP
Communication Model and noting that it is a tool for modeling. Now the interesting about it is
that it arose from modeling. It arose from modeling the language patterns of Fritz Perls and
Virginia Satir and while it used Transformational Grammar (TG) to do so, the new model, “The
Meta-Model of Language” soon jettisoned Transformational Grammar. That’s why, while you
will find a summary of TG at the end of the book The Structure of Magic, Volume I, you will not
find it in any of the other books by the NLP originators or any of those who came later.

Why? Why did that happen? How is it that the model or tool that created the Meta-Model was
made redundant immediately thereafter so that it was no longer used? The reason is that NLP did
not need Transformational Grammar. The Meta-Model didn’t need it. In the book about the 25th
year anniversary of the Meta-Model, Communication Magic (2001), I described this as resulting
from two sources:
First, Noam Chomsky who created Transformation Grammar himself gave it up and
tossed it out in 1976. He gave up on that model because too many holes and
inconsistencies had been discovered about it.
Second, what NLP took from TG was the idea of the levels of information processing and
while TG has that (surface and deep structure) so does Koryzbski (levels of abstraction)
and Bateson (levels of learning).

Question: How is the Meta-Model a modeling tool? We know that it is a communication tool
and that by using the linguistic distinguishing of the Meta-Model and the questions or
challenges, a person can effectively invite a speaker to create a well-formed and precise
description of an experience. But how does one use it to model the structure of experience?

Answer: The answer goes to the fact that experience is coded and driven by language. When it
comes to experiences, especially the key experiences that we humans value or disvalue, want to
want to avoid—they are labeled, named, and given meaning by the words that we use to describe
and evaluate them. And if this is so, then no wonder the Meta-Model becomes a powerful tool to
unpack an experience and given that the Meta-Model enables a person to take vague and
indefinite descriptions and make them empirical and sensory-based, it becomes a wonderful tool

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for precision.

So, no wonder from the beginning of NLP, the Meta-Model has been used as a tool for modeling
the linguistic facets of an experience. Now I did not know this when I first learned NLP. In fact,
I read, studied, and trained in NLP all the way through Practitioner training before I discovered
this. I had even read those two original NLP books that are so unreadable, The Structure of
Magic, and while I liked them, I still did not get it. Then one day during the beginning of my
Master Practitioner Training, Richard Bandler said, almost in an off-handed way, that
“everything we’ve created in NLP was based on the Meta-Model.”

I was stunned. “What? Everything in NLP is based on the Meta-Model? How could that be?” I
could not figure it out. So I went back and re-read the original books very slowly and very
deliberately and that was actually the beginning of my own experience in modeling.

“What did I find?” you ask? I found that when it comes to human experiences, almost all of our
most valuable experiences involve language, and that by meta-modeling the language, a modeler
can identify a great deal of the structure of the experience. He or she can put together how the
person got him or herself into that state and experience. And so if it is an experience to take onto
oneself, then the linguistic model gives a person a step-by-step process for replicating it. And if
the experience represents a painful, dysfunctional, and toxic experience, then modeling it gives
one numerous ways to undo it, pull it apart, and prevent it from being operational.

I thought that was great! So when I began to play around with my first attempts at modeling, I
was absolutely fascinated by how much one can discover in a person’s language. I was
astonished with how much I could learn by listening to the words of people, especially experts,
and how much of how they have constructed their sense of reality and how much it suggests the
steps for stepping into that same experience.

Now at the time I was doing psycho-therapeutic work as a therapist and so I began creating a
model for each client. How did this person create this or that experience? What do this person’s
words indicate or imply in terms of the processes involved— the generalizations, the deletions,
and the distortions? It was in this way that my own phenomenological studies began, first of
single experiences and later of combining different models that people used to experience a
similar category of experience and after that when I left the domain of therapy, to apply the same
thing for such experiences as wealth creation, selling, negotiating, being an entrepreneur,
leadership, etc.

As linguistic beings, we live in the house of language. This explains why and also how we can
use language for modeling experience:
"The limits of my language are the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein, 1922).
"Language is what bewitches, but language is what we must remain within in order to
cure the bewitchment." (Henry Staten)

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-35-
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #13
March 11, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #6

THE MODELING
THAT DISCOVERED META-STATES
The enrichment of modeling with Meta-States began in 1994 during my very first modeling
project— Resilience. I started the project in 1991when I became really fascinated by the quality
of staying with something when set-backs occur. It did not begin with big set-backs, but actually
with little ones. And with the smallest of set-backs. Until then I had not even really noticed the
phenomenon.

Prior to that if someone quit or gave up on something, I dismissed it with a wave of the hand as,
“Well they must not really be interested.” Or, “It just must not be their thing.” Or, “They’ve got
something else that’s more interesting.” Then one day during an NLP class I was interviewed
someone about some very small thing that the person had started, then there was a set-back, and
then the person gave up on. Using the Meta-Model questions, I probed and probed to understand
the mental map of the person. When we had chased the person’s thinking-and-feeling about that
one, he remembered another thing he had started, and a set-back, and a giving that up for
something else. That led to a third memory and, of course, “Do we have a pattern here?”

His pattern was to think of something that he wanted or wanted to achieve, make a visual image
of it (Vconstruct), then amplify it so that it was really compelling (K+), and in amplifying it, he
would compress the time frame for achieving it so the picture came closer and closer and then he
would say things like, “It’s almost here; I’m going to have it” (Alanguage), and then if anything got
in the way of it (a set-back) like a disappointing result from an action or the realization it would
take longer, he would then create another picture of it but this one would either be far, far away
or a degraded version of it (Vconstruct) and the more he thought of it, the more it would move over
and replace the original picture. At that point he would say, “Agghh. I don’t really want it
anyway; it’s not worth the effort.” That would create a momentary sense of dislike and then he
would be off to something else.

That got me hooked. Suddenly, I realized that there could be, for some people, a pattern of non-
resilience. Set-backs of the smallest nature would put them off. So I started doing the interviews
with just about anyone who would let me. As that continued, I discovered bigger and bigger set-
backs— real knock-downs (divorces, bankruptcy, being fired, being mugged, rape, war,
accidents, and all sorts of traumas).

Now what really amazed me in the interviews was that it was not the size, magnitude, power,

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number, or intensity of the set-back that determined the person’s response. For some people, the
smallest set-back would knock them off-course and for others, the largest, most devastating set-
back would not. They would get up, dust themselves off, and go for it again. Even if multiple
set-backs occur at the same time— they would do the same thing. Get up, shake off the
disorientation, examine what was left, figure out something to do, and bounce back! I was
impressed. And, I wanted that! I wanted it for myself and I wanted it for every client that I
worked with and I wanted it for those who attended every NLP course that I conducted.

“Okay, so what is the strategy of resilience, of bouncing back after a set-back? How do people
think and map out the experience so that they take it as a matter of course, ‘I will be back.’?”
That was my question and it was 1991. Many years prior to that I had read the book from
Elizabeth Kobler-Ross on grief recovery and the stages that she proposed: shock, denial,
bargaining, anger, and acceptance. I had also already read Viktor Frank’s Logo-Therapy and is
story of resilience in Man’s Search for Meaning. So I began a search of the literature to see what
else had been written. In 1991 there was not the category of Resilience as there is today so there
was not much. But there was the study of the Children of Survival from the War in Lebanon.

While I was search out those things and now interview people who “had been to hell and back” I
was reading through Korzbyski’s Science and Sanity and Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
I was writing and publishing about the language patterns in Korzybski that were not included in
the Meta-Model and writing NLP articles about Bateson’s contributions to NLP.

Then in 1994 a call for papers for the NLP Conference in Denver came and I decided to propose
a workshop on “Resilience: Going for it — Again!” I worked out the stages: The set-back (or
knock-down), the emotional roller-coaster stage of dealing with the emotional shock of a world
falling apart, the accessing of stabilization states and skills to stop the fall, the coping stage of
putting one’s world back together, and the mastering stage of recovering a new vision and
intention so that one would finally “be back.” The strategy was straight-forward and linear. So I
gathered my materials and headed to Denver with some friends.

Then it happened. While interview a man at the training, I asked, “How did you know to go from
stage 2 to stage 3? And he said something like, “Well, I had this larger vision, this higher state
about where I was and I knew that it was just a matter of time and that I would get through this.”
Then either I reflected back to him or he said, “It’s like being in a state about my state, in a meta-
state ...” Regardless of who actually said the words, the phrase “meta-state” was an Eureka
moment for me as it brought together the meta-levels, logical levels, and levels of abstracting that
I had been immersed in for three years. “Of course, at the same time that you are coping on the
primary level you are also accessing your higher level thoughts-and-feelings and it is those meta-
states of vision, intention, and determination that you will get through that’s infusing you with
this complex state of resilience!"

The fact that we do not just operate at one level, but multiple levels simultaneously brings into
focus that we cannot model most subjective experiences without tracking our self-reflexive
consciousness as it creates multiple meta-states. We are multi-layered beings. We do not just

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think or feel— we are always and inevitably thinking-and-feeling (a state) about our thoughts-
and-feelings and we are also experiencing states about those states. This comprises the matrix of
frames that we have about things: our beliefs, values, identities, memories, imaginations,
decisions, models, intentions, and dozens and dozens of other meta-level understandings. So to
model in a full and complete way requires using the Meta-States Model for modeling out the
self-reflexivity of the mind-body system.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #14
March 18, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #7

HOW TO MODEL WITH META-STATES

In the last article I described the modeling that discovered Meta-States, now for an overview of
how to model using the Meta-States Model. This was actually the surprise that I experienced
after discovering Meta-States. While I was absolutely delighted to identify the meta-level
structures of resilience (#6), I really had no ideal how extensive the Meta-States Model would
apply. And how extensive does it apply?
In any and every experience where a person’s self-reflexive consciousness is operative.

Now if you are new to Neuro-Semantics and to Neurons, self-reflexive consciousness is the kind
of consciousness, the kind of mind that you have, that we humans have. What does it mean? It
means that you never just think. You never just feel. As soon as you think–and–feel (create an
emotional state), you think–and–feel about that first state. You do not just get angry, you get
afraid–of–your–anger or you get angry–at–your–anger, or you feel ashamed–of–your anger. And
that’s just the first level. Then you think–and–feel something else about that first meta-state.
And so it goes.

This explains the complexity of your states. This explains why it is often very difficult to answer
the question, “What do you feel about X?” When you think about that X, there is your first level
thinking–and–feeling, then your second level, third level, and so on. Up the levels it goes. Nor
do these “levels” stay separate. It is their nature to combine and integrate. We call it coalescing
in Neuro-Semantics.

So if you meta-state your learning state with joy, fun, or delight and you create the meta-state of
joyful learning, if you do that repeatedly, then after awhile the joy and the learning so coalesce
that they operate as if they were a single primary state— joyful learning. Then try as you will to
pull the joy out of the learning and you will find it next to impossible. Why? Because your
mind-body neurology is designed to make–actual (actualize) your thinking–and–feeling and so
when you keep meta-stating learning with joy, you generate a new gestalt state so that a new
emergent property arises— joyful learning.

For modeling, this is crucial. It lies at the heart of every complex and dynamic “state” that we
humans are able to generate and this goes far beyond the linear modeling of basic NLP. And if
you want to model the rich, robust, powerful, and complex states that characterizes experts—
resilience, self-efficacy, seeing and seizing opportunities, entrepreneurship, leadership, etc., then
you have to model out the meta-levels within the meta-states of the expert. Ignore that and you

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only get the surface first level and you will never tap into the rich layered qualities that lie behind
it.

Now years ago I wrote a whole book on Modeling with Meta-States, I gave it the title of NLP:
Going Meta (1997) and wrote it after the formatting that Robert Dilts used in Creating NLP: The
Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience, Volume I. So I also titled it, NLP: Going Meta
— Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels, Volume II. Here are the book’s chapters:

I: STRATEGIES FOR MODELING

Ch. 1 NLP: Identifying the Pieces of Subjectivity 19
Ch. 2 The NLP Strategy Model 33
Ch. 3 Strategies for Modeling 47
II: ADVANCED MODELING USING META-LEVELS 68
Ch. 4 Why Introduce Meta-Levels to Modeling? 69
Ch. 5 Logical Levels: What are They? 80
Ch. 6 Models of Logical Levels 97
Ch. 7 Bateson's Logical Levels of Learning 132
Ch. 8 Korzybski's Levels of Abstraction 149
Ch. 9 Dilts' Levels of Outcomes and Beliefs 167
Ch. 10 Levels of Perception (Meta-Programs) 193
Ch. 11 Levels of States (Meta-States) 213
Ch. 12 Systemic NLP: Meta-Layering Consciousness 242
III: ENHANCING STRATEGIES WITH META-LEVELS
Ch. 13 Integrating Meta-Levels With Strategies 261
Ch. 14 Elicitation: Unpacking Multiple Layers 278
Ch. 15 Utilization: Meta-Level Resourcefulness 303
Ch. 16 Design: Meta-Level Design Engineering 336
Ch. 17 Installation: Meta-Level Installation 363
Epilogue 380
Appendices
A: When Levels Coalesce 384
B: Logical Levels in Emmanuel Kant 385
Bibliography 386

So just how do you model using Meta-States? The answer lies in detecting and identifying the
meta-levels that a person has reflexively brought to him or herself that now qualifies the
experience and operates as a frame to the experience. What this means is that as you and I access
another thought–and–feeling about our first state, that second state operates dynamically to do
several things—
C It brings another mind-body state to it and so adds qualities or qualifies the first.
C It sets the cognitive ideas within that state as the frame for the first.
C It puts the first as a member of a class, the “class” being the classification that the second
one creates.

The second bullet point means that all of the so-called logical levels (beliefs, values, identity,
mission, spirit, intention, permission, memory, imagination, meaning, etc.) are dynamically
inside of the second state (the meta-state) and set the frame of meaning for the first. Back to the
example of “joyful learning.” Is that a belief? Do you believe you can joyfully learn? Is that a

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value? Do you value learning for the joy it gives you? Is that an identity? Are you a joyful
learner? Do you have memories of joyfully learning? Do you imagine it in your future? Do you
anticipate, expect, desire, give yourself permission, etc. to learn joyfully?

So what is it? It is all of those things at the same time. It is we with our linear thinking who
want to separate these things and make them different phenomenon. Yet are they really? Could
they all be aspects of the same thing? That’s our position in Neuro-Semantics. We look at all of
these “meta-level phenomena” and view them as facets of the “diamond of consciousness.”

What does this mean for modeling? It means that when you discover a meta-level that’s
qualifying an experience— there are beliefs in it, values in it, identities within it, intentions,
permissions, prohibitions, and all of the other 100 logical levels. Oh yes, there are one hundred
logical levels (actually more). I made a list of 104 of them in the book, Neuro-Semantics (2011).

There’s more to describe about this — especially the third bullet point on classes and categories
as well as how to detect and call forth the meta-levels. I’ll write about that next time. To your
effective modeling!

http://www.fakedoctorate.blogspot.sg/2013/03/richard-bandler-co-founder-of-nlp-phd.html?m=1

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #16
March 25, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #8

ADVANCED NLP MODELING

USING META-STATES
In the last post (#7), I wrote this: So just how do you model using Meta-States? The answer lies
in detecting and identifying the meta-levels that a person has reflexively brought to themselves
that now qualifies their experience and operates as a frame to their experience. What this means
is that as you and I access another thought–and–feeling about our first state, that second state
operates dynamically to do several things—
C It brings another mind-body state to it and so adds qualities or qualifies the first.
C It sets the cognitive ideas within that state as the frame for the first.
C It puts the first as a member of a class, the “class” being the classification that the second
one creates.

I then addressed the first two bullet points and suggested that in modeling, exploring the meta-
stating or self-reflexivity process will enable you to model out how the person has qualified or
added the qualities he or she did to an experience. And I suggested that when you model, within
every meta-state that you detect there’s going to be a whole world of the so-called “logical
levels” there—beliefs, values, identities, intentions, permissions, memories, imaginations,
expectations, etc.

I think of this meta-level modeling as knocking on the expert’s door and asking to come in and
then when in, standing in awe of the dynamic complexity that’s within the meta-level. The
metaphor that really appeals to me is that of a hologram. If the experience is like a hologram,
then within any part of it is the whole. So when I explore the meta-state that’s qualifying the
experience I can ask about the person believes about it, values in it, identifies with it, anticipates,
expects, forbids, permits, understands, knows, means, and so on.

By meta-stating joy to the state or experience of learning and creating the simple meta-state of
joyful learning, the joy has become the frame of meaning for learning. That is, “learning” is now
a member of the class of activities that is labeled “joyful” or “fun.” What’s fun for you?
Learning, yes, definitely learning. What does learning mean? One thing it means is fun. It is in
that category.

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But it is not so simple as that. So ask, “What other category is learning in?” “How else do you
classify it?” “Oh, self-improvement, growth, development, professionalism, etc.” Ah, there’s
been lots of meta-stating here about learning! Now you can ask about the rich interplay of these
states and classifications. “Is self-improvement also a member of the category of joy?” “Is
personal development also joyful?” If you then ask, “And what do you believe about that?” you
move up yet another level to see how it is next classified.

Now these classifications are part of how the higher levels of your mind sort things out,
understand things, and creates your knowledge base. They reflect the level of category making.
And strangely enough, you and I as human beings can have category problems. Really? How is
that?

Well, if you create categories that box you in, limit your choices, and/or that creates pain and
distress for yourself— and you have lots of members in those categories, you could really make
your life a living hell.
C Failure: Do you have a category in your mind of “failure?” If so, what are the things that
for you are members of that class? Making a mistake? Saying something wrong?
Sending out a report with typographical errors? Not being flawless?
C Embarrassment: Do you have a category for “embarrassment?” What’s are the members
of that class? I know people who are so skilled at embarrassment, they experience it
dozens of times a day. How do they do that? They have so many experiences that are
members of that class.
C Moments of ecstasy: Do you have this category? How many everyday things “count” for
this? Smelling a rose, seeing a sunset, warming shaking someone’s hand, saying
something that validates someone ... what?
C Commitment to your development of excellence: Do you have this category? What are
your “members” of this class?

When I model, these are some of the things I want to know about. What are the categories of the
person’s mind? How does the person classify things? This is a key aspect of meaning-making
and so fits into the Meaning Matrix (using the Matrix Model) and if you ignore this, you won’t
be modeling as fully as you can.

When I was modeling resilience, one of the first categories I heard in several people was a meta-
state and meta-state belief. It went: “I will get through this. This is temporary.” In my notes, I
wrote down. Classification: Set-backs are Temporary. Is that a belief? Yes, of course. Is that a
value? Yes, of course. Is that an identity? If you want it to be! As a meta-state of “patience”
this belief, value, identity, permission, understanding, meaning, frame, etc. is a hologram of a
very powerful resource.

Another category I discovered in people with highly effective resilience was: “I’ll be back!” a lot
of them anchored that with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice from the Terminator and other
movies. This created the meta-state of commitment, persistence, and/or determination. The set-
back was a member of the class of “Living my Vision and Values.” And just because something

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interrupted me now doesn’t it that’s my future. My future is Living my Vision and Values.

To meta-state is to classify and that means framing and reframing and outframing— all of which
lie at the heart of modeling.

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #15
March 23, 2013

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL

ABOUT COACHING?

I returned to my home in Colorado this past week and in returning lots of calls to people, I had
the opportunity to talk to lots of people about both the Meta-Coaching System and the Neuro-
Semantic Conference in Malaysia this year which we have designated a “Coaching Conference”
with 18 workshops ... all of them related to the field of Coaching. One person seemed to be
genuinely surprised that we are devoting the Second International Conference of Neuro-
Semantics to Coaching, and asked why. “What’s the big deal about Coaching?”

At the same time, my daughter Jessica returned home so that we could catch up ... and when I
showed her the colorful brochure on the Conference, she also seemed surprised that we were
devoting the whole thing to coaching. “Why?” she asked.
“The reason why is because what we call coaching is really about being a professional
communicator which begins with really, really listening, and then enabling people to
sense that we care about what they said and think, and then asking the kind of probing,
penetrating, and incisive questions that can get to the heart of things quickly and
powerfully. It also means listening and calibrating so precisely that you can mirror back
their own responses so that people can actually hear and listen to themselves.”

Of course, in saying that, I was really summarizing the seven core coaching skills that we train
and benchmark in the Meta-Coaching System. With several of the people I talked to, I seemed to
have an interested audience, so I continued.
“And when you can do that, then with your communications you can manage, lead,
interview, consult, and do many other things that are of high value in companies and
organizations. And of course, you can coach, and you also have the foundational skills
for counseling and psychotherapy. These are the essential skills that supervisor and
managers and even senior managers need. They are the skills for selling, skills that
anyone leading an organization needs in selling ideas and proposals. So that’s why.”

In one of the discussions, after I said all of this, the person asked, “Well, what about conflict?

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And when I inquired a little further about what he meant, he said, “What about dealing with
groups in conflict or even just with one person who is hard to get along with or lead, who is
always complaining and bad-mouthing others?”
“Well, yes. That’s where the mirroring skills really become powerful for constructive
confrontation. First you calibrate to the person by receiving what they are saying, how
they are saying it, and all of the non-verbal expressions that they use, then after some
framing, you mirror it back so that the person can see and hear themselves— they can see
and hear themselves as in a mirror, the mirror of your eyes.”

“And that works? They don’t get madder because of that?”

“Would you like me to mirror that back to you? [“Yes, okay.”] And you are in a good
enough state of mind and emotion to receive it? [“Yeah, sure.”] Then what I just heard
you say in a questioning tone of voice that sounded like this, ‘And that works?’ And as
you said it, your nose scrunched up like this (repeating what I saw) and your eyes went up
like this (mirroring back what I saw) as you said, ‘And that works?’ (Pause) ... Okay, so
how was that?”

That was pretty good I guess. But, of course, I wasn’t upset in the first place.
“Yes, I sensed that. And that is also why I asked the framing questions to make sure that
you truly wanted the feedback and that you were ready for it.”

“Oh, that’s what you mean by framing!”

“Yes, as a communication process, framing enables the person or persons you speak to to
have a way of interpreting what you’re saying so that it serves and enhances the
interaction. It gives them, in technical terms, an interpretative schema so that they will be
much less likely to mis-interpret what you offer. And it’s one of the powerful tools that
coach or any professional communicator uses. If what you have to say could be mis-
interpreted, if it could ‘push a button’ and get someone upset or if it could be used against
you later, framing helps to prevent that.”

“So that’s the big deal about coaching! It’s really just communication skills— it’s just a way to
make yourself more clear and precise so that there’s less mis-understandings and confusion? Is
that right?”
“Well, yes, although I wouldn’t use the word just as you did. It is so much more than
‘just communication skills,’ it is some of the highest and most advanced skills on this
planet, the ability to create mental clarity and precision, to align people to a common
vision, to excite and inspire people to step up to the possibilities of their potentials, and to
take the quality of their experiences and their very lives to the peak of human possibilities
... so it is so much more than just communication skills.”

“Okay! When you put it like that — sign me up. When is that conference or when is the next
Meta-Coach training?”

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From: L. Michael Hall
2013 Meta Reflections #17
March 31, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #9

MODELING FRAMES
I ended the last post about modeling (Advanced NLP Modeling using Meta-States) saying:
To meta-state is to classify and that means framing and reframing and outframing— all of
which lie at the heart of modeling.

Now when you are modeling any complex state or human experience, you have to flush out the
frames that governs that experience. If you cannot do that, you will not be able to actually
understand the experience let alone replicate it if it is a state of excellence that you want to adopt
for yourself and others. This raises lots of questions about modeling:
C What are “frames?” What does this mean in terms of subjective experiences?
C How does one flush out the frames of an experience?
C How can you determine which are the actual frames governing an experience?
C What are the multiple ways that we can think about framing and reframing?

The word frame comes from a larger phrase, frame-of-reference. And this refers to the reference
that a person is using to understand something. And the good news—you are already skilled in
flushing this out! When you hear a person speak and you don’t know what they are talking
about, you know to intuitively ask, “What are you referring to?” If you walk in on a conversation
that several people are having and they are talking about something, and it seems important, even
emotional, but you really don’t know what, who, when, etc., then you ask the reference
questions: “What are you talking about?” “Who are you talking about?”

And the reference they are using makes a lot of difference! Suppose you think they are talking
about you, or your daughter, or your spouse, or your job ... and then you find out they are talking
about the movie that saw on the weekend! How you interpret their words, their emotions, and
their responses depends on the reference that you use. Make sure you use their reference to
understand them.

Now if that is obvious about external references— what, who, when, which, where, etc.— how
much more important it is about internal references— beliefs, decisions, understandings, sources
of information, models, values, criteria, standards, permissions, cultures, etc. It is even more

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important about internal references because when you use a frame-of-reference you are using
something (an event, an understanding, a belief, etc.) to interpret or make sense of something
else. That’s what a “frame” is. A frame is an interpretative scheme, a lens by which you
perceive, observe, understand, etc. something else.

So when you set a frame, you set a way of interpreting or understanding something. And you can
do that with words, with decorations, with environment, with context, with gestures, etc. And if
modeling is anything, it is seeking to understand a human experience on its own terms so that we
can understand what it is, how it works, and what we can do with it. That’s why to accurately
model a human subjective experience, I first need to enter into that experience in a neutral way
(without my own filters and judgments), empathetically (to understand it as an experience on its
own terms), and thoroughly (to understand the full system and not just the obvious and
symptomatic expressions).

Now most NLP modeling includes finding some of the “frames,” especially the “beliefs.” In
fact, this has been the focus of most NLP modeling. Robert Dilts make this explicit in his Neuro
Logical Levels Model:
Beliefs: What are the beliefs about the experience?
Value beliefs: What are the beliefs about its value and importance?
Identity beliefs: What are the beliefs about one’s identity?
Mission or Spiritual beliefs: What are the beliefs one’s mission in the world?

In Neuro-Semantics, using the Meta-States Model we have taken this much further. First, we
have identified 104 “logical levels” (see Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and
Performance, 2011). Second, we have pictured these “levels” not as a rigid hierarchy, but as
fluid and reflexive, using such images as a diamond of consciousness, a hologram of holoarchy
relations, as a Matrix (see The Matrix Model, 2003), and as a system of interactive variables (see
Systemic Coaching, 2012).

This is really important for flushing out frames. That’s because frames often hide, even from our
own perspective and that’s because when you live within a frame for long, it seems “real” and
“the way things are” and not an interpretation. And whenever that happens (and it happens to all
of us constantly), the Matrix has us!

How do we flush out the governing frames that are working as the self-organizing attractors in
the system? First and foremost, enter into the system and keep holding the frames that you
receive and detect and see where it goes from there. Accept, embrace, and innocently enter into
the given frames. This is not an obvious skill or an easy skill to develop. It is counter-intuitive
to how we all have learned to think and speak and respond to each other. In phenomenology, this
is called the epoche'– the emptiness. In NLP we call it the know-nothing state or the “stopping-
the-world” state. Fritz Perls called it “losing your mind and coming to your senses.”

Hold the frame that you receive and ask, “If this is so, then what?” “Let’s say this is true, so
what? What does that mean? What do you believe about that?” Most people will go blank at

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this point. They will say, “I don’t know.” Now in Neuro-Semantics we love this answer. “Oh
really!? Why?” Because we have 15 ways to respond to “I don’t know.” After every Coaching
Mastery I send that list to our Meta-Coaches because if to be a great coach, you often have to
model the person’s current experience to understand it.

http://www.neurosemantics.com/second-neuro-semantics-conference
APG training in Portugal (Lisbon) May 3, 4, 5. Jairo Mancilha [[email protected]]

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From: L. Michael Hall
2013 Meta Reflections #18
April 8, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #10

MODELING FRAMES
USING THE MATRIX MODEL

The Matrix Model originated from the Meta-States Model. It arose as a way to express what a
“meta-state” is in a way that the average person could easily understand and use. So instead of
taking about “states,” I began talking about “the games” that we humans play out in our actions
and talk. So where did that idea come from? From T.A. (Transactional Analysis) and especially
from Tom Harris (I’m Okay; You’re Okay, 1970) and from Eric Berne (Games People Play,
1965). People play “games.” A game is a set of actions that you can see or hear and so a
“game” is an external expression of something internal.

In T.A., the internal that drives the “game” is a “script”—an idea about something like one’s
value or disvalue, or how something works, etc. It’s a belief, understanding, decision,
perspective, etc. In NLP, following from Bateson, we call these ideas—“frames” (as described in
the last article), so when we put these two things together, we have frame games.

After the discovery of the Meta-States Model in 1994, I spend most of years from 1998 onward
conducing workshops on Frame Games and then I wrote the book by that title in 199. (It now
has a new title, Winning the Inner Game, 2007). As I was modeling selling, writing, learning,
business, relationships, etc. I titled those trainings and training manuals accordingly. Games
Prolific Writers Play, Games Great Lovers Play (2004), Games Great Sales People Play, Games
Business Experts Play (2002).

In these modeling projects I focused on modeling the frames that made the difference and not just
the many micro-strategies that would occur within the larger subjective experience. That is, if
you consider great lovers, there would be many, many micro-strategies that they would use for
the many, many activities that go into the larger experience of being a great lover. In fact, for
every act of love (every loving act) there would be a strategy. Being supportive when a partner is
discouraged, planning for some coupling time during the upcoming week, communicating about
daily activities, etc. Yet above and beyond all of those strategies would be frames— self-
organizing frames that would be the meta-states of the person that enables one to be a great lover.
These would be meta-states of benevolent good will, extending oneself for the benefit of another,
patient resilience, forgiveness, magnanimity, etc.

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The more I worked with frames (meta-states) and the games (behaviors, languaging) that
resulted, the more I talked about “never leaving home without my state, my self, my meanings,
my intentions...” Then the day came in Sydney Australia (2001) when my business partner, Bob
Bodenhamer, asked me how many things that I never left home without. Only know 3 or 4, I said
seven. That led to a discussion of frames, an extensive revisiting of Developmental Psychology,
and eventually to the creation of the Matrix Model (2002). This model combines the processes
frames whereby we create our sense of reality (meaning, intention, and state) with the content
frames of self (self-value, powers, others or relationships, time, and world) of how we experience
ourselves in the activities of life.

Then in 2002, Bob Bodenhamer and I had the opportunity to model a human experience that
many find intensely painful—stuttering. I had written one or two articles about what General
Semantics had discovered about stuttering and then some people who stuttered contact Bob
asking him to work with them to deal with their stuttering. That led us to the very first
application of the Matrix Model as we sought to understand stuttering in terms of the seven sets
of frames in the Matrix and how those frames are grounded in the state of stuttering.

Now in using the Matrix Model to model you have to shift from linear thinking to systems
thinking. The first thing that means is to forget one-thing-happening-at-a-time and anticipate that
while one thing is happening, other things are simultaneously happening. Bob and I started with
the trigger. What triggers the experience of stuttering (or blocking)? Ultimately we discovered
two key things: authority figures and girls (90% of stutterers are boys!). So what’s the frame?
The meaning frame is first that there is linguistically such a thing as “stuttering.”
And the meaning of that for oneself (self) is that you are flawed and inadequate. You first
have to define “stuttering” as repeating a particular letter.
And the meaning of that is that others will see one as flawed and inadequate.
And that means, “not liked, not valued, not wanted, laughed at, mocked, rejected,
criticized, etc.”

Of course, with meaning frames like those, no wonder dysfluency (mis-speaking a letter or
repeating a letter) is semantically loaded with lots and lots of negative emotion! And if that’s the
“game” played, then of course a person will try very, very hard to not mis-speak. Now we have
the Matrix doing something else.
In the person’s power matrix, as the person tries to stop a natural process (speaking and
being dysfluent at times, which is true of everyone), one then discovers that one cannot
(like “trying hard to sleep” which we are also powerless to do, that only creates
insomnia!). The person then discovers that he is powerless and helpless. And that
means — I will always be inadequate and rejected (time) in every domain of life (world).

And all of that goes on simultaneously and in a way that sends a person in a spin, round and
round, so that as the negative meanings layer on top of each other, the person’s state gets worse
and worse. All of this gives us a structural understanding of how to create a good case of
stuttering. It enables us to model the how of how. That is, how does a person right now in this
or that context induce a stressful/ fearful state so that one elicits dys-fluency? What meanings

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does a person have to be operating from? And, of course, if we know the process, the how that a
person does something, we are in an ideal position to know how to interfere with that process or
to preframe it so that it becomes irrelevant. For more abut this, you can find some articles on
Stuttering on www.neurosemantics.com and for the full modeling of the structure of stuttering
and what to do to master the stuttering, see Bob Bodenhamer’s book, I Have a Voice (2011)
(originally titled, Mastering Blocking and Stuttering with NLP and Neuro-Semantics, 2004).

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From: L. Michael Hall
2013 Meta Reflections #19
April 15, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #11

MATRIX MODELING

While The Matrix Model originated from the Meta-States Model and not from any particular
modeling, Bob Bodenhamer and I immediately used it as a modeling tool as we applied it to the
experience of stuttering. And in doing that we realized that we could use this model as a format
or tool for modeling any human experience and especially complex human experiences. In fact,
the more systemic the experience, the more the useful the Matrix Model became.

Why is that? How does that work? The explanation goes to the fact that the Matrix Model is
based on three axes— Meaning, Performance, and Self.
C Meaning because all of human experience and therefore “reality” is a function of the
meanings that we construct about things. To understand any person or any experience
that humans have we have to find out what meanings have been created. What does the
person think in representing something (see, hear, sense), how does the person frame
those representations (classifies, categories, invents concepts), what metaphors and
understandings used to put all of that together, etc.

C Performance because from meaning comes embodiment, the feed-forwarding into

ourselves so that we go into state, experience emotions, and create the biological energy
to speak and act to influence the things and people in our world. Performance because
the body is designed to actualize our mental constructions.

C Self because the earliest and most fundamental frames we build are about ourselves as we
build up a matrix of frames about our worth, competence, relationships, temporality, and
dimensions of operations (self, power, others, time, and world). That’s then why we
never leave home without our Self, and the Self that we take with us everywhere we go
filters all of our subsequent experiences.

These three dimensions of experience provide the three basic categories that take in just about
everything we need to consider when it comes to modeling a complex, systemic human
experience. And these three dimensions are not separate or distinctive dimensions, they are
interactive and systemic. That’s because the meanings we construct are fundamentally meanings
about ourselves in the various worlds that we navigate and as we do they are made actual in our
body and so our performances.

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Now we can follow the two loops of communication, the feedback— feed-forward loop of
information in—energy out. These two loops enable us to explore the outer game (stimulus –
response) and then the inner game (thinking– feeling). The outer game loop of stimulus or in the
world that triggers us to respond is the obvious loop. Information comes in and we respond with
energy in our speech and behavior as we act to deal with that information. Yet this loop, while
empirical and sensory-based and quantitative is superficial. It’s just what happens on the outside
that you can see and hear and sense.

The more significant loop is the internal one. This is the thinking—feeling loop. First we
“think” and that doesn’t mean just consciously, but also unconsciously. We think by
representing, by languaging, labeling, evaluating, framing, associating, metaphoring, etc. This is
the feedback we give to ourselves as we draw conclusions, compute our meanings, interpret,
make sense of and layer more thoughts-and-feelings about our abstractions. And as we conclude
and interpret things, we then feed-forward into our neurology and body the energy that activates
and mobilizes us. This creates our emotions and our somatic-body-states.

This inner-game loop is the loop of feedback— feed-forward that creates our mental maps and
sense of reality. And among the conclusions we are drawing and the meanings we are inventing
for our interpretations are all of our abstractions, conceptions, and ideas about our Self.

Matrix Modeling centers in following the energy. In Neuro-Semantics we say that we “follow
the energy through the system.” And why? Mostly to understand the system— the person’s
mind-body-emotion system. Then, once we understand how a particular experience or system
works, we understand where we can intervene in the system to create a desired change. We
follow the information into the system to see where it goes, how it is processed, changed,
interpreted, abstracted as it moves around the system, and then see how it is actualized and
turned into neurological energy.

Matrix Modeling occurs by recognizing the cues of the sub-matrices within the Matrix so that we
can tell when any given matrix flashes on as information or energy (emotion, feeling) is
experienced in that matrix. You can tell when it flashes on because the person will mention it,
the person will talk about their worth (self), their skills, powers, responsibilities, etc. or the lack
of them (powers), their relationships, other people, groups of people, etc. (others), some facet
about time, the past, present, or future (time), or some domain of meaning (some profession or
area where humans live).`

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From: L. Michael Hall
2013 Meta Reflections #20
April 21, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #12

MODELING
SHORT-TERM & LONG-TERM EXPERIENCES

A basic premise in NLP is that within (or behind, or above) every experience has a structure.
Further, when you work with or change the structure, you are working with the very processes of
the experience (or behavior) rather than dealing with the content or symptoms. To put it another
way, there is a how to involved in every experience and when you discover the how to, you
discover the heart. To make this really practice, this means that there is a how to for—
C Getting depressed when you have sufficient money and loved ones.
C Becoming anxious in the face of speaking before an audience.
C Put off doing something that you fully know would improve the quality of your life.
C Eat the wrong foods and too much of them when you have other choices.

In these and a thousand other human experiences, you have to have the know how for pulling
them off. Lots of people cannot. Lots of people could never figure out how to depress
themselves when they have a job, sufficient money, and loving relationships. It would be beyond
them. Others could never in a thousand years feel anxious when speaking before an audience.
They couldn’t if they tried really, really hard feel anxiety in that context. Others would never
put off exercising, reading, going to bed on time, etc. when they know it makes a difference in
the quality of their life.

For them to be able to do such unhealthy things, they would have to learn some strategy and
practice it. Of course, why would they?

The structure that’s within these and every other experience is not a static structure like the
bones within our bodies. The structure is made up of processes of how a person thinks, believes,
gives meanings, feels, speaks, and then acts. It is a strategy of how the person uses his or her
nervous-system and brain (neurology and mind) to generate the experience. It is more like a
formula. In NLP, we call these formulas “patterns” and run the pattern as a step-by-step process
for generating a given experience.

There’s a living structure or process for creating stuttering as I mentioned in an earlier article in
this series. There’s a living structure or process for coaching effectively, presenting with clarity
and force, creating healthy energy and vitality, leading an organization, and so on. Modeling is
the process of discovering these living structures and detailing the processes. By modeling, we

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map out how the experience works, that is, what a person has to do in order to have the
experience. Now this doing is primarily and mostly the internal things that a person does in
thinking, defining, framing, picturing, recalling words, etc. In NLP, we call that internal set of
steps a strategy. And so over the years we have developed a whole set of strategies— strategies
for making decisions, buying, selling, negotiating, eating healthily, etc.

What NLP has been deficient in—and even anemic in—are strategies for long-term experiences.
For the experiences that can be “triggered” on and stepped into in a moment of time — deciding,
feeling motivated, selling, etc., these are easy with NLP. For strategies that are long-term
experience, that transpire over months and even years— the old classical NLP models including
the so-called “New Code” are inadequate.

Why are they inadequate? Because they do not describe how an expert creates and holds a frame
of mind over a decade. For the strategies that would enable us to replicate effective leadership,
responsible management, resilience, a healthy lifestyle, etc., we cannot just “trigger” it on, step
into the corresponding state, and Presto! we are able to replicate that experience.

It would be nice to access an anchor for “healthy and fit” with the proper body weight and cardio-
vascular and skeleton strength, step into that state and suddenly experience it! But sadly, it does
not work that way. If you want to be healthy and fit with t he proper body weight for your height
and bone size along with the cardio-vascular and skeleton muscular strength, there are lots and
lots of things that you’re going to have to do over months and years. The strategy does not occur
in a moment— it endures over years.

This is where Neuro-Semantics comes to the rescue! (Cue here for Roman Horns!) That’s
because the Meta-States Model enables us to detect in an expert the long-term frames of
reference that the expert holds in mind over the time period required to get the results that we
want. This is where also the Matrix Model enables us to sort out a whole belief system rather
than just one or two empowering beliefs. It enables us to set up a set of beliefs that will enable a
person to negotiate the steps and stages of an experience and to align those beliefs so that the
person is fully congruent with the experience.

It is in detecting the whole systemic network of frames (as an integrated meta-state system) that
allows us to then refine, streamline, and install for those who want to replicate an expert’s
experience. And the test of this takes us back to experience. Does it work? Can others take on
the matrix of frames and then over a period of time begin to replicate the experience in oneself?
This was the test that I made with every one of my 17 modeling projects. Can I do it? Can I be
resilient in the face of set-backs? Can I sell with integrity? Can I maintain a healthy body-
weight and energy? Can I create wealth and become financially independent?

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From: L. Michael Hall
2013 Meta Reflections #21
April 28, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #13

MODELING
MULTIPLE-STAGE EXPERIENCES

In the last article in this series, I contrasted two very different kinds of “subjective experiences,”
short-term and long-term experiences. In doing so I also contrasted the genius of NLP to the
genius of Neuro-Semantics. My point was that what NLP began regarding modeling the
structure of experience, Neuro-Semantics has continued and expanded with the Meta-States
Model and the Matrix Model. Here as I continue that discussion, I’ll use resilience as an
example. I’ll do that because it is easy to comprehend and because it was the modeling project
from which I discovered the Meta-States Model.

Consider the state of resilience. What does it feel like? If you accessed this state, what are you
feeling in your body? And where? What are you thinking and representing in your mind? What
is happening in the auditory channel? Difficult questions, are they not? And why? Simple —
resilience does not occur in a moment of time.

Instead, resilience is what happens over time. Resilience is what you call your experience or
your state when you look back and notice how you kept coming back every time something
knocked you down. No wonder resilience is not a primary state! No wonder it is next to
impossible to point to some place in your body where you feel resilience. Resilience is as much a
meta-feeling, that is, a meta-evaluation and a way of orienting yourself to life or work or sport so
that as you anticipate set-backs, illnesses, mediocre results, big challenges, losses, etc., you see
those things through a certain lens— the resilience lens.

And when you see them through the resilience lens— what do you see? You anticipate that
you’ll get through, that you will not be stopped, that you’ll figure out a way, that you have lots of
resources to tap into and fix whatever is wrong, that your vision and dream is too big to let go,
etc. These “thoughts” also are typically not coded in see-hear images like an internal movie
(although they can be). More usually they are the belief statements that you say to yourself, the
decision beliefs that you have made, the identity beliefs you have created, etc.

And they do not all apply at the same time. Some apply for the first stage of resilience, the
getting knocked down stage. Some apply for the second stage, the emotional roller-coaster stage
when one’s emotions are all over the place from shock, anger, begging, demanding, crying, etc.
Some are for the coping stage during which you develop the skills to cope with the challenges

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and solve the problems that they create. Others are for the mastery stage when you finally get
some things figured out and you’re able to master certain challenges so that they are no longer
any challenge at all. Finally, some are for the I’m Back! stage. The experience of resilience is a
multiple-stage experience so that we need multiple strategies, each of which contributes to the
whole.

And what holds all of the stages and strategies together? Usually, many higher level frames
about those frames. That is, meanings and intentions that create a self-organizing attractor in
your semantic system and which endows the whole with the quality or texture of “resilience.”
“I know I will get through it, it’s just a matter of time and learning.”
“I will bounce back with renewed energy and inspiration.”

Here then is a multiple-stage experience. And this will hold true for the majority of the most
highly desired states and experiences. Health and fitness also is not an experience that occurs in
a single moment of time, but like resilience over a period of time. So also with wealth creation,
leadership, and mastery in anything. Given the studies of Anders Eriksson on expertise, every
competence requires multiple-stages and therefore time— and in the case of expertise, 10,000
hours of deliberate practice (that is, 10 years).

None of these experiences will ever fit the pattern of accessing a primary state where you access,
step in, and presto! you have the full experience of the primary state— joy, love, relaxation,
focus, etc. When you set out to model any of these primary state experiences, you will not have
multiple stages, but a single stage. That’s why the experience is as close as your skill for
accessing and stepping in. That’s why you can have “instant relaxation” hence the book by that
title that I wrote with Debra Lederer. You can have “instant joy,” “instant love,” etc.

Multiple-stage experiences are very different. Here you will find no such thing as “instant
resilience,” “instant wealth creation,” or “instant health and fitness.” So modeling these means
identifying the stages, finding the strategy for each stage, identifying the triggers that indicate
when to move into and out of a particular stage, and much more. This does not mean that each of
these stages operates independently, that each represents a separate experience. It does mean that
when put together under a larger over-arching frame, the steps and stages is the meta-detailing of
the larger experience.

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From: L. Michael Hall
2013 Meta Reflections #22
May 5, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #14

MODELING BEYOND BELIEFS

Modeling any experience inevitably involves modeling beliefs. Whether you are modeling an
experience of excellence or an experience of dysfunction and pathology, beliefs are involved.
They drive the experience. That’s why every NLP modeling process that I’ve seen to date
involves examining the beliefs that are involved in the experience. We do that explicitly in
Neuro-Semantics by examining the belief system, that is, the system of beliefs which make up the
person’s matrix of frames about something. Yet there is something more within complex human
experiences— something that transcends beliefs.
“What’s beyond beliefs? Isn’t it beliefs all the way up? Isn’t that what you wrote in
Meta-States and the Matrix Model?”

Yes, all of that is true. From the perspective of beliefs, we could say that it is beliefs all the way
up. Yet when beliefs grow up, they become something more and something different. So what
do we have when a belief grows up? We have knowledge, principles, premises, assumptions,
etc.

This actually explains why we start with a principle or a concept when we do the Mind-to-
Muscle Pattern. We start with a general statement that is universally recognized by experts in a
field as a legitimate and generalized statement, “Wealth is created by spending less than you
make.” And then we can turn it in to one or more beliefs, “I believe in spending less than I
make.” “I believe in earning more than I spend.”

When I first modeled wealth creation, I first had to establish some time parameters—how long
does it take to create wealth as in financial stability, financial independence, and/or financial
freedom? Then I established the stages that a person would have to negotiate to reach these
various milestones indicating different levels of “wealth creation.” And as I wrote in the book,
Inside-Out Wealth (2010, chapter 2) there are seven stages of wealth creation and for the average
person this requires approximately ten years. Hence, the reason we create in that book, and in the
training, a Ten-Year Wealth Creation Plan.

From that arises the next question which is critical whenever it comes to any longer-term
experience that a person has to persist in with constancy, regularity, and discipline,
“What do I need to hold as a higher level principle that will sustain me for the long haul?”

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 “What concept, principle, or premise do I need to set as my larger level frame of mind so
that I can move through the various stages and steps within each stage, effectively and
efficiently?”

What do the successful wealth creators believe about themselves as wealth creators, about
wealth, about creating wealth, etc. that are expressions of an even higher meta-level frame— a
principle or concept about wealth and one that sustains them over the years? Consider these
principles:
Wealth creation is a long term proposition, seldom is it created overnight.
Wealth creation has to be holistic (involving the whole of life) and not limited just to
finances.
Wealth creation depends on adding massive value via products, services, and information
to people.
Wealth creation is a matter of time if a person knows where he or she is in the process
and what to do to move through the current stage to the next one.

Principles like these describe an understanding about the experience and how the experience
works that can then sustain a person’s perspective over months, even years. Such principles
facilitates a realistic understanding of the experience that enables people to maintain the
discipline with patience and persistence.

Because principles establish guidelines and rules for operating, once you set them as your frame-
of-mind, they operate as a self-organizing attractor in your mind-body system. And that’s why,
in part at least, they represent such an important feature to model. If you can interview in such a
way as to elicit the functional principles in a person, you will be able to detect the dynamic
structures that are so much more than just beliefs. And this will give you a key to what enables
the person to persist over time in making real his or her vision.

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Meta Reflections #23
May 13, 2013

BOOK REVIEW Of

THE ORIGINS OF NLP

Edited by John Grinder and R. Frank Pucelik

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Finally we have a second book on the history of NLP, one that adds more information about the
early days and gives much more of a human face to the adventure called NLP. In 1990 Terry
McClendon published the first book, The Wild Days: NLP 1972-1981. This now gives us two
books on the early history. Yet while we have a second book, it is still not complete and there’s
lots more about the history and origins of NLP that is missing from this book.

A couple years ago I talked with many of those who were at the beginning and commented that if
we don’t get some of the stories from the people who were there, many of those stories would be
lost to history. At about that time I was writing a series of seventeen installments on the History
of NLP (you can find on www.neurosemantics.com/ Articles). Later I approached several of
those original people to see if several of us could collaborate on writing a history. That did not
work out and I will tell a little bit of that story shortly. But I did achieve one thing —I provoked
John Grinder sufficiently so that he put out this volume! So at least we have his point of view in
this book— in fact, this book is mostly, the origins of NLP from Grinder’s perspective. Those
who disagreed with him for the most part are not in this one! And for anyone John disagrees
with, he wrote a “Commentary” that corrects their misunderstandings.

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I’m genuinely delighted to see this book in print because it really does put more of a human face
on the origins and enables us to see a little bit more into the minds and hearts of the men and
women who brought about the field of NLP. It also highlights the cultural context of the early
1970s in southern California where NLP arose. And yes, the book is one-sided in that it fails to
deal with the darker-side of NLP— the conflicts, the lawsuits, the breakups (all of which John
Grinder seems to deny or pretend does not exist). All that he says in the whole book about that is
“... there are severe issues with its [NLP’s] quality” (p. 220). No kidding! Only Stephen
Gilligan alludes to this in a short paragraph on page 93:
“ While the base of my experience was tremendously positive, the underbelly of 1970s NLP
included an arrogant, “take no prisoners” contempt for all “outsiders” in which anybody and
anything was fair game for ridicule. This antagonistic attitude seemed to deepen as NLP moved
to an international level, culminating in a mid-1980s cacophony of lawsuits, criminal charges,
bad mouthing, and other unpleasantries. The principle that the “map is not the territory” seemed
altogether forgotten in such events, and NLP suffered as a result. Of course, you cannot speak
about NLP in the singular anymore, as there are many different modes and forms.”

This lack of balance in the book strikes me as trying hard to put a positive turn on things so much
that it fails to address much of the legacy that we have inherited in NLP— the disdain of much of
Psychology and Academia for NLP, the negative P.R. that is prevalent around the world about
NLP, why and how the early people in NLP did not engage in research or create an association
that would “police” people misusing the technology of NLP, why and how they got into fights,
divided, spoke ill of each other, etc. All that will be for another book on the history of NLP.

The Six Months Delay of “Origins”

Originally, The Origins of NLP was to be released at the NLP Conference in London in
November, 2012. That did not happen. Why not? What happened? Apparently, after getting
the ten contributors to write their chapters, John Grinder didn’t like Robert Dilts’ chapter and
ended up writing 25 pages of notes to correct Robert’s memory! Robert wrote 25 pages to make
up his chapter, Chapter 10 “My Early History with NLP,” but production stopped due to the 25
pages of corrections that John wanted to include. I’m not sure how it was eventually worked out
or who negotiated the truce, but in the end the “corrections” were not put into the text. That only
took six months to work out.

Well, I say not put into the text ... from what I know, John apparently gave up on his position of
keeping those corrections in the text after Dilts’ chapter as a “Commentary” chapter, and instead
sneaked some of them into his chapter, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind” which is
the longest chapter of the book—50 pages, a chapter that mostly rambles on and on.

The book has ten contributors— John Grinder, Carmen Bostic-St. Claire, R. Frank Pucelik, Terry
McClendon, Judith DeLozier, David R. Wick, Byron Lewis, Stephen Gilligan, James Eicher,

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Robert Dilts. All together John wrote five contributions, he wrote two “Commentaries” on what
the others wrote and then a long list of “corrections” about things he disagreed with. It was as if
he could not help himself to let the contributors have their own voice—their own opinion and
memory about things. You can see this in his long introduction about how memory is fallible
and undependable and how many of the things the others write about just did not happen!
Claiming it is his act of responsibility, he wrote, “It takes the form of a warning.” Actually, two
warnings:
1. A significant portion of what is described never happened!” (page 5)
2. Memory is selective and essentially incomplete! (page 6)

The Origins of NLP is really a John Grinder book. After all, together John and Carmen wrote
130 pages of the 253 pages of the book. Fifty of the pages is in John’s chapter, then he wrote
another 46 pages along with Carmon’s Preface and Epilogue of 35 pages. And in doing so, they
have essentially written Volume II of their book on Whispering in the Wind.1 Both John and
Carmen quote writings in Whispering as if it were a sacred text that corrects all errors(!).

After his warnings, John fills the book with his biases about what “real” NLP is about. Nor does
John seem undaunted by his presumption of correcting others and putting them in their place.
Writing on page 16, he says:
“I take it as co-author of Origins, I have the prerogative to edit what the authors in this section
have written. At the same time, this requirement is to be balanced with the strategy that Frank
and I have adopted for the presentation of the history of The Origins of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming. More specifically, the strategy that we pursue here is to rely on the intelligence
of the readers to assimilate the representations by different authors that diverge in significant
ways and through some multi-angulation of these divergent descriptions from distinct perceptual
positions to arrive at their own understanding of what occurred.”

The Value of the Book

Do I recommend this book? Yes, it’s a very good book! It is a valuable read for many reasons.
What you will discover are lots of historical facts about the earliest period: 1971-1972 when
Richard and Frank were playing around with Gestalt Therapy. The next period: 1972-1974 when
John entered and they began using Transformational Grammar to model the language patterns of
Perls and Satir, and finally 1974 and following when the Meta-Model was developed, used, and
published that launched NLP as such.

You’ll discover that terminology of NLP— “Neuro-Linguistic Programming” came about in

1976 and that it was not until almost the end of the 1970s that the formatting of practitioner and
master practitioner developed. I especially enjoyed the chapters by Frank Pucelik, Terry
McClendon, Robert Dilts, and Stephen Gilligan. Their spirit and attitude of NLP reflects how I
think about NLP and wrote in the book, The Spirit of NLP (1996).

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What’s New?
The third co-creator of NLP! This is actually the first work that fully identifies Frank Pucelik as
“the third man” who played a co-creating role in the origins of NLP. Grinder had mentioned this
in Whisperings (2002) and I had written an article on Frank in my series on the History of NLP,
and there was a interview with Frank in Rapport. But mostly prior to this, there was very little
record of Frank and his role in the origins. In almost every history of NLP it is always Richard
and John. From now on, we will be seeing that “there were three who worked together and co-
created NLP, Richard, John, and Frank.”

What’s also unknown to most NLP practitioners is that Frank and Judith DeLozier were married
prior to moving to Santa Cruz; then after their break-up, Judith and John married. During that
time, Frank and Leslie Cameron dated and became partners (“life partners” to use his words from
his chapter); this was prior to Leslie and Richard Bandler marrying. Given that, I found it
fascinating that Judith wrote a mere 4 pages for her chapter. What she doesn’t say seems
thunderous. I wonder if there will be more forthcoming?

Frank’s chapter speaks about John, Judy, and Leslie going to visit Milton and something
unspecified happening that led to he and Leslie to end their relationships and shortly thereafter
Richard inviting (making a “request”) for Frank to leave. Obviously there’s as much unsaid
about all of that, so there’s much more of the story yet to be described.

NLP was born of some Encounter Groups. This also is new! The Origins of NLP highlights
Frank’s role in first working with Richard doing the gestalt “encounter groups” and then inviting
John into the experience to model the linguistic structure of what they were doing. From Frank
also we learn that there were two original groups of people who brought about NLP, the first
group, called “the meta people” or the “meta kids” by Frank, experimented with the encounter
group format and helped developed the Meta-Model. The second group experimented with the
Meta-Model, Milton Model, Strategies, etc. An interesting fact about these two groups is that
none of the people in the first group stayed with the development whereas almost every single
person in the second group went on to become the leading NLP Trainers, Developers, Thinkers
and Writers.

A discovery that Origins reveals is that Kresge College itself and the experimenting pre-NLP
groups grew out of the Encounter Groups. John Grinder made this explicit in his chapter:
“The particular form used to develop this Living/Learning Community was a model of
communication lifted from the National Training Laboratory called the T Group or sensitivity
training. Originally a form of group psychotherapy, the T Group was adapted for non-therapeutic
purposes: development of community, studies in small (8–15 members) group dynamics. Thus at
a minimum of once a week for several hours (often, more frequently and with longer hours), T-

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 Groups assembled (groups of 8–15 people, consisting of a faculty member, a trained T Group
facilitator and a mix of staff and students.” (P. 173)

Now imagine that! Today’s overly individualistic NLP field full of many sub-communities
began as an Encounter Group! It was created in the context of twelve to twenty people (as
identified by Frank Pucelik in his chapter) experiencing “gestalt” therapy as practiced by Richard
and Frank and later analyzed by John. NLP began as a community! How about that!? In fact, in
reading through the chapters of Origins I wondered many times about how the justice or accuracy
in accrediting only the co-founders and not the community of people that they worked with,
practiced on, and learned from as the full source of NLP?

The Cognitive Psychology Foundation of NLP. Most of us have long known that the key
personalities responsible for the Cognitive Resolution in Psychology— Noam Chomsky and
George Miller were at the heart of the development of NLP. This explains why “NLP” is usually
put under the category of “Cognitive Psychology” in textbooks. Interesting enough, John
Grinder revealed something that I didn’t know that further establishes this connection:
“I had spent one academic year as a Guest Researcher at George Miller’s lab at Rockefeller
University in New York City (1969–70) and had great respect for Miller’s work.” (P. 139)

Of course, John cannot leave it there or accept even this as he noted—

“I mention in passing that during this era and consistently since, I have refused the classification
of NLP as a part of academic psychology. Academic psychology, at least as practiced in the
states, is the study of the average performance and activities of people given certain tasks – a
statistical approach to the study of human behavior. This was and remains the domain of
psychology. NLP, in contrast, is the study of one of the extremes of human performance, the
patterning of genius, the patterning of the most advanced performers available.” (P. 141)

Now for the Back Story —

The Book is “a Severely Bad Idea” (John Grinder)
Now here is what you don’t know and will not read in the book The Origins of NLP. In 2009-
2010 Wyatt Woodsmall and myself decided that we would collaborate together on a book on the
history of NLP. I asked Wyatt to work with me on the book because Wyatt was one of my
original trainers in NLP and because of the high regard that I hold him in terms of intelligence
and integrity. After discussions with Martin Roberts, Wyatt, Terry McClendon, Frank Pucelik,
Robert Dilts and others, my idea was to write a book and title it, In Their Own Words.

The book would be a collection of as many of the voices that we could get from those early days
and we would do no editing. We would collect the chapters, ask the contributors to write in the
area where each would feel the most passion about their actual experience. Then we would write

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some Reflections at the end of the book using some of our own experiences in the field of NLP.
So we made a list of all of the contributors, 25 or more and began to contact them.

Everybody I wrote to, or spoke with, thought that it was idea whose time had come and said in
essence, “Great, let’s do it.” I wrote to both Richard Bandler and John Grinder, both who
immediately refused. It was John Grinder who first wrote back and asked in a demanding way,
“Who are these so-called ‘developers of NLP’?” When I tried to relieve his fears by saying, “It is
you, Richard, Frank and the others who were at the beginning.” He wrote back declaring, “It is a
severely bad idea” and he said he would have no part of it! I wanted to know what led him to
think that. That’s when he became not a little bit rude with me.
“I personally think that you being associated with any representation of the history and origins of
NLP is a bad joke. From my own point of view, your writings –the only connection I have ever
had with you – demonstrated a extremely limited grasp of NLP. I had hoped that you would
desist representing NLP so ineptly and would focus on the development of Neuro-Semantics –
now you show up again, acting as if you are qualified to comment on the origins and history of
NLP – events that you (and the majority of people you list as contributors) have zero direct
experience of. So, I decline and I invite you to take a step back from this project. I do not
recognize any contribution you have made as being in the field of NLP and therefore find it
ludicious that you would propose this book.” (Email, December 13, 2010)

Determine to not respond in kind I wrote back and commented that I was “stunned and
disappointed” in his response. “I had hoped for better.” Then I wrote some words that I knew
would be provocative and that in the mind of a mis-matcher would stir him up:
“The history will be told with you or without you. I made the offer, I had hoped you were up to
the task. If you’d like to add a touch of Neuro-Semantics to sweeten your NLP, let me know. I
think it really needs it.”

I then ended my email as I do with everyone, “To your highest and best.” Within the next three
weeks, many of the people who had agreed to write the book, In their Own Voice, wrote to me
and said that they “had to back out.” They said that they were going to write their chapter now
for John’s book. I smiled. “Ah, I provoked him!” He’s going to do a history book on the origins
even though he thinks it is “a severely bad idea.” Good.

The Origins of NLP —a fascinating book which provides wonderful glimpses into more of the
history of NLP. In the book you will get bits and pieces of a dozen or two human stories as it
presents many of the men and women who initiated the beginning of the adventure that we call
Neuro-Linguistic Programming. You will discover that NLP was created by a community and in
a community of people fascinated by personal growth and development. And for me, that is the
true spirit of NLP that we need to recover today.

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Author:
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. A student, researcher, and author of NLP since the late 1980s and
author of over 40 books in the field of NLP, many of them best sellers in spite of what John
Grinder thinks(!). Some of the history of NLP has been written in the book, Self-Actualization
Psychology (2010) and the series of 17 articles on the history of NLP can be found at
www.neurosemantics.com. For “The Secret History of NLP” see Rapport and other journals as
well as the Neuro-Semantic website.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #24
May 20, 2013

DIMENSIONS OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION
There are many dimensions of self-actualization, maybe there are as many dimensions as there
are aspects of human experience. As we in Neuro-Semantics keep studying, researching,
training, coaching, and consulting on self-actualization and enabling people to live a self-
actualizing life, we are discovering new dimensions. To this end, I have designed the Self-
Actualization Training, Certification, Competency skills, and Diploma around four of the key
dimensions: vitality, potentiality, creativity, and leadership. These are very different aspects of
the self-actualizing life and so each of the trainings are very different as well.

The Vitality Dimension — Biological Self-Actualization

The focus in the first module is on identifying a person’s basic and higher needs so that a person
can adequately and truly satisfy those needs. When a person succeeds in doing this, it results in
vitality—energy and motivation to live more fully and humanly. It enables a you to discover
your real self and to be authentically you. How about that!? How much is that worth? What
then results from this vitality dimension of biological self-actualization is authenticity— being
real and authentic in yourself as a person.

After all, if you do not have vitality and energy to live your life with focus and passion, then you
will not be able to be your best self or fulfil your visions and values. It takes energy for the effort
of self-actualizing. Where can you get that kind of energy? That energy comes from the built-in
drives within your mind-body system. These drives are instinct-like but without content
information. So you have to learn. You have to learn what these drives are and how to
adequately and truly satisfy them. Do that, and then as they go away, the next level of drives
emerge. Eventually, you move beyond the lower needs to the higher being-needs that are the
truly human needs that enables us to be fully alive, fully human.

The Potentiality Dimension — Psychological Self-Actualization

The focus in the second module refers to what is potential in human beings which can be made
actual and therefore real in your everyday life. To find, identify, and develop your potentials,
begin by taking on the challenge of owning and exercising your human powers as a meaning-
making in constructing great and positive meanings and also in releasing limiting meanings. We
refer to this as entering into the Construct and taking ownership of these powers. This lies at the
heart of Neuro-Semantics (as you can see from the front page of the website,
www.neurosemantics.com).

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Doing that then allows you to create a human Crucible whereby you can release old meanings
that no longer serve you and which may, in fact, create leashes that prevent the unleashing of
potentials. From this then you can create the synergy of integrating meanings and performance
as you move into “the zone” of optimum performance and do so at your will. In APG we call
this the “personal genius” or “flow” state. The result that follows from this is a being-doing
synergy that allows you to close the knowing-doing gap.

This is the core drama of self-actualizing and we talk about it as a drama in three acts: The
Construct, the Crucible, and the Zone. After all, self-actualization is a function of “both
contemplation and action” (Maslow) or as we say, meaning and performance (challenge and
competence). To taking ownership of meaning-making powers and ownership of your core
powers from which every skill is made enables you to act on your highest meanings and sacrilize
your everyday activities. That’s the synergy of self-actualization. Would you like that?

The Creativity Dimension — Existential Self-Actualization

The focus in the third model is that of creativity. Maslow described the first creativity is that of
creating your self, that is, hearing your inner voice and unleashing your potentials (covered in the
second module). After that, your power of creativity does not end, it only shifts gear so that
instead of creating your best self, you move outside of yourself to addressing the problems of the
real or external world. That’s why self-actualizing people are, by nature, highly creative and
inventive. Unleashing your creative powers in creating your self now take a new form as you use
them for problem-solving the problems that we have in human societies, businesses,
governments, etc.

The third module is about creativity and innovation and to facilitate that we use four
conversations— four well-formed conversations. The first is the well-formed outcome
conversation to set out a vision and mission. Next is the well-formed problem conversation by
which we identify and solve the problems that interfere with achieving our goals. Next comes
the well-formed solutions conversation wherein we brainstorm solutions and choose to fully
invent the best solution. Finally, the well-formed innovation conversation which, of course, is
for innovating the solutions that transforms the problems and enables you to actualize the vision
that you began with. The result of this is a professional communication style that is a coaching
facilitation style by which you become a highly skilled problem-solver.

The Leadership Dimension — Sociological Self-Actualization

The focus of the four module is on leadership. After all, to unleash your own or another’s
potentials for creative solutions is to bring out the best in yourself and/or others. That’s what
leadership is—bringing out the best in others and to lead to creating self-actualizing homes,
businesses, communities, etc. Self-actualizing leadership is situational and functional and is
something everyone who is self-actualizing can do. After all, we need good, caring, visionary,

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competent leaders in every home, every area of life, and at every level. The result of this is the
ability to create and innovate humanistic communities among any and all groups of people.

Self-Actualizing couples, families, businesses, associations, companies, and countries, however,

do not just happen. They have to be envisioned and then created by self-actualizing leaders. And
given the current crisis in leadership in every area and dimension of life, we really need much
more mature and creative leaders in the world today.

These are the four dimensions of self-actualization that we present in the four trainings and when
we combine them, this leads to a Diploma in Self-Actualization Psychology. If you are
interested, contact us. The next one is this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the one after that is in
Johannesburg, South Africa. See the contact information below.
www.seekingthepeak.co.za — for a Description of the trainings also—
www.self-actualizing.org

The next trainings that I will be involved in for the entire series in 9 days is:
May 25- June 1 --- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – contact [email protected]
July 14-August 1 --- Johannesburg, South Africa – contact -- Barbara
Walsh [email protected]
In South Africa — [email protected]

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #25
May 27, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #15

MODELING PRESENCE OF MIND

UNDER PRESSURE
Some years ago I interviewed several public speakers. It wasn’t a big modeling project, just a
tiny little one. I wanted to know what certain speakers who seemed exceptionally “cool, calm,
and collected” were doing in their minds and bodies to create that experience. So I asked. I
asked if I could interview them, and then using a combination of NLP and Neuro-Semantic
models, I questioned them until I obtained their strategies for maintaining “presence of mind
under pressure.” After I got three strategies, I then went to the literature on stress and stress
management, to the writings of Hans Selye, the stress management expert and person who coined
the term eustress, and the literature on Assertiveness which is the Type-C personality in contrast
to Type-A and Type-B personalities when it comes to stress.

Then, as with every modeling project that I’ve ever done, I applied the learnings first to myself to
see if it works on me. That’s my litmus test: If I can’t get a pattern, process, or model to work on
myself, then there is something lacking or wrong in the model that needs to be corrected or
supplemented.

The result of all of that? The pattern that we have in Neuro-Semantics which we call, Presence
of Mind Under Pressure pattern. This is a pattern that we have made one of the staples in
Trainer’s Training and for good reason —to be an effective trainer you have to be able to
maintain presence of mind under pressure. If “pressure” arises due to who is there, the numbers
of people there, the demanding or challenging questions that arise, the making of a mistake, etc.
and you lose your cool, if you go into a stress response, if blood is withdrawn from head and
stomach and sent to the larger muscle groups— then you will not be able to effectively remember
or present. You will not be in your optimal “genius” state of flow.

Further, for many people, public speaking is in itself a pressure and one that requires a lot of
presence of mind. So for trainers, presenters, keynote speakers, etc., there will be times when
various pressures will arise and it is in those moments that you are put to the test. Will you or
will you not remain “cool, calm, and collected?” Or will you lose your cool? In fact, to test this

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very thing, in our Trainers’ Training (NSTT) we intentionally put participants in stressful
contexts to see how they do and what they need to maintain presence of mind under pressure. [If
that sounds like fun, then be sure to join us this year for NSTT in Hong Kong. See the notice at
the end of this article.]

Presence of mind under pressure is a powerful state. It is a state that allows you to relax, to
lighten up, and to enjoy an experience even when there are lots of things that could be used to
create a state of pressure. And isn’t that the best way to handle the pressures? And besides what
are the “pressures” and how do they arise? The pressures are mostly the expectations and
demands that a situation seems to produce but which are really mental states of mind— frames.
They could be belief frames, identity frames, expectation frames, etc. So it is you yourself who
creates (or accepts) these internal “pressures” and so you are the one pressurizing yourself with
the demands:
C I must do well. I must not make a mistake. I must impress people.
C I have to succeed and demonstrate my knowledge and skill.
C I cannot blow it. I cannot show a fallibility or say, “I don’t know.”

That’s what and how most people approach public speaking. And that is precisely how experts
in staying “cool, calm, and collected” do not think or feel. They do not put those kinds of
pressures on themselves. In fact, their focus is entirely on the audience, not themselves. They ae
un-self-conscious, not thinking about themselves (and so no self-consciousness) and certainly no
judgments about themselves and their performance.

And if you can get them aside and get them to talk about what they actually do think about these
things, they say things like:
C I’ll do the best I can, give the best I can and leave it at that (an optimizing attitude).
C If I make a mistake, or say something wrong or awkwardly, or blow it, I say so, use it as
an example, show my vulnerability and move on. No big deal.
C The training is not about me, it’s about people getting what they came for.

What a very different set of frames! Trusting themselves through preparation and practice, they
also know that they will be their best when they are real, authentic, human, and not putting on
airs about being something that they are not. They are real, they are down-to-earth, and this
enables them to be able to improvise in the moment. So they have another attitude or frame of
mind:
C Whatever happens, I will incorporate into the act and use it for a learning.
C If adversity or crisis arise, this provides a wonderful opportunity to show how these skills

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 apply in the most challenging of times.
C I have hopes and wants, but no demands of myself or of the presentation.
C It’s just a presentation, not an evaluation of myself as a person.
C The quality of my performance is always determined by my frames and my choices, not
by the conditions.

Presence of mind under pressure— interested? Why not join us for Platform Skills (the first 8
days of Trainers’ Training) and learn the skills of presenting and training as well as several
patterns like this one.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #26
June 4, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #1

GETTING CLEAR ON
WHAT AN EMOTION IS
Just this past week I presented the Seven Truths that we Speak to Emotions. In Neuro-
Semantics, we present this when we work with the Crucible Change Model, the Meta-Stating
Troubling Emotions pattern, the Emotional Mastery training, and various other trainings. These
ideas are also in numerous books, Unleashed, The Crucible, and Meta-States. Several suggested
that I present the material here on Neurons, hence this series.

Today talking about emotions and working with them have become much more acceptable and
welcomed especially given that a new field has arisen in the past two decades— Emotional
Intelligence or E.Q. Today we recognize that leadership is emotional and requires emotional
intelligence. Today we know that business is emotional and that managers, customer service,
even research and design requires emotional intelligence if a company is to produce products,
services, and information that fit for customers.

Today also we know that there is a feel of a semantic meaning within the human mind-body
system. What is the feel of meaning? It is an emotion. When you have an emotion, you are
experiencing what a meaning feels like. And that’s because of what an emotion is and how it
works.

Emotions— The Feel of Meaning

If we ask where and how does a person register the feel of his or her meanings, what is the
answer? The answer is that you and I feel “meaning” in our emotions. That’s due to the first
truth about emotions.

1) Emotions measure the map / territory difference; they are felt meanings.
To have an emotion you have to have an internal map of understanding something, expecting
something, believing something to be the case, and so on and then an experience in the world
where you use your skills to act on your inner mental map. What then happens results in an
emotion. If the balance between what you think (map) and what you experience (territory) is an
emotion. If the scale tips downward so that you are not getting what you want, expect,
understand, you experience negative emotions: upset, stress, frustration, irritation, annoyance,
fear, anger, loss, disappointment, etc. If the scale tips upward so that you are getting what you

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want, expect, and understand, you experience positive emotions: delight, joy, surprise,
contentment, excitement, passion, love, empathy, compassion, etc.

If the scale tips down, your experience feels like it is

violating your map. Your primary tool for navigating reality
(your inner mental models of understanding, knowledge,
belief, etc.) is called into question and so that is what
“hurts.” When we say that emotion or feeling hurts me, the
feeling doesn’t hurt. What’s been hurt is one’s sense of
reality— due to one’s map being made wrong or inadequate.
Hence the negative emotions. Something is wrong with our
sense of the world. And that’s why we don’t like it. That’s
why a negative emotion registers that inside us something is
wrong with the world. So like the brakes in a car, the
negative emotions inhibit our neurological responses and
moves us to “stop, look, and listen!” Something is not right.

What’s not right could be our map. What’s not right could be our skills in the experience. So we
can change our emotion by updating our map or up-skilling our skills. And in this way we can
change the emotion.

So the Neuro-Semantic definition of an emotion is this— an emotion is the difference between

one’s mental map of the world and one’s experiences of the world or territory.

2) Emotions are important as information signals.

Given that emotions indicate how our map is operating in the territory, emotions provide
“signals” or “information” about how we are doing. Are things going well according to our
ideas, understandings, beliefs, intentions, etc.? Or are things not going so well? Positive
emotions indicate the first, negative emotions the second. But this system is a relative one. It is
relative to the accuracy and adequacy of our mental maps. If our mental map of understanding
and believing is off, our emotions will not register that. It will only register whether our actions
in the world are actualizing our hopes and dreams.

This explains why and how emotions can be false, wrong, and completely off-base. If you expect
that you will never make a mistake, fail, or be embarrassed and then you do make a mistake. The
emotions you experience will only tell you that you are not fulfilling your mental map, they will
not tell that you have an erroneous map in the first place.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #27
June 10, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #2

OPERATIONALIZING OUR UNDERSTANDING

OF WHAT AN EMOTION IS
Last week I began this series on “Getting Clear on what an Emotion is.” I started by beginning
with the “7 Truths about Emotions” that we present in a good many of the Neuro-Semantic
Trainings. Here are two more for this week. These “truths” about emotions pick up on the
theme to continue grounding this subject so that we know what we’re talking about and in that
way we can create a good operational definition of an emotion. Once this is complete, then I’ll
present some skills for handling emotions from an NLP/Neuro-Semantic perspective for
emotional mastery.

3) Emotions are functions of the body as well as the mind.

When we talk about “emotions” in NLP, we distinguish between a feeling and an emotion.
When I first learned this in NLP, I found this distinction and insight very useful. Later when I
check numerous books on anatomy or books in psychology, I saw this distinction again and
again. An emotion is a combination of a feeling and a cognition.

First is the neurology which is the “feeling.” More technically, this is a kinesthetic distinction.
It could be inside kinesthetic (a proprioceptive sensation) or an outside kinesthetic.

Inside Outside
Relaxing— tense, tight Rough — smooth (texture)
Cold– warm – hot Cold – warm – hot (temperature)
Rate of heart beating Slimy – dry
Skin sweating – shivering Hard — soft
Eyes dilating – degree of Thick – thin
Rhythm of movement Wet – dry
Pulsating ... quiet

Then, once you have a “feeling,” add a cognition to it (which gives it some meaning) and then
you have an “emotion.” This explain why four of the most basic emotions are the same in terms
of the neurological sensations and differ not in terms of what’s occurring in our body, but from
the differences that we compute in the mind. The neurological state is called the “General
Arousal Syndrome.” It is what you may more commonly recognize as the Fight– Flight– Freeze

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Pattern.

At the level of neurologically and physiology, the four emotions begin with an arousal that causes
the heart to beat faster, the lungs to pump oxygen harder, the glands to release adrenalin, the
sweat glands to be activates, eyes to dilate, and so we are in general arousal sydrome. But what
“emotion” is this? If the trigger is undesired and unwelcomed— then it could be fear or anger. If
you think you can handle it, anger; if not, fear. If the trigger is desired, then excitement, and if
sexually desired, then lust. So four emotions— fear, anger, excitement, and lust all involve the
same “feelings” in the body. The distinguishing variable is that of the cognitive understand and
meaning. Hence again, number one definition: a relationship between mental map in one’s head
and one’s experience in the territory of the world.

“Emotions” are somatic responses of the mind-body system which also explains why our
emotions are susceptible to so many of the physical factors in our lives such as sleep, eating,
exercising, health, illness, etc. What and how you have been eating influences emotions as a
contributing factor, so does your sleep habits, your exercise patterns, etc.

The “motion” part of an e-motion is the action of the motor cortex sending a message when we
experience an emotion to move–out from where we are to some other place. Hence the original
word, “ex (out) motion.” Emotions move us to move out from where we are. They give us the
somatic boast of energy to move.

Where do emotions come from and what are they? As e(x)motions, they are inner urges,
activated by the motor cortex, moving us out from where we are. Neurologically, an emotion is
“an action tendency” generated by the information in our context that activates our motor cortex
and other brain structures (amygdala, thalamus, hypothalamus, adrenal gland, etc.).
Understanding emotions in this way enables us to hold the tension between several realizations
that are all simultaneously true.

As a neurological process, an emotions is not a thing, it is not solid and static. It is an activity
going on within our mind-body system and so produces it each moment as energies move us
from where we are at to another place.

4) Emotions are just emotions, not commands from heaven or our destiny.
In the end, however, emotions are just emotions. As the difference that we register in our body
(soma, hence somatically) between our map of the world and our experience of the world, the
emotion is just the motion generated in the body by the feeling of our meanings. As such
emotions are secondary and derivative of— mind-and-body. This makes them symptoms of the
functioning of our mind-and-body. And that leads to the next understanding.

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If “emotions” move us out from where we are because of the cognitive meaning within them so
that they give us information about what fits or does not fit our sense of reality, then they are
information, movement, energy, somatizing of meaning, but they are not commands from
heaven. They are not orders about what to do. They do not set our destiny. They are just
emotions— the symptoms of our mind-body in action. Emotions are just emotions and so if we
treat them as mind-body symptoms then we can effectively discover how we create them in our
mind-body system. Until the next Meta Reflection — to your highest and best!

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #28
June 17, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #3

EMOTIONS— RIGHT AND RELATIVE

In the past two articles, I have identified five of the seven truths about emotions, and with this
one the last two truths. As a kinesthetic sensation enriched by meaning (cognitively) an emotion
exercises influence on us to get us to move (motion) out (ex) from where we are. As a
difference between map-and-territory, these mind-body systemic experiences create energy,
motivation, and vitality within us. They are therefore important, but not as ultimate truth, but as
relative truth indicating what meanings our bodies are attempting to actualize. As somatic
registering of our meanings— they indicate the meanings that we are feeling.

5) Emotions are always right — relatively and conditionally to the map–territory situation.
Here is the paradox, while fully fallible (definition– “liable to error”) emotions are always right.
How is that? They are right to the maps out of which they come and they are right in the context
and situation that they are reflecting. That’s why we should pay attention to them without falling
into the falsehood of “obeying” them. They do provide information, although that information
may be erroneous. And what this means is fabulous for human beings.

What this means is that there are no “bad” emotions. Write that down. There are no bad
emotions. The judgment of “bad” doesn’t apply to this mind-body function, an emotion is just an
emotion. It arises as a symptom of how you are thinking in relation to your expectations and
skills. They are not indicators of external reality. Instead they indicate the relationship between
our map and our experience of the territory. In this, they are completely fallible and not an
infallible voice or authority. Our emotions can be very wrong and erroneous to the outside
world, a reflection of distorted thinking and fallacious reasoning.

6) Emotions can be responded to in a variety of ways.

When it comes to emotions, you and I can respond to them in a wide range of ways. We can
listen to them, suppress them, ignore their message, obey them, release them, take them into
consideration, etc. Once we feel an emotion we can be chose how we will respond, listen to
them, ignore them, or deal with them later. So, how do you want to respond when you feel any
given emotion?

The range of your choices and your flexibility of response describes your repertoire of skills in

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responding to your emotions. So as you develop more and more ways of responding to your
emotions, you’ll have a sense of more choice and more control in your life. And as you do this,
be sure to quality control your emotions.

What does it mean to quality control? It means to check to see that the emotion itself, how you
are experiencing it, how you are creating it, what it is registering, and so on is useful for you,
helpful, empowering, and enhancing. After all, if emotions are fallible, functions of thinking,
meaning-making, and experiencing the territory, then emotions need to be quality controlled for
ecology and realism.

So, just because we feel something doesn’t demand that you act on it. Emotions can be distorted
and even perverted. What you feel may not be real. You may be feeling an “old” emotion, a
dated emotion, an imaginary emotion, and so on. So check it out before you just react! By
quality controlling your emotions, you will discover that you have many more ways of
responding to an emotion and that ultimately, you have that choice.

7) Emotions always habituate and become unconscious moods and attitudes.

When an emotion habituates, we live in it and lose awareness of it as an emotion. Then the
emotion becomes something else, it becomes a mood. It becomes an attitude. It becomes a
generalized mind-set or disposition and when this happens it doesn’t so much feel like an
emotion. As it is repeated and habitualized, it feels so familiar and so comfortable, that you will
experience it as “the way things are,” “what’s real,” and “life as you know it.”

Summary
Here then in summary are the 7 truths we speak about emotions in Neuro-Semantics. These are
not the only “truths” but central to being able to create and experience a healthy emotional
intelligence and emotional mastery.

1) Emotions measure the map / territory difference; they are felt meanings.
2) Emotions are important as information signals.
3) Emotions are functions of the body as well as the mind.
4) Emotions are just emotions, not commands from heaven or our destiny.
5) Emotions are always right — relatively and conditionally to the map–territory situation.
6) Emotions can be responded to in a variety of ways.
7) Emotions always habituate and become unconscious moods and attitudes.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #29
June 24, 2013

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 THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL

NEURO-SEMANTIC CONFERENCE

We have just now completed the Neuro-Semantic Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and
what an experience! As I think about trying to convey the excitement, the learnings, the
connections, the building of community, I do not have words for it. Externally, here are some of
the facts of what happened this past weekend:
C 150 people attended
C They came from 20 countries and the team in Kuala Lumpur created a Flag Wall of the 20
nations
C 18 workshops on the theme of Coaching Excellence
C 6 moving Keynote Presentations and when I say moving, I think we hit a new benchmark
on inspiration!
C Hundred and perhaps thousands of pictures and videos were taken — which you can find
on Facebook and LinkedIn, and who knows where else on the internet. Check out the
International Society of Neuro-Semantics on Facebook to get an idea of the hundreds and
thousands of pictures.

The Venue: We were in a 5-star hotel in the heart of Shah Alam— the Grand BlueWave Shah
Alam and Dr. Md Taib Mat and the MTM Consultants was our sponsor for the event and I
cannot say enough good things about the sponsorship, the dedication and work that Taib and his
team put into making this Conference a big success! They sequenced all of the workshops in the
three rooms, the ballroom on the main floor and two workshop rooms on the second floor. They
provided a very extensive lunch so that everybody could eat together and socialize for the hour-
and-a-half for lunch. This was provided for every participants each day of the conference. They
also organized things so that each workshop was video-taped (which we will be talking about
when those video-tapes as DVDs are made available), and the certificates, the Neuro-Semantic
Shirts and coffee cups, and on and on.

Now within all of that set up and preparation, we had many fabulous workshops from presenters
from literally all over this planet. I’m sure there are pictures on Facebook and other places of the
flag wall of the 20 countries represented. We also had six keynotes, I had the privilege of
leading out and speaking about the theme of Actualizing which comes from the Psychology of
Self-Actualization. Then there were very moving keynotes from Mandy Chai and Colin Cox and
very practical, down to earth keynotes from Lene Fjellheim and Dr. Md Taib Mat although they
were simultaneously inspiring and uplifting.

The participants who attended expanded the full range. They ranged from brand new to NLP
and Neuro-Semantics— virgins to this whole field to those who are Practitioners to Master
Practitioners, and to Trainers. We also had many Licensed Meta-Coaches there from many

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countries. And I talked with many of the participants who really, really appreciated the fact that
their Trainers informed them about the Conference— that this was a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to me the Who’s Who in Neuro-Semantics and NLP in their own country. Many
spoke about that with tears in their eyes about the wonderful and unique opportunity.

The Workshops for the most part were really wonderful. The thematic focus throughout was
the use of the Meaning–Performance Axes which leads to the Self-Actualization Quadrants and I
heard presenters use and expand and develop those models in ways that enriched my knowledge
of them! And John Sands and Shane Stewart took the Axes of Change model to a new level and
application. When the videos come out, by all means get their workshop on that.

Leadership Summit: Prior to the Conference, the Neuro-Semantic Leadership Team met for
3 days to address various issues and to plan for the future of Neuro-Semantics. While we
communicate regularly among ourselves, it is also critically important to meet face to face to
renew our relationships and friendships and in doing that this time, we all felt that we moved
much, much closer to being a functional team rather than just a working group. After all, when
we gather we have to practice the very things that we teach, train, and coach— communication,
authenticity, fierce conversations, conflict resolution, etc. And for those on the exclusive
egroups of the Meta-Coaches and Trainers, more will be coming from the Leadership Team in
the next few weeks.

At the end of the Conference, we inducted Dr. Md Taib Mat into the Leadership Team. He is
the first person on the team from Malaysia or this part of the world, the first Moslem Neuro-
Semantic Trainer and Meta-Coach on the team and so we are very proud of Taib as a man of
vision and integrity and one who will very well represent this part of the planet.

PCMC Assessment: During the days and nights of the Conference, I also had the opportunity
along with most of the Leadership Team to benchmark three people who reached PCMC Status
(Professional Certified Meta-Coach) — Femke Stuut, Mandy Chai, and Silvia Serna. A great big
Congratulations for them! That brings the number of Meta-Coaches with PCMC level to 21.
And when you see a PCMC person coach — it is typically a very moving experience. I felt
moved by all three and with each I experienced one of those momentary “peak experiences” just
watching it!

The next Conference — the Third International Neuro-Semantic Conference will be in Hong
Kong in 2015 and Mandy Chai is the sponsor and leader for that Conference. For that one we
have set our goal to double the attendance again, and so anticipate 300 for that Conference.
Mark your calendar — June 2015 Hong Kong.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #30
July 1, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #4

WHEN AN EMOTION
IS NOT A REAL EMOTION

Masquerading around our lives are pseudo-emotions. Seducing us to call them “emotions,” to
think of them as real emotions, and to respond to them as if they were actually “emotions,” these
masquerading false-emotions plague our lives and those of our loved ones. And what makes
them so tricky and so difficult to catch is that you and I can create them in a moment, in a
nanosecond.

Now it is true that with most of these pseudo-emotions, there is an actual emotion lurking
somewhere within. Yet that’s the problem, while there is a real emotion present, it is covered-up
and ignored, and the pseudo-emotion is given prominence. Now we have two problems. First,
we don’t know or are unaware of the real emotion and we are over-invested and confused by the
presence of the pseudo-emotion, mistakenly thinking that it is the actual emotion.

Now to create one of these pseudo-emotions in a mere moment of time, all you have to do is to
start a sentence with the words, “I feel . . .” Then to complete the deception, just add a
judgment.
“I feel put off by her.”
“I feel offended by his foul mouth.”
“I feel low self-esteem.”
“I feel mediocre.”
“I feel defeated by all this talk of what we cannot do.”
“I feel stupid when he takes-over in the meeting when I am talking.”
“I feel that you don’t listen to me.”

And the list goes on and on and on. I feel defeated, like a failure, ugly, beautiful, stupid, like a
winner, triumphant, inadequate, dominated, cheated, silly, like a kid, etc. Yes these are pseudo-
emotions and, as pseudo-emotions, they deceive you into thinking you are experiencing or
working with an actual emotion when you are not. In this format, you have made a judgment or
evaluation and framed it with the words “I feel . . .” but you have not identified an emotion or a
feeling. You have only shared a judgment.

Now there probably is a real “emotion” down underneath the judgment. When you say
something like: “I feel judged.” “I feel mediocre.” “I feel put down.” my guess is that you are

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feeling the emotion of frustration or anger. Or it could be fear or stress. There will be some
negative emotion that reflects something about your world that isn’t working well. But instead
of identifying the emotion and getting in touch with the feeling, you have judged the experience
and then deceived yourself thinking that it is an emotion when it is not.

In a video-tape that we made of expert coaching, Graham Richardson, coaching in Sydney at the
ACMC training in 2011, he commented “So now you’re getting real.” And then he asked, “How
does that feel?” His client said, “Real.”

Graham immediately recognized that was a pseudo-emotion and so commented: “Yeah. But how
does it feel?” His client then said, “Pretty good.” So Graham explored, “And how does that
feel? I need a feeling.” The client then said, “I feel very centered.”

At those words, Graham confronted him directly, “That’s not a feeling.” Real— Pretty good—
Centered — three attempts at identifying a real emotion and still the client had expressed no
actual emotion! That elicited a long ten second pause ... At which time, the client said, “It’s the
feeling in my chest.... (holding hand on chest).” To that Graham said, “Yes! What is that
feeling?”

Another pause, this time for three seconds, “... It’s the feeling of being unstoppable if I choose
to.” Another pseudo-emotion. Graham commented; “Yeah, not a feeling.” ... and then asked,
“Are you connected to your feelings?” At which point the client acknowledge, “I push them
down.”

Consider that coaching interchange: the client used four words in a row, quickly, at first and then
more and more slowly as he tried to identify his emotions, but in the final analysis, he was not
able to identify his actual emotions, just his judgments: real— pretty good— centered
—unstoppable. For some people, maybe for the majority, identifying, detecting, and being aware
of what we actually feel is a tremendous challenge.

So many, many years before “Emotional Intelligence” was popular, NLP dealt with this as we
talked about emotional states. What state are you in? Basic NLP introduced the idea of
intelligently handling our emotions by talking about eliciting states, detecting states, anchoring
states, shifting states, working with our states, and transforming our states. And this became
even more developed with the discovery of the Meta-States Model because to understand a meta-
state, you have to understand states.

When is an emotion not a real emotion? When we present abstract ideas and evaluations about
ourselves and our world and do so using the linguistic template, “I feel ...” Don’t be fooled, just
because someone starts a sentence with, “I feel...” does not mean that they are talking about their
emotions. Keep asking, check to see where they feel that in their body. If they cannot point to
where they feel that in their body, it is probably not a real emotion.

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Denis Bridoux wrote a basic NLP book on Seven Steps to Emotional Intelligence. In Neuro-
Semantics we have a 3-day training on Emotional Mastery and it remains a cornerstone of what
we do in the APG Workshop (Accessing Personal Genius).

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #31
July 8, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #5

EMOTIONAL CONTINUA

Having provided an operational definition and description of what an “emotion” is (#1-#3) and
that no every emotion is a real emotion (#4), I now want to present another perspective for
thinking about emotions— one that will assist in experiencing more emotional mastery.

The perspective is to view any given emotion on a continuum. If you think about your emotions
in terms of a continuum, you can get a fuller and richer view of your emotions. If you position
any given emotion (the basic emotions) on a continuum, you thereby make it possible to begin to
identify the other emotions that cluster around that one. This will enable you to see the
relationship between similar emotions and that will lead you to see how one emotion can shade
or evolve into another emotion.

As an example, think about anger and the emotions similar to anger, Displeasure Scale
the emotions that cluster around anger. I first discovered the value of
thinking about emotions in terms of a continuum many years ago Violence
when I took a contract with the Department of Corrections in the State Out-raged
of Colorado. My job was to work with men who were leaving one of Rage
the Federal Penitentiaries in the state and to enable them to develop Wrath
some anger control. A year or two later I took another contract on the Fury
Ire
same subject, but the second group was composed of a bunch of boys,
ages from 14 to 18, who were in a lock-up-situation for being
Anger
convicted of a violent crime.
Indignation
What I stumbled onto in engaging the two groups for anger control Offended
was to ask the men and the boys about the emotions they experienced Stress
before and after they experienced “anger.” Frustration
Before you get angry, what are you feeling? Agitated
What would you call that feeling or emotion? Upset
When anger stops being anger, what is it? What do you then Vexed
call it? Irked
Dislike
Annoyed
That led to a whole list of anger words: rage, wrath, fury, ire,
Bothered
indignation, offended, stress, frustration, agitated, upset, vexed, irked, Peeved
dislike, annoyed, bothered, peeved, etc. Then, working with the men

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and boys about this list of words, I put them into a scale— an Anger Scale or as I later labeled it:
A Displeasure Scale. I did that because displeasure is the message of anger— displeasure with
something that’s not going the way we want it to go.

There are many words for describing kinds and intensities of displeasure:
Anger: “Anger” is the general term for the emotional reaction of displeasure, typically
strong displeasure. Anger refers to a sense of threat to your person and values. You can
experience rational and irrational anger, in-controlled anger or out-of-controlled anger,
useful verses unuseful anger; current and appropriate anger and old dated angers. Anger
does not refer to any outward expressions, only to the feeling of threat and desire to
aggress.

Prior to the emotion of anger, we experience the levels and intensities of displeasure as:
Upset: a state a disorder, confusion, disturbed, decomposed, a disorder that may range
from minor to major.
Annoy: feeling disturbed or irritated, something wearing on the nerves.
Vex: more provocation than just annoyed, feeling perplexity and anxiety.
Irk: having difficultly in enduring & resulting weariness or impatience of spirit.
Bothered: feeling bewildered, upset, interference with peace of mind.
Peeved: irritation, mild mood shift to resentful, holding a grudge.
Peevish: querulous in temperament, fretful, contrary, marked by ill temper

When anger grows in intensity, then we have:

Ire: great intensity and exhibition in words and deeds.
Fury: even more violence and connotes a degree of temporary madness.
Indignation: righteous anger at a commonly agreed upon unfairness, injustice, or
meanness.
Wrath: either rage or indignation and suggests a strong desire to avenge or punish.
Rage (anger, sometimes including violent actions.

The Displeasure Scale — of Anger

When it comes to the emotions of displeasure, there is a wide range of descriptive terms we can
use to sort and separate levels, intensities, and kinds of displeasure. By developing the ability to
distinguish these kinds of negative anger emotions saves the emotional energy of true anger for
those events and situations that truly violate our values and call for a strong emotional response.

There’s a verse in the Bible that says, "Be angry and sin not . . ." (Eph. 4:26). Here is some
ancient wisdom about properly owning, using, and registering anger in a way that does not use it
to violate another person or even yourself. The verse also says, "Neither let the sun go down on
your anger . . ." That describes the need for releasing anger so that it is not stored up and turned
into "cold" anger (e.g., malice, ill-will, resentment, bitterness).

Construct an Emotional Constellation for Emotional Awareness

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This works with lots of other emotions. Because emotions occur along a range and have varying
degrees of intensity, we can gauge an emotion’s intensity on a scale and distinguish emotions at
different levels of significance.
C What is the range of the emotion and on what scale?
C When is the emotion more intense, less intense?
C What is it? What do you call it?

These questions and distinctions allow us to create emotional scales and distinguish emotions at
different degrees. This means that there are typically a constellation of emotions around an area
of emotionality. And as we did this with the Dislike Scale, we can do it with other emotions.
How?
1) Choose an emotion.
2) Make a list of similar emotions, words that indicate a closely related emotion.
3) Invent a continuum to put the emotions on.
4) Put the various emotions along the range of emotions from least to most intense.

Here are some more examples:

Fear Sadness Joy Guilt / Wrongness

* Terror * Depression * Ecstasy * Overly conscientious
* Panic * Bitter, victim * Happiness * Guiltiness
* Paranoia * Emptiness * Delight * Self-betrayal
* Fear *Grief-stricken * Mirthful * Pained Conscience
* * Grief * Joy * Guilt
* Worry *Sadness * Playful * Shame
* Apprehension * Loss, miserable * * Embarrassment
* Stress * * Pleasant * Remorse
* Upset * * Content * Disappointed
* Out of sorts * Hurt * * Feeling bad
Avoidance

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #32
July 15, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #6
C What is an Emotions (#1, 2 & 3)
C Pseudo-Emotions (#4)
C Emotional Continua (#5)

EMOTIONAL TOLERANCE
FOR ACCEPTING ALL EMOTIONS
Question: What is the one big emotion that everyone wants to experience and feel? Of all
emotions, which one is the emotion most desirable? If there’s any common response to these
questions or the question about what do you really want, at least in American culture, it is “I just
want to be happy.” Happiness, it seems is what everybody wants. And it certainly seems that
this is what is constantly sold on the internet, on television, in movies, and in all forms of social
marketing these days. It is not only sold as the great prize, happiness is also presented as the
great panacea for life’s problems. As a result it is common for people to think, “If only I was
happy, everything would be okay.” And so lots of people live their lives searching for happiness.

Yet as wise ones over the ages have repeatedly noted, there’s a paradox in pursuing happiness:
Pursue happiness directly and happiness will evade you. Conversely, when you stop chasing
happiness and focus on doing something that it engages you fully, makes a contribution to others,
and that you find meaningful, then happiness will be yours.

Beyond that “happiness paradox,” there are several other problems with focusing on happiness.
It is mis-directed for several reasons. One problem that arises from over-loading “happiness” as
the most important emotion and the only one worth pursuing is that it tempts us to discount all of
the other emotions. Then we not only stop caring about the other emotions, we dislike them and
may even try to avoid them.

Yet if we are to be emotionally intelligent and whole, we need all of the emotions. This also
includes the negative ones as well as the positive ones. We need them all in order to be whole.
Without the capacity to experience the full range of human emotions—we cannot be fully alive
and able to effectively handle the challenges of life’s experiences.

The so-called “negative” emotions are important for us to know when to “stop, look, and listen”
for what may be going wrong with either our map or our experience and make needed changes.
When there’s a loss of something important in life, it is normal and natural to feel sad. Sadness
helps you to recognize the value of the loss. It tenderizes your heart. It enables you to recognizes

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what’s precious in life. And it motivates you to do the “grief work” and then replace what you
have lost.

Anger is important to recognize a violation of your values. The subsequent energy gives you the
backbone to stand up for yourself and fight for your values. Without that ability you would not
stand up for yourself. You would be a wimp. Others would learn to walk over you. Fear is
important to recognize a danger or threat to you and your values. Of course, all of these
emotions, as symptoms of your mental map-making and understanding, can be distorted and
erroneous. They are the feel of your meanings and so the meanings need to be checked for
accuracy and usefulness.

Over-loading “happiness” as the most important emotions tends to reduce our ability to tolerate
the other emotions. And without emotional tolerance we tend to reject our emotions, avoid
them, defend against them, deny them, and use all kinds of defense mechanisms and this, of
course, in the long term creates a blindness to our emotions. Only wanting happiness will lead
you to suppress other aspects of your experience.

Emotional tolerance enables us to work through the experiences of life without getting stuck by
hating, resisting, and fighting a symptom— a particular emotion that we dislike. The fact of life
is that when we’re engaged in any challenging project, there will be set-backs, disappointments,
moments of anxiety and stress, and therefore the need for patience and persistence, etc. And if a
person does not have the emotional tolerance and acceptance of such emotional states, then that
person can become stopped or blocked at those very points.

Such “negative” emotions are often the very emotions we try to stop, block, avoid, or escape
through various dysfunctional behaviors. That is, what seems like a dysfunctional behavior—
over-eating, smoking, getting drunk, using drugs, procrastinating, ADD, etc. are actually serving
a purpose. That purpose may be to dampen our feelings of loneliness, avoiding rejection,
calming our nervousness, or calming ourselves down when feeling socially distressed. These
“secondary gains” for many of the behaviors are what causes another level of trouble. They
develop as pseudo-solutions for handling emotions.

The real solution is simple— accept an emotion as an emotion, tolerate it as just tension in the
body, explore the meanings creating the emotion in the first place, and then find more effective
ways to deal with the emotion. The key to changing any such self-destructive behavior is to be
willing to allow or tolerate the feelings that the behaviors are blocking. So if you are feeling
tension from thoughts of being inadequate, thoughts of being abandoned or rejected, distressed
by thoughts of being mortal, being different, etc., then allow yourself to simply feel the tension
and explore the meanings generating the tension begins the freeing. Your emotions gives you
energy for life and make up your engine for navigating life’s journey—so welcome them,
embrace them, tolerate them, and use them as signals about your meanings.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #33
July 22, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #7
C What is an Emotions (#1, 2 & 3)
C Pseudo-Emotions (#4)
C Emotional Continua (#5)
C Emotional Tolerance (#6)
C Distorted Amplified Emotions (#7)

WHEN EMOTIONS
GET DISTORTED AND AMPLIFIED
This may be controversial, well, in fact, I’m sure it will be controversial. Yet given the
exaggerated coverage of Murder Trial of George Zimerman by the US media, I thought I’d use it
to write about emotions and emotional mastery.

The George Zimerman case has been in the news here in the USA for many months and in the
past month has absolutely dominated the news. CNN covered it as if there was no another thing
happening on the planet. They devoted hours and hours to it every day especially during the
three week trial that finally occurred in Florida. Then last week, after all the evidence was
presented, the jury of 6 women deliberated 16 hours and found him “not guilty.” Normally that
would be the end of things. But in this case, it has not ended.

Now it has been fascinating to listen to the pros and cons of the actual evidence that Mr.
Zimerman, a neighborhood watchman who reported a young man acting suspicious, and who
followed him to see what he was doing, and then there was a four minute hiatus and then
suddenly there was a confrontation, of which Zimerman got the worse. A witness reported him
on the ground and the other person on top and beating him (which accorded to the injuries that he
came away with); later he testified that he head was being slammed against the concrete sidewalk
(which his injuries also indicated), and fearing that he would go unconscious and so fearing for
his life, he shot the young man, Trayvon Martin, and the single shot just so happened to deliver a
fatal blow so that he ended up dead.

Why then is the situation not over? My opinion is that it is mostly because of the media and in
particular, how the media framed it. While Zimerman is Hispanic and Martin was Black, the
media (esp. NBC) presented it as a racial white-on-black crime. The media also presented it as
“racial profiling” which all the evidence has failed to substantiate. Then there are all the people
emotionalizing the situation and that’s what I want to address.

Apart from what happened that rainy night in early 2012, and all of the emotions that naturally
arise when there’s that kind of conflict and fight and death, there have been lots of “playing on

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emotions” and “amplifying emotions” to make a whole lot more of the situation than is
warranted. About emotions—it is very sad that any young man of 17 years of age was killed.
That’s a big loss to his parents, family, and friends. And when there is that kind of tragic loss,
there will be sadness and grief.

Other emotions: When a community suffers a crime spree and those discovered were young men,
it makes sense that someone commissioned as a neighborhood watchman would be on the alert
and could easily over-react. It also makes sense that a young man who thinks he is being
followed by someone in authority might feel under threat and, as it is with young men, one might
be quick to get into an altercation that might degenerate into a fist fight and brawl and then
something worse might happened. As it did in this case. These fight-flight emotions are human
emotions and normal, and unless managed well, can be dangerous.

Is it really any surprise about the emotions evoked given such events on a dark rainy wintery
night? Fear, anger, apprehension, surprise, etc. All of that is normal enough and strong enough
to evoke strong reactions. What’s made it much worse is the way others have framed things that
amplify the emotions, play off the emotions, and exaggerate the emotions. How have they done
that? By giving too much meaning and distorted meaning to the events. Some immediately
made it about “race.” NBC news actually altered the 911 call from Zimerman and distorted it in
such a way as to give the impression that he was “racially profiling” Martin. Later they
acknowledged the distortion, and apologized, but by then it was too late. The damage had been
done. Emotions of anger, rage, outrage, injustice, etc. were now in play and arousing people to
watch “justice” and revenge.

Even the President got involved and made statements that “fan the fire” of the racial conflict and
hatred saying such things as, “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon” and “35 years ago I
would have been Trayvon.” That kind of personalizing, which maybe he wanted people to
understand the Black experience, tended to make things worse— much worse. Instead of
calming the situation and being a leader to the whole nation, he promoted one side of a local
issue. For me, this showed his incompetence as a leader. He was not rising above it and
providing a unifying perspective.

What has been and continues to amplify and distort the emotions of thousands of people about
this situation is the either/or thinking, the exaggeration, the tunnel-vision perspectives, and the
jumping to conclusions. These cognitive distortions inevitably distort the meaning that we give
to things and will amplify emotions.

If you are reading any of the news about this, you will read that some people have taken a tunnel
vision view about the “stand your ground” law in Florida. Interesting enough, though, that law
was never brought into the trial and had nothing to do with the verdict. But now there are rallies
in dozens of cities wanting to get rid of those laws.

Another tunnel vision point of view is that of “profiling.” To listen to some people, profiling is
the worst evil on the planet. But if there a crime spree and those involved are consistently young

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men, then seeing a young man sauntering along on a rainy night “acting suspicious” is precisely
what a watchman would and should look out for. It’s a matter of probability. Someone not
walking fast when it’s rainy and who doesn’t stay on the sidewalk, and who looks like he’s
looking into windows — that’s a curious thing that should be checked into, shouldn’t it? Why
would someone ignore that sign? That has nothing to do with race, that’s about behavior. And
behavior is precisely what we can profile.

Now about “race,” it has been noted scores and scores of time that 93% of all shootings and
deaths of young black men in the USA is by young black men. It’s called black-on-black crime
and apparently Chicago is the nation’s worst city for this. And according to one news report that
I saw, during the trial of Zimerman, 8 young (16 to 19 year old black youth) were shot in Chicago
and not one of them got any national attention. Why is that? Why does the media seem to think
that the only “news worthy” news is when it is white on black or hispanic on black or something
other mixture? What’s with that? And why do those who are supposedly the leaders in the
Black community not raising their voices about that?

Here is a situation where emotions have raged and become exaggerated and have led to all kinds
of additional hurtful actions. And why? The meaning given to the events. The events have been
semantically over-loaded so as to agitate, anger, frustrate, and elicit more hate, especially racial
hatred.

And what about emotional mastery? What’s needed to bring some emotional calmness, respect,
thoughtfulness, etc. into the situation? Better meanings.
First we need to stop jumping to conclusions based on inadequate information. We need
to calmly and patiently keep asking for the facts of the case and not assume guilt or
injustice or whatever until the facts are in.

Second, we need to not interpret one instance between two individuals as representative
of whole groups of people. That kind of over-generalizing leads to stereotyping and
abstracting that semantically over-loads the situation.

Third, we need to keep contextualizing the when, where, who, what, etc. facts of the case
so that we don’t take it out of context and distort the meaning. Keeping our emotional
cool is challenging enough. Keeping it when there’s been a tragic loss of life is even
more challenging. But it can be done. We can express our sympathy and concern to
those who have suffered loss and we can withhold judgment and blame from others until
we get the facts. And when in the course of things, a selected jury has made a decision,
we can accept it because we live in a land that’s based on the law, not enraged emotions.

What makes democracy wonderful is not that we have to agree everything that happens, we do
not. But we do need to be respectful of each other and as calmly and respectfully as possible ask
tough questions without being insulting. If we could do that, if we could demonstrate that level
of emotional mastery— we could solve the real problems and avoid creating unnecessary ones.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #34
July 29, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #7
C What is an Emotions (#1, 2 & 3)
C Pseudo-Emotions (#4)
C Emotional Continua (#5)
C Emotional Tolerance (#6)

DON’T JUST FEEL,

DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE FEELING
If an emotion is the difference between map and territory, between how you have mentally
mapped something in terms of your understandings, beliefs, representations, etc. and how you
then experience some event, person, or interaction in the world— then as noted before in this
series, your emotions are always right. That is, they are right to the map that you’re using and
the skills that you exercise in the territory of the world. But this right does not mean that they are
useful, effective, or healthy. They are just right to how you created them. They can often be
very wrong to the context and so inappropriate, unuseful, and even interfering and sabotaging.

No wonder then that we have to be careful and intelligent about how we relate to our emotions.
We have to understand them— what they are, what they are not, their proper use, their improper
use, etc.

Overall, a good way to start is to think of your emotions as signals of the map/ territory
difference. And if they are signals, then they signal you to Stop, Look, Listen when a negative
emotion is activated. That’s because a negative emotion means that something is wrong in your
world as you have constructed it. So to positively use your negative emotions, use the signal to
slow down, check things out, and reflect on how you have created that emotion, what it means,
and what you should or should not do about it.

Like the gauge on your dashboard, the negative signals are there for a positive use. They tell you
when something needs to be attended too—you need gas, oil, engine check, something. In The
Emotional Hostage (1985) Leslie Cameron-Bandler and Michael Lebeau made a similar point,
“Unpleasant emotions are worth having if they are used well.” And if used well, then it means
understand what the negative emotion is saying:
“There is little point in regretting something you have done unless that feeling of regret
helps you change your future behavior. There is little point in feeling guilty unless your
feeling of guilt leads to a renewal of will and intention to fulfill your standards in the
future. There is little point in feeling frustrated unless that feeling of frustration propels

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 you toward creative efforts to attain your desired outcome. The functional attribute of an
unpleasant emotion specifies what you need to do to respond appropriately to that
emotion.” (p. 38)

It is the function of emotions to get you to respond appropriately. Anger gets you to stand up and
fight for something; fear gets you to move back away from a danger or threat or approach with
caution and resources. Sadness enables you to acknowledge value and move you to replace what
you have lost. Every emotion exist to fulfill a function that enables us to be healthier and more
effective. And that why, positive or negative, the emotion is valuable and designed to energize
you to take effective action.

Yet if you feel emotions, but you do not respond to them and from them, then you are not putting
the signal, the message, and the energy of your emotions to good use. To put this more bluntly:
The purpose of your emotions is not for you to just feel that emotion! The purpose of the
emotion and the feelings it generates is so that you do something about it! So, yes, feel it,
embrace it, be with it— and use the energy it generated to act, to do something about it!
There is little point in feeling the emotion unless that feeling helps you change your
behavior and alter your thinking.
There is little value in merely feeling the feeling and not understanding how your system
created it in the context of your life.

This realization raises several questions for all of us:

What are you going to do now that you have that feeling?
Given that feeling will you check out and adjust your mental map?
Maybe that feeling should get you to work on your skills so that what you know, you can
do with competence and grace?
Are perhaps what you need to do is to qualify the expression of the emotion.

As signals, emotions come to us as ongoing feedback about what’s going on with you as you
move through the world using your skills to actualize your mental map. If you don’t realize that
your emotions are your creations, then moving through life will seem like being a back seat
passenger of forces that are happening to you without your understanding or agreement. You
will then see and feel like a victim to your emotions. Once, however, you realize and take
ownership of the fact that your emotions are your creations you move from the back seat to the
driver’s seat. You shift from going along for an emotional ride to being the manager of your
emotions.

As energy to act, your emotions give you a boost for action. The emotion itself is not the action,
just feeling the emotion does not demand or require that you do something. Yet once you feel
the emotion, now you are in a position to decide what you are going to do about it. Will you just
observe, notice, and understand? Will you express the emotion by informing others about what
you are feeling? Will you act it out in a certain way? If so, to what purpose? What’s your
outcome in acting on the emotion? What do you seek to achieve?

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #35
August 5, 2013
Emotional Mastery Series #8

SELF-ACTUALIZATION
AND EMOTIONS
If you really want to master your emotions—self-actualize. That is, make real (actualize) your
best version of you so that you become as Carl Rogers said a “fully functioning person” and as
Abraham Maslow said you access your “full humanness.” And if you do this, what will you feel?
How will you handle your emotions? What will be different about your emotional life?

Well, first and foremost, you will have lots of energetic vitality. By gratifying your basic needs
truly (and not falsely or through distortions) and adequately (sufficiently, not perfectly or one-
hundred percent), those driving impulses (“needs” or requirements for living) will be gratified
and “go away” thereby allowing the next level of drives to emerge. And after the levels of basic
needs the self-actualization needs emerge. And when these are the inner driving impulses of
your life—then you will be living passionately with a strong sense of purpose, inner value, and
joy.

In self-actualizing you will be giving accurate meanings to your basic and higher needs which
will enable you to truly and adequately gratify your inner impulses and drives. As you then learn
effective and adequate coping skills, you will satisfy those needs which, in turn, will release your
energy and vitality. That’s the design of your “needs” as well as the sign that you have gratified
them truly and adequately.

The vitality that you will be feeling will be an energy to live fully, to be your best self, and to
strive to contribute and make a difference. That’s what “self-actualization” means and if I
belabor this, it is because of the myth that connects it to selfishness. The truth is that self-
actualization is not about you, it is through you, but paradoxically not about you. This vitality
involves experiencing those moments that Maslow called “peak experiences.” These are those
little moments that happen to everyone (or nearly so) in which, for that moment, you sense that
“life is good, it is precious, it is sacred.” And in that moment, you are again “in love with life”
and are “surprised by joy” (C.S. Lewis) and are able to appreciate freshly as if for the first time,
again.

All of this is one side of the self-actualizing emotional life. There is another. The other involves
being able to experience your emotions— all of them, the negative ones as well as the positive
ones— fully and accurately. And as you do so, you lose your fear of any of these emotions.

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After all, they are just emotions— just the somatic or bodily experience of the meanings being
activated in your mind-body system. And now you can use the negative emotions for their best
value— to stop, look, and listen and see where you need to make some life adjustments.

Now as a self-actualizer, you can much more effectively and efficiently use your fear, anger,
sadness, stress, frustration, vulnerability, tenderness, etc. to be more fully alive and more fully
human. Now you can allow yourself to fully experience the emotions without being
overwhelmed by them or think that you are going to “lose control.”

By self-actualizing, what you will feel will be more appropriate to the contexts and situations of
your life. Here’s what Abraham Maslow said about people actualizing (making real) their inner
drives and integrating what could be dichotomies. This came after his study of the fully human
self-actualizing subjects that he studied:
“It seemed to me that ... it could be traced back to the relative absence of fear in my
subjects. They were certainly less enculturated; that is, they seemed to be less afraid of
what other people would say or demand or laugh at. They had less need of other people
and therefore, depending on them less, could be less afraid of them and less hostile
against them. Perhaps more important, however, was their lack of fear of their own
insides, of their own impulses, emotions, thoughts. They were more accepting than the
average. This approval and acceptance of their deeper selves than made it more possible
to perceive bravely the real nature of the world and also made their behavior more
spontaneous. ... they were less afraid of being laughed at or of being disapproved of.
They could let themselves by flooded by emotion.” (1968, Toward a Psychology of
Being, p. 140-141).

About what happens to the experience of anger in a self-actualizing person, Maslow described
the change in this way:
“In the healthier person, anger is reactive (to a present situation) rather than a
characterological reservoir from the past. That is, it is a realistic effective response to
something real and present, for instance to injustice or exploitation or attack, rather than a
cathartic overflow of misdirected and ineffective revenge upon innocent bystanders ...
Anger does not disappear with psychological health; rather it takes the form of
decisiveness, self-affirmation, self-protection, justified indignation, fighting against evil,
and the like.” (1968, p. 162)

“The ability to be aggressive and angry is found in all self-actualizing people, who are
able to let it flow forth freely when the external situation ‘calls for’ it.” ... “a child should
learn not only how to control his anger, but also how and when to express it.” (1968, p.
195)

Emotional Mastery Series

C What is an Emotions (#1, 2 & 3)
C Pseudo-Emotions (#4)
C Emotional Continua (#5)

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C Emotional Tolerance (#6)
C Don’t just feel, Do Something! (#7)
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #36
August 12, 2013
Modeling Excellence Series #16

WHY SOME MODELING IS

INEFFECTIVE MODELING

Earlier this year I wrote 15 articles in the “Modeling Excellence” series and ended that with the
one back on May 27. Recently in a training someone asked, “When is modeling ineffective?
What would be an example of an ineffectively modeling of some excellence?” At the moment of
the question I did not have a poignant example, but now I do.

A number of years ago after Southwest Airlines demonstrated their excellence in creating a low-
budget airline that stayed profitable and kept growing during the same time that every other
airline in the US was suffering declines and losses, if not going through bankruptcy. So both
United Airlines and Delta attempted to model what Southwest was doing and enter into the
market as competitors. So both launched subsidiaries to compete with the Southwest’s business
model. United invented “TED” which I often flew between Grand Junction and Denver. Yet
while they were certainly able to copy the system, they were not able to actually model the
excellence that distinguished Southwest.

That is, they were able to copy the planes, the processes, quick turn-arounds at airports, etc. but
they were not able to model and replicate Southwest’s values or spirit. Southwest is known for
their entrepreneurship, fun, and love and the airline trades under the ticker symbol LUV. They
were the airline which first introduced humor in something as serious as the safety instructions
given just before a flight takes off. They added little comments like, “If you haven’t been in a car
since 1970, here’s how a seat belt works.” So while United and Delta airlines could model the
externals—what Southwest does, they could not model the spirit by which Southwest employees
do what they do. Given their cultures, they could not model the culture.

This explains, I think, much of NLP modeling which has failed to be effective. People have
examined and modeled the structure of some experience and have fully identified all of the
external steps, actions, and responses required to be able to do whatever some high performer or
expert is able to do. But they missed something. They did not get the internal stuff— the spirit
of the expert. They did not capture the expert’s attitudes, values, principles, understandings,
beliefs, decisions, identity, permissions, and frames of mind.

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So what’s the problem? The problem is that while Neuro-Linguistic Program is superb at
detailing the behaviors of an experience and some of the first-level frames of mind— beliefs, it is
not equipped to flush out the multiple layers of self-reflexive frames. And why? Simple. The
classic NLP strategy model does not include a model for modeling the systemic self-reflexivity of
human consciousness. NLP is excellent for detailing the linear strategy of the visual, auditory,
and kinesthetic steps in “thinking and “feeling.”

This explains why NLP needs the Meta-States Self-Reflexivity Model. That’s because above and
beyond the strategy model, and each piece of the strategy model, are additional layers of reflexive
thoughts-and-feelings and for each one of those are additional hidden layers. And it is the Meta-
States model that is designed to identify these layers that hide within, above, and behind these
“thoughts” whether they are beliefs, decisions, identities, permissions, prohibitions,
understandings, etc.

Now, systemically when these layers combine they gestalt to create additional phenomena that
are more than and different from the sum of the parts. Within human consciousness, they gestalt
into attitudes—higher level frames of mind that hold together a synergy of multiple beliefs. And
because of this, using the Meta-States model we can model the structure of an attitude to identify
the spirit of the expert.

Here then is the difference that makes the difference within so many experiences. That is, above
and beyond what the top achiever does is his or her attitude or spirit that actually drives the
experience. It is the person’s spirit that endows the experience with the certain quality that takes
it to a new level and gives it the quality that we are actually seeking to model.

The point is that our modeling will be ultimately ineffective if we do not get both the what and
the why. The what is the performance, even when it is the micro-performance of the actions that
make up the activity. The why is made up of lots of things:
C The intention behind it, which is made up of the values or significance and which answers
the why question. “Why are you doing that? What’s your intention?”
C The principles and understandings governing one’s assumptive frames about how it
works and how to carry it off.
C The aspirations of one’s vision about the meaningfulness of the activity.

The point is that to unpack the expert’s attitude or spirit requires the ability to enter into his or
her matrix of multiple meanings or meta-states that galvinize the person’s robust state. This
explains why we really cannot, or should not, use NLP as mere technology— as merely a set of
techniques. To be a technician alone will only model out the external activities as United and
Delta did with Southwest and entirely miss the inner “culture” of the company. To model the
culture, the inner spirit and attitude of the people who add the quality to the activity, we have to
use a model that can handle the non-linear, systemic self-reflexivity of the human subjective
experience— the Meta-States Model.
For books on Meta-States, see www.neurosemantics.com and click Products.
For the APG Trainings that Introduces Meta-States, click Trainings and then APG.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #37
August 19, 2013

OPEN INVITATION
TO NLP TRAINERS
Here’s something fantastic to imagine—imagine NLP Leaders getting together and collaborating!
As a visionary, while it is a far-off dream and wild imagination, it could happen! What if ... what
if those who are leaders in the field of NLP gathered together, and using our prime model (the
NLP Communication Model) to talk, we talked about creating a platform for cooperating and
even collaborating? Wouldn’t that be something?

Well, a couple years ago after an experience that I and Frank Pucelik had with a young wild NLP
trainer who was being seduced away by some cult, we had a brainstorm. What if we called “the
elders of the tribe of NLP” together and began a series of conversations to see if we could
facilitate the leaders in this field to get together in a more collaborative way? That was the idea.
So we did that. We called for a NLP Leadership Summit. That became a reality the following
year at the NLP Conference (Nov. 2012). We invited those who had been Leaders in this field
for twenty-years to come together and so we had a gathering of 28 for a day of conversation.
Actually we reduced the number to 15 years to accommodate some of the obvious leaders in the
U.K.

That first conversation was mostly to get to know each other and so we spent half of our time
sharing who we are and some of our experiences and then half the time working on some basic
questions about vision in the field of NLP. As a result, we created a LinkedIn presence (The
NLP Leadership Summit) and since then more Trainers have joined. The only requirements that
we set were:
1) Having been in the field of NLP for 20 years.
2) Planning to attend the NLP Conference in London in coming year.

Why these requirements? Because we want to first call “the leaders of the tribe” together and see
if we can get some basic cooperation among us and then expand it outward to the new up-and-
coming leaders. And we want “leaders” because they are the ones bringing people into this field
whether by training, writing, researching, etc.

What dawned on me two years ago when we dreamed this up was that those of us who are
bringing people into this field and influencing them about NLP, what it is, what it involves, what
you can do with it, etc., we are the leaders and we are therefore the ones responsible for the state
of affairs in this field. As you probably know, I have been writing articles about the state of

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affairs in this field since the early 1990s. One of the first articles that Bob and I wrote we titled,
“The Downside of NLP” pointing out some of the real problems and challenges before us.

Well, as you also know, we in Neuro-Semantics know that merely complaining about something
is quite insufficient. If we want to change things, we have to take responsibility and step up and
take the risks to make things better. So that’s the why behind The NLP Leadership Summit.

After The NLP Leadership Summit last year, I wrote a report about what happened there. Here’s
a bit of that. Among the best dreams for the field of NLP that were described and discussed were
the following. What is our Vision for NLP?
NLP as a Community —a community of people who cooperate and collaborate.
NLP as known for what it gives, rather than received; NLP is contribution and a force for
good in the world.
NLP as an esteemed Profession, one with standards, one taught in Universities around the
world.
NLP as a resilient community built upon trust.
NLP as a community that deals with conflicts, has great models for helping people work
through conflicts.
NLP as people who search for patterns and structures in experiences.

With those visions, the conversation went to community, to relationship, to trust and trusting.
This led to asking for a show hands for those who thought “There is a NLP community” and
those who thought “There is not an NLP Community.” Hands were about equally divided. Then
Heidi Heron from Sydney noted, “There are many NLP communities, there is just no singular
global community with a shared consensus.” That resonated with everyone. We have
communities, but not a single community that combines and unites the smaller communities.

Early in the day there was an attempt to begin talking about Standards and establishing
professional criteria, and I think that all of us wanted to talk about that, and yet most also realized
that if we jumped into a topic like that too soon, it would be counter-productive. Standards is a
conversation that we need to have, but to have it also requires lots of rapport and relationship. So
we put that one off at that time.

Where to from here? With many people in the room who had been at many similar attempts like
the 1997 Visionary Leadership Conference and having seen the attempts come to nothing, we
knew that this had to be just the beginning, the first step of a long journey, and that there has to
be continual follow-up. I first mentioned that we could meet once a year, every year at the NLP
Conference, but several felt such was just not sufficient. And true enough. Yet it is a beginning.
So we did agree— “Next Year in London!” And we will be working on a Linked-In presence
whereby we can invite more and more of the “elders of the tribe” into the NLP Leadership
Summits.

If we are a field made up of many small communities and if we are leaving a legacy which most
of us really do not like then how do we change that legacy? This year (2013) we will meet for

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the day prior to the NLP Conference — November 15 and if you are a NLP Trainer with 15 or
more years experience in this field and want to join us — please let myself, Frank Pucelik, or
Teresa from Crown House Publications know
[email protected]
R. Frank Pucelik – [email protected]
[email protected]

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #38
August 26, 2013
Making Self-Actualization Actionable #1

REAL LIVE, EVERYDAY

SELF-ACTUALIZATION

After a lifetime of studying and modeling self-actualizing people, Abraham maslow wrote a
chapter about his experiences in a book, Challenges of Humanistic Psychology that James
Bugental edited. He titled of the chapter, “Self-Actualizing and Beyond.” What I found
wonderful about this chapter is how he described both his original motivations for the modeling
project and how he then set about to create benchmarks for self-actualization. So given that one
of our key discoveries in Neuro-Semantics is the “secret history” of NLP in the work of Maslow
and Rogers and that benchmarking is one of our key contributions to the field of NLP, I thought I
would quote extensively from the chapter and relate it to current work that we are doing in
Neuro-Semantics.

Modeling: 1935
Forty years before Bandler and Grinder modeled the three Human Potential Movement leaders
(Bateson, Perls, and Satir), Maslow modeled two people who showed extraordinary development
of human excellence and began the Human Potential Movement. What he discovered was that in
“... trying to understand two of my teachers that he loved, adored, and admired and who were
very, very wonderful people ... [I] sought to understand why these two people were so different
from the run-of-the-mill people in the world. These two people were Ruth Benedict and Max
Wertheimer.” (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, 1971, Chapter 3, p. 40)

Maslow’s modeling then began out of astonished amazement at two individuals who “were most
remarkable human beings.” Unlike the NLP modeling of skills, this model wasn’t about what
they did, but what they had become— being more than doing. Now in terms of doing, they were
both famous—Max was the co-founder of Gestalt Psychology and Ruth the founder of Cultural
Anthropology, the mentor of Margaret Mead, first wife of Gregory Bateson.
“I made descriptions and notes on Max Wertheimer, and I made notes on Ruth Benedict. When I
tried to understand them, think about them, and write about them in my journal and notes, I
realized in one wonderful moment that their two patterns could be generalized. I was talking
about a kind of person, not about two non-comparable individuals. There was wonderful
excitement in that. I tried to see whether this pattern could be found elsewhere, and I did find it
elsewhere, in one person after another.” (41)

This modeling is driven by the scientific attitude of seeking knowledge about human excellence,
something that Maslow spent his entire life searching this out. He selected “wonderful people”

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 “... and then tried to figure them out and fond he was able to describe a syndrome—the kind of
pattern that seemed to fit all of them.”

Maslow selected people who were visibly successful and who were also inwardly success becaue
he wanted to discover the farther reaches of human nature:
“When you select out for careful study very find and healthy people, strong people, creative
people, saintly people, sagacious people— then you get a different view of mankind. You are
asking how tall can people grow, what can a human being become?”

What did he find as he searched for human excellence? He found that these self-actualizing
people were living for what he defined as the being-values—the values of being—the values that
were valuable in and of themselves, inherently, innately, and were not valued only for their
instrumental use. He commented that these B-values are “the meaning of life for most people.”
“Self-actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own
skin, in something outside of themselves. They are devoted at something ... which is very
precious to them ... so that the work-joy dichotomy in them disappears.” (42)

Benchmarking Self-Actualization
In his 1967 chapter, Maslow was looking for the actual behaviors that led to and that indicated
self-actualization— the benchmarks.
“What does one do when he self-actualizes? Does he grit his teeth and squeeze? What does self-
actualization mean in terms of actual behavior, actual procedure?” (43)

That’s when he came up with “eight ways in which one self-actualizes.” I will be quoting him
for each of these eight ways in the next weeks and adding comments about each.

1) Total Absorption
“First, self-actualization means experiencing fully, vividly selflessly, with full concentration and
total absorption. It means experiencing without the self-consciousness of the adolescent. At this
moment of experiencing, the person is wholly and fully human. This is a self-actualizing
moment. This is a moment when the self is actualizing itself.” (44)

Maslow wrote that this “can be a very sweet moment” and that’s because in such moments of
absorption, one can forget poses, defenses, shyness and “go at it whole-hog.” Such engagement!
This is the very thing that Csikszentmihalyi has described in his description of a flow state. The
flow state is where one becomes so completely engaged in an activity that one gets lost in it. One
becomes so engaged with something, and the amazing thing is that it could be just about
anything— an athletic event, a puzzle, rock climbing, reading a book, having a coaching
conversation with someone, writing, cooking, making love, playing with a dog— the list is
endless.

And it is this kind and quality of total engagement that e call “the genius state” in Neuro-
Semantics. Building on the foundational work of DeLozier, Grinder, Dilts, and others, Accessing
Personal Genius is all about this— how to turn on your “genius” or “flow” state so that it is

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yours— at your command. No longer do you have to wait for it, cross your fingers and hope for
it, you can “turn it on” and step fully into the zone of your optimal state— at will.

Now given that this is one of the benchmarks of self-actualization, in fact, the first one, and that
it is a total absorption and engagement with something outside of yourself— this again clarifies
the old confusion between self-actualization and selfishness and why we say that Self-
Actualization is not about you, it is through you.

Ready for living the self-actualizing life? Then get ready to move far, far beyond multi-tracking
as you step into total absorption of a meaning and value that endows your life with a rich and
robust meaningfulness.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #39
Sept 2, 2013
Making Self-Actualization Actionable #2

EVERYDAY SELF-ACTUALIZATION
AND THE POWER OF CHOICE

According to Abraham Maslow the first benchmark for living the self-actualizing life is a total
absorption into a being-valued significance— the personal “genius” state of flow. That was the
theme of last week’s Neuron post. Here is the second one and it is about the power of choice.

2) Choosing Growth
The second behavior that benchmarks self-actualization according to Maslow is “choosing the
growth choice.”
“Let us think of life as a process of choices, one after another. At each point there is a
progression choice and a regression choice. There may be a movement toward defense, toward
safety, toward being afraid; but on the other side, there is the growth choice. To make the growth
choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day toward self-
actualization. Self-actualization is an ongoing process; it means making each of the many single
choices about wether to lie or to be honest, wether to steal or not to steal, and it means to make
each of these choices as a growth choice. This is movement toward self-actualization.” (44
italics added)

If you read the literature of Maslow about self-actualization, you will find that very frequently he
called it “growth.” Self-actualizing is growing to be fully and completely everything that you can
be, growing to be your best self. At times he even called this new psychology, Growth
Psychology, and even created a second model, a Growth Model. And in this model he noted that
inner personal growth is not inevitable— we have to choose it. You do not have to grow up and
mature! You can resist it or just not develop it. To experience it requires a choice. “Choosing”
to step forward, to step up, to make a choice for growth is one of the behaviors of self-
actualization.

Now choice involves a meta-state. It involves meta-stating yourself first by stepping back or
stepping up to a place above and beyond an experience so that you move to a choice point. Now
you can see alternatives or options. From here you can make an informed decision of the pros
and cons of the choice, quality control your frames about choosing, taking a risk, moving
forward, etc. And what will you choose?

As you can tell from the quotation above choosing is a step of responsibility and taking, owning,
and exercising responsibility is choosing to grow. These are equivalent. And choosing is not

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always the easy thing to do, or comfortable thing. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, and
challenging, and even hard. Yet when you resist the seduction of the status quo and stretch
forward to the next step— you are taking a step of self-actualizing.

3) Choosing Your Way

“Self-Actualization implies that there is a self to be actualized. A human being is not a tabula
rasa, not a lump of clay. He is something which is already there. ... A human being is his
temperament, his biochemical balances, and so on. There is a self, and what I have sometimes
referred to as ‘listening to the impulse voices’ means letting the self emerge.
As a simple first step toward self-actualization, I sometimes suggest to my students that when
they are given a glass of wine and asked how they like it, they try a different way of responding.
First, I suggest that they not look at the label on the bottle. They will not use it to get any cue
about whether or not the should like it. Next, I recommend that they close their eyes if possible
and that they ‘make a hush.’ Now they are ready to look within themselves and try to shout out
the noise of the world so that they may savor the wine on their tongues and look to the ‘Supreme
Court’ inside themselves. Then, and only then, they may come out and say, ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t’
like it.’” (45)

Self-actualization also involves discovering your inner self and taking the courage to let that
highest self emerge. How does this occur? In part, you do this by learning to listen to your own
inner voice. And to do that you probably have to stop listening to all of the other voices around
you— the voice of family, culture, tradition, authority, media, etc. Ask, “What do I think and
feel?” This describes the growth from positing authority and evaluation externally and bringing
it inside and owning it for ourselves. Discovering your own true likes and dislikes.

This is not easy. Maslow recommends learning how to slow down and create an inner silence—
“to make a hush.” The shoulds can so easily get in the way. “I should do this,” “I should do
that.” Operating from the shoulds is one thing; operating from what truly fits for you is an
entirely other thing. Slow down, become silent, and check with your own inner Supreme Court.
“A person who does each of these little things each time the choice point comes will find that
they add up to better choices about what is constitutionally right for him. He comes to know
what his destiny is, who his wife or husband will be, what his mission in life will be. Once
cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares listen to himself, his own self, at each moment in
life, and to say calmly, “No, I don’t like such and such.” (45-46)

We describe this as the meta-program of “internally referencing and having an external check” in
NLP. Yet none of us are born with this program. This is one of those programs that we have to
develop. We are all born “externally referenced” because, without instincts, we do not know
anything, much less what we want or need. So childhood for the majority is lived always
looking outside oneself to find out what is good, what is bad, what to do, what not to do, etc.
Actualizing your highest and best self means bringing that outside authority inside. It means
being responsible for yourself and for your choices. It means grow up and become the “author”
of your own life as you determine your beliefs, values, ethics, way to live, etc.

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Ah, choice— using our executive level of mind to say yes to values and no to dis-values. The
process of self-actualizing requires the exercising of this human power.

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #40
Sept 9, 2013
Making Self-Actualization Actionable #3

COURAGEOUS RESPONSIBILITY
PRACTICAL SELF-ACTUALIZATION

The first benchmark, according to Abraham Maslow, for living the self-actualizing life is a total
absorption into a being-valued significance— the personal “genius” state of flow. The second
and third ones focused on the ability to exercise one’s power of choice as you live your life
responsibly. Maslow spoke about choosing growth and choosing one’s way as you learn to listen
to your own internal voice. Now for the fourth and fifth benchmarks.

4) Taking responsibility for Self

“When in doubt, be honest rather than not. ... ‘When in doubt” covers us so we need not argue
too much about diplomacy. Frequently, when we are in doubt we are not honest. ... then playing
games and posing. ... Looking within oneself for many of the answers implies taking
responsibility. That is in itself a great step toward actualization. This matter of responsibility
has been little studied ... Yet it is an almost tangible part of psychotherapy. In psychotherapy,
one can see it, can feel it, can know the moment of responsibility. Then there is a clear knowing
of what it feels like. This is one of the great steps. Each time one takes responsibility, this is an
actualizing of the self.” (45)

The doubt here is a doubt about yourself and what to do to be your best self. So when you are in
doubt about actualizing yourself, how do you respond? Maslow says, “Be honest.” This is a call
to be real. He also notes that most people are not. Instead of honestly stating what’s going on for
us, we play games. We posture ourselves and worry about what people will think of us and so
we put on masks to cover-up our doubt. But posturing behind the PR that you’ve created for
yourself or losing yourself in your own press is how you can lose yourself— lose your real self.
Yet if we’re serious about living the self-actualizing life, it is at those very moments when taking
responsibility for ourselves enables us to be true and honest with ourselves.

“Responsibility” here is another meta-state— it is the state of accessing your innate powers for
responding to the world and events. Then, from that awareness, you accept and take ownership
to your response-powers. Doing this creates the gestalt of a very special state, a complex state
that we call responsibility. Maslow says that doing this is, in itself, “a great step toward
actualization” and that it is “act actualizing of the self.”

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We stress this in Neuro-Semantics by using the Meta-Stating Pattern of accessing, owning, and
developing our fundamental state of our “power zone.” This is based on recognizing that all of
our powers boils down to four powers and these four powers make up every “power,” every
resource, and every skill. This de-mystifies “responsibility” and issues in a very specific
awareness where you response-ability begins and ends. It begins within you— in your very
thinking-and-emoting and it extends to what you can say-and-do. beyond that, you may have
influence, but not control. “Control” of your response-power ends in what you are “able” to say
and do.

What does “taking responsibility for yourself” mean? It means recognizing and owning that
what you transmit by speaking and doing is your response and you cannot transfer to that to
others. It is yours. No matter what influencing factors or contributing factors you can point to as
you attempt to “explain” your actions and words— ultimately, they are yours. Fully accepting
that is an act of self-actualization. Blaming and fault-finding in others or in situations blocks
self-actualization.

5) Courageously Be Oneself — Listen and Speak as Yourself

“We have talked of experiencing without self-awareness, of making the growth choice rather
than the fear choice, of listening to the impulse voices, and of being honest and taking
responsibility. All these are steps toward self-actualization, and all of them guarantee better life
choices.” (45)

Using an illustration from “the art world,” Maslow described the experience of being captured by
a small group of opinion-makers. To be influenced by them is to focus on what you think that
you should value and appreciate instead of what you actually do think and value. Instead, “We
must teach people to listen to their own tastes. Most people don’t do it.” And why not? Fear.
Fear of being ridiculed or put down. To listen to our own voice and tastes takes courage. To be
honest with ourselves and with others takes courage.
“Making an honest statement involves daring to be different, unpopular, non-conformist. . . . To
be courageous rather than afraid is another version of the same thing.” (46)

This courage describes a facet of self-actualizing which involves embracing change and
challenge. The courage to be oneself is the courage to grow, to keep on learning, and to develop.
To do this, acknowledge your uniqueness and look within for what you have to give to the world.
And this requires the courage to be self-referent in terms of “authority” rather than external. That
is, in terms of being the “author” of one’s life, do we look within or outside? We are all born
with an external-authority reference sort and part of growing up and taking responsibility means
bringing it in so that we have an internal-authority sort with an external check.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #41
Sept 15, 2013
Making Self-Actualization Actionable #4

DISCIPLINING THE SPONTANEOUS

Maslow began thinking about how to benchmark “living a self-actualizing life” in the 1960s and
so identified several. The first benchmark, according to Abraham Maslow, for living the self-
actualizing life is a total absorption into a being-valued significance— the personal “genius” state
of flow. The second and third ones focused on the ability to exercise one’s power of choice as
you live your life responsibly. Maslow spoke about choosing growth and choosing one’s way as
you learn to listen to your own internal voice. The fourth and fifth benchmarks were about
courageous responsibility. Now for the sixth and seventh benchmarks which I have put under the
heading of “Disciplining the Spontaneous.”

6) Expending Effort in the Ongoing Process

“Self-actualization is not only an end state, it is also the process of actualizing one’s
potentialities at any time, in any amount. It is, for example, a matter of becoming smarter by
studying if one is an intelligent person. Self-actualization means using one’s intelligence. It may
mean going through an arduous and demanding period of preparation in order to realize one’s
possibilities. Self-actualization can consist of finger exercises at a piano keyboard. Self-
actualization means working to do well the one thing that one wants to do. To become a second -
rate physician is not a good path to self-actualization. One wants to be first-rate or as good as he
can be.” (46)

Does this paragraph give you the impression that self-actualization involves work, effort,
discipline? Good. Then you’re right—it does. The process of making something real
(“actualizing”) requires effort and energy and discipline. It is for this reason that self-
actualization doesn’t happen quickly, or automatically, and or even inevitably and it certainly
does not happen without conscious awareness and choice. If you are to actualize your
possibilities and potentials, you have to choose to do so, courageously take responsibility, and
then give yourself to a discipline. In other words, there’s a price to pay and you pay it in the
work and effort of discipline that you put forward to actualize your highest and your best.

And why? To be as “first-rate or as good as you can be.” That’s why you have to work to do
well the one thing you want to do. And that’s why “to become second-rate” in your desired
profession “is not a good path to self-actualization.”

7) Setting Up Peak Experience Conditions

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 “Peak experiences are transient moments of self-actualization. They are moments of ecstasy
which cannot be bought, cannot be guaranteed, cannot even be sought. One must be, as C.S.
Lewis wrote, ‘surprised by joy.’”

There’s a special reward that will come to you when you are living a self-actualizing life,
Maslow named that reward a “Peak Experience.” This refers to those special little moments of
life where you are surprised by joy, where a rush of delight and love and awe comes over you,
your hair stands on end, your spine tingles, and for that moment, you have an incredible sense of
“Life is Good!” “Life is magical!” “I’m experience a taste of heaven!” These are not the same
as a peak performance— that refers to the mastery that occurs after years and years of deliberate
practice.

The peak experience is smaller, simpler, and much more available. It does not depend on
expertise, it depends on allowing oneself to be bathed in meaning and meaningfulness. It arises
from being able to appreciate— to see the everyday things of the world through the precious eyes
of wonder and delight. And the peak experience comes to seduce you to keep in the path of self-
actualization. And while you cannot control this, you can manage it.
“But one can set up the conditions so that peak experiences are more likely, or one can
perversely set up conditions so that they are less likely. Breaking up an illusion, getting rid of a
false notion, learning what one is not good at, learning what one’s potentialities are not— these
are also part of discovering what one is in fact.” (46)

The process of self-actualizing not only involves finding out what to do (a “toward” orientation),
it also involves finding out what one is not good at, and of one’s own illusions (an “away from”
orientation).
“Practically everyone does have peak experiences, but not everyone knows it. Some people
wave these small mystical experiences aside. Helping people to recognize these little moments
of ecstasy when they happen is one of the jobs of the counselor or meta-counselor.” (47)

Here’s another step in making peak experiences more likely to occur and that involves learning
to recognize them. The implication is that you can have them and not know it. But once we
learn to recognize them, then we can acknowledge and honor them. The problem is that often
they are such “small” things (i.e., a glorious sunset, a human touch of compassion, an act of
thoughtfulness, a rush of emotion of joy in playing with a dog) that we dismiss them as nothing.
And in the adult world of schedules and paychecks, this is easy and common. It is so easy to
discount these things.

Actually, by using the meta-state process of what we call “The Personal Genius Pattern,” we can
learn to identify the internal conditions that make the peak experience state so that it is more
likely to occur in our lives. We can learn how to step in and out of them ... and at will. After all,
it is just a state. And so as with any state, there is a dynamic structure that makes it happen. This
is what Neuro-Semantics has contributed to the “flow” state, that is, the ability to choose it when
we desire to.

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These two benchmarks of self-actualizing speak about discipline and the spontaneous “surprised
by joy” experience of the peak experience. How different these are! Yet what if we combine
them? What if we were able to manage conditions so that the peak experience were made more
likely to occur? Would that discipline then be a discipline for spontaneity? Would it be
disciplined spontaneity?
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #42
Sept 23, 2013
Making Self-Actualization Actionable #5

SELF-ACTUALIZATION
How do you benchmark self-actualization, that is, “living a self-actualizing life?” That was the
question and Maslow answered it by say it is—
C First, Become fully engaged and present to life as your way of being.
C Second and third: Exercise your power of choice by living responsibly as you choose growth
and choose your way of being as you learn to listen to your own internal voice.
C Fourth and fifth: Exercise courageous responsibility.
C Sixth and seventh: Develop disciplined Spontaneity.
Now for the eighth benchmark.

8) Opening yourself up to self-discovery knowledge

“Finding out who one is, what he is, what he likes, what he doesn’t like, what is good for him and
what bad, where he is going and what his mission is— opening oneself up to himself— means the
exposure of psychopathology. It means identifying defenses, and after defenses have been identified,
it means finding the courage to give them up. This is painful because defenses are erected against
something that is unpleasant. But giving up the defenses is worthwhile.” (47)

This is how to self-actualize and therefore a benchmark of living the self-actualizing life. It begins
by a deep and intimate opening yourself up to yourself—to really get to “know thyself” in every
aspect. It is becoming open to your innate powers, to your unique gifts and talents, to your right to
be yourself and to be unique. And this takes courage. It takes courage to both identify your typical
defenses and to give up those defenses. Because those defenses are expressions of psycho-
pathology— of an inner sickness, when we are not at our best, when we are avoiding ourselves,
hiding from ourselves.

That courage is the pathway to self-actualization. It is repression, rejection, judgment, fear,

avoidance, etc. that holds us back and that blocks becoming fully all that we can become.
Conversely, it is the willingness to risk and to discover our full humanity, however fallible it is, that
enables us to step into authenticity, into being more fully an authentic self.

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Now there are many, many defense mechanisms and yet in this passage Maslow especially focused
on one defense mechanism, the one that he called desacralizing.
“Self-actualization means giving up this defense mechanism and learning or being taught to
resacralize. And resacralize means being willing to see a person ‘under the aspect of eternity,’ as
Spinoza says, or to see him ... as the sacred, the eternal, the symbolic.” (48)
Sacralizing is to make sacred, that is, special, honorable, important, and precious. So de-sacralizing
is to take that away, it is to discount that which is valuable, it is to eliminate the positive and the
precious, and it is to treat the world as entirely mundane and secular. Conversely, the benchmark
for living the self-actualizing life is to learn to see the world in its specialness and to live in the world
as if “under the aspect of eternity.”

“Self-actualization is a matter of degree, or little accessions accumulated one by one. Too often our
clients are inclined to wait for some kind of inspiration to strike so that they can say, “At 3:23 on
This Thursday Is became self-actualized!” People selected as self-actualizing subjects, people who
fit the criteria, go about it in these little ways: They listen to their own voices; they take
responsibility; they are honest; and they work hard. They find out who they are and what they are,
not only in terms of their mission in life, but also in terms of the way their feet hurt when they wear
such and such a pair of shoes and whether they do or do not like eggplant or stay up all night if they
drink too much beer. All this is what the real self means. They find their own biological natures,
their congenital natures, which are irreversible or difficult to change.” (49)

Now isn’t that paragraph shocking?! “Self-actualization is ... little accessions accumulated one by
one.” It’s not a big thing. Not a world-shaking, paradigm shifting, or revolutionary thing ... it is the
accumulation of many little things. It is not an earthquake that suddenly, out of the blue, grabs you
by the lapel or a message from heaven written boldly in the sky. Self-actualization is more down-to-
earth than that. It’s being human. It’s being fully alive and fully human in all of our fallibilities and
everyday concerns. It is living true to ourselves and becoming increasingly more and more authentic.

With these benchmarks we now have a very concrete way to think about this big word “self-
actualization,” and to be able to measure this experience in our lives. And when you pull together
the benchmarks that maslow listed, we have a description of the self-actualizing life.
C Become fully engaged and present to life as your way of being.
C Exercise your power of choice by living responsibly.
C Choose to grow by discovering your way of being by listening to your own inner
voice.
C Exercise courageous responsibility.
C Develop disciplined spontaneity.
C Open yourself up to self-discovery as you get to know yourself.

The Neuro-Semantic way of making this actual and real in our lives includes —
C Accessing your personal “flow” or “genius” state (the APG pattern and
Intentionality).
C Using the “Power Zone” pattern, Responsibility To/For pattern.
C Meta-Stating Self with Acceptance, Appreciation and Esteem to distinguish being
and doing.

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C Meta-Stating fears with various resources to generate the gestalt state of courage
C To create a compelling future and an action play (Well-Formed Outcome pattern) and
then to use the Mind-to-Muscle pattern to close the knowing-doing gap.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #43
Sept 30, 2013
Transcendence #1

“TRANSCENDENCE IS INCLUDED”

When it comes to human beings, transcendence is part of the package. You don’t have to go to
school to learn it. You don’t have to hire a coach or consultant so that you can learn how to do it.
You don’t need to apply for a scholarship so that you can take off a few years and develop it as a
spiritual quality to add to all of your human qualities. It’s not like that. Not at all.

When it comes to the experience and capacity for transcendence, it is part and parcel of being
human. This is so much true that you could not turn it off even if you wanted to. It is inevitable,
inescapable, and innate. Now true enough, it is not there at birth, but it is there as a potential and
it doesn’t take long and Pow! there it is.

What am I talking about? What is this transcendence? Transcendence is the mechanism of

consciousness whereby you become aware of your awareness. In other words, it is the first meta-
state which we all experience. But again, not at first. At first, we are in the Garden of Bliss or to
use the biblical story, the Garden of Eden. We are conscious— sentient— aware, but we’re not
aware of our awareness. We live in the World of Attentions. Whatever catches our attention leads
our thinking and emoting. We’re not even aware of ourselves.

Then it happens. Like the biblical story of the beginning, it is like eating of the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil in that as we grow and develop, as our mind develops, we become
aware of “knowing” (knowledge) that some things are good for us and some things are not. And
with this awareness, we begin to become conscious of being conscious. We become self-conscious.
Suddenly we know that we’re naked. So while a four-year old may joyfully jump out of the bathtub
and run through the house and out into the yard buck naked, at five or six years of age we have a
more developed consciousness. We are self-conscious, conscious of being seen, being exposed.
And so the age of shyness deepens.

Now begins the age of self-consciousness and given that we live in a world of giants who are so
smart, so big, so strong, and so much in control, we become aware that we are not. We become
aware that we lack the ability to do so many things and so we feel the lack of self-confidence and
the lack of self-assurance. This is transcendence. It is as if we can stand aside from ourselves and
be aware of ourselves. And as this power or capacity develops, it is as if we can stand aside from
our awareness of others and become aware of what they are thinking of us. Little children cannot
do this. Cognitive development takes some time before this occurs.

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Then again, with the maturing of the brain during adolescence when new chemical are pouring into
the brain and bringing it to higher levels of formal logic, transcendence also develops and we are
able to as it were step aside from our mortality, temporality, fallibility, and dozens of other concepts
to become philosophical about these mysterious aspects of human life.

How our brains create the sense of transcendence is a mystery; we simply do not know. We have
guesses and we might assume that it might or could or probably arises due to the complexity of the
processing neural systems within us, but in the end, all we have are guesses. We certainly have not
been able to model it and replicate it in a computer. Nor do other biological creatures have this sense
of transcendence as far as we can tell.

In his work with dolphins in Hawaii Bateon noted the ability to “jump at least one logical level,” that
is, to move beyond a certainly classification of information to the frame of that classification and to
then create a higher level understanding. You can read about that in his classic, Toward an Ecology
of Mind (1972). Yet jumping one logical level or even two, that’s all that the most intelligent
animals can do. Yet a child can jump many and then into the teenage years, we humans have no
limit to the number of logical level jumps that we can make. No limit!

The reflexivity of our minds seems to be the mechanism by which the sense of transcendence arises.
And since the Meta-States Model is a model of reflexive consciousness, transcendence is built into
the core of the Meta-States Model and hence the Neuro-Semantic approach to NLP. Over the years
this has enabled us to model higher level and more complex states of consciousness than what we
could do with old classic NLP. The Meta-States Model emerged from my modeling project on
resilience as told in the book, Meta-States (2007). But that was just the beginning. Then we
modeled out the structure of the subjective experience of proactivity, responsibility, self-esteem,
magnanimity, forgiveness, seeing and seizing opportunities, and a hundred others.

So far we have not been able to create any final definitions of the sense of transcendence, we are still
in our infancy in being able to model that. Currently we are working on those rich complex states
that entail and encompass the sense of transcendence. That is, in certain states almost everybody has
“a sense” of rising above oneself, stepping outside oneself, taking a higher perceptual position than
first or second position, even beyond third and fourth and having a system perception of the whole.
We are also modeling out more fully “the peak experience” of Abraham Maslow, beginning where
he ended in his incredibly insightful work about the mystical “peak experiences.” He knew they
were special, that there was something “other-worldly” about them, but he could only map out with
broad strokes the mysterious realm that he had identified.

Transcendence— it is built into us, it comes with the package, it is innate and inevitable. And it is
a mystery. It seems to lie at the heart of what it means to be human. And the study of transcendence,
going meta, and using our self-reflexive consciousness lies at the heart of Neuro-Semantics.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #44
Oct. 7, 2013
Transcendence #2

DEALING WITH YOUR

INNATE TRANSCENDENCE

Because “Transcendence is Included,” because it is part and parcel of being human, and because
it is innate to our human nature, one aspect of your humanity and mine involves how we deal with
transcendence. The first thing we need to do to deal with it is to recognize it. Now the funny or odd
thing is that you can experience this strange sense of stepping outside or beyond yourself to become
aware of yourself and talk about it without recognizing it. People do it all the time. If you listen,
you can hear them do it.

Listen to them meta-comment. “I know this sounds silly, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot...” “I
feel foolish when I said that.” “I don’t know where that just came from, it just popped into my
head... but that’s a great idea.” The ability to meta-comment entails the ability to use your
awareness-of-your-awareness as you step back from your experience and comment on it, and this
is something that happens many times every day to all of us. Yet most people never notice it. And
when we train the Meta-Coaches to begin to notice them and use them for deepening the
conversation or to use meta-comments to set frames, most find it difficult to become fluent with this
awareness.

But that’s not the big problem with recognizing and detecting it, the big problem occurs when you
use your self-reflexive consciousness against yourself. And that also is very common—very
common. And again, if you have ears to hear, you can hear this all the time as when people say, “I’m
really stupid.” “What’s wrong with me that I mess up like that?” “I will never get this right.” The
reflexivity within these statements turn one’s negative thinking-and-feeling against oneself and that
energy has no where to go except to be registered and felt in one’s mind and emotions and body.
And structurally, these statements are expressions of self-attack, self-accusation, self-rejection, self-
contempt, and so on.

When I first introduced the Meta-States Model I used the metaphor of a dragon and called these
dragon states—unresourceful states in which we have turned our thinking-and-feeling against
ourselves so that we are in some form and some degree of self-abuse. In the book Dragon Slaying

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(1995/2000) I included nearly two dozen chapters on the most common dragon states. And as noted
there as every Neuro-Semantic trainer notes in training Accessing Personal Genius (APG), this is
a misuse of human self-reflexivity. And the simple solution is to raise your hand and make a
promise to yourself to be kinder and gentler with oneself and never again bring your energy against
yourself. Attacking yourself is not going to make things better. It just confuses you as a person with
your behaviors, even your thoughts and feelings.

This is how transcendence is built into the core of the Meta-States Model and hence the Neuro-
Semantic approach to NLP as I wrote in the last post. By “going meta” to your own experiences,
to your macro and micro behaviors, to your states, emotions, mistakes, etc., you “step up” to a
broader experience of yourself and when you do so . . . if you then judge yourself, that’s going to
set a judgment frame against yourself. And when you do that, you not only put yourself into a box,
you misuse this wonderful power and may become afraid of yourself.

Now for some personal questions for you regarding how you deal with your own reflexivity and
when you have one of those experiences in which you seem to transcend yourself:
C Do you like and enjoy the way you have used and are using your self-reflexive
consciousness?
C Do you like and enjoy your own experiences of transcendence?
C When you do step back and notice your own experiencing, is that a “spiritual” kind of
experience for you?
C Do you ever turn your mental-emotional energy against yourself so that you engage in some
kind of self-abuse?

Now from what I’ve written it should be obvious that the best way to deal with your transcendence
ability is to accept and appreciate it. It is to step back (go meta) and be kind and gentle with
yourself. How skilled are you at that? Where would you gauge yourself in using your self-
reflexivity and sense of transcendence to step back from your self and love your self in a kind and
gentle way?

Now if this offends you because you come from the biblical faith, then let me quote two verses. The
first one comes from Genesis where it is said that, “God made man in his own image and likeness
and said, ‘It is good.’” Say step back and say it, “I’m made in God’s image and likeness and it is
good!” If that’s shocking, your feeling of shock indicates your need to re-adjust your attitude. The
next verse may be even more shocking because it is not only okay to respect yourself, the spiritual
pathway is to love yourself.
“No man ever hated his own self (his flesh), but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord
does to the church.” (Ephesians 5:29)

How about that? The apostle Paul suggested that when you step aside from your self, nourish and
cherish yourself! And just so that you don’t mis-understand what he is saying, he provided an
example. He said it similar to how the Lord nourishes and cherishes his church. So if it is good for
Jesus to “nourish and cherish” his people, it is good enough for you to “nourish and cherish”

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yourself. Transcendence — recognize it, acknowledge it, accept it, and appreciate it. That’s the
beginning.

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #45
Oct. 14, 2013
Transcendence #3

TRANSCENDENCE AND HAPPINESS

Transcendence is a mystery. Yes, transcendence is included and manifested through the incredible
and powerful mechanism of reflexivity by which we can step back from ourselves and be aware of
ourselves (#1). And yes, your reflexive self-consciousness is your glory as a human being, it enables
you to rise above yourself to direct yourself, the heart and soul of self-leadership. Yet it can also be
misused as when you are not kind and gentle with yourself. Then you turn your energies against
yourself and create those unresourceful “dragon” states (#2). And yet it this ability to transcend
yourself is still an incredible mystery.

At the heart of our ability to transcend our states and our self and to develop higher levels of
awareness about this experience that we call “life,” is our ability to make meaning of these higher
levels. Making meaning at the lower levels enables us to identify what we are dealing with when
we encounter the world and all that it offers (identification). Meaning-making also enables us to
figure out how things work, what causes what, what leads to what (causation).

This level of meaning-making has given us the power to control our world. By it we have figured
out how to meet all of the lower level needs: survival needs—how to create agricultural industries,
manufacturing industries, etc. We have learned how to meet our safety needs— how to be safe, how
to stabilize the dimensions in our lives, our economies, work, relationships, etc. We have learned
how to meet our social needs for bonding, love, and affection, etc. We have learned how to meet
our self needs for importance, competence, worth, etc. Coping well with all these needs makes us
successful at this level of need— the animal level.

Yet with all of our prosperity, with the standards of living rising all over the planet, we are still not
satisfied. Human life is not just about meeting our lower needs. There’s a transcendent area within
us that remains to be satisfied, an area of need for being fully and truly human, for meeting our self-
actualizing needs. Maslow discovered that we are biologically organized with a set of drives that
are transcendent drives— the being needs that transcend our doing (achievement) needs. Here we
strive to be above and beyond our instrumental doing. And these needs are not instrumental. They
are not means to some other end. As non-instrumental needs, we are motivated to be fully human,
to transcend our animal needs and to become fully human, fully alive.

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What a mystery! We are liberated by our prosperity but we are not fulfilled by it. Beyond all of that
is the transcendent mystery of creating even higher level meaning— so that we endow our life with
a sense of meaningfulness. It is here that you can hear the call of transcendence: What does it mean
to be human, fully human? What is the meaning of our lives?

In a recent article in The Atlantic, the authors of an article “Meaning is Healthier than Happiness”
explored a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on
“happiness.” In first defining happiness, they distinguished two forms:
1) Happiness as associated with selfish “taking” behavior.
2) Happiness as a sense of meaning associated with selfless “giving” behavior.

The first “happiness” is happiness without meaning and is relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even
selfish life. It is focused solely on getting one’s own needs satisfied. This kind of “pure happiness”
is about emotion, about “feeling good,” about hedonic well-being or pleasure, and not about helping
others in need. The researchers measured happiness by asking subjects questions like:
How often did you feel happy?
How often did you feel interested in life?
How often did you feel satisfied?

The second “happiness” is about contributing to others. This happiness is more like “eudaimonic
well-being” rather than an emotion of feeling good. “Partly what we do as human beings is to take
care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful, but it does not necessarily make
us happy.” This happiness was defined as an orientation to something bigger than oneself. The
researchers asked subjects questions like:
How often did you feel that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it?
How often did you feel that you had something to contribute to society?
How often did you feel that you belonged to a community/ social group?

Now what is even more fascinating in the study is that “Cole and Fredrickson found that people who
are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives—proverbially, simply here for the
party—have the same gene expression patterns as people who are responding to and enduring
chronic adversity. That is, the bodies of these happy people are preparing them for bacterial threats
by activating the pro-inflammatory response.” Their conclusion? “‘Empty positive emotions’ – like
the kind people experience during manic episodes or artificially euphoria from alcohol and drugs —
‘are about as good for you as adversity.”

Conversely, the other “happiness” pattern, that of well-being through life-meaningfulness had a
different gene expression pattern. “On the other hand, if you are doing well and having a lot of
healthy social connections, your immune system shifts forward to prepare you for viruses, which
you’re more likely to contract if you’re interacting with a lot of people.”

The point? Feeling good is not enough. You and I need meaning to thrive. We need transcendent
meaning that enables us to connect to something bigger and larger than ourselves. Feeling good is
a by-product of another kind of good— doing and being good as Aristotle contended.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #46
Oct. 21, 2013
Transcendence #4

TRANSCENDENCE
AND PEAK EXPERIENCES
If we are wired for transcendence, if it is built into our very nature is seen by the fact that we have
both a drive for it (the self-actualizing “being” needs) and a mechanism for it (our self-reflexive
consciousness). Given this, there’s no escape from it. It is within our very nature to experience
transcendence and so we naturally seek it. This is probably what drives all people to contemplate
philosophical and theological issues to understand what transcendence means.

One of the ways that we all experience transcendence is in those everyday experiences that are
moments of “peak experiences.” Maslow researched this and wrote extensively about peak
experiences saying that these experiences have much to tell us about human nature and especially
about human nature at its best.

By definition, a peak experience is a moment of high intensity (peak) that’s full of meaning which
in turn, validates your life and making it worthwhile. No wonder we experience such moments as
moments of transcendence. According to Abraham Maslow, in a peak experience you feel at peak
of your powers—that you are using all your capacities at the best and fullest. You feel that you are
fully functioning and there is no waste, that all of your capacities are being used. In a peak
experience, what you do seems effortless as there is an ease of functioning. Everything “clicks,”
everything seems to be “in the groove.” All of this makes a peak experience a moment of total life-
affirmation and a moment of joy.
“Heaven, so to speak, lies waiting for us through life, ready to step into for a time and to
enjoy before we have to come back to our ordinary life of striving.” (Maslow, 1968, p. 154)

And the amazing thing is that we have all had them — and probably we all have them all the time,
we mostly just do not notice. In the training, Unleashing Vitality, the first of the Self-Actualization
Trainings, I took Maslow’s following instructions and turned it into a pattern to facilitate the
development of more peak experience states.
“I would like you to think of the most wonderful experience or experiences of your life;
happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love, or
listening to music or suddenly ‘being hit’ by a book or a painting, or some great creative
moment. First list these. Then tell how you feel in such acute moments. How you feel
differently from the way you feel at other times. How you are at the moment a different
person in some ways.” (1968, p. 71)

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Maslow described a peak experience as a term for the best moments of the human being, the happiest
moments of life, for experiences of ecstasy, rapture, bliss, of the greatest joy. When do we
experience such? Often times in a profoundly aesthetic experience, or in a moment of unexpected
creativity, or in moments of mature love, perfect sexual experiences, parental love, natural childbirth,
etc. (1971:101).

So regarding transcendence and peak experiences, because they emerge as those wonderful moments
of ecstasy, they seem to be rewards of the meta-life which enable us to transcend the moment and
not only feel more alive and full of vitality, but to raise us above the everyday to see the sacred in
it.
“You see the world in peak experiences through the eyes of Being-cognition, through what
the ancient philosophers defined as the good life (truth, beauty, and goodness): truth, beauty,
wholeness, dichotomy-transcendence, aliveness-process, uniqueness, perfection, necessity,
completion, justice, order, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, and self-
sufficiency.” (1971:102).

“These are also the ‘highest’ values in the sense that they come most often to the best people,
in the best moments, under the best conditions. They are the definitions of the higher life, of
the good life, of the spiritual life.” (1971: 105)

Part of the inherent transcendence within the peak experience is the momentary experience of many
of the characteristics of the self-actualizing life. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that
peak experiences are integrative of the splits within a person and so can be used to move a person
toward more mental and emotional health.
“Any person in any of the peak experiences takes on temporarily many of the characteristics
which I found in self-actualizing individuals. That is, for the time they became self-
actualizers.” (1968, p. 97)

Yet these are described as moments, not hours or days. Momentarily, they are peak experiences. So
now the question, “Why are peak experiences transient and brief?” Again, Maslow took on this
question and answered it: We are just not strong enough to endure more; it’s too overwhelming.
There is also, with the ecstasy of these moments, the fear of greatness.
“We fear our highest possibilities ... We are generally afraid to become that which we can
glimpse in our most perfect moments, under the most perfect conditions, under conditions
of greatest courage. We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves
in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear
before these very same possibilities.” (1971: 34)

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #47
Oct. 28, 2013
The Neuro-Semantics of Government #1

LEADERSHIP, WEALTH,
AND HARD DECISIONS

One of the challenges of leadership is that sometimes leaders have to make some very hard decisions.
A true leader sometimes has to make decisions that will not be popular, decisions that will not
increase one’s approval, decisions that might even trigger temper tantrums and outbursts, but
decisions that have to be made. Decisions that someone has to “man up to” and make. That’s why
they are hard decisions.

For several years now many governments are facing some really hard choices about finances—
spending, taxing, accountability, etc. Since the worldwide financial crisis of 2008, several of the
European countries (Greece, Spain, etc.) have really struggled with this— with the threat of the
entire country going bankrupt. Now the same challenge is beginning to show up in the United
States.

For several weeks leading up to October 1 and then up to Oct. 17, our media gave us a front row seat
to the “playing of politics” by our President and Congress as each spent lots of time demonizing the
each other and pointing fingers as who is the real culprit about our financial problems. The “funny,”
but sad, thing in watching and listening to all of this, to the political parties dancing around the
issues, making their points, and quoting their “talking points” over and over was that all the while
they were neglecting the big issue. Yes, they eventually came to an agreement and “kicked the can
down the road,” so we’ll have to go through it again in January, yet all the while they essentially
ignored the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

What is that 800 pound gorilla? The fact that we are spending more than we are making. It is the
problem of an addiction that our country has—an addiction to impulsive and out-of-control
spending. This addiction has now created a national debt of more than 17 trillion (see “Visualizing
Trillions” at the end). And not only that, but we have the problem so bad that our Congressmen and
Senators alike constantly sneak “pork” into every bill that Congress passes and that the President
signs. And why? They put in the pork to win the votes of certain political and interest groups. This
is the “politics as usual” that’s destroying our financial well-being.

While that is the basic or primary problem, there is the meta-problem. This is the problem of
refusing to face the primary problem of over-spending. The meta-problem is refusing to make the
hard choices regarding what to cut back on and how to bring the spending under control. I hardly

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ever hear anyone address that problem. The problem is that except for the rare exception—all of our
leaders seem to be cowards about these problems. Some of them will at least talk about it, but then
when it comes down to actually doing something about it, the great majority are cowards.

All of us know that as individuals we cannot handle our finances in the same way that governments
are handling their national finances. Who would even be able to keep borrowing and borrowing,
even borrowing money for bread-and-butter expenses (food, shelter, transportation), and then borrow
so much that it is more than a person can make in an entire year or more than all of their combined
equity (or nationally, more than the whole economy), and keep “kicking the can down the road”
crossing-their fingers and hoping that “it will work out”?

We all know better than that. That’s the fast track to bankruptcy and dissolventcy. Yet before we
would ever get to that point, we would cut back on spending, we would sell off things, we would be
told that we have reached our borrowing limit and can borrow no more. Well, the President and
Congress has a borrowing limit called the Debt Limit. But then every single year, under both
Republican and Democratic administrations, they vote to raise it. Now isn’t that weird? I think it
is weird! After all, what this is the purpose of having a Debt Limit if it never limits your spending?
If every time you get to the limit, you then raise the limit, what’s the whole point of a limit?

Individually, you and I know that wealth is squandered and wealth-creation is undermined by an
addictive spending pattern. The same is true nationally although that awareness does not seem to
govern the thinking or action patterns of the leaders in Washington. Somehow they don’t seem to
think of the financial responsibility that they have been given in the same way they think when it
comes to spending their own money. In this, they are engaged in a form of irresponsibility and are
acting as if there’s no consequences to what they are doing.

The solution to all of this is obvious and easy—well easy to say. It is an differently matter to do.
It involves a change of behavior in our political leaders. It is going to require the development of
new kinds of leaders. On the personal front, to change your own finances requires a change in your
own self-leadership so that you think long-term, you think about consequences, you assume
responsibility, and you make some hard decisions. Similarly with our political leaders— we need
men and women who will stop with the “politics as usual” and think beyond their own vested
interests and political parties.

Visualizing Trillions
Just how much is a trillion dollars? If there was such a thing as a thousand dollar bill and if you had
a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand— a million dollars would be only 4 inches high.

Now for a billion dollars, we have to multiple that handful of 4 inches for a million by 1000 and then
the stack would be 4000 inches high. And 4000 inches is 333 feet or somewhere about 110 meters.
That’s longer than a football field! But that’s just for one billion.

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To now go to a trillion, multiple the 100+ yards or meters (approximately) by 1000 – and the stack
is now 67 miles high. And that’s just one trillion. The US debt today is over 17 trillion, so multiple
it the 67 miles by 17 — and now the stack is 1,139 miles high.

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #48
Nov. 4, 2013
The Neuro-Semantics of Government #2

WHEN GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM

Originally I didn’t plan to write more than just one post on the over-spending problem of government
(#46). Then I received a dozen emails questioning my assumption that the problem is one of over-
spending. Several suggested that the problem is unemployment and under-employment. And true
enough, that’s another significant problem that we are currently experiencing in the US and in many
countries around the world.

One person suggested that if only government would spend more, namely give the unemployed more
money and benefits, that would help. And yes, in that case, there would be more money in the
economy. Of course, doing that is only dealing with a symptom of the problem and not the cause.
Sure, in the short-run it would help. In the long-run, however, it creates another problem—
dependency on the government, and more costs, and a sense of entitlement. The hidden
presupposition is that it is government’s role and purpose to “take care of us”as if we were helpless
and powerless and unable to take care of ourselves. And that’s a frame that violates one of the
fundamental assumptions that we operate from in Neuro-Semantics.

To make sense of all of this let’s back up, identify what we mean by “government,” and then use the
questioning power of the Meta-Model of Language to gain greater clarity on these things.
What is it? How does it work?
Who is it? What is it about?
What are the assumptions (presuppositions) that any given form of government is operating
from?

What is it and how does it work?

The term “government,” a nominalization, refers to the process of governing and that speaks about
how we govern the way we communicate, interact, create rules for ourselves, gather money, spend
money, protect ourselves, and so on. This is what we refer to as the governance of a home or
business or corporation or association. And when it comes to governing a group of people—we are
speaking about how we organize ourselves and what form of organizing that we use (dictatorship,
kingdom, oligarchy, representational republic, democracy, tyranny, aristocracy, etc.). And of course,
this is the way we “author” our reality (our organization) and so creates the “authority” that we live
by.

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What is it? It is us. It is how we as a group function, organize ourselves, invent the rules that we
then use and follow as our government. In the US, our founders framed a constitution that operates
as the foundational rules of our society and started it by a declaration. That declaration declared
itself as valid because it is an expression of We the People. We are the government and the good
thing of a democracy, or a represented republic, is that if we don’t like it, we have rules and
processes by which we can change it.

How does it work?

It works by the rules. The rules describe the operational processes of a government. And the rules
work by its explicit and implicit assumptions. That is, the rules themselves are governed (managed)
and they are governed by the presuppositional frames that drive the assumptions. So now we can
back up to ask philosophical and psychological questions that drive the government:
C What do these rules assume about human nature? Dependent, independent, inter-dependent?
Good, bad, neutral?
C What do the rules assume about people coming together to create a society? Natural,
unnatural; natural competitive, cooperative, collaborators?
C What do the rules assume about what people need, what drives them?
C What do they assume about people following the rules— their motivation, intentions,
understandings, etc.?
C What do they assume about leading people— those in charge, those creating the rules
(legislators), those enforcing the rules (police, judges, tax collectors), those overseeing and
executing the rules (executive offices, supreme court, etc.)?

Ah, within and behind our thoughts and ideas about government are lots of psychological and
sociological ideas about we the people who need government, create government, and exercise
government. We separate Government and Politics as if they are separate disciplines, yet they are
not. They inherently and inescapably involve human psychology, human functioning, human
communicating, and so on.

Who is government and what is government all about?

It is we the people getting along with each other. First and foremost to create a safe environment so
that people are safe from being attacked by domestic or foreign enemies. It is to create stable enough
society so people can predict how the economy, schools, and businesses function and how to succeed
in making a sufficient living. It is to create a free enough society so that people can fully develop
their talents, intelligence, creativity, art, etc. so that people can pursue their interests and passions.

What are the assumptions (presuppositions) that any given form of government is operating from?
Does the government now think that their job is to control people or free people? Do they think they
need to police everything the people think, say, and do or that they are to enable, equip, and empower
people so that they can be the best they can be? Do they think the people are children who have to
be taken care of or adults who can take responsible to take care of themselves?

These questions indicate that “government” is us, it is comprised of our human psychology. It relates
to what drives us, how we function at our best, our potentials, our social nature, etc. So when

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government is the problem—it is a problem due to the frames it is operating from. And if it operates
from conceptual frames of beliefs about how to lead and govern, then when it is the problem, we can
correct that problem by changing the frames.
From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #49
Nov. 11, 2013
The Neuro-Semantics of Government #3

THE GAME OF GOVERNMENT

In Neuro-Semantics (as in NLP) one of our governing premises is that where there are problems, the
person (or people) is not the problem; if there’s a problem, the frame is the problem. That’s because
behind what people do is what they think. And as they think (believe, understand, assume, etc.) so
they feel and act. So you are never the problem, what you feel and do are not the problem. Feeling
and doing are symptoms of your frames. And because frames govern in this way, that’s why
“Winning the Inner Game” is not only an introductory book to this field, it is the basic theme for how
to win whatever game you’re playing— whether it is the game of love, of business, of wealth
creation, whatever.

All of this holds equally true for the Game of Government. For us—as a group of people—to create
a governing system of rules and processes that will enable us all to win, we need to first win the inner
game of government. In last week’s post I used Meta-Model questions and wrote about what
government is, who it is, what it is for, how it works, etc. In that description, I hope it became clear
that when we talk about “government” and “politics,” we are talking human psychology, that is,
about how we humans function, operate, interact, and communicate with each other. And all of
these symptoms are functions of the frames that we bring to the experience.

So, what do we assume about these semantically loaded terms of government, politics, political
parties, etc.? What are the various frames that we hold about these aspects of governance? What
are the frames that set the games that we play and those that we want to play? One set of frames
about human beings and government creates a Story that goes like this:
People are selfish, egotistical, narcissistic, survival and self-protection is their primary
concern; they are like animals or little children in being irresponsible, lazy, ego-centric, etc.
So you have to control everything that they do; they will not manage it on their own. They
need a strong, central government to take care of them. Government should be there to
provide all their needs— safety, money, job, house, medicine, insurance, etc.

Another set of frames about human beings and government is very different. These frames describe
a completely different Story and it goes like this:
People begin life undeveloped and childlike and grow to become disciplined, highly skilled
and responsible, they move naturally from dependence to independence to inter-dependence

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 because they are social beings and are made for even higher virtues— as they are all driven
by a self-actualization drive to become the best they can become. When this drive is
inhibited persons become diminished.

Now in the field of business, Douglas McGregor took Maslow’s psychological paradigm shift to the
bright-side of human nature and articulated it in what is now recognized as Theory X and Theory Y
of management and leadership. In the fields of business and organization development, this was a
radical shift. It moved people from Authoritarian Leaders and Bosses to Facilitative and Visionary
Leaders. When we apply this Theory X and Y of government and politics, it invites the same kind
of radical paradigm shift from one of believing we need as much government as possible to need as
little government as possible.

The old set of frames viewed government as the Organization that will save us from ourselves. And
why do we need that? Because we can’t make it on our own: People are too irresponsible, too lazy,
too undisciplined. They are like children. So someone who knows better needs to take care of them.
Now who can that be? Why “The Government.” So as political children this is actually one of our
rights that we are entitled to—we have the right to expect that government will provide everything
for us and take care of us as our parents once took care of us. Of course this makes government
paternal and controlling. Throughout history this has been the primary Story of politics.

No wonder the opposite set of frames about government is so radical. It is radically positive about
human beings in that it views people through the positive psychology of self-actualization: People
want to become independent, responsible, and disciplined to make real what is potential within them.
People, when healthy and growing, are ethical, caring, and collaborative. This form of government
assumes that the best government is the less government and accordingly it gives government a new
direction, vision, and purpose: Government is to facilitate self-governance. The best government
governs in a way that empowers people to handle the responsibilities of citizenship. It secures the
freedom of people so that they can learn how to use freedom of speech, of thinking, of gathering, of
uniting, etc. so that they can be an informed and active participants in governing.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #50
Nov. 18, 2013
The Neuro-Semantics of Government #4

GOVERNMENT AND SELF-GOVERNMENT

If “government” is what we create so that we can manage our relationships with each other whether
it is the relations we establish in a family, a community, a business, a corporation, or an association,
then we are the government. We are the government and do the governing in the social group. And
where there is a group, there is “politics” and therefore some form of governance. This is primarily
true for democracies and, of course, there are many kinds of democracies.

It is not true of other forms of government. In those forms, those with “power” (military, financial,
intellectual, etc.) decide about how things will be governed. They may do that unilaterally, or
through conquest, or bargaining, or negotiating. However they come to the place that they are in a
position to decide on the structure of the governing, they then govern. The forms and processes they
set up thereafter become that kind of government. And in these cases, the government is not
democratic, that is, of or by the people.

When democracies began appearing in the modern world after centuries and centuries of kingdoms,
tyrants, dictators, aristocracies, etc., the new idea was pretty radical. It is the idea that the source of
power, legitimacy, and government lies in the people. The source does not lie in “the divine right
of kings,” or some royal blood (family), or in “might makes right” (military power), or in conquest.
The idea that the source of government is the people was a radical idea when it appeared in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Today most of us take it for granted.

When we set up a government, what is the government for? In every case, it is to structure the
relationships of the people. This is true with a couple, a family, a business, a nation. Given that, we
can now explore: How do we want to structure our relationships? How formal or informal? How
much based status or competence? How much based on seniority (tenure) or skill?

When it comes to a nation or state, the purpose of structuring government similarly depends the
goals that we set for the structuring. The U.S. experiment in democracy set it up so that government
primarily was structured for protection from enemies, domestic and foreign, and so it was design for
as little government as possible. That’s no longer true. Over the years and centuries, “government”
has grown to take on more and more control over our lives. Suppose that we now ask the question
afresh: How much government do we need? How much is best? What kind of government is
optimal for a people? Controversial questions, right?

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If we start from the position that we want a democracy that is of the people, and for the people, and
by the people, then what’s required of people so that they can do a good job in the governance (or
politics) that they set up? Now we get to some psychological questions and issues, do we not? The
founding fathers of the new democracy of the United States believed that it would only work long-
term if there was an informed and educated population. That’s premise was based upon another
premise— democracy isn’t as simple as in a Kingdom or a Dictatorship. In organizing a group in
those ways, all people have to do is obey. “Comply with the rules and do what you are told to do
and all will be well.” (!) I think it was Aristotle who said that the most efficient form of government
is a dictatorship— a benevolent king.

When we organize ourselves (at any level, family, corporation, country) for a democracy, things get
messy. In a democracy, people have to exercise their personal powers of speech, debate, tolerance,
acceptance of difference, work through conflict in a civil and honorable way, seek to understand
opposing views and positions, and make their voice heard in order to affect the ongoing development
of “the government.”

Wow! To do all of that requires a lot of personal responsibility, accountability, and effort. The heart
of a healthy democracy is that we make a social contract with each other—one where we say to each
other that we will tolerate and accept each other and each other’s differences. We accept differences
rather than demonizing them or punishing them. We create a system where change is not only
endured, but actually cultivated and promoted because we anticipate growth and development. The
social contract is that if I don’t get my way on a position, I will accept that and work within the
legitimate structures to bring about the change that I prefer.

What all of this requires is that within a good healthy political government of any and every group
is a lot of simultaneous self-government. In fact, one of the goals of healthy government is to
facilitate self-government in people. We do that in families as we work to enable and empower our
children to become independent, knowing that by moving to a state of independence they will be able
to create health inter-dependent relationships. We do that in our schools by teaching our children
to become self-reliant as they discover their strengths and find their best gifts and develop them so
that they develop skills for making a living and creating good relationships. Such “government” is
for the purpose of actualizing the highest and the best in everyone who participates.

How then do we do that in our societies? What would be our objectives and processes for creating
good citizens? How would we enable people to become productive as members of the body politic?
Would it not also be to understand how the government is not to become a mommy-or-daddy to
grown up people, but release them to increasing responsibilities and freedoms? In fact, unleashing
self-actualizing governments would involve developing the leadership ability of politicians at all
levels (from city counsels to national offices) so that as a whole we need the least amount of
government intervention and regulation, not more.

In therapy and in coaching and in education and in most of these developmental disciplines, we say
that our goals is to teach or coach ourselves out of a job. That is, we want to enable people to stand
on their own feet, take ownership of their own powers, to run their own brains, make up their own

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minds, make their own decisions and as they do so do it in a way that creates rich and robust
relationships and that is a win/win relationship in every domain. What if politicians thought that
way? Their job is to facilitate the overall development of people individually and collectively so that
we work so well together that we need them less and less. Hmmmm. That would be an interesting
world, would it not?

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #51
Nov. 25, 2013

NLP AND META-STATES

“Meta-States is NLP on Steroids”
When speaking to NLP groups, I often ask, “How many of you know about the Meta-States Model?”
Now with some NLP groups, I will sometimes find that nearly 90% have studied, learned, or read
about Meta-States and then there are times when I’m with an NLP group where almost no one has
studied Meta-States. Typically that’s because even the NLP Trainers who have taught them do not
know about the Meta-States Model! So even though the model has been acknowledged, validated,
and generally accepted in NLP since 1996 (for 17 years!), some trainers do not seem to stay current
about what’s going on in the field of NLP.

I recently encountered a group that somehow had been sheltered from the new developments in NLP
during the 1990s and beyond. As I introduced Meta-States to them, they had some questions, “Why
is the Meta-States so important? What does it enable you to do?” As I explained, one of the things
that I said was the following:
“The Meta-States Model models NLP and it does so to such an extent that it is the model that
enables you to consciously understand NLP—how it works. Anyone who is able to do NLP
effectively does so by using the Meta-States structure. Without the guidance of the Meta-
States Model, much of what you do in NLP is guesswork. But with the Meta-States Model,
you can operate in a systematic and explicit way.”

Then this past weekend at the NLP Conference in London I presented a workshop on Systemic
Coaching (based on the 2012 book by that title). Afterwards several experienced NLP Trainers
commented that the Meta-States Model and the Matrix Model restored to NLP a systematic precision
like the precision that they originally learned. When I asked them what they meant by that, they said
that Meta-States enables them to move vertically as the Strategy Model enabled them to move
horizontally. They then commented that the Meta-States Model was like an amplifier of NLP and
one said, Yes, Meta-States is like “NLP on steroids.”

Now there’s an image for you! It jarred me a bit and I think that’s because I’m so used to the Meta-
States Model, I tend to take it for granted. I forget how radical and empowering and revolutionary
it can be for people when first learned. The Meta-States Model is radical and revolutionary because
it addresses a different aspect of “mind” or “consciousness” than what the NLP model addresses.
Whereas NLP studies the structure of the representational mind and models by following the
direction and orientation of where that mind goes (using the Strategy Model), the Meta-States Model
focuses on the distinctive kind of mind that most uniquely describes human consciousness— self-
reflexive consciousness.

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That’s why the NLP model offers a more linear understanding of consciousness beginning by
noticing the “languages” of the mind (the representational systems of visual, auditory, kinesthetic,
etc.) and following where mind goes as it processes information. It simplifies the first level
complexity of consciousness using the TOTE model (test-operate-test-exit) from the cognitive
psychologists (George Miller, Karl Pribram, Eugene Gallanter) which in NLP has become the
Strategy Model that we use for modeling subjective experiences.

Yet human consciousness is more complex and more systemic. Not only do we think step by step,
we also reflect back onto our processing and layer thought-upon-thought, feeling-upon-feeling,
belief-upon-belief, etc. This is how we create what’s called “logical levels.” Actually, there is no
such thing as Logical Levels. That’s not a thing or object. It’s a process. The two nominalizations
(“logical” and “levels”) actually refers to a singular process, using our reasoning powers to layer
thought-and-emotion upon itself. So using verbs, it is layering and reasoning and so as we reason
our inner logic creates our psycho-logics (Korzybski’s emphasis).

These are our meta-states— our states about our states. Our joy about our learning, our worry about
our fear, our fear about scarcity, etc. This is what your self-reflexive consciousness creates as you
think-feel-decide-identify, etc. What the Meta-States Model provides is the ability to track, detect,
and work with these psycho-logical levels as you layer them (meta-state them, set them as the frames
in your mind). And when you can do that, you are seeing the meta-level structures and structuring
and your mind and/or the mind of another person with whom you are working and conversing.

What is the Meta-States Model?

It is a model about how you simultaneously reflect on your thoughts and feelings as you are
thinking-and-feeling (experiencing states).
It is a model about how you set the “logical level” frames in your mind that determines your
inner world (your Matrix of Meanings).
It is a model about these unconscious frames that drives your mind-body system.
It is a model that details out the meta-move (the m in a strategy sequence) that’s within the
structure of any and every subjective experience.

How does the Meta-States Model empower NLP, amplify NLP, extend NLP, and makes NLP explicit
in a systematic way?
The Meta-States Model compliments the representational mind with the self-reflexive mind.
The Meta-States Model identifies how self-reflexivity occurs.
The Meta-States Model shows the process for how “beliefs” (a meta-state) arises from mere
thoughts and emotions.
The Meta-States Model identifies the layers of beliefs-upon-beliefs that creates a belief
system.
The Meta-States Model shows the structure (structuring) of “logical levels.”
The Meta-States Model shows how different logical levels are facets of the same holoarchy
and that they are not a hierarchy.
And much, much more.

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Interested? See Meta-States (2007), Wining the Inner Game (2007), Secrets of Personal Mastery
(1997), and Neuro-Semantics (2011).

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #52
Dec. 2, 2013

NLP AND META-STATES

Meta-States Informs and Transforms NLP

After the last post (#50) on “Meta-States as NLP on Steroids” my original business partner in NLP,
Dr. Bob Bodenhamer wrote the following two paragraphs to add yet another point to how Meta-
States adds so much Ummph to the basic NLP model. Bob liked my question:
How does the Meta-States Model empower NLP, amplify NLP, extend NLP, and makes NLP
explicit in a systematic way?

And from that question he decided to add yet another answer. Now Bob writes with more than two
decades of practical experience in using NLP in the context of therapy and after co-authoring 9 books
with me and especially our book, Sub-Modalities Going Meta. Back in 1999 we first co-presented
our discovery about sub-modalities at the Canadian NLP Conference.

What is this “inner secret truth about sub-modalities”? Shhhhhh! The secret is that they are not
really sub-, that was a mistake Richard Bandler made. But calling it “sub” does not make it “sub.”
And it those distinctions are not at a “sub” level to the representations. The truth? They are meta
to the representations as Todd Epstein indicated in his original term for these cinematic features of
a person’s movies —Pragmagraphics (that is, graphics that have pragmatic applications). The story
then goes, Bander thought that was too big and complicated of a word, so he called them sub-
modalities (as if that was not a big and complicated word!). This is what Bob said opened his eyes
so much in the early days of Meta-States.
“It is simple: The Meta-States Model enables the NLPer to know up-front which NLP Pattern
will work and which one won’t work. And, the Meta-States Model clarifies in our minds
‘Why?’ some Patterns do not work yet, many do. An example is found in the sub-modality
mapping across processes. Early in my practice I discovered to my dismay that some of the
sub-modality mapping across patterns just would not work in some situations. The
explanation is found in the Meta-States Model for it will recognize whether or not the frame
where the problem state is mapped across to the desired state is indeed a “higher frame” to
the problem state thus bringing about a positive change in the problem state — in this case
you can say that the problem state has been reframed.

An example where it will not work is when you attempt to change your negative thoughts to
positive thoughts when you map across an image of Mother Teresa onto that of Adolf
Hitler. Rare indeed is the person who will experience positive feeling from this. Why?
They will have higher frames of reference in place that will shout from the roof top, ‘No
way! There is no way to put the sub-modalities of Mother Teresa in with those of Adolf
Hitler.’”

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Without an understanding and study of the Meta-States Model, one would not know that it is a model
that actually governs the core models of NLP— from the Meta-Model of language, to the Meta-
Programs model of perceptual filters, to the sub-modality model, to the Strategy Model, etc. That’s
why several of the early reviewers of the Meta-States Model (i.e., Graham Dawes in London)
commented that this model would consume NLP itself (the actual quotation, “Meta-States will be
the model that ate NLP”).

Now over the years, one of the unexpected and unintentional things that have happened with the
Meta-States Model is that it has indeed allowed us to explain the other models of NLP in terms of
how they actually work. That’s why Bob says that with it you can identify which pattern to use and
predict which pattern will work and which will not and the reasons for this. If you don’t know this,
please get to an APG training and discover this incredible secret. Or read one of the books on the
Meta-States Model.

If I were to identify the principle that explains that pretty outrageous and stunning conclusion, I
would say that it goes to the principle of self-reflexivity within the human system. As a description
of how our mind-body-emotion system works, reflexivity is dynamic, fluid, moving, and “alive.”
Reflexivity is the systemic process whereby products already created by a system re-enter the system
and so feeds the process of a self-organizing system. And when you have reflexivity, you have
iterations and that means the same process (with different content) will be going round and round
until new emergent properties arise— gestalts. And that’s why you cannot explain the gestalts of
these new emergent properties by adding up all the parts. The whole that emerges is more than and
different from the sum of the parts.

That’s why the Meta-States Model can model the structure of richly complex states like courage,
self-esteem, resilience, and hundreds of other states that are the most precious and powerful (as well
as those that are the most pathological) in human experience.

Another person, a system analyst for 13 years, Rodrigo Santiago who lives in Rio de Janiero, Brazil
wrote and said that he had the suspicion of Meta-States and mapped out the core idea as best he
could until he came across the Meta-States model. Just this year he has become a Neuro-Semantic
Trainer in addition to being a Meta-Coach. When he read last week’s article, he wrote this about
what he had written before finding the Meta-States Model indicating that he knew the secret of
human function had something to do with thoughts-about-thoughts:
“People are suffering without needing to because they don't have any clue that ‘their
ideas are in control of them.’ They are people who identify themselves with their
thoughts and culture. They tell everyone else, ‘This is who I am: I am my ideas.’
And we know that's far from true. We're more than our ideas.”

Here is meta-states in its simplest form— an idea about other ideas, an idea that sets a frame and that
locks people into a prison, identifying with one’s thoughts. And that meta-state as a belief, a value,
an identity, a prohibition and so on then reeks all kind of damage in the lives of people. Yet now,
seeing and recognizing the structure, the meta-state structure, we now know what to do and how to
proceed. Want to find out the Model that has been and continues to consume NLP? Check out

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Meta-States!

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2013 #53
Dec. 9, 2013

MANDELA—
A LEADER LIKE NONE OTHER

“Mandela has passed.” Those were the words that first announced to the world at 2 am South
African time, Dec. 6, by the current President of South Africa that a great leader had died. And if
you’ve been watching TV or following on any number of news websites— documentaries of his life
story and interviews with many people who knew him have been playing over and over. And rightly
so— almost universally he is recognized as a leader like none other.

But why? What did he do, what did he accomplish, and who was he that makes him stand out head
and shoulders above other leaders?

Part of the story is the tremendous life-long struggle he had to fulfill a vision. The vision itself was
simple, obvious, and self-explanatory— to bring freedom and equality to his people. He wanted a
free South Africa. He wanted democracy for all. He wanted the racist apartheid system to end and
to create for his country what exists in other democracies around the world. What he wanted was
not extraordinary. It was and is a basic human right.

Part of the story was how long it took to realize his dream. It took a very long time! He was able
to rise up in the context of the heavy prejudice in his country to get educated, to become a lawyer
and then to become a fighter against racist system of apartheid. From that position he then stepped
forward as a young professional man to begin his resistance to the current system. When the system
then found a way to unjustly imprison him, he spent 27 of his “prime” years as a prisoner of the
system that he sought to reform. 27 years! He went sometimes two years at a time not seeing his
wife and family. And for 11 of those years he was forced to break rocks in the hot sun.

Yet none of that killed his dream. None of that stopped him from persisting. That is what stands
out as absolutely incredible. How long have you devoted to making your life dreams come true?
His vision continued. Mistreat, abuse, the punishment of hard labor, none of that killed his spirit.
And to make it even more amazing— through it all he became a better man. He could have become
bitter. He did not. He became better. Over the weekend, President Bill Clinton said that Mandela
went in an angry man and that he told him he beat the rocks for 11 years getting out his anger.

And why? How? Meaning. He had within in mind and heart an inspiring vision of justice and

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equality and the meaningfulness of that vision drove him forward. And he refused to play the victim!
Even though he was being unfairly treated, mistreated in cruel ways, he believed he had control and
choice. So he began writing from prison. And not because that was easy. He had to write and
sneak out his writings.

His biography, The Long Road to Freedom, does not say this, but frame by implication he had to
have a frame in his mind that he was free, he had choice, he could do something, his life still
counted, and his actions did matter. Those are all of the qualities and meta-states of resilience.
Amazing, eh? One news reporter said that when he greeted him in Feb. 1990 after 27 years of
imprisonment, he looked like a man back from a 3 day holiday. Now how incredible is that? That’s
speaks about the power of the mind— to make rich and robust meanings which keeps a person vital!

Part of the story is the ending— from prisoner to president! Now there’s a rags to riches story if
there ever was one! The man that they tried to beat down in prison, in depriving him of contact with
family, with trying to shut his mouth— steps up to the podium as President. And so he becomes
President of the new South Africa (1993-1999) and what is even more amazing than that is what he
did as President.

What did he do? Unlike almost every other president in African countries or the surrounding Middle
East countries—when he became President he protected those who made his life so miserable,
forgave them, and created a system of reconciliation. He did not imprison or kill his enemies. He
did not retaliate. He did not do what is most “natural” in human nature that is not developed.
Immature human nature retaliates. But mature, grown-up, and well developed human nature—
human nature actualizing its highest and best — forgives, treats others with respect, looks for the
good of the whole. And that’s what Mandela did.

When F.W. DeClarke, the white President of South Africa came to power, he immediately began
undoing the apartheid system. He freed Mandela from prison and then began negotiating with
Mandela as they worked together to end apartheid. Upon his death, DeClarke noted this weekend
that Mandela did not just negotiate for his people, he also negotiated for the whites. He argued that
the whites had to be made safe. And that’s what prevented a civil war— a war that many expected
and that people in those days were preparing for. Amazing! Talk about collaboration!

Now for something even more amazing. Mandela came from a tribal background. His forefathers
were tribal leaders there in Africa. But... and this is a gigantic but ... but he did not behave in a tribal
manner. Unlike what’s happening in Iraq and Iran and other Middle East Arab countries and other
African countries with all of the tribal wars and massacres, Mandela refused the tribal mind-set and
frame of reference. Isn’t that absolutely incredible?

A self-actualizing leader and especially, a self-actualizing political leader does not misuse power.
He or she is, in fact, the only person who should be given power because the self-actualizing person
respects power and does not crave it. Most politicians are not like that. Most are hungry for power
and therefore are not to be trusted with it. When he created his government and his cabinet, he
actually put his opponents in positions of power. Now how amazing is that? How was that

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possible? He trusted them. And they came to trust him. That was his thinking and belief. He
himself said, “In order to be trusted, you have to trust.”

I heard Charles Krauthamer on Fox News say that Mandela he was a great leader because he forgave.
He said that given what the apartheid government had done to him— mistreated him, submitted him
to 27 years of prison life, what he found amazing was that there was no sign of resentment and hatred
in him. He said, “If he didn’t feel bitter after all those years— that in itself is amazing and
incredible. If he did feel it and did not express it— well, that is saintly! Absolutely brilliant.” Now
imagine that— no bitterness after when he went through what he went through! For me, another sign
of a self-actualizing man— a self-actualizing leader, a self-actualizing politician.

If there was ever a truly great leader—it seems to me that the vote worldwide would probably go to
Nelson Mandela, hands down. And why? What sets him head and shoulders above other leaders?
(1913-2013).
He had a broad and bright vision equality for all, a dream that all would be treated with
dignity.
He lived that vision. It was not just talk. He walked that talk and was willing to pay the
price for it.
He refused to give up that vision when everything in his world looked impossible not for just
this year, for 2 years for 10 years, for 20 years, for 27 years!
He suffered for that vision and he suffered with a grace that strikes most of us as unworldly,
beyond this world.
When he had power to get back at those who took away his best yeas and he did not misuse
it. He did not use it for revenge.
He led South Africa to transformation without a civil war.

Is there is such a thing a great political leader— a self-actualizing political leader? Yes. Mandela
has pioneered that trail. It is possible. We can no longer dismiss the possibility. He has given us
a model and exemplar for Political Science and what Government can be. Today we can now say
to our government leaders who play dirty politics, are not transparent, play political games to
besmirch the opposition, etc. — look at Nelson Mandela! Let the light of his example chase away
the darkness of your example.

As a Neuro-Semanticist studying the highest values and meanings and the best performances so that
we can model them and transfer them so that they can be replicate in the lives of others, Nelson
Mandela provides a tremendous example of moral courage, humility, and compassion. He provides
a model of self-actualizing leadership. May we have many, many more leaders in our world like
him!

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #54
Dec. 16, 2013

THERE’S META-STATES HIDING

IN YOUR EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

When you know how meta-states manifest themselves, you will discover that they are everywhere
in your life— and in the lives of everyone around you. Why is that? Precisely because of the special
and unique kind of human consciousness (self-reflexive consciousness) is dynamically active every
moment of our lives. And that means that you never just think and leave it there. Ah, if only life
was so simple! No, you think and then you think about your thinking. And then about that thinking-
of-thinking. And that’s not the end of it. There’s yet more after that. You feel about your thinking,
you think about your feelings, and you do so level upon level upon level.

Okay, so good for theory. That’s the theoretical framework for understanding how the layering of
self-reflexive consciousness works. But how does it show up in our lives? How does it show up in
your life? Ah, this is actually where the magic occurs.

When you bring one state to another state in your thinking-and-feeling, you texture the first state
with the second. Bring joy or fun or delight to your learning and you create a layered experience—
joyful learning. What’s the quality of that learning? Joy. You could bring impatience for impatient
learning. You could bring seriousness for serious learning. Whatever state you bring to the state of
learning (the first state), that second state textures it, qualifies it, and sets the frame for it.

And if you noticed — this shows up in language: joyful learning. In grammar, this is an adjective,
it could just as well be an adverb, joyfully curious. Here then is one place where meta-states hide.
Today I supervised and benchmarked a coaching session. The client wanted a change in his
concentration. It was too intense. He said he wanted to be less stressed because he is good at
focusing, but then when he gets focused, it’s too much. His head starts to hurt, he gets headaches.
So eventually talking it out, he said “I just want a relaxed concentration.” Ah, there it is. A meta-
state and one hidden in language.

Along this line, in an article in Rapport: The Magazine for NLP Professionals (London), Joe Cheal
wrote an article that he titled, “The Impact of Language” (2012/2013). There he wrote and described
primary and secondary qualities.
“Primary qualities are said to be the qualities that something has that are ‘independent’ of a
perceiver. This might include shape, solidity, movement, and location. Psychologically,
these primary qualities are what we experience when we imagine nouns and verbs.”
“Secondary qualities are dependent on a perceiver and are more about our own personal

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 experience of the thing/relationship. This might include color, brightness, focus, and
loudness. Secondary qualities tend to be more descriptive, adding detail to the framework
of primary qualities. Secondary qualities are akin to adjectives and adverbs and are likely
to be more comparative and subjective than primary qualities.” (p. 24)
“Adverbs describe the quality of the verb and hence will likely affect the internal
representations.” He illustrates with ‘quickly’ ‘comfortably, disastrously, curiously.

I wrote to Joe and noted that he had just described how meta-states show up in language in these
secondary qualities. And that as qualities that we bring to our experiences in the world, what we had
always assumed were sub-modalities are actually meta-modalities. After all, “color, brightness,
focus, and loudness” are not things, they are all nominalizations of the categories that we invent in
our minds as concepts. Blue as a color arises from how our eyes interpret the light that strikes our
eyes. But “color” is a concept, it is not red, or brown, or yellow, or any color; it is a category of these
colors.
“Secondary qualities are akin to adjectives and adverbs and are likely to be more comparative
and subjective than primary qualities.” (p. 24)

Yes, and that’s because we invent these qualities and then frame the primary qualities or events with
them. Translated: We meta-state experience. And we do it every single day. Yet most of the time,
we never notice. But you can. What meta-states have you heard today?
A brilliant idea. Ashamed of my brilliance.
Lazy learning. Sad about being embarrassed.
Playfully serious. A stressed-out vocation.
Fearful of my anger. Curiously learning.
Generously sad. Enjoying being depressed.
Frustrated about being upset. Procrastinating about my procrastination.
Valuing hatred. Hating the value of hating.
Playfully prejudiced. Seriously prejudiced.
Courageously resisting prejudice. Prejudiced against being prejudiced.

References:
[email protected] NLP Master Trainer. Rapport: The Magazine for NLP Professionals. article “The Impact
of Language” Joe Cheal, Winter (2012/2013)

For more about the language of Meta-states, see the Book, Meta-States: Managing the Higher Levels of the
Mind (2005) in both paperback and hardback. Also, Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997).

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #55
Dec. 23, 2013

WHAT IF ALL YOUR LIMITATIONS

WERE IN YOUR MAPS?

One of the most powerful premises in NLP and Neuro-Semantics is that our limitations are not real.
That when a person feels limited, the limitation is an inside job. From the beginning, NLP has said
that people are primarily limited by their maps, not by their reality. If a person is limited or feels
limited, that limitation is almost always a function of some mental map that he or she is carrying
around. As a result, this means that limitations are about as real as you believe they are real.

Now is that shocking? Surprising? Unbelievable? Well, let’s test it. A good way to test this is to
look around at those individuals who have or had many of the same external conditions to deal with
and yet who did not let those conditions limit them. Same conditions, yet no limitations. Now let’s
make it really personal. What limits you? Make a list of whatever you think are things that are
limitations in your life. Now you can begin to explore or wonder if anyone else on this planet has
ever had a similar limitation to what you have and yet did not let it limit them.

In NLP this premise arises from the fact that we do not operate on the territory as we move through
life or through the world, we operate only on our map of the territory. Some people develop a map
that “learning is hard,” that “I’m just not a good learner,” that “learning is boring.” With that mental
map you can guess with pretty good odds how they will then relate to the experience of learning.
That mental map generates a limiting belief and a limiting understanding. Then living long enough
from those limitations, one would also develop more—a limiting identity, limiting metaphors,
limiting perceptions, etc.

So here is a transformative question to consider:

What if all of your limitations were limitations, not in the world, but in your maps of the
world? If you take this on for a day, how would you re-envision your life experiences?

It seems that there are so many conditions of life that most of us are so very quick to label a
limitation. Whether it is lack of money, lack of caring parents, lack of schooling, the misfortune of
being mugged, raped, imprisoned, etc. there are others who have experienced a similar condition
and who did not let it limit them. They refused to map an external challenge as a personal limitation.
It could have been a devastating prison experience such that Viktor Frankl experienced in a Hitler
Concentration camp. It could have been a more regular prison like Nelson Mandela. It could have

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been a rape such as Oprah experienced, or deaf and blindness, or whatever. But the conditions were
not mapped as a personal limitation. And so they were not.

What does this mean? It does not mean that “we create reality.” That’s far too big of a jump of
logic. An over-generalization like that is unfounded. We do not create reality, but we do create our
sense of reality. That is, we create how we experience life and the quality of our life.

It is in this sense that our meaning-making operates as such a creative power in our lives. This
brings us back to the magic and wonder and power of language. It brings us back to the neuro-
linguistic effects of languaging or mental mapping in our lives. Precisely because meaning is not
given, you and I, as meaning-makers have the power to invent what a thing, event, or condition is
to ourselves. And as we do, we then endow it with various degrees and qualities of significance.

You and I can over-load things with too much meaning— meanings that it cannot bear. This is the
source of addictions. We can just as well under-load things so that it is not meaningful enough for
us so we end up feeling bored. And we can create distorted meanings which then generates distorted
relationships to things thereby messing up how to think or feel or handle something. This explains
why, in Neuro-Semantics, we begin almost everything by examining the ecology of the meanings
that we attribute to things:
Does it work for you?
Does it empower you as a person?
Does it enhance your life?
Does it serve your overall well-being?
Does it unleash your best potentials for being your very best?

While meaning is not inherently given, we live in a social world where others who have come before
us have created meanings, meanings that we inherit by virtue of being born in that society. But the
meanings given may not be serving us well in the long run. The meanings may, in fact, create all
sorts of distortions and dysfunctions and undermine our well-being. So we begin by checking out
the meanings attributed. And that puts us in a position of choice whereby we can change things.
We can change our sense of reality by asking,
What would be the very best meaning that I could invent and give to this or that experience?
The very best meaning so that instead of experiencing something as a personal limitation, I
frame it as simply something to be dealt with?

This is the foundation of all personal, social, and organizational transformation.

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From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections 2013 #56
December 30, 2013

INSIDE-OUT LIMITATIONS

If all of our limitations are limitations of our maps rather than reality (Meta Reflections #54), then
the case of our lives is one of inside-out limitations, rather than outside-in. Yet for almost
everybody, limitations feel like an outside-in process. It certainly seems that what is creating
limitations in my life are other people, how I was treated by my parents, friends, lovers, bosses, etc.,
by the circumstances that I’m facing, etc. It seems that way; it feels that way, yet in actuality, that’s
not the way it is.

Why is that? What explains this? The principle is that our inside-out limitations (which are in our
maps) color our perceptions. Limitations seem to come from the outside, because that’s how we use
our map-endowed limitations—we use them to color what we see.

The result of this is that much of what is inside us is projected outside. It is projected onto other
people, onto the world, onto experiences, etc. In NLP this shows up as the process of “mind-
reading.” Yet even more than projection is the mechanism of filtering—we see the worlds that we
see as colored through our filters. This describes the power of a belief. A belief, as an understanding
and conviction about something (yourself, others, your work, money, business, discipline, etc.),
works as a self-organization attractor within your mind-body system. That’s why all of the great
faith systems warned: Be careful what you believe because as you believe, so be it unto you as you
believe.

After last week’s post on this subject, Cat Wilson [[email protected]] who trains NLP in Portland
Oregon sent the following quotation from Jennifer James (2003) who said something that relates to
this challenge. She offers a solution: We can learn to recognize the distorting factors.
“Tugged in opposite directions by a familiar present and an uncertain future, we can lose our balance
and our ability to keep things in perspective. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can learn to
recognize the many factors that may be distorting our perceptions. We can sharpen our perspective
skills. In short, we can keep our eyes and minds open to the forces of change as they will affect our
businesses and our lives.” (Thinking in the Future Tense, Touchstone iBooks)

Is this easy? No, of course not. Yet is it important? Yes, absolutely. And is it possible? Yes! And
that is one of the values of NLP Training, learning to recognize the distorting factors in our
perceptions. If you’re committed to learning that, I’d recommend that you start with learning and
using the Meta-Model of Language. It was designed to enable you to challenge the quality of your
map-making. And don’t just use the original 11 distinctions (The Structure of Magic, 1975), use all
22 of the distinctions (Communication Magic, 2001). From there, focus also on the thinking pattern

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that you use in thinking— your meta-programs and the cognitive distortions. These govern how you
think.

Similarly, Neuro-Semanticist and Meta-Coach, Scott Pochron [[email protected]]

who has made developmental psychology his focus (Scott presented a paper at the NLP Research
Conference last year) wrote the following about the importance of a community of support for
enabling all to engage in better thinking.
There is a real limitation though—a developmental limitation that impacts the way in
which maps are constructed. In this case, the challenge is not just the quality of the map, but the
capability of the individual to coordinate maps of sufficient complexity to adequately represent the
territory.
A simple example is systems thinking. It's estimated that only 20% of the US population is able to
think systemically (i.e., able to coordinate the interdependencies between more than two variables)
without some form of support.
There is enough research evidence to confirm that there is a change over time in how individuals
construct meaning and there are patterns in the structure of these changes from one stage to the next.
What is exciting, as Neuro-Semanticists and Meta-Coaches, this is the area we attend to—we can
work with clients to understand both the structure of the maps and their map-making capabilities,
and provide the support to enable transformation, which eventually can evolve the map making
capability itself so they can be self supporting.

I wrote back to Scott noting what a shocking statistic that is— “only 20% of the US population is
able to think systemically ... without some form of support.” So what support do people need?
What do we have in Neuro-Semantics that an offer you support?

I’d first recommend using the Meta-States Model. As a systems model, it will get you use to the
system process of self-reflexivity and how to follow your own information—energy loop through
your mind-body-emotion system. This non-linear facet of thinking will condition you to think about
the variables as information moves through the loops and are transformed into neurological
responses.

Once you have a good working handle on how you meta-state yourself (and others) with layers of
psycho-logical levels, then focus your attention on learning how to use the Matrix Model. This will
enable you to identify the key variables in the system and a few key principles that govern the
dynamic complexity of the system. Then you will be able to follow the information into a person’s
individual system until it emerges as energy “states” that the person operates from in speaking and
responding.

This is what we do in Meta-Coaching. We follow the data that a person is paying attention to and
focusing on. We follow it into his or her map-making system where the person then creates both
limitations and resources by interpreting the meaning of the data. When this framing of meaning
creates a limitation—the problem is that limiting frame. And that’s the leverage point of
transformation in that person’s system. What limitations in emotions, speech, behavior, and
relational responses makes sense. It makes senses to the meaning that the person maps about the
data. While it may seem like the limitation is out there in that data, it is not. The limitation comes

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from the inside to the outside due to the interpretative meanings framed by the person. Got a
limitation? No worry, the frame is the problem! Time to reframe!

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