Mastery Skills Manual: From Matrix to Mastery

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FAST TRACK SKILLS TO SUCCESS

MASTERY SKILLS Playing and Mastering The Inner and Outer Games To Win at Life, Love, and Business

Copyright 2004 L. Michael Hall Mastery Skills: From Matrix to Mastery

Based on

Secrets of Personal Mastery (1999), Crown House Publications. Meta-States (1995/ 2000 2 edition), Neuro-Semantic Publications Games Business Experts Play (2002) Crown House Publications, Wales, UK. nd

Neuro-semantics Publications L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. ISNS: International Society of Neuro-semantics® P.O. Box 8 Clifton CO 81520 (970) 523-7877 [email protected]

www.neurosemantics.com www.runyourownbrain.com

Disclaimer: This Training Manual is designed for training and education and should not be used as a substitute for psychotherapy or psychiatry. Even though this material was designed and written by a psychologist and a Professional Licensed Counselor (PLC) in the State of Colorado, neither Dr. Hall nor the International Society of Neuro-semantics (ISNS) recommend that this should be used in the place of professional psychological and psychiatric assistance.

For Audio and Video CDs and tapes of Trainings Tom Welch — [email protected] www.nlp-video.com

MASTERY SKILLS Overview of the 7 Days

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Day 1: Waking up to Your Matrix When the Matrix Has You Warning: Taking the Red Pill Games and Frames The Matrix Model and Meta-Stating the Matrix Matrix and Meta-Questions

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Day 6: Mastering Your Business Matrix

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Self Matrix: Self-Valuation and Esteem Power Matrix Ownership of Powers Ego Strength Intention Matrix — Intentionality Stance Flexibility in Exploration Excuse Blow-Out: Yes/ No Dancing with Dragons Day 3: Reloading Your Matrix

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Meaning Matrix Frame of Choice Cognitive Distortions & Clarity Meta-Programs: Changing Meta-Programs Texturing States — Gestalting: Proactivity Genius State Making Executive Decisions Closing Knowing-Doing Gap Mind-To-Muscle Changing the Rules of the Game Multiple Layering of Frames

Day 4: Mastering your Relationship Matrix

The Others/Relationship Matrix Responsibility to / for Giving and Receiving Feedback Un-insultability From Magnanimity to Forgiveness Playful Humor Skill Development in the Matrix

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The Time Matrix Personal Efficiency Adding Value

State Matrix: State Induction — Meta-Stating Matrix Creation Frame Game Detection — Matrix Detection Systems Check Matrix Detection and Transformation Day 2: Matrix Training

Day 5: Mastering your Wealth Matrix Living with Passion Inside out Wealth / Abundance Seeing & Seizing Opportunities Bold Risk-Taking Adventuring

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The World Matrix World Detection World of Business, Principles Meta-Detailing Meta-Detailing Business Success Well-formed Problems Well-formed Solutions Solution Focus Day 7: Mastering your Leadership Matrix Super-Charging Your Attitude Emotional Vitality Leadership Criteria Continuous Improvement Optimism Resilience Persistence

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Articles: Wake Up, Neo, the Matrix Has You! Welcome to the Matrix of Your Mind Frame Game Questions Frame Game Worksheets

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Models for Mastery Glossary Bibliography Author Neuro-Semantic Trainings

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OVERVIEW FROM MATRIX TO MASTERY Personal Mastery: Day 1: Waking up to Your Matrix Taking Charge of Your Matrix Day 2: Matrix Training Powering Up in your Matrix Day 3: Reloading your Matrix Matrix Transformations

You were born in a Matrix—a Matrix for your mind, for your mind-body system, a Matrix of frames about meaning. Until we wake up to our to our Matrix, the Matrix has us. Waking up to it enables us to master it so that we can truly choose how to take charge of our talents, passions, and dreams and live by our values and visions. Playing off of the idea of Frames and Games as well as the Matrix movie— the training enables you to power up so that you can reload your own Matrix with the most inspiring of frames.

Life and Business Mastery: Day 4: Mastering your Relationship Matrix For personal and business relationships

Discover your Others/Relationship Matrix and the skills that enable you to gain rapport, trust, respect, listen, communicate effectively, influence, negotiate, and build teams.

Day 5: Mastering your Wealth Matrix Inside Out Wealth: Using talent and passion to add value

Wealth is an inside-out phenomenon. Learn that and you can operate from an abundance that sees and seizes opportunities and that creates value everywhere.

Day 6: Mastering your Business Matrix Business skills and intelligence for top performances

As there is I.Q. & E.Q. for emotional intelligence, so there's a B.Q. This Matrix enables us to play the great Game of work, identify critical success factors and think like an entrepreneur.

Day 7: Mastering your Leadership Matrix Leading yourself into your future with an entrepreneurial attitude

Lead yourself and others by finding your Vision and super-charging your attitude so that you can play and win.

WAKING UP TO YOUR MATRIX The Art of Taking Charge of Your Matrix " Wake up, Neo! The Matrix has you!" Description: You were born in a Matrix —a Matrix for your mind, for your mind-body system, a Matrix of meaning frames about a thousand things. Until we wake up to our Matrix, the Matrix has us. Waking up to it enables us to take charge of our talents, passions, and dreams and to then live by our values and visions. Challenge: How do we wake up to the Matrix? How do we resist the seduction of comfort, familiarity, fear of risk or change? Solution: Waking up to the Matrix begins by learning about it, detecting, it, entering it, and exploring it. That's our first task. We will wake up and become aware of the grounding matrix of state and begin to develop state awareness and management. Playing off of the idea of Frames and Games as well as the Matrix movie— the training enables you to power up so that you can reload your own Matrix with the most inspiring of frames. Outcomes for Day 1: Waking up to the Matrix of Frames that govern our thinking, feeling, speaking, behaving, relating, and development. Discovering and incorporating the understandings, skills, and patterns for waking up to our Matrix of frames. Learning to enter the Matrix with ease and grace. Discovering the adventure, magic, and power of waking up to how we create our Matrix as we meta-state ourselves. Experience the foundational skills for state management. Learn the basic structures of the Matrix. Learn how to use the meta-questions to flush-out our frames.

WHEN THE MATRIX HAS YOU! Is there a splinter in your mind—driving you mad?

Figuring out when a Matrix is ill-formed

Unable to act on what you know. Do you know more than you do? Do you know lots of ways to improve the quality of your life and yet for all that intelligence and wisdom you still can't pull it off? Repeatedly experience the same problems. Are you deluged with lots of good advice for solving a difficulty and yet the same problem continues to recur? Feel controlled by something that you can't specify. Do you feel "played" by some known or unknown game that keeps putting you through the same pattern over and over? Does it seem that no matter what you do, the "system" seems to be plotting against you? Blinded by the frame.

Attempted solutions only make the problem worse. Does a way of thinking, feeling, or acting keep repeating itself and when you fight it, it gets stronger? Going round and round in circles. Do you feel that you're just going round in circles trying to find better solutions for developing better habits in eating, exercising, relating, succeeding, etc.?

Experience diminishing returns over time. Do you find that you have one or more patterns that the longer you use it becomes less and less useful or less and less effective?

Healing a Matrix to Make it Robust

Acting on what you know. Close the Knowing-Doing Gap. Act on the knowledge you have. Learn to take effective action.

Bring closure to old Frames. Resolve issues. Complete, move on to the next level. Power Up to become the Master of your Matrix. Power up, gain a sense of control. Systemic awareness of what's happening

Flexibly shift to do something different. Learn how to stop what doesn't work. Learn effective solutions- even counter intuitive ones. Step out of the negative spirals. Step out of the double-bind traps. Ride the loops. Develop your step back skills. Run systems checks. Create virtuous spirals. Create more empowering frames and Matrices. Upgrade skills and responses. Build up more effective frames.

AND THEN THERE IS THE MATRIX Trinity; "It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did, the answer is out there, Neo." Neo: "What is the Matrix?"

In the beginning there was a void. An emptiness. We are born and we don't even know that we are in the world. It takes some time to wake up and realize that we are ... to differentiate from mother and to discover the World. Then suddenly several things begin to emerge .... • • • •

Self: I am a self... a being ... I am alive, I see, hear, feel. I am hunger and wet and dry and uncomfortable, then comfortable. Happenings — Events — People. There's others. There's movement. There's activity. Things are happening. I'm being fed, carried, rocked ... States: I'm in a state: pleased / unpleasant; happy / unhappy; comfortable / uncomfortable. Mapping: What is this all about? What do I think and feel?

And then the Matrix Adventure Begins.

WHEN THE MATRIX HAS YOU! Is there a splinter in your mind—driving you mad?

Figuring out when a Matrix is ill-formed

Unable to act on what you know. Do you know more than you do? Do you know lots of ways to improve the quality of your life and yet for all that intelligence and wisdom you still can't pull it off? Repeatedly experience the same problems. Are you deluged with lots of good advice for solving a difficulty and yet the same problem continues to recur? Feel controlled by something that you can't specify. Do you feel "played" by some known or unknown game that keeps putting you through the same pattern over and over? Does it seem that no matter what you do, the "system" seems to be plotting against you? Blinded by the frame.

Attempted solutions only make the problem worse. Does a way of thinking, feeling, or acting keep repeating itself and when you fight it, it gets stronger? Going round and round in circles. Do you feel that you're just going round in circles trying to find better solutions for developing better habits in eating, exercising, relating, succeeding, etc.?

Experience diminishing returns over time. Do you find that you have one or more patterns that the longer you use it becomes less and less useful or less and less effective?

Healing a Matrix to Make it Robust

Acting on what you know. Close the Knowing-Doing Gap. Act on the knowledge you have. Learn to take effective action.

Bring closure to old Frames. Resolve issues. Complete, move on to the next level. Power Up to become the Master of your Matrix. Power up, gain a sense of control. Systemic awareness of what's happening

Flexibly shift to do something different Learn how to stop what doesn't work. Learn effective solutions- even counter intuitive ones. Step out of the negative spirals. Step out of the double-bind traps. Ride the loops. Develop your step back skills. Run systems checks. Create virtuous spirals. Create more empowering frames and Matrices. Upgrade skills and responses. Build up more effective frames.

AND THEN THERE IS THE MATRIX Trinity: "It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did, the answer is out there, Neo." Neo: "What is the Matrix?"

In the beginning there was a void. An emptiness. We are born and we don't even know that we are in the world. It takes some time to wake up and realize that we are ... to differentiate from mother and to discover the World. Then suddenly several things begin to emerge .... • • • •

Self: I am a self... a being ... I am alive, I see, hear, feel. I am hunger and wet and dry and uncomfortable, then comfortable. Happenings — Events — People. There's others. There's movement. There's activity. Things are happening. I'm being fed, carried, rocked ... States: I'm in a state: pleased / unpleasant; happy / unhappy; comfortable / uncomfortable. Mapping: What is this all about? What do I think and feel?

And then the Matrix Adventure Begins.

WARNING! You are about to take the Red Pill!

"What exists today are only messages about the past which we call memories, and these messages can always be framed and modulated from moment to moment." (Bateson's (1972, p. 233)

You are about to enter

"You can't be told What the Matrix is, You have to see it for yourself." Morpheus

the Matrix Zone

This trip will be dangerous to your delusions, denials, and repressions. The adventure will inevitably put you in a spin and initiate feelings of disorientation before you come out the other end freer, more empowered, and more masterful. It will flush out Agents and Sentinels (i.e., Dragons, Demons, and Toxic Beliefs) that will try to get you, stop you, and scare you ... but take courage, they (like all frames) are just made out of the stuff of "thought" and easily transform into Masters, Princes, Princess, Empowering Beliefs, and Wonderful Dreams.

Via training in the Matrix you will begin to re-define who you are, what you're about, and your direction in life. You will learn how to begin to believe, really believe, in yourself. You will discover afresh or for the first time the ability to set the frames you desire—and to wake up for the rest of your life with your frames of choice. Matrix Games is a model for How to Win at the Games of Life. It operates by detecting and transforming our frames of mind— the frames that make up the Matrix of our mind, Matrix Games is also about becoming a Master of your Matrix... a master who can identify frames as they are presented, outframe toxic frames, effectively refuse losing games, and solidly set new empowering games.

ALL OF LIFE IS A GAME PLAYED INSIDE OF FRAMES WITHIN FRAMES OF FRAMES "It's difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame."

G a m e s — the set of actions and interactions that make up our lives The External or Outer Games: Performance, behaviors, actions, skills, activities, gestures, relationships, cultural roles, rituals, ceremonies, etc. The Internal or Inner Games: Mental behavior: thinking, valuing, imaging, etc. Emotional behavior: feelings, emotions, valuing, appreciating, etc. We cannot not play "games." Every state, behavior, skill, etc. plays out some game. And since we are always in some state, we are forever playing out some frame. It's just a matter of, "What frame game are you playing now?" "What frame games have you been playing?"

F r a m e s — The Inner Game of Your Frames of Mind The ideas, concepts, beliefs, understandings, decisions, models, paradigms, assumptions, terms, suggestions, purpose, notions, values, expectations, desires, hopes, theories, etc. that set up the Games. Every mental structure involving words, symbols, conceptual models, etc. establishes a frame as in "frame of-reference" which then leads to various levels of our "Frames of Mind." "Frames greatly influence the way that specific experiences and events are interpreted and responded to because of how they serve to 'punctuate' those experiences and direct attention." (Dilts, 1999, p. 22) F r a m e G a m e s — The Outer Games of Your Actions and Performances Frames and Games come together to create our felt experience of life in whatever field, dimension or facet of life we're engaged in, whether work, career, personal, health, etc. We only and always play games. We play both good games and bad games. We do so because we're have a frame brain. We typically call these Games "reality." We say, "That's the way things are!" "The things you have to do to succeed in this world." These descriptions make us feel better, but do not change the fact that they are human constructed "realities" that set up the games that we play.

THE 7 MATRICES OF OUR NEURO-SEMANTIC SYSTEM Process matrices; 1) Meaning/ Spirit Matrix: 2) Intention Matrix: — State Matrix:

What does it mean? What is its significance? What do I want? What's important? What's my outcome? What's the purpose? What state are you in? How are you feeling? How intense is the state? What triggered the state? How do you do that? What do you call this? What state do you have to be in to do this? How do you get yourself into this state?

3) Self and Identity Matrix

Who am I? What's my nature?

What am I like?

4) Power: Coping/Mastering Matrix Our Modus Operandi.

What should I do? How should I do it?

What can I do? Can I do something?

5) Time Matrix:

Is "time" a friend or enemy? Do I live in the past, present or the future?

5) Others/ Relationship Matrix

Who are others? Are they friendly? What is life, what exists? What is out there?

6) World / Reality Matrix:

What are they like? What is real?

The 7 Matrices as a Model There are 7 matrices of frames embedded within frames that make up the essence of our personality, attitudes, and perceptions. These govern who we are and what we are about. They are built around our mind-body-emotion or neuro-linguistic states and create our higher neuro-semantic states.

The Grounding Matrix: • State - the foundational matrix that grounds all of the Frames The Process Matrices: • Meaning / Value • Intention / Purpose The Content Matrices built around special Concepts: Self • Power or Resourcefulness • Time • Other or Relationship • World

F A C E T S OF THE MIND

META-QUESTIONS FOR TEASING OUT META-STRUCTURES AND META-FRAMES All meta-levels in our mind are made up of the same "stuff" that governs the primary state or level: thoughts, feelings, and physiology. We use our see-hear-feel representations and words to build up meanings at the meta-levels to create the matrices of our mind. The following set of questions in various categories offer lots of ways to explore and elicit these higher level structures. As you use these, remember the different categories are not different things—just other ways of expressing the same thing, the meta-frame. This is not trivial. It means that we can view a "meaning" as an idea that we "hold in the mind" as a belief, a value, an identity, an understanding, etc. Every frame has every one of these categories within it. Confused? It is this very thing that confuses most of us about the higher levels of our minds that we call "logical levels." When we nominalize these categories, "Beliefs," "Values," etc. we mis-cue our minds-bodies and begin thinking of them as "things." And as different things. Yet they are not. All of these words are but expressions of various mental processes— the framings that we do which create our neuro-semantic reality or Matrix. Think of the following questions as 26 ways to way around the diamond of consciousness and see, hear, feel and explore the many facets of perception and focus. These are facets of focus that give us multiple ways into the Matrix of our mind. 1. Meanings: The "ideas" that we hold in mind. What does this mean to you? What else does it mean to you? How much meaning does it hold for you? Do you know how you came to attribute this meaning? How well does this meaning serve you? 2. Beliefs: The "ideas" that we affirm, validate, and confirm (also Convictions). What do you believe about that? How much do you value that belief? Do you have any beliefs about that belief? How have you confirmed that belief? How strong is that confirmation? What other convictions do you have about this? 3. Frames: The ideas that we use to set frame of reference, structures of context in our mind. What's your frame of reference for this? How do you frame this? How else could you frame it? What's the most empowering frame you've heard from others about this? 4. Generalizations: The "ideas" that we draw as summary conclusions about things, "ideas" we have about other ideas. What do you think about that? What do you feel about that? What comes to mind when you entertain that thought? What conclusions have you drawn about this?

How have you generalized from this experience? 5. Realizations: The "ideas" we develop as new insights, understandings, and even eureka experience. (Denis Bridoux) How does it feel to realize this? When you realize this, what do you think? Now that you know, what do you want to do? Now that you're aware of this, what comes to mind? 6. Permissions: The "ideas" that we allow and permit which open up new possibilities from old taboos. Do you have permission to think or feel this? Who took permission away from you? What happens when you give yourself permission to experience this? Would you like to have internal permission for this? Does the old prohibition or taboo against it serve you well? As you give yourself permission and notice what happens, how well does that settle? How many more times will you need to give yourself permission? 7. Feelings: The emotional "ideas" and feeling judgments that we bring to other ideas. What do you feel about this? What specific emotion do you associate with this idea or experience? Framing it with this feeling, does this empower you as a person? Does this feeling map things in a way that enhances your life? 8. Appreciation: The "ideas" of appreciation or value that we use to frame other ideas. What do you appreciate about this? About yourself in this experience? What could you appreciate about this emotion or experience? If you could stay totally resourceful and have this experience, what value would that hold for you? How much appreciation would you like to have about this? 9. Value / Importance: The "ideas" that we value, treat as important and significant, esteem. How is that important to you? What do you believe about that value? Why is that important or valuable to you? When you get that value from it, what's even more important than that? 10. Interest: The "ideas" of fascination, curiosity, interest, etc. that we bring to other ideas. What's the most fascinating thing about this experience or idea? What could you become curious about in this if you allowed yourself? How do you best like to put yourself into something (inter -est)? 11. Decision / Choice / Will: The "ideas" that we separate and "cut off" (cision) from other ideas or choices so that we say Yes to some and No to others. What decision or decisions drive this? So what will you do? What would you like to do? What are you saying to yourself in terms of choosing or deciding? 12. Intention / Want / Desire / Strategy: The "ideas" you have about your motive, intent, desire, wants. What is your purpose in this? What is your intent in this? And what is an even higher intention than that? When you have that in just the way you like it, what do you get from that? Why is that valuable to you? What's your strategy for making that happen?

13. Outcome / Goal: The "ideas" we have about goals, outcomes, desired ends. How do you want to see this turn out? What is your preferred desired outcome from this? What consequences do you hope will come from this? What is the outcome of this outcome? 14. Expectation / Anticipation: The "ideas" we have about what we anticipate will happen. What are you expecting? Where did you learn to expect that? How legitimate is that expectation? What is the quality and nature of that expectation? Is it rigid or flexible? Does that expectation keep you open and curious or demanding and controlling? 15. Connection: The "ideas" we have about our connection with other ideas, experiences, and people. How connected are you to this idea, feeling, or experience? What does your connection to this do for you? Is this connection linked up to your self-definition or identity? 16. Causation: The "ideas" we have about cause, influence, contributing factors, what makes things happen, etc What makes you feel this way? Think this way? Experience this? Does it have to make you have these thoughts and feelings? Who says? What's the rule that makes this so? Does it always work this way? When has it not caused this? What other exceptions are you aware of? What are the mechanisms that make it work this way? 17. Culture: The "ideas" we have about our cultural identity, definition of reality, and cultural ideas. Is this part of your cultural heritage? What cultural context did you learn this? What do you think about these cultural values and beliefs? How well do they serve you? If you were to pass on a new cultural legacy, what would it be? 18. Presupposition / Assumption / Implication: The "ideas" that we use as higher frames that reflect our assumptive world and understandings. What's implied in that statement? How does it make sense? What are you assuming that enables you to think or feel this way? How many presuppositions are you running with in order to believe this? Where did these assumptions come from? Are they from your upbringing? Are they in the structure of language itself? 19. History / Memory / Referent: The "ideas" that we bring with us about previous experiences and use as our "referential index" for making-meaning. Does this remind you of anything? What comes to mind when you surrender to these thoughts or feelings? What previous examples or experiences have you had that relate to this? How does your personal history play into this? 20. Rules / Demands / Shoulds / Musts / Authorize: The "ideas" that we use that set up the Rules of the Games that we play out in our lives, the modal operators that generate our modus operandi (MO) in the world. You should, must, and have to do this? Why? Who says? What creates the demandingness in your statement or feeling? Who or what is the authority beyond and above this experience that demands this? What if you don't? What then? What will happen then?

21. Definition / Language / Class / Categorizes: The "ideas" that we have that set the frames and categories for our minds. What does this word or term mean to you? How do you define it? What emotional associates have you connected with this term? How would it feel if you knew that this term was just some sounds and didn't have to be so semantically loaded? What other definitions could you give to this to make it more useful as a map? How does this term classify things? What does it mean in terms of the categories that it suggests? 22. Understanding / Know / Knowledge: The "ideas" you have that "stand" "under" you as the mental support for your world. What do you understand about that? What background knowledge are you accessing that creates your understanding about this? What do you "know" about this? How do you "know" that? What kind of knowledge is this? In what modality is this knowledge? What kind of intelligence is this? (Use Gardner's Seven Intelligences). 23. Identity / Identify / Self/ Self-definition: The "ideas" we build up about our "self," the ideas we use in selfdefining. Does this affect your self-definition or identity? How does it affect the way you think about yourself? What does this say about how you perceive yourself? Are you identifying yourself with this thought, feeling, or emotion? Does that enhance your life or empower you as a person? Do you really need to do this? 24. Paradigm / Model / Map / Schema: The "ideas" we have that come together as more complex mappings about things. What paradigm (model, schema) drives and informs this? What paradigm are you relying on in your understandings? How valid or useful is this map? Would you like to map it in another way? 25. Metaphor / Symbol / Poem / Story: The "ideas" that we form through stories, analogies, and non-linguistic forms. What is this like? If this was a color, what color would it be? If this was an animal, what animal would it be? What would this sound like if you put it to music? If you made up a poem or story about this, what would you say? How have you been storied? Who storied you? What is the story? Would you like to create a new narrative for yourself, for this experience? What would a new narrative sound like? 26. Principle / Concept / Abstraction: The "ideas" that we treat as guidelines, laws, settled conclusions. What is the guiding principle that you hold about this experience? What concept or conceptual understanding governs this? How does this principle or abstraction work in everyday life? Do you have a good relationship with this concept? If you were to remap this abstraction, how would you change it?

MIND-BODY STATES Everything is Grounded or Embodied in State. At the foundation of our neuro-semantic system of frames within frames within frames is our everyday state of consciousness that we call our state. And we are all always in some state. It's only a matter of— • What state are you in? • How strong is that state? • How resourceful or limiting? Do you like it or not?

Our Mind-Body or Neuro-Linguistic States:

Our states are energy fields. The word "state" may give the impression of being static and unchanging, states are actually fluid and dynamic processes. They are not "things" at all but activity and processes of mind-bodyemotion in interaction with the world. They never stay the same for long. States are the composite of all we do in our mind-and-body system to create our everyday sense of consciousness and experience. States are Mind-Body: They are made up of the stuff of "mind" —the representations and ideas on our mind: sights, sounds, sensations, smells, and touches as well as the words we use to define and describe things. In primary states, the Theater of the Mind is where we experience the representation systems of sights, sounds, and sensations (the VAK). States are made up of the stuff of "body" —how we use our neurology and physiology. How we take care of ourselves in terms of sleep, eating, exercising, etc. How we move, breathe, gesture, etc. When our body registers the values and meanings of our mind, the result is what we call an "emotion," Thus, every mind-body state is also an emotional state. States have degrees of intensity. Their intensity never stay high but that level of intensity will habituate to become our "comfort zone." The more intense a state, the more we experience state dependency. Then they determine and govern our memory, perception, learning, behavior, and thinking. Neural: States are neither good or bad, but enhancing or impoverishment. There's no morality in the fact of our states, morality arises from what we do when in a given state. Absolutely Critical What goes on in the mind— will affect the body! Embodiment occurs. Incorporation.

State—the Center of the Matrix: Our primary states ground us in the moment, in our current experience, and set the foundation for all of our other thoughts and self-reflexivity about things. What we experience at the higher levels of the matrices collects and accumulates in the middle, in our everyday primary states. We experience what occurs at the higher levels, the whole of the system, in our present state of mind and body as feelings and as influences in our Mental Movie. It is in this way that the whole is in the part, and the part is in the whole. State Awareness: Every Matrix starts from a particular state and is expressed in a given state. But what state? That's the millionaire dollar question. It's the first and one of the most important questions. What state are you in? What is the quality and nature and intensity of that state? What are you in reference to? How are you experiencing this state? What triggers this state? What is the context and environment in which you experience this state? What is the physiology and the physiological factors of this state? Do you know how to interrupt your state? How skilled are you at it? State Movie: We experience the states we do depending on the Movies we play in our mind. And the coding and quality of the internal Movie governs the quality of our experience. • What are you representing in the theater of your mind? • How are you representing it in audio-visual terms? • Are you in the Movie or out of it? Matrix activated by States: Many experiences only occur, and can only occur, when we are in a particular state or environment. In a different state, the Matrix will not "work." This provides a powerful principle and secret for Neuro-Semantic coaching. We can state it as an instructional statement in this way: Induce the person into a very different state and then invite them to try to experience their problematic Matrix ... when they cannot engage it and run it, begin to question the problematic Matrix, undermine it by deframing and reframing it. Use so-called "paradoxical" interventions and counter-intuitive commands: Show me your panic (or anger, paranoia, etc.). Freak out ail of the floor right here. Show me how bad it is.

F R O M STATE TO FRAMES 1) It begins with a State... and a reference. While in any state—we reference people, experiences, events, ideas, feelings, etc.. To elicit it, ask the following. The answer gives you the beginning reference points. When you think about X, what comes to mind? What experiences have you had with learning? Have you ever encountered an authority figure which stood out in your mind, positively or negatively? {Criticism, mistakes, friends, succeeding, sense of self etc.)

2) We then turn the Referent into a Represented Frame. From an event, we take the experience, and represent it. We encode it. We create a mental picture of it To elicit this, simply ask about the mental coding. What are the audio-visual qualities of your internal movie of that reference? If I were to peak into your mind and see, hear, and feel what you do, what would I observe?

3) Next, we habituate the Movie in our mind so it becomes a Frame of Reference. We use the represented image as a "frame of reference." We draw conclusions to think in terms of it. It provides us an orientation and perspective. We take the experience and our memories of it and turn it into Principles and Understandings about life. Now it begins to "get into our eyes." We find it increasingly difficult to discern it from our perceiving. It seems so much a part of what we perceive that we often confuse our Frame with external territory. Given what you've been through, what do you think, belief, or perceive about this X? Conceptual frames that create your perceptive (mental filers) and the ideas/ concepts in the back of your mind (the circle). At this level, frames operate as our rules, mental thinking patterns, and reference systems.

STATE INDUCTION To be at our best we have to use our personal powers to step into or access our best states, our Top Ten Business Excellence States. Once we know how to "run our own brains," accessing our best states and operating out of them becomes a piece of cake. Our best performances are functions of our mind-body states. The first performance we each create every day is our state. Sometimes we get all dressed up and forget to dress up our attitude. Not a wise choice. This is the heart of personal power, the ability to induce, elicit, and access states. How skillful are you in recruiting the best states in yourself? In someone else? Elicitation is a natural and inevitable process. We are always facilitating and coaching others to access, create, and/or experience mind-body states. Use memory or imagination to elicit. 1) Memory: Think about a time when you felt or experienced X. 2) Imagination: What would it be like if you could fully feel or experience X? 1) Identify a resourceful state that you want for yourself What would be some of the best states for you? What would be your top ten best business expert states? List them. What state would you would like to have available for your use, a state which would allow you to act from your full capabilities? Menu: Relaxed, confident, playful, curious, learning, focused, committed, etc. 2) Use one or both of the Accessing avenues. Memory: Think about a time when you experienced that state and step back into that memory... Imagination: What would it be like if you were really there? 3) Fully describe the experience... step in fully. What is it like? And how else do you know that you are experiencing X resource? When you even more fully step into that movie and get lost in it, what then happens to you? If you allowed this state to begin informing your eyes, countenance, breathing, shoulders, posture, etc., how much can you show me this state right now — right here? 4) Amplify the state. Use even more of your output channels to experience this. What happens when you double the feelings? As you do, let the circle become a sphere... a bubble... a space ... from which you live and move. 5) Anchor the state. Which gesture would you like to use to stand for and represent this state so that you can use it as a trigger or anchor to get back into this state? And some word or tone to go along with that? Any visual image or symbol? 6) Practice stepping in and out of the state. Good ... just snapshot this experience in all of the sensory systems and step out of it. Now step back in as fully as possible. Step out again. [Keep repeating until you can step in and out and turn on the state experience fully.]

THE BASIC META-STATING INDUCTION OR PATTERN Meta-Stating is very, very simple. Access a state and apply it to another state, thought, emotion, or physiology. That's the short and simple approach. The 5 A's is the longer. We have simplified and arranged these 5 A's so that it is easier to remember. This fits for English and Spanish, and Denis Bridoux and Gilles Roy have made it fit for the French translation! 1) Access a resource state. What resource state do you want to bring to bear on or apply to the primary state? A "resource " can be a thought, feeling, idea, belief, value, memory, imagination. 2) Amplify fully and Anchor. Juice up the resource state and establish an anchor for it by touch, sight, sound, word, etc. 3) Apply to the primary state. Bring the resource to bear on the primary state (this creates meta-level anchoring), or embed the primary state inside a resource state. 4) Appropriate to your life by putting into your future (future pacing). Imagine having this layered consciousness in your mind as your frame as you move out into your future. 6) Analyze the quality, health, balance (ecology) of the system. Would it enhance your life to set this resource as your frame-of-reference for the primary state experience? Would every facet of your mind-and-body align with this?

MATRIX CREATION: FROM FRAME TO MULTIPLE FRAMES From our first frame of reference (meta-state) we habituate things to create our Frame of Mind. We now have a well-rehearsed the frame. It becomes our way of seeing the world—a selforganizing and self-fulfilling set of belief frames. The frame operates as an attractor in our mindbody system. As we use this frame of reference as we move through life, what attitude or frame of mind has it generated within? Each level or layer becomes yet another semantic environment. Here frames structure what we call "personality."

Then from Frame of Mind to Frameworks— > Our Personal Matrix. The solidification process that habituation creates continues transforming our frames of mind into frameworks— systems of beliefs, larger level models of the world. Given this frame of mind, what do you believe about self, life, others, the future, Working simultaneously—> This Neuro-Linguistic / Neuro-Semantic System creates the overall "gestalt" of our felt sense of life, our everyday "states." Every emotional state is a game, and arises from a frame. Every state involves a set of actions and transactions with others as we act out our emotions, ideas, concepts, mental maps. Further, every state is a motivated state, it operates for some purpose. It seeks to achieve or accomplish something, some stroke, spike, or something. We naturally and inevitably meta-state, that is, set higher frames about previous frames. We think in terms of various ideas. We bring various ideas, feelings, and even physiologies to bear upon other ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc. In this way, whenever we think about our thinking, feel about our thinking, feel about our feeling, etc., we set a higher level set of thoughts-andfeelings upon other thoughts and feelings. Reflective thinking creates states-upon-states or metastates. We react to our reactions. We fear our anger. We rejoice in our learning. We feel embarrassed about our sadness. IT'S F R A M E S A L L T H E W A Y U P Using the self-reflexive model of Meta-States, The Matrix enables us to trace self-referential thought as it grows, develops, and evolves, as we move up the layers of mind, transcending and including. This allows us to track the construction of "thinking" and how mind, emotion, consciousness, perception, etc. emerge in this systemic process. In this way, the Matrix offers an easy to understand model about the functioning of "mind" as it creates our frames-of-reference. We can now see how "thought," occurring at every level,

grows and develops to become increasingly more complex and systemic. As we move up the levels from experience to reference to frame and eventually to frames of mind, and then frameworks or the Matrix, we layer thought upon thought, emotion upon emotion, sensation upon sensation. It all begins as we reference, because we think by referencing. Every thought refers to something: a person, event, thing, idea, feeling. And every thought in our head as a representation of our reference occurs within some frame-of-reference—actually many frames-of-references.

It's frames all the way up. Our experience of "reality" is as negotiable as our willingness to negotiate it. After all, we negotiate "reality" by our frames in the first place as we use various classes, categories, labels, language, etc. in structuring and encoding of that "reality." What would get you to re-prioritize your perception of wealth? What frame would shift everything? We punctuate our everyday experiences ("reality") and sort it into fictional categories (shared fictions and idiosyncratic fictions) that we call concepts, beliefs, etc. Frame : "It's all mine!" I own everything I experience. Libraries, parks, sunsets, the beauty of the stars, air, etc. Frame : "I didn't want to give my parents the satisfaction of turning out productive and effective!" Frame : "You can only become wealthy by taking advantage of others. 1

2

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The Development of Frames as our Brains Frame

FRAME GAME DETECTION We search for frames and flush them out because frames hide. They hide in the upper reaches of our mind. That's why we have to search them out, flush them out, and shine a beam light on them. Frames conspire to prevent detection. We have to tease out the hidden frames, the invisible frames of our minds. • What Frame is operating here? • What other Frames are lurking in the shadows? Make a list of the 5 most frustrating and persistent negative behavioral patterns in your life. 1) Describe the Game-like Pattern by identifying the specific behaviors. What colloquial name can you give it that fits and adds humor? 2) Gauge the intensity of the pattern or situation How intense is it from 0 to 10? 3) Identify its negativity. Why is it negative? What is negative about it to you? How does it hinder or limit you? 4) Identify the positive payoffs. What is the positive payoff of the pattern? What feeds and maintains the pattern? How does the pattern work for you? To what degree? 5) Identify the positive benefits of the payoffs. How do you perceive that payoff as positive? How does the payoff seduce you into that game? 6) Identify preferred Game. What "game" (pattern) would you prefer to play? FRAME FLUSH OUT 1) Name the Game: "What's the game?" 2) Discern the Frame through inquiry; look for frames by implication. 3) Run Foreground / Background shifts — center-staging then back-staging the Frame What lies in the foreground and background of your awareness? How do you highlight things in the foreground? What elements cause something to stand out in a salient way on the screen of our mind? 4) Step in and then out of the Game What's your frame of mind about this? What's your attitude? What processes and mechanisms enable us to background other facets? What words do you typically use to track over to X? What game do the words suggest or elicit?

MATRIX DETECTION PATTERN Exercise: Get into groups of three person. Designate one Coach, Client, and Meta-Person. Do the following

Detection Pattern 3 times so each person plays each role.

1) Identify a positive Experience. What has been one of the most positive and exciting experiences around an area of expertise? Example: Have you ever interacted with another person and coached him or her through a process that turned out great leaving you feeling wonderful? Tell me about that. What was that like?

2) Explore the meta-levels of that experience using the Matrix Questions. Explore the Matrix of the person's the meanings, intentions, sense of self, resourcefulness, time, others, world? What do you believe about that? What did that mean to you? What was your intention in that? Sounds like that really affected you deeply, how did that affect your sense of yourself? Clue: Especially listen for Semantically loaded words which activate states, value words, nominalizations, and belief phrases. Key: Follow the energy through the matrix.

3) Step Back to identify Patterns as you debrief the experience. What did you find? What patterns did you hear? How would you profile the client's matrix about this event? What were the key features or elements of the way the client processes things? What is the heart of his or her matrix?

4) Invite transformation. What frame of mind, belief frame, value frame, etc. that could take your experience or skills to the next level? If you had a magic wand, what transformation would you desire? How would you like to make your experience richer?

A MATRIX SYSTEMS CHECK Quality Control your Matrix: Since frames determine what can and cannot be accomplished, what we feel, the quality of our life, the strength of our mind, etc., make sure that you have healthy frames that do you good. "Ecology" refers to consequences and results, to balance and wholeness. It explores the overall health of a system, the balance that a set of actions, thoughts, and emotions have over time. To "run an ecology check" means to step back from something and evaluate it in terms of the overall systemic ecology in terms of the shortterm and long-term health of the system. The Quality Controlling frame game not only detects frame games, but exposes them. Use this game also to refuse frames, shift and alter frames, and even transform frames. It's that powerful. Why do we do this? Because our brains lack any natural Quality Control mechanism.

1) Step Back from the frames of the Matrix and the Matrix Games that result and take a deep breath. What does it feel like to take a moment to pause, to gain some "psychological distance" and to relax as you think about the frame and its Game? 2) Run a Systems Check: Check the ecological value and balance of the Games. How many ways can you ask the Quality Control question? Does this state, decision, belief, thought, part, behavior, meaning, evaluation enhance your life or not? Does this serve you well? Does it serve you well in relationship to your friends and loved ones? Does it empower you and others? Does it enhance your life? Do you like this? Does it set up the direction that you want your life to go? 3) Step Back or Up yet again for a more advanced Systems Check. Once you check the basic ecology of the frame game, run a more advance one that brings more and more of your values, beliefs, and understandings to bear upon the game. Do you find this frame game wonderful and magical? Is it God-honoring? Does it promote sanity all around? Does it create the kind of legacy that you want to leave your children? Would you like it installed in your children? Does it make life a party?

MATRIX DETECTION & TRANSFORMATION 1) Think of something in which you would like to be more effective. What do you do, or could do, that you would like to do with more success and effectiveness? Got something like that? What? Have you ever done that? What is your reference experience? 2) What's your Matrix about this? How do you represent this? What is the Movie that you're playing in your mind? What words, labels, terms? What meanings and evaluations? What frames? Belief frames? What emotional links, associations? What thinking patterns? 3) Step back for a Systems Check. Do you like this? Does it enhance your life? Does it empower you as a person? Does it make life a party? Are your thinking patterns accurate and useful? 4) Describe a Preferred Frame. If you could have any frame of mind you want—what would you choose? Expand this and develop it. 5) Solidify this new Frame through confirming and provoking. You like this? Really? You want to keep it? Really? You think you can?

Day 2:

MATRIX TRAINING Powering Up in your Matrix Morpheus: "Rest well, you're going to need it!"

Neo: "For what?" Morpheus: "Your training." Tank: "Loading program... hey, Mikie, I thinks he likes it. Neo: "Hell yes!"

You want some more?"

Description: After detection and awareness of the Matrix comes Matrix Training so we can reenter our Matrix and change it. We have to develop our mental-and-emotional as well as our verbal and behavior skills so that we can not only enter the Matrix but change it— use our mindbody system to alter it, to transform it. Already we have seen how that mere detection itself is a change process, so is non-judgmental awareness and questioning, especially meta-questioning. We have seen that running a systems check is also a transformative process. Challenge: Do you have the power to re-model your Matrix? Are you ready to power up and to enter into training mode? Will you develop the matrix skills for mastery? Solution: Powering up with our innate powers for responding, dealing, and mastering things. To activate our Power / Resource Matrix for self-efficacy, self-confidence, and for tapping into our potentials.

Outcomes for Day 2: To develop our basic response-powers. To develop skills for framing and reframing our matrix. To take an intentional stance regarding our frames. To take ownership of our powers and create the states of initiative and proactivity. To blow out all excuses that sabotage our best experiences and performances. To develop the wisdom of many flexible perspectives.

THE SELF MATRIX The White Matrix The First Content Matrix: A central and core matrix that we live in and from, and that we take with us everywhere we go is our Self Matrix. We never leave home without our self. It's the first thing that we punctuate, the first classification, and the first frame. Who am I? What am I? What is my nature, purpose, destiny, value, etc.? The matrix of Self inquires about how we have mapped and given meaning to our "sense of self and how well does that mapping and framing works for us? The term "self is itself a multiordinal term, that is, a nominalization term which means something different at every level we use it. There is no "ghost" within, it is just "me" operating at different levels.

Critical! The meanings we map about our concepts of self make all the difference in the world whether we move through the world trying to become a Somebody, or whether our life in the world is an expression of our Somebodyness. In the first case, we put our ego or self-esteem "on the line" with almost everything that happens. We identify and personalize almost everything that happens, especially the negative and unpleasant. This makes us reactive, defensive, and thinskinned. The problem? Not the person, but the frames that map the self as inadequate, conditionally valuable, and unworthy. Our Multiple Selves: This matrix contains many facets of our thoughts-and-feelings. It includes our sense of self in self-esteem, self-confidence, social self, sense of self in presence of others, self definition, and identifications. And that's just the beginning. A healthy Self matrix is the difference between feeling worthy, valuable, respectable, and loveable and seeking to experience things in the world to obtain these experiences. With a healthy Self matrix we can celebrate ourselves and value ourselves without putting our "self on the line with the activities that we engage in. It allows us to separate person from behavior, selfesteem from self-confidence. Self-Confidence Self-Esteem Self-Efficacy Self-Definition Self-Presentation Social Self Cultural Self Work/ Career Self Ethical Self Relational Self Robust or Not? When this Matrix is not well-developed, we easily and automatically personalize and put our ego (sense of self) out "on the line" with regard to most things. We may become Other-Referent and try to get a sense of safety or okayness from others or from external things.

What are the processes that we can use to bring about a generative transformation and build up a mapping of self that allows us to become more all we can become?

Frames for Self-Confidence /Self-Esteem: When we map our Self as inherently and innately valuable, worthwhile, lovable, and having dignity, as a member of the human race, as a Somebody, and with nothing to prove, but everything to experience, we are freed to be and become, to explore and enjoy and to choose to only identify with the things that enable us to become more than we presently are. This mapping allows us to explore our potentials, to be open and responsive, to be caring and loving in relationships, to be non-defensive about mistakes, fallibility, and vulnerability, and to be creative with our skills and passions. When the ego is not on the line, there's nothing to prove. This mapping allows us to get ego out of the way which frees up lots of our mental-and-emotional energy which we can invest in others, in developing our talents, and in contributing.

Frames for Conscience: In the Self Matrix we map out our sense of conscience or super-ego as well. This relates to our sense of right and wrong, of being and doing what's proper, ethical, honorable, and moral. Conscientiousness is mapped here in relation to Others. We become "ego-involved" in our ideas, emotions, beliefs, experiences, possessions, etc. by over-identification and/or by the lack of healthy ego-development. In ego-involvement, the idea becomes an extension of the self.

Self distinctions: What are your frames and maps about boundaries? Me and "not me?" What kind of boundaries? How strong? How flexible? What are your frames about your strengths and your weaknesses? Are you committed to playing to your strengths? What are they? What are your weaknesses? Your natural intelligences?

ACCEPTING, APPRECIATING AND CELEBRATING SELF This meta-state process for self-esteeming empowers us to establish a solid sense of self so that we will be less stressed and insecure by life's everyday events. It's based on separating self-confidence (what we do) and self-esteem (what we are). Set a frame of high value and worth for yourself.

1) Access the 3 "A" resource states: Acceptance, Appreciation, and Awe. Access each states by using a small and simple referent so that you can access the feeling of the state fully and discreetly. A) Acceptance: B) Appreciation. C) Awe. 2) Amplify each state and Apply to Self. Amplify each state until you have a robust enough state to then apply to your sense of self knowing that as you do you are bringing each resource to bear upon your "self "(your concept of self) so that you set each as your frame. 3) Apply self-esteeming to a needed context Is there any context, situation, or event wherein you feel tempted to self-contempt, self-question, self-doubt, and/or self-dislike yourself? In what context would you prefer a more resourceful response? 4) Apply Self-Esteeming to the old self-contempting context Apply and notice how it transforms the old context. Are you ready to self-respect yourself no matter what? 5) Imaginatively put into your future to validate. Imagine moving through life in the weeks and months to come with this frame of mind Do you like this? Notice how this would transform things for you... Does every aspect of the higher parts of your mind fully agree with this?

THE POWER MATRIX The Red Matrix The Power Matrix Second to the Self matrix. Focus is on our ability, capabilities, self-efficacy, skills, responses, strengths and Resources. What meanings do we create regarding our ability to take effective action in the world? What can I do? What skills and resources can I develop? What are my aptitudes and capacities? How can I develop my potentials? Can I cope with things? Can I master myself, run my own brain, regulate my own states, and plan my own future? Can I develop mastering in an area of passion? Significance and Importance: The sense of power or resourcefulness makes all the difference in the world between living with a weak response style and a strong one. It's the difference between learned helplessness and learned optimism, between reactivity and passivity and assertive proactivity. A healthy Power matrix enables us to feel self-efficacy and to take ownership of our life. It's the foundation for persistence, determination, resiliency, passion, and proactivity. The Power matrix relates to our sense of options and choices, and hence to will and to "will power." If you map out the lack of power or helplessness, you will experience little sense of choice or options. You will feel controlled, limited, fated, and that life is deterministic. The Heart of Power: Self-Efficacy. The sense of self that precedes self-confidence is self-efficacy: our personal sense of being and feeling resourceful. "I can handle things. I can figure it out. I can handle the emotions. I don't have to know it all, I can work with and through others." Self-efficacy answers the questions: what can we do, what are we able to influence, what effects can we produce, how much skill or knowledge can we express in coping or mastering the challenges of life. What have we mapped in terms of our abilities, skills, potentials, capabilities, etc? Does it give us a sense of ability, power, and control or does it undermine such? Test: Do you feel like the driver of your own bus or a passenger in the back going for a ride? How have you mapped the sense of "control?" Did you grow up in an environment that was safe, secure, and that gradually allowed you to take more and more control over your life? To learn independence and autonomy in a safe and loving way? If so, you probably mapped out supporting meanings about your own Power so that you welcome it, accept it, enjoy it, and want it. You believe in it and delight in it. Damaged in the Power Matrix: If you grew up in a chaotic family or culture, in a war zone, or a place that was erratic and unpredictable, you more likely mapped that Power was impossible, not available, or the most important thing in the world. Of course, whatever you mapped about such governs this Matrix. People overwhelmed with too much whether in childhood or in adult life, often abdicate control

to others and opt for living in states that we call weak, indecisive, and deferential. It's the meanings that they have given and mapped and so it becomes "real" to them on the inside. Facets of Power: Learned Helpless: When bad things happen, it's about me (personal), about everything in myself and life (pervasive) and forever (permanent). This sucks the bad thing inside ourselves so that we can never get away from it. Learned Optimism: We index bad things to whatever they concern (not-me), to a particular situation (this, not-pervasive), and here and now (not permanent). This keeps the evil contained and "out there." The weaker our sense of power, the weaker and more limited our Intention matrix. Our power of mind-emotion is our IQ.

Your Power Zone... of "Responses." How activated is your Power and Resource matrix? How robust is your Power Zone? Able to act on Knowledge: Given this knowledge or understanding, what can I do to shape my future in an enhancing way? How can I translate this into practical value? The power of translating knowledge into action is the process of taking the great ideas and principles in our mind and translating them so that they become incorporated into muscle. This is the power that enables us to be willing to take complete ownership of our responses.

OWNING YOUR POWER ZONE This pattern enables us to recognize and own our core "powers" or functions. By meta-stating our core powers, and owning them, we can create the foundation for personal empowerment and then the more complex states of responsibility, proactivity, initiative, and risk-taking. 1) Fully Access your four central powers. As you just sit back comfortably, just notice that you have two private inner powers. You have powers of thinking—representing, believing, valuing, understanding, reasoning, etc. and powers of emoting—feeling, somatizing, valuing, etc. You also have two public or outer powers by which you can effect yourself and the world— speaking —languaging, using and manipulating symbols, asserting, etc. and behaving— acting, responding, relating, etc. Just notice and enjoy and appreciate these as you access them fully. Access them so that you begin to feel these powers. Use your hands to mime out these powers in your own personal "space" to create your Circle of Power and influence and responsibility. 2) Access the state or sense of ownership. What can you can say "Mine!" to fully and with every fiber in your body? What do you know is yours? Has there ever been a time when you said "Mine!" that fully? As you recall that referent, be there and feel it with every fiber of your being. "Mine!" Key: Keep it small and simple: "My hand!" "My eye." "My cat." "My toothbrush." 3) Amplify your ownership states until your neurology radiates. What happens when you amplify your sense of ownership and say, "This is my zone of power. I am totally responsible for my responses of mind, emotion, speech and behavior..."? Notice how this feeling and this state can transforms things. 4) Access the states of acceptance and appreciation of "Mine!" What is some small and simple reference that gives you the feeling of acceptance? What do you welcomed and acknowledged something like ... a rainy day, the traffic? Feel this acceptance and apply it to owning your powers. What do you appreciate? As you feel appreciation, apply that to your sense of ownership. What is that like? 5) Future pace to install Imagine in the weeks and months to come, moving through the world with this frame of mind about your zone of response... power... Do you like that? Just notice how it will transforms things as it allows you to fully claim you mind, heart, voice, and response powers.

DEVELOPING EGO-STRENGTH 1) Access a state of Acceptance What do you accept as just a fact of life? What do you accept that you could or perhaps have rejected and angered yourself about? What is it like when you think of something small and simple that you simply accept? What did you once worked yourself up about but now just go along and accept it? Feel that fully ... and now apply that feeling or awareness to you — to your human powers and fallibilities. Apply it to the cards that life has dealt you, to your aptitudes and lack of aptitudes. What it is like when you future pace it into the contexts of your life? 2) Adjusting your Expectancies What are some of your self-expectancies or expectancies of others, the world, work, etc. that can get your into a frustrated state? Identify them. What do you need to do to adjust them so that you have a fairly accurate map about what is, how things work, and what you can legitimately expect? What have you mapped about yourself, people, relationships, fairness, life, etc.? What unrealistic expectations give you a semantic jar of disappointment? What do you need to learning about so that the greater understandings will increase your ego-strength? How much do you need to raise your level of frustration tolerance? 3) Step into your Power Zone How much do you have a strong sense of personal power? How much does that increase when you accept your personal responses? How much more when you meta-state them with ownership? What other resources do you need in order to face reality as it is? 4) Meta-State yourself with Flexibility How flexible and/or rigid are you? How willing are you to accept the flux and flow of life? Do you have enough security to welcome and enjoy things changing? Access a sense of openness and flexibility. How does that affect things? 5) Build an Optimistic Explanatory Style Do you have an optimistic explanatory style? To what extent do the Ps of the pessimistic style govern your thinking? The three Ps: personal, pervasive, and permanent when a "bad" thing occurs. To what degree do you explain unfortunate events as about you (personal), about everything in your life (pervasive) and about forever (permanent)? To what extent are you able to index the specifics and contain the "evil" as about the event not us (nonpersonal), here in this situation and context (non-pervasive), and today (non-permanent)? That there then. 6) Consciously raise your frustration and stress tolerance levels What triggers stress in you? What frustrates you? To what extent can these very things thrill and excite you? How do you view, interpret the experience as a stressor? What frame of mind would you have to have to see it as excitement? Do you know how to do positive framing and reframing? Are you will to do so? 7) Taking all of these elements, meta-state yourself and future pace your growing sense of ego-strength.

THE INTENTION MATRIX The Orange Matrix Every matrix is motivated! The Intentional Matrix is about our sense of direction, goals, reasons, motivation, and intention. It is from this Matrix that we create meanings about the purpose of things and our highest intentions. From here we develop and experience our motives and motivations for living and our moment to moment agendas and aims. We can elicit this matrix by asking: What do you want? What are you seeking to accomplish? What's in it for me? What's your purpose or agenda? What am I living for? What do I want? Why is that important to you? Why do you want that? Why do you give yourself to that? What do you hope to obtain by getting that?

Intention as another kind of Meaning: Intention relates to what we value and think important or meaningful, it arises from the Meaning matrix. We have intentions in doing whatever we do. We are seeking to accomplish something of value for ourselves. This also relates to the agendas we develop that make up our motives and motivation. So this is the matrix that answers the "why" questions. Why do we want that? Why is that important? Back of the Mind Agendas: We typically experience our sense of purpose or intention as "the thoughts in the back of the mind" which then organize our attentions—"the thoughts in the front of our mind"—what's on our mind. Together, intention and attention gives us our sense of "will" or choice. Moving up into this matrix allows us to understand and explore what we or another truly want, what we think we are going after and to check whether we are actually getting our highest intentions or not.

Up the Intentions: Intentionality describes yet another meta-cognitive awareness. Failing to map, recognize, or embrace our higher intentions or just getting lost in the present moment attentions can create what is mis-labeled "attention deficient disorder." That means being overwhelmed with too much stimulus and unable to control or manage all of the things that grab our attention and keep distracting us as we run around trying to put out fires or feel incapable of holding our attention on anything for long. When we live in the attentional world, we experience our mind (and emotions) similar to that of a small child or animal. Attentions come and go and we are at their disposal and so we are shifted here and then there. There's no sense of control.

Living Life "On Purpose!" Living in the intentional world gives us a sense that we are in control of what we pay attention to, when, where, and for how long. We have a big enough "why" to govern and organize the everyday attentions and to screen out what isn't important to us. ADD is really Intentional Deficit Disorder. Either there is not a strong enough intention, or we have the conflict of intentions, wanting two things that are contradictory. From the meaning and purpose matrices we experience the higher states that give us a sense of inspiration, passion, hope, love, joy, and transcendence, the very qualities that we call "spirit" or "spiritual" - SQ. With the Intention/ Purpose matrix, we move up to not only outframe our immediate goals and objectives, but to also map out our beliefs and understandings of the ultimate purposes of the universe. Here we map

our ideas about whether we think the Universe is friendly or unfriendly, chaotic or ordered, intelligent or non-intelligent, etc. In this Matrix, we create meanings about spirituality, philosophy, religion, ontology, etc. In this matrix we usually find multiple intentions and layers of objectives. Whenever we classify anything at the beginning of the Meaning matrix, we do so to make sense of the world. That's our first intention. Then with every other meaning that we create and attribute, and every matrix that arises, we do so for yet other reasons. Intentionality: Intention creates the attractors in our mind-body system that invites our neuro-semantic system to selforganize around that attractor—motive, intention, agenda. We can follow intention up the levels to create new and higher energy for living. Intentionality stated in the negative evokes the paradox of "command negation." Intention activates our motor programs so that we feel intentions as urges to act. It moves us to what to do something.

TAKING AN INTENTIONAL STANCE 1) Identify an important task that you want more energy, focus, and motivation with. We will first identify an activity to use as a reference point to explore our higher intentions. What are some of the tasks that you engage in as part of your everyday life, career, etc.? What do you need to do in order to succeed? 2) How is that Activity Important to you? I take it that that activity is significant, right? How is it significant? How is it valuable? Meaningful? In what way? What else is important about that? How many other answers can you identify about this activity? 3) Move up the Meta-Levels.. One at a Time. So this activity is important to you because of these things. And how is this important to you? What's important by having this? What important about that outcome? And what's even more important than that? And when you get that fully and completely and in just the way you want it, what's even more important? [Continue this until you flush out and detect all of the higher values.] 4) Step into the higher Value States of Importance so that you feel them fully. That' must be important to you? [Yes.] So just welcome in the good feelings that these meanings and significances invite, and just be with those higher level feelings for a bit. Do you like that? [Yes.] Let those feelings grow and intensify as you recognize that this is your highest Intentional Stance, this is what you are all about... isn't it? Enjoy this awareness. 5) Bring the Higher States/ Frames of Mind down and out Having these higher feelings in mind... fully... imagine this intentional stance getting into your eyes, into your body, into your way of being in the world and imagine moving out into life tomorrow with them... and as you do ... and as you engage in that work-related activity that's part of your life, health, wealth building plan, etc., notice how the higher frames transforms it... And take all of this into tomorrow and into all of your tomorrows... 6) Commission Your Executive mind to take ownership of this. There's a part of your mind that makes decisions, that chooses the pathway that you want to go, will that highest executive part of your mind take full responsibility to "be of this mind" about this activity and to remind you to see the world this way? Imagine using this as the basis of your inner life, your way of being in the world. Do you like that? 7) Invite other Resources. Would you like to bring any other resource to this intentional stance? Would playfulness enrich it? Persistent? Passion? Etc.

FLEXIBILITY IN EXPLORATION The power of flexibility enables us to adapt, stay current, be relevant, and stay ahead of trends. We need to be flexible to our environment so our actions are appropriate, fitting, relevant, and meaningful. To be creative, we have to see opportunities and make smart plans. To gain high quality information about a frame—step inside it and the "game" it elicits, then to step out. This provides a double and tripledescription. Do this to enter and understand a Matrix and to become aware of neuro-semantic systems and to increase flexibility. Use this to do System Checks. Do this first with a positive game and then with a negative one that you'd like to have more choices about. 1) Identify the resources you need or want to be truly flexible. What do you need to be flexible? Menu: ease, fluidity, playfulness, silliness, calmness, etc, When have you been flexible? Think back to a time when you were easy to work with. What was that like? How do you know to call this memory and state "flexibility?" 2) Contrast the flexibility state to a time when you were very dogmatic, rigid, and stubborn. What's the difference between these two states? How can you tell? What are the differences in how you express the two states? Check for muscle tension, voice, movement, etc. 3) Texture this flexibility onto the state wherein you want more flexibility. Keep cycling through the differences, adding more and more resources until you develop a wellformed expression of your desired state. 4) Imagine the new Flexible You as you move out into your future. Make your imagine of flexibility very personal by imagine yourself with all of that flexibility. Step into that imagine and feel it fully. 5) Pick a positive experience and flexibly step into it. Just for the purpose of discovery, temporarily step into the frame and its corresponding game so that you allow yourself to feel it deeply and allow it to work on your emotions, body, mind, etc. Immerse yourself into the frame and imagine moving through life with it. 6) Now step out As you stand back from the frame and notice it, just witness the You who had stepped into it and from this broader perspective allow your awareness to expand about it. You may want to step back yet again, taking numerous other perspectives, each time allowing more richness and wisdom to accumulate. 7) Step in Again. Step back in again to further explore & see what the frame now evokes and how you feel when operating from the frame of mind. As you do this, language it using the following lines. "When I view things within this frame of reference, I see, hear, and feel...." "When I view things from outside this frame of reference, I become aware of..." "When I hold both of these descriptions simultaneously, it enriches my understandings so that...' 8) Step into the Perceptual Position of a Receiver of the Game. Suppose someone offered this state, game, dance to you—what would it feel like, look like, sound like, etc.? Would you like it?

THE EXCUSE BLOW-OUT PATTERN We become emotionally intelligence and access our own mastery when we refuse to let excuses dominate our lives. When excuses do dominate our lives, we essentially choose our excuses over our values and visions. Some excuses are legitimate and useful while most are illegitimate, stupid, and useless. Most waste our time and sabotage our goals. Develop the intelligence to refuse to sell yourself short to such excuses.

1) Access a Desired Outcome What do you want that's very important to you? What outcome do you want to achieve or go for that you know is well-formed and ecological? What is something that would really improve the quality of your life? 2) Let the Excuse or Excuses emerge When you think about carrying it out, do you find that numerous excuses come to mind and stop you from acting on your desired outcome? Take a moment to imagine going ahead with taking action ... and notice what happens. How do you excuse yourself from it? Listen to your internal voice. Feel the excuse. Notice where you feel it in your body. What does it feel like. In your body? How do you know to call it an excuse? 3) Quality Control the Excuse Is it just an excuse? Do you want this excuse? Do you need it? Does it serve your life at all? Does it enhance you or empower you? If there is some part or facet of the excuse that you might need or want to preserve, what is it? What facets of the excuse may serve a positive purpose for you? 4) Preserve the Excuse's Values and Benefits Go inside and preserve any part of the excuse that might prove useful to you in some way at some time. Suck out of the excuse any element (a value, belief, understanding) that could be useful. Suck it all out so that the rest of the excuse remains as an empty shall, devoid of any usefulness at all. Notice the value of the reason— an understanding, belief, or state that you want to keep with you.. Note it and store it as something you can have apart from this particular stupid excuse. Is it now just an excuse? Just an empty shell of an excuse? [Yes] If not, repeat until you just have an empty shell of an excuse left. 5) Reject the Empty Shell of the Old Worn Out Excuse Access a strong "NO!" state, a "Hell, No!" state. Amplify that state of "Rejection, Refusal, or Disgust" that comes out as a "No" fully until you feel it very strongly. Anchor it spatially in a spot and feel it in your hands and in your feet. Let it radiate throughout your body. When you have it accessed very strongly, imagine the empty excuse immediately in front of you and step into that excuse with the NO!" state and Stomp on the excuse with the power of your "hell, No!" Stomp it to the ground. 6) Test Now imagine the desired activity that's ecological and notice what happens as you think about moving toward it... What do you feel? What comes to mind? Do you have any excuse lurking that you might use to excuse yourself from life, love, and commitment? 7) Access Your Executive Decision State Will you do this? Will you allow it to become an attractor in your mind so that as you think of this activity, how you will do it will simply become a matter of discovery and of building the resources so that you can .. and will, will you not? Go to the part of your mind that makes decisions and commission it to go ahead and decide to engage in your desired activity.

DANCING WITH YOUR DRAGONS Morpheus: "Load the Jumping Program. " "Will he make it? " "Everybody falls the first time." A dragon is either a negative emotion that's gotten to strong and overwhelming, or a negative thought or feeling that's been turned against oneself, or a toxic idea, frame, or belief. The term "Dragons" is a metaphor for non-enhancing, non-productive, problematic, un-useful, and toxic states. All states do not serve us equally well. Some can make life a living hell. Some feel like "dragon" states; some turn us into dragons! Effective state-management skills enable us to shrink down the dragons, tame them (put their energies to positive uses), or to slay them. • Are there any Dragons that sabotage you or your best efforts? • What dragon lurks in some dark corner of your mind that creates internal conflict for you? • What Dragons do you need to expose and then slay or tame? Dragons are often "Negative" Emotions What if we find something "negative" inside of us? What if we find a negative thought, feeling, memory, idea, etc.? What shall we do with "the negatives?" It all depends. It depends upon its level Does the negative operate at a primary level or a meta- level? This makes all the difference in the world. For Primary Level thoughts and feelings as immediate frames, welcome them fully. Give them permission to be and to inform you. An "emotion" describes the relationship between two things: your Model of the World (your Frames) and your Experience of the World (your everyday experiences). An "emotion" therefore comes to you as a piece of Information about how these two things compare, the relationship of the difference. Backtrack to the thinking (or frame) out of which the emotion arises. Clear your perceptions about what you are actually receiving from the world. For Meta-Level Thoughts & Feelings, welcome these meta-frames in order to see if you want to set this as a frame or not. Then decide. Rejecting something too soon will prevent the negation from working. "Strive to be non-tense" — Welcome the tension comfortably. Acceptance also shifts us away from the Blame Game. Generally speaking, whenever we bring a negative T-F against ourselves, we put ourselves at odds with ourselves and thereby creates "Dragon States."

1) Identify and welcome the negative Framing into awareness. What negative frames have you set in your higher levels of mind? When, where, and for what positive purpose did that negative framing get set? Invite the symptom in, validate it as you can (for once being useful, for being the best choice at a time). 2) Access and apply a state of acceptance and appreciation. At what level is the "negative" thought or emotion? What is the structure of the negative? Hate of hate, hate of embarrassment.

3) Quality Control the Negative Framing. Does it serve you well? Does it empower you? 4) Deframe the Negative Framing. Pull it apart. Shift to Frame Busting. 5) Outframe it with "Dissolving Frames" It's Just an Old Experience It's No Longer Needed It's just a thought/just a map anyway.

Does it enhance your life? Do you really need it? Say "NO!" to it

6) Replace it with a More Positive & Empowering Frame What would you rather think? Belief? Value? Understand? What idea or concept would give you a better and more productive focus?

Day 3:

RELOADING YOUR MATRIX Matrix Transformations "I can only show you the door, you have to talk through it" "The Matrix is made of rules. Some of the rules can be bent, others can be broken." Morpheus to Neo

Description: If you have detected and discovered your Matrix and have started the powering up process, then you're ready to create some brand new—wild and wonderful—-frames for your inner and outer games and reload your matrix so that it is renewed, even transformed. Now you're ready to go and make it happen. Are you ready for some new and improved frames for your Matrix? Challenge: How do we reload our Matrix? How do we delete the old programs and install the new ones? What are the processes involved and what skills do we need to develop to pull this off?

Solution: Since we are meaning-makers and create meaning by framing, we first have to take charge of our meaning-making / framing powers in the Meaning Matrix. This enables us to change how we construct frames for our Matrix in the first place. We will texture our states to give new qualities to them. Next comes Changing the Rules of the Game.

Outcomes for Day 3: To discover and fully activate our Meaning-making Matrix. To clean out cognitive distortions for more precise processing. To texture and quality states so we can operate at our best. To set executive frames that become self-organizing attractors. To coach our body how to feel some great ideas and activate some great principles. To transform the inner game of our frames. To recognize our own meta-frames and develop greater flexibility with them.

THE MEANING MATRIX The Purple Matrix Principle: The Quality of our Meanings determines the Quality of our States and the Quality of our Life.

Levels of Meaning: Meaning occurs at the level of state and begins there, then it moves all the way up the levels of the mind- We make meaning in different ways at different levels of the mind and at different times in our development and yet the meaning-making process is one even though it develops and becomes more complex over time.

Kinds of Meanings: We create all kinds of meanings. We associate things that may or may not be naturally or logically connected to create Associative or stimulus-response Meaning. Then, above and beyond that we create Frame Meaning, the meanings that arise when we classify and categorize things, even associative meanings. We create Definition Meaning as we label things (linguistic meaning). We create Evaluation Meaning as we make judgments. We create layer upon layer of

embedded frames of meanings within frames. We layer mind-body-emotion states upon previous mental and emotional states and so meta-state ourselves into more and more of our Matrix. We use various Thinking Patterns (meta-programs) to formulate Meaning. We are the Meaning-Makers! The significance of the meanings we attribute and invent creates the internal universe we live in. Ultimately we live in and by meaning because it is through the creation of meaning that we know what to call things, how to interpret events, and how to perceive the significance of anything. As a semantic class of life, we do not have innate programs for how to live, relate, or even be human. We have to learn to attribute meaning to things and the range of meanings that we can attribute is infinite. Born inside of a Matrix: We are born inside of Meaning matrices. We call them—family systems, cultures, societies, religious and political worlds, etc. We absorb the style and content from these meaning systems which indicate the previous meaning making of those who came before us. • How does a person interpret something? • What does anything mean to a given individual? • Is that interpretation accurate, useful, productive, healthy, or empowering? • Does that meaning induce one into a positive or negative mental world? • Does it encourage love, compassion, joy, courage, confidence, development, etc.? What's Important? What's Significant? The Meaning matrix also answers the questions about what we deem as valuable or important, what holds meaning or significance for us. Of all the matrices, this one is the most crucial because it is the one determining how and what we value and give significance to. It creates or calls the others into existence. What does anything mean? What does any specific behavior or event mean? How do we classify it? How do we reason and think to associate it with our internal states? How do we frame it and use it as our frame of reference? Meaning Making Style: What's your meaning attribution style? Do we count things or discount? Do we reject and contempt or appreciate and validate? Do we create positive or negative meanings? What is our style? How rich or impoverished are our meaning structures? How rigid or flexible? Meaning All the Way Up! It begins at the bottom with our Mental Movies—and how we edit our Cinemas. This is the editoral dimension inside the Meaning matrix ("sub-modalities" dealing with how we represent things in our cinema which determine how compellingly real our constructs feel. If we encode the cinema with all the features of being present, big, close, 3-D, and we're inside the movie- we will quickly install the ideas and beliefs. If we do all of this, but observe it as a spectator just watching it, it will be informational only and not necessarily emotional or motivational.

FRAME OF CHOICE To be at our best we not only have to have the ability to access our Top Ten Best States, but also to manage the higher levels of our mind so that we are in charge of our attitude—our frame of mind. That's what this Game is all about. What frame of mind would you like to wake up in, go to work in, negotiate from, sell, deal with cranky people from, etc.? It's your choice.

1) Identify a challenging context and your default frames. Is there anything you do at work or as part of your career that you find challenging? What default frame of mind do you tend to use when you think of that? Does this frame of mind enhance your effectiveness? 2) Choose a new frame If you could choose any frame of mind to be in — what would it be? When you think about those who handle this kind of challenge effectively, what's frame of mind does he or she use? What other resourceful frame may be a part of it? Which is the most powerful? The most profound? 3) Describe it fully What would this frame of mind be like if you stepped into it fully? What do you experience first when you try it on? What's the most transformative thing about it? What do you need to do to amplify this so that it is maximally powerful for you? 4)

Identify supporting frames What frames do you need about this frame that would support it? What do you need to believe, value, identify with, understand, decide, etc.?

5) Future pace and confirm How does it transform things when you think about taking this with you in the days and weeks to come? Do you like this? Would you like to keep this with you?

IDENTIFYING COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS IN OUR MEANING-MAKING What controls and determines the way we think and make-meaning in the first place? • What is our style and mode of thinking? • How many thinking or sorting styles are there? Our style of thinking or meta-programs occurs at a level above {meta) to our thinking. These as solidified meta-states operate as our frame for thinking, sorting, paying attention and processing information. We develop habitual thinking styles which become our Meta-Programs because we "think" on several different levels. Content thinking is about what we think, process thinking concerns our style of thinking. Ellis & Harper (1975) and Beck (1983), Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy (formerly RET), call them thinking errors or cognitive distortions. These unproductive ways of reasoning lead to personal misery and unsanity. These cognitive distortions create mapping blindness and dysfunction. Cognitive Distortions — Thinking Patterns that Dis-empower 1. Over-Generalizing: Jumping to conclusions on little evidence or without facts. 2. All-Or-Nothing Thinking: Polarizing at extremes-Black-and-White thinking. Either-Or thinking that posits options as two-valued choices. 3. Labeling: Name-calling that uses over-generalizations. 4. Blaming: Accusatory thinking that transfers blame & responsibility for a problem. 5. Mind-reading other's thoughts and motives. Projecting thoughts, feelings, intuitions onto others without checking our guesses with the person, over-trusting our "intuitions." 6. Prophesying the future: Projecting negative outcomes into the future without seeing alternatives or other ways to intervene. 7. Emotionalizing: Taking counsel of one's emotions as an information source for what's real. 8. Personalizing: Perceiving circumstances & actions of others as targeted toward oneself, perceiving world through ego-centric filters. 9. Awfulizing... Terriblizing: Imagining the worst possible scenario & then amplifying it with a non-referencing word, "Awful," as in "This is awful!" 10. Should-ing — Demandingness: Pressuring self and others to conform to our rules using "should" and "must" statements. 11. Filtering out the positive or the negative: Over-focusing on one facet of something to the exclusive of everything else, a tunnel vision perspective, filtering out the positive, solutions, etc, 12. Can't-ing or Impossibility thinking: Imposing semantic limits on oneself & others using the word "can't." 13. Discounting or Minimizing one's self and abilities: Putting down and dis-qualifying possible solutions.

Thinking Patterns or Frames of Mind that Empower: Counter the ways that thinking becomes distorted (ill-formed, inaccurate). Use the following list for more empowering cognitive ordering. 1. Contextual thinking: Inquire about the context of information & index it according to what, when, where, which, how, who, and why. Meta-model unspecified nouns, verbs, relational terms, etc. 2. Both-and-thinking: Reality test to determine if a situation truly functions in an Either/Or way. If not, think in terms of a continuum. Inquire whether the two seemingly contradictory options actually exist as such represent different ways, times, circumstances, etc. 3. Reality-testing: Test the reality of the experience: to what extent, in what way, etc. someone deems something as "bad, undesirable, and unwanted?" Meta-model the value words. Denominalize terms words to recover the hidden verbs. 4. Denominalizing thinking: Reality-test to determine how a label functions: accurately, usefully, productively, too generally. Denominalize pseudo-nouns that make thinking and language fuzzy. 5. Systemic thinking: Reality-test to determine the pattern of causation. Distinguish linear causation from the multifacetic nature of systemic causation. 6. Information Gathering: Gather information to find the facts and then to check the conclusions, 7. Tentative predictive thinking: Gather high quality information about the factors, causes, forces, trends, etc. that come together to create an event. Keep an open mind about ways of intervening and altering that destiny. Look at consequences of certain, actions, etc. 9. Critical thinking/ Meta thinking: Thinking critically and analytically about the multi-causational nature of human emotions, back-track to the originating thoughts, think above and beyond the immediate content to the patterns and structures. 10. Reality-test the "shoulds." Challenge the word "should," discover the rule, if there's no such law, shift to desire thinking, "I would prefer that..." "I would like." 11. Depersonalizing thinking; Responsibility To/For Thinking: Reality test to see if the content or context deals references you personally. If not, code information in a third-person perspective, empathize without sympathizing. 12. Possibility thinking; Reality test "can't" to distinguish physical or psychological can'ts, then shift to possibility thinking. Ask, "What stops you?" "What would it feel like, look like, or sound like if you could?" 13. Appreciative thinking: What does count? In what way? How could it be valued?

DETECTING THE THINKING STYLES IN THE MEANING MATRIX 1) Identify a problem state that you have experienced recently. What happened? How would you describe the state, the problem? Why was it a problem for you? How as it a problem for you? 2) Do a Step back to Listen. Check list for cognitive distortions. Specify all of the ones that create problems and difficulties for you or another person. Listen for meta-model distinctions, linguistic markers of meta-programs and meta-states 3)

Validate and confirm the cognitive distortion. Reflect it back to the person. "It sounds like the way you have thought about this involves Awfulizing. Does it seem accurate as you step back from it and examine it?" "How would you characterize this pattern of thought?"

3) Invite the person to do a Step Back also (take a meta-position). Does this pattern of thinking reflect one that you (or I) typically use? How long have you used this cognitive distortion in sorting through things? Has it served you well? In what way? In what way may it have undermined your sense of well-being and accurate processing? What more useful way of processing this information would you like to use? 5) Challenge and dispute with the distortion. Argue against Personalizing, Awfulizing, Should-ing, etc. By identifying and arguing against these cognitive patterns, we bring them out into the light where we can deal with them. This breaks their power of working outside of consciousness. 6) Replace the cognitive distortions with some empowering thinking patterns. Check the list of the more enhancing ways of thinking.

META-PROGRAMS HUMAN PERCEIVING PROCESSING Cognitive Thinking Patterns

FEELING Emotional & Somatic

CHOOSING Conative Willing

RESPONDING Behaving, Acting, Social Responses

#7 Information Size Global— General Specific— Details

#13 Stress Coping Passivity Aggression Assertive

#20 Motivation Direction Toward or Approach Away From or Avoidance

#29 Social Stress Sort Extrovert Introvert Balanced Ambivert

#21 Conation Options Procedures

#30. Work Style Independent Team Player Manager Bureaucrat

#41 Instruction Sort Strong-Will Compliant

#57 Communication Stance Blamer, Placater, Distracter, Computer, Leveler

#42 Worthiness Sort Conditional SE Unconditional SE

#32 General Response Congruent/ Incongruent

#43 Self-Confidence Specific Skills one holds faith in self about

#2 Relationship #14 Frame of Reference Matching for Sameness Internal Referent Mismatching for Difference External Referent Other-Referent

#3 Representation System Visual Auditory Kinesthetic Language

#4 / #5 Information Gathering Uptime as a Sensor Downtime as an Intuitor

#15 Emotional State #22 Adaptation Judging/ Associated in feelings, Controlling & Judging Dissociated in thinking, Perceiving & Observing

#16 Somatic Responses Active Reflective Inactive

#23 Modus Operandi Necessity Possibility Desire Impossibility

Competitive/ Cooperative

CONSTRUCTING Semantic Concepts

#40 Values List of Values

Polarity/ Meta

#6 Quality Sort Either-Or Thinking (black-white thinking) Continuum Thinking

#17 Convincer/ Believability Looks Right, Sounds Right, Feels Right, Makes Sense

#24 Preference People, Place, Things, Activity, Knowledge, Time

#33 Social Response Active, Reflective Inactive Balanced

#44 Self Experience Identified with Mind, Emotions, Choices, Body, Choices, or dis-identified, Spirit

#18 Emotional Direction Uni-directional or Multi-directional

#25 Goal Sort Perfectionism Optimization Skepticism

#34 Work Preference Things Systems People Information

#45 Self-Integrity Conflicted & Incongruity Integrated Harmony

#7 Scenario Thinking Best- Optimistic Worst - Pessimistic

#26 Value Buying Cost Convenience Quality Time

#35 Comparison Quantitative Focus Qualitative Focus

#46 Time Zones Past Present Future

#8 Representational Durability Permeable Images Impermeable Images

#2 7 Responsibility Under-Responsible Over-Responsible Balanced Irresponsible

#36 Information Source Modeling Experiencing Conceptualizing Authorizing

#47 Time Experience In Time —Primary State Through or Out of Time —Meta-State

#9 Focus Quality Screeners Non-Screeners

#28 People Convincer Sort Distrusting—Suspicious Trusting—Naive

#3 7 Completion Closure Non-Closure

#48 Tim Access Sequential Random

#10 Philosophical Sort Why for Origins How for Solutions

#38 Social Presentation Shrewd and Artful Genuine and Artless

#49 Ego Strength Unstable Stable

#11 Reality Structure Sort Aristotelian & Static Non-Aristotelian and Process oriented

#39 Dominance Sort Power Achievement Affiliation

#50. Morality Sort Overly Strong super-ego Strong super-ego Weak Super-ego

#12 Communication Channel Sort Verbal and Digital Non-Verbal and Analogue Balanced

#19 Emot. Exuberance Desurgency Surgency Balanced

#51 Causational Sort Causeless, Linear, MultiCausal, Personal, External Causes, Magical, Correlational

Prepared by Denis Bridoux, NS-nlp Trainer, Harrogate, England and by L. Michael Hall, Ph,D. from Figuring Out People: Design Engineering Using Meta-Programs (1997) by Hall and Bodenhamer. ©1997 Michael Hall/ Bobby Bodenhamer

CHANGING

META-PROGRAMS

Meta-Programs inform our brains about what to delete If we move Toward values, we delete awareness about what we move Away From. If we sort for the Details, we delete the Global. Re-Direct awareness to what you normally delete, value that information, practice looking for it.

1) Identify and check the ecology of the meta-program filter. When, where, and how do you use this meta-program which does not serve you well? How does it undermine your effectiveness in some way? 2) Describe the preferred meta-program filter. What meta-level processing would you prefer to run your perceiving and valuing? When, where, and how do you want this meta-program to govern your consciousness? 3) Try it out. Imaginatively adopt the new MP, pretend to use it in sorting, perceiving, attending, etc. Notice how it seems, feels, works, etc. in some contexts where you think it would serve you better. Even if it seems a little "weird" and strange due to your unfamiliarity with looking at the world with that particular perceptual filter, notice what other feelings, beside discomfort, may arise with it. 4) Model it. Do you know someone who uses this MP? If so, then explore with that person his or her experience until you can fully step into that position. When you can, then step into 2 perception so that you can see the world out of that person's meta-program eyes, hearing what he or she hears, self-talking as he or she engages in self-dialogue, and feeling what that person feels. What's that like? n d

4) Run a systems check on the meta-program filter. Go meta to an even higher level and consider what this MP will do to you and for you in terms of perception, valuing, believing, behaving, etc. What kind of a person would it begin to make you? What effect would it have on various aspects of your life? 5) Give yourself permission to install it for a period of time. Do you have permission to shift to this meta-program filter? What happens when you give yourself permission to use it for a time.? Are there any objections? Answer by reframing and then future pace. 6) Future pace using the meta-program in specific contexts. Practice, in your imagination, using the MP and do so until it begins to feel comfortable and familiar. "If you knew when you originally made the choice to operate from the Other Referent (name the meta-program you want to change), would that have been, before, after, or during birth? Use one of the time-line processes to neutralize the old emotions, thoughts, beliefs, decisions, etc The visual-kinesthetic dissociation technique, decision destroyer pattern, e t c Once you have cleared out the old pattern, you can install the new meta-program.

TEXTURING YOUR STATES A "gestalt" refers to some configuration of mind-and-emotion that comes together and that emerges from many interactive parts in a system so that "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." In a gestalt state we have one or more levels of meta-states outframing a primary state so that as a result something new and higher arises.

1) Identify the Elements and Components Identify the Elements and Components that you need to make up a rich and vibrant state of the particular Gestalt state (i.e., Optimism, Seeing Opportunities, Courage, etc.). What do you need to think, feel, know, value, believe so that this gestalt arises for you? Customize this higher state so that you have all of the right ingredients. Make sure it is sufficiently compelling for you. 2) Access and Amplify each Resource Access: Take each resourceful thought and emotion and use various small and simple examples until you access that state. Amplify: Gauge to make sure it is sufficiently intense. 3) Apply to the Primary Situation Apply: Apply each resource state to the primary state to layer it and set it as a frame. Check after each application to see if the gestalt has now emerged. Appropriate: When the gestalt state emerges, future pace it by imagining how it will play out in the days and weeks to come in your everyday life. Notice how it will affect your thinking, perceiving, feeling, talking, acting, relating, working, etc. 4) Install by making an empowering Decision for it, then Meta-Yes it Decision: Are you willing to make this your program? Identity: How will it affect your self-definition? Confirmation: Do you want this? You really do?

PROACTIVITY Responsibly taking the Initiative Two Dragon states tempt, seduce, and afflict all of us: Reactivity and Defensiveness. These arise from our General Arousal Syndrome (i.e., the fight/flight syndrome) which describes the general functioning of our nervous system (neurology) when we think that something threatens or overloads our resources. Untrained, undeveloped, and unschooled we access states of reactiveness and defensiveness. We all come equipped with this neurological skill! Only later does consciousness come. If we train, order, discipline, develop, and cultivate consciousness, we can access states of reason, intelligence, wisdom, patience, self-management, understanding, sympathy-empathy, etc. 1) Set your Intention to become Proactive Do you want to consciously transcend the Fight/Flight Syndrome and to move beyond reactivity? If proactivity is thinking-and-feeling, valuing, choosing prior to taking action as we think about our responses, are you ready to use your higher thoughts to become more mindful about your primary states of threat, overload, stress, etc.? What responses would you like to produce? What would be the most productive action? 2) Identify the triggering event and primary State. What threats, upsets, disappointments, stress overloads, etc. trigger you to be reactive, passive, or to play the victim? When does the dragon of Reactivity arise in you? What pushes your buttons? Rattles your cage? Invites you into reactivity? What states would you prefer to be in as you respond? 3) Explore your meta-states of Meaning about your buttons. What do you think-feel about your buttons? Do you like your natural responses to distressful events? What frames of mind are counter-productive for you? [Use the Meta Questions and the Matrix Questions to explore.] Shift and run a Systems Check: Do you like your reactivity, or passivity, or stress responses, or feeling like a victim, etc.? Does your current frames enhance your life? Empower you? 4) Design preferred frames from your Power matrix to create proactivity. What do you need to think-feel about the danger, threat, and/or overload to become proactive? What resources enable you to feel safe or un-threatened? Have you proactively accepted or assumed total response-ability for your responses? What happens when you say to yourself, "I am solely responsible for my own responses. My thoughts and emotions are mine."? Which of the resources from the following Menu do you need meta-state yourself with? What happens when you access the resource and apply to your primary state? 5) What Self, Others, and World frames will create and/or support proactivity? Who do you need to become to become proactivity? What do you need to believe, understand, value, etc. about others? 6) Solidify and install the new proactivity matrix. Do you like this? Does it serve you well? How much confirmation do you need to bring to this new state and frames? Do you now have a truly robust meta-state of proactivity?

Menu List: Choice: Consciousness of choice, personal power, awareness of your ability to respond. Acknowledgment and acceptance of your "Power Zone." "I can choose how to take a trauma, how to think about it, what attitude to adopt, behaviors to engage in, etc." Mental and emotional Aliveness: Feel vigorous inside about your internal powers of choice.

Sense of freedom: Awareness of the Gap: between the S-R. There's a freedom gap between Stimulus and Response wherein we can think, represent information, reason, imagine, remember, fantasize, and engage other cognitive "world-making" (Matrix making) functions. Self-reflexive consciousness expands our choices, sense of freedom, internal "locus of control" which then leads to a sense of self-efficacy rather than "learned helplessness."

Self-Management Skills: What are some of little things that you can always do as an act of choice that cultivates your sense of self-management? What may you have discounted up until now as just a "small thing?" Power Bubble: Do you focus on the things in your Power Zone? Do you dis-empower yourself by focusing on things outside that arena? Do you give your power away? How much do you take charge of your own responses? Do you have an induction into your Power Bubble yet? Use the Talk of proactivity: Have you replaced any language of reactivity, passivity, or victimization? Do you avoid speaking for others? Have you eliminated all "you" statements and statements of blame, accusation, and excuses? What do you say to yourself when your buttons are pushed? Self-Reflexive Awareness: How easily can you transcend your primary state and take a meta-view about things? How aware are you of your ability to respond as existentially "free" person? What empowering beliefs put your "locus of control" within you? Compelling Outcome: Do you have some compelling out comes that keep you focused? Do you think consequentially? Do you formulate plans, values, and visions about being proactive? Implementation: How skilled are you in implementing what you know? Do you use mistakes as feedback and learning? How quickly can you shift to asking yourself solution-oriented questions? Your Proactive "Self:" Do you think of yourself as a proactive person? Is that part of your self-definition?

PERSONAL GENIUS PATTERN "Genius" involves a totally committed and passionate state in which you become so totally engaged that the world goes away, your sense of self goes away, time vanishes, and your focus becomes highly intentional with a laser beam focus. The original ideas for this came from Grinder and DeLozier's Turtles all the Way Down: Prerequisites For Personal Genius (1987). In that work, they explored the use of "logical levels" to protect and govern a focused commitment state in that work to use a higher level to govern first-level attentions. In the following pattern, we will access a current "genius" state of total engagement and use that as a template for building up a new genius state. Finding and Experiencing a Focus State for a Template of How You Do it First we access a naturally occurring "genius" state and use it as a template for the process. Doing this does several things. It creates an awareness that we already can and do access focused states of "flow" in which we get lost in an experience. It also refreshes and enriches the natural genius state. It creates a sense of self-confidence about this process.

1) Access a state of innocent witnessing and/or observing. I want you to access a pure and discreet state of "just observing." Step into this position and just notice some of the colors and sounds, etc. of this room. Have you ever stepped back from something and just observed things? Relax all of your muscles and just observe.

2) Identify a fully committed state wherein you can "get lost" in the state Take a moment to think back over your history and, has there ever been a time when you were in a committed state? What was that like? Have you ever been committed to something else? Find a specific state that you have fairly easy access to and which you can elicit fully. Choose a state that comes as close to a full 100% commitment as possible.

3) Access the focus state fully • •

What do you call this commitment state? As you recall a time when you were really into this state, step into it fully, seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you felt. Just be there fully and completely. Describe it until you refresh it and it amplifies. When you have fully accessed this state to a level of 8 or 9 on a scale of 10, nod to let me know or say so.

4) Practice shifting in and out of the state to develop impeccable state shifting •

•

In just a moment I want you to step out of these state fully and cleanly, leaving this state intact and as you step out, taking as little of it as possible. Okay? So ready, go. Step out to your observer position. Would you like to imagine a bubble that protects and secures this genius state?

5) Access an executive level of mind wherein you make decisions •

•

•

There's a part of your mind that makes decisions, that decides when and where to have this genius state. Rise up from the focused state to this executive level state that it can take charge of things while you get lost in this state. Would you like that? Would you like this executive level of mind to run the choices you make so that you can be cued about when the appropriateness of staying in this state or coming out? Would you like your executive mind to determine when to make the switch in and out of the genius states and to determine the contexts for the "cage" or Boundaries of your "demon" or genius state? Good. Then just inside your mind, answer the following questions: • Time: When should you have this state? When should you not? • Place: Where should you have this state? Where not? • Style: How should you? In what way, with what style? How should you not?

Criteria: According to what other criteria and qualities? Contexts: In what context or contexts? In what contexts should you not? Intention: Why should you? Your reasons, agendas, motivations? Why should you not? Relational: With whom? With whom not? Meaning: For what significance or meaning? What meanings to not give it? Resources: What other characteristics and features could you add to this state that would even more fully express the quality and efficiency that you want? Any other resources to add to the genius state? love, respect, daring, fallibility, balance, etc.? Emergencies, Interruptions: For what emergencies or concerns will you step out and interrupt this genius state? Any other considerations that you would like to determine the boundaries of this genius state? 6) Commission the executive meta-state and future pace • Are you willing to take full responsibility for setting these parameters for this commitment state so that this person can fully experience this commitment state? [Yes!] • Are you willing to take responsibility for letting this person fully experience this intense and passionate state? For knowing the limits and boundaries, when to have it and when not, how to have it and how not, will you signal X when to step out? • As you imagine moving out into your future, are you fully aligned with this? Any objections?

Building up a New Genius State With the template of your naturally occurring genius state, now you get to identify and design a genius state involving an engagement that you want to learn to get lost in. 1) Access the new desired focus state What focused state would you like to build? What do you call it? Have you ever had a little bit of it? Good. Access that bit seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you felt Go there and be with it fully. Amplify. Use your imagination and the "What If..:" Frame to assist. 2) Access a simple state of just observing Step in and out of this new genius state, practicing a clean state shift, in order to make the distinctions that allow you know how to have it upon cue. 3) Use your executive mind to further develop the genius state Re-access the state and then rise up in your mind to the part of your mind that makes decisions and answer the following questions. • Time: When should you have this state? When should you not? • Place: Where should you have this state? Where not? • Style: How should you? In what way, with what style? How should you not? • Criteria: According to what other criteria and qualities? • Contexts: In what context or contexts? In what contexts should you not? • Intention: Why should you? Your reasons, agendas, motivations? Why should you not? How would it be valuable to you? • Relational: With whom? With whom not? • Meaning: For what significance or meaning? What meanings to not give it? • Resources: What other characteristics and features could you add to this state that would even more fully express the quality and efficiency that you want? Any other resources to add to the genius state? love, respect, daring, fallibility, balance, etc.? • Emergencies, Interruptions: For what emergencies or concerns will you step out and interrupt this genius state? • Any other considerations that you would like to determine the boundaries of this genius state?

5) Commission the executive meta-state and future pace • Are you willing to take full responsibility for setting these parameters for this commitment state so that this person can fully experience this commitment state? [Yes!] • Are you willing to take responsibility for letting this person fully experience this intense and passionate state? For knowing the limits and boundaries, when to have it and when not, how to have it and how not, will you signal X when to step out? • As you imagine moving out into your future, are you fully aligned with this? Any objections? Debriefing the "Accessing Personal Genius" Pattern The qualities of a "genius" state involve focus, clarity, commitment, engagement, lost in the moment, at one's best with all of one's resources available, "in the zone," experiencing "flow," etc. Because such states are very focused, we need to protect them so that we don't contaminate them, dilute them, or reduce them. Finding our own template for how we get lost in a state enables us to recognize that personal genius is fully possible for you. Stepping in and out of the genius state allows us to find the differences that make a difference and to use those distinctions for creating ecological boundaries. These distinctions inform our neurology for when and where to cue the state. By stepping cleanly out of the state, and shifting the focus of our mind and body system, we learn to separate from this intense Flow state so that we can leave it cleanly behind. Do this repeatedly until you can do so impeccably... with no residue left over. Practicing interrupting further enables us to learn to trust ourselves, to trust that we will not lose the state, to trust that we can always get it back. This then changes our relationship to the experience and to the idea of "interruption." The pattern involves Inviting a person to be interrupted and handle it effectively by stepping out of state, handling the interruption, and then matter-of-factly stepping back into state. We begin by practicing responding to an interruption and then take charge of it by interrupting ourselves so that we step out of state with a minimum overlap, and then back into the state in a moment's notice. The brain/ nervous system will learn this pattern quickly and achieve the desire level of competency of state shifting. When the person carries over no mental or emotional residue from one state to the other, but cleanly separates and breaks between them and can then step back in and re-access that state with a strong intensity, you have achieved the goal of this exercise.

COMMISSIONING YOUR INNER EXECUTIVE GAME Operate from the CEO position of your Matrix to set the policies and frames that allow you to be true to yourself, congruent, and aligned. Direct yourself to choose your dreams, visions, and values. In deciding, we literally decide, that is, we cut off alternatives and push away options as we focus on a singular pathway that we can then fully validate and affirm. To say "YES!" to one thing necessitates saying of "NO!" to other things. Decision also involves aligning and empowering our highest intentions to drive and govern our everyday attentions. In this way, we engage in pathfinding and pathmaking. We have to make decisions. If we don't, we go nowhere.

1) Access the feeling of a "Decision" Step in and experience a great decision that you made that worked out wonderfully, and which you made with the qualities of— decisiveness, resolve, without a question, firm, confident, etc. Cut off the alternatives with your powerful "No!" as you affirm your preferred choice with your affirmative "Yes!" • Have you ever made a decision that you absolutely knew and felt was a great one? • Have you ever made a decision that you had to spend some time clarifying your Values and Visions and when you did, you then took effective action?

2) Amplify the feeling of "Decisiveness" and apply to your desired Frame Game Juice up the state until it sizzles, giving you a sense of power and control, the sense that, "Yes, this is my choice that I own and appreciate."

3) Make an Empowering Decision about Your Decision • • • • •

What kind of qualities would you like to embed your decision strategy within? What about balance between values/visions, others, health, etc. What about thoughtfulness, permission to say "No!" to good choices, delight and pleasure, proactivity, willingness to take a risk, the wisdom of consultation? What other qualities? Refusal to constantly re-negotiate with yourself about your decisions. If you made an informed decision in the daylight, don't question it in the dreadful gloom of midnight or while turning over in a warm bed in the morning.

4) Qualify with the Higher Frames that you choose: — Confidence — Open feedback loop

— Quality Control — Compassion

— Flexibility

5) Step in and experience it fully and imagine it as a resource for all of your tomorrows. Contextualize it into your future. Notice when and where you do want this and notice how it thereby transforms things.

6) Rise up to the part of your mind that makes decisions —your internal Executive Will the part of my mind that makes decisions take full responsibility to say Yes! to the things that fulfill my visions and values and No! to everything that gets in the way?

Closing The Knowing-Doing Gap Put your Creed into your Deed (Ralph Waldo Emerson) "We know too much and are convinced of too little" (T.S.Elliot) Knowing is not enough. Knowing is only the beginning. Doing is where we find out if our knowing is accurate or sufficient. Doing is where we put the knowing to the test. Taking effective action is what distinguishes the true business expert. The biggest cause of failure in business—the lack of implementation. We don't execute what we know to do in a timely manner.

The Mind-to-Muscle Pattern 1) Identify a Principle (concept, understanding) you want incorporated into your muscles. What concept or principle do you want to put into your neurology and commission to run your programs? Describe your conceptual understanding. What do you know or understand or believe about this that you want to set as a frame in your mind? State it in a clear, succinct, and compelling way as you finish the statement, "I understand..."

2) Describe the Principle as a Belief. Do you believe this? Would you like to believe it? If you really, really believed that, would that make a big difference in your life? State the concept by putting it as a belief saying, "I believe..." Now state it as if you really did believe it. Notice what you're feeling as you say that again.

3) Reformat the Belief as a Decision. Are you doing to do it? Would you like to live by that belief? [Yes.] You would? [Yes.] Really? [Yes.] Will you act on this and make it your program for acting? Then state it as a decision as you finish this statement, "From this day forward, I will.." Or, "I want... I choose ... it is time to... "

4) Rephrase the Belief and Decision as an emotional State or Experience. State the belief decision again noticing what you would feel if you fully believed it. What would you feel if you fully believed this empowering belief and decision and living them? Be with those emotions... let them grow and extend. Put your feelings into words: "I feel... I experience... because I will... because I believe..."

5) Turn the Emotions Into Actions to Express the belief and decision. "The one thing that I will do today as an expression of these feelings, to make this belief decision real is..." And what one thing will you do tomorrow? And the day after that?

6) Step into the Action and Let the higher levels of your mind Spiral. As you fully imagine carrying out that one thing you will do today... seeing, hearing and feeling it you are doing this because you believe what? Because you've decided what? Because you feel what? And you will do what other thing? Because you understand what? Because you feel what? Because you've decided what? Because you believe what? And what other thing will you do?

CHANGING THE GAME'S RULES "Some of the rules can be bent, some can be broken." (Morpheus, The Matrix) "If the rules of a game become too flexible, concentration flags, and it is more difficult to attain a flow experience Commitment to a goal and to the rules it entails is much easier when the choices are few and clear." (Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, p. 225)

Games are played and structured by rules. The "rules" describe how we set up a game and how a game works interactively. We often play a games and then someone protests: "Hey, you can't do that; that's against the rules!" We play Matrix Games in a structure of rules. These govern how we set the game up, the number of players, how to begin, how to end, legitimate and illegitimate actions within the domain, scoring, how "points" are counted, exceptions, etc. These rules create the conditions of the game and the playing conditions—the Game Scape. They inform us about numerous aspects of a game and define the difference between chaotic actions and structured games. How to set up the proper conditions for the game. How to actually play the game. How many can play. The processes allowed in the course of action. When an activity produces a "point" or something that "counts." The conditions when an exception to the rule occurs. The penalties that can occur when the rules are violated. How to determine when a Game is completed. How to honor or acknowledge the winner. Who, if anyone, governs the game as referee, coach, or commissioner. How to keep score and who keeps score. Rules create establish the structure, form, and order of a game. When we know the rules for how to structure and play a game, then we have a way of orienting ourselves, contextual cues about the game, and motivation for playing. Conversely, when we don't know the rules of the game or how the game is to go, we may find ourselves disoriented, confused, overwhelmed, or unmotivated, etc. Without knowing the rules, the game plays on and we feel powerless, clueless, and left out. Meta-Rules enable us to take charge of the rules so we can make our games human, winnable, and fun. How do you keep score as you play your own frame of games? What rules have you constructed for how to play the games? What are the kind and quality of rules that you use? How well do these rules serve in your playing? Do the rules about your score keeping enable you to easily win or is the deck set against you? Fill in the following questions with whatever state, experience, emotion, or quality that you desire (i.e., happy, confident, healthy, free, safe, in control, creative, radiant, charming, successful, in love, respectful, etc.). How do you know when you are X? If you were really X, then you will be doing what? If you X, you will... I have to Y (set of behaviors, actions, conditions) in order to X. I can't feel X unless... I will experience X when ...

What will it take for you to know that X is happening? To experience X, I should ... To experience X, I must... Anytime that I Y (action, experience, situation), I know that I am X-ing... It just doesn't feel or seem that I am really X.

Designing New Game Rules If our rules and game structures are all arbitrary, does anything stop us from formulating them so that it's easy to hit a home run or sink a basket? Does it serve you to have the rules that you do? Are the rules the kind of rules that allow you to win frequently or do they stack the game against you? Winning at Confidence: How do you know when you are confident? What has to occur in order for you to rank up some confident points? When you are feeling confident, what are you doing? What is happening to you? Winning at happiness, cheerfulness, a joyful attitude, a playful spirit, etc. What has to happen for you to allow yourself a win in this frame game? — Do you have to win the lottery? — Do you have to have "everything going your way all day?" All week? — Do you have to have a Hollywood shaped body? What are the criteria, evaluations, standards, and rules that allow you to feel pleased, joyful, or playful?

DESIGNING NEW RULES 1) Identify a healthy, fun and productive Game that you want to play. What do you want to obtain or experience in playing this game? What would you call this Game? Examples: The Aim Game, The Proactivity Game, The Modeling Game, "I Can Handle It!" Game, The Deep and Rich Relationships Game

2) Design some winable, playable, and fun Rules for the Game How will you know that you have won or lost? How will you keep score? What will inform you that it's time to "count" something as a point? "I know I will feel confident when... (List signs, clues, etc.) "It counts when I . . . (specify behaviors, experiences)

3) Keep running a quality control on the rules of the game Make sure the game is a human and humane one Make sure it provides balance, energy, vitality, fun, respect, etc

4) Solidify by future pacing and confirming.

THE MULTIPLE LAYERING OF FRAMES When we use questions and meta-questions we can not only explore a belief, we can set and reset multiple frames at the same time and quite covertly. The first questions in the following process deframe and fragment, the next ones invite the construction of a more positive and useful way of framing, and the latter ones solidify that frame as a new belief. I have adapted the following pattern from a review that Jeremy Stern wrote concerning the spiritual methodology of Byron Katie (Rapport 46, Winter, 1999).

LAYERING F R A M E U P O N F R A M E When we layer one frame upon another frame and make sure that they are all aligned toward eliciting the same state or experience, the conscious mind can only track so far and keep so much in awareness. This allows us to use the very "weight" (speaking metaphorically) of the frames to work in a presuppositional way. With every layering, we assume the lower layers and take them for granted. The layering invites us to assume and accept the earlier frames as we shift to other things. With the "weight" of 5 or 6 frames, we accept the first frames without question. They slide right on in. In the layering of frames, "gestalt" states and experiences emerge from the neuro-linguistic system of mind-body elements. If all of the frames are focused in the same direction — then we experience higher and more intense energy all in a straight and focused way. If however, we have some frames eliciting one thing, and at another level other frames creating other focus, disorientation, trance, paradox, confusion, and many other meta-muddled phenomena can occur.

Design/ Pattern

Frame Game

Purpose, Intent Structure

The Name of the Game

Solidifying the new Frames 16) And you'd like to have this belief? 15) Okay, reverse the first belief that we began with & restate it.

Seeking confirmation Formulation of a new belief

The Yes Frame Game

Setting and Confirming the new Frames 14) Really, really? 13) Really? 12) Would you like to have this new belief running your programs?

Confirming the confirmation Eliciting more "Yeses!" Eliciting a "YES!" confirmation

Eliciting Questions... Cycle through a series of questions Begin at the bottom & come up

Setting and Installing New Identity Frames 11) Who would you have to be without the old belief

Building new identity with the new belief

Belief Questioning Frames that Deframe and Loosen old Frames Anything stopping you? 10) Do you recognize any non-painful What holds you back? reasons to keep this belief? 9) How would it serve you to drop or

Values, Benefits, for dropping

Decision Frame Game

New Identity FG

Confirmation FG

Value FG

exchange or transform this belief?

Ecology of Using New Belief

8) While I'm not asking you to drop this belief, I do wonder if you can see even one reason to drop it? What?

Highlighting not believing this Eliciting reasons for dropping the old belief.

Safety FG/ Possibility FG Solution FG

7) Is this who you are? Is this who you want to be? 6) Is this your highest Path?

Challenge Values/ Visions

Identity FG

Life Mission, etc.

Mission FG

Increase Pain threshold Elicit negative consequences

Threshold FG Positive Intention FG

Questioning, planting doubt Fragmenting using

Questioning FG Allness FG

Pacing Frames that enter into the person's Matrix 5) What else do you get by holding this belief? 4) What do you get by holding this belief? 3) Do you really know this to be absolutely true without any question? 2) Is this true? Really?

Primary State:

Person —

Beginning Frame The Problem Statement/ Situation

1) What is the problem? Pace, Pace, Pace

Information FG Problem FG

MASTERING THE LAYERING SKILL... Now that you have a taste (view, hearing, feeling) of the layering process, we have sniffed it out, have we not, then without doubt you are fully ready to play this Master Framing Game. Well, you'd like to be, wouldn't you? And, of course, the easier and more playful you get with this, I'm sure you already realize just how quickly you'll get the hang of it and become truly elegant in your persuasion skills.

Eliciting Questions ... Cycle through a series Begin at the bottom & come up

Frame Games For Persuasion of

questions

Layer

Frame

Upon Frame to systematically Construct, Set, and Solidify Frames

Loosen,

Deframe,

Start at the base — enter the Matrix with a blank mind, open, curious, playful, respectful, honoring... Make it safe through Validating: 1) What is the problem? 2) That sounds like that's must be hard, is it? Continue until you have a sense of Rapport and trust Begin planting seeds of doubt, questions, skepticism: 3) When you step back from that and get a larger perspective, do you really think that it's true? Absolutely? 4) Do you really know this to be absolutely true without any question? Cycle back to Affirmation/ Validation to seek more information: 5) What do you get by holding this belief? 6) What else do you get by holding this belief? 7) That's sounds important to you, guess that's really valuable, huh? 8) What else is valuable about that? Important? Significant? Meaningful?

Information FG Pacing FG

Questioning FG Allness Fragmenting FG

Positive Intention, Aim FG Flushing out FG

Apply Values, Beliefs, Visions, Missions, Spirit, etc. to this: 9) Is this who you are? Is this who you want to be? Identity FG 10) Is this your highest pathway in life? Does this reflect Life as you really want it? Mission FG/ Aim Game 11) Would you like to rise above this and be more than that? 12) What else would you like to discover, experience, and become? 13) What other qualities and traits would you like to texture into your experience? Invite Yes/No Confirmations, Decisions, Re-Orientations: 14) While I am not asking you to drop a belief or take on a new frame, unless that feel absolutely convinced that it would enrich your life and increase your resourcefulness, I do wonder what you now see in terms of higher values in thinking with this new frame. 15) How would it serve you to drop or exchange this belief? Would this new belief do you well? 16) Is there anything stopping you from choosing that kind of higher resources? 17) Who would you have to become and what would you have to experience to rise up to that kind of height of experience? 18) Would you like to have this new belief running your programs? 19) Really? Really? You're pulling my leg! 20) And you'd like to have this belief? 21) So will you? Now?

Safety FG/ Possibility FG Solution FG/ Search for Higher Reasons FG Value FG Quality Control FG Detecting Barriers FG

New Identity FG Decision Frame Game The YES Confirmation FG The Yes Frame Game

Day 4:

MASTERING YOUR RELATIONSHIP MATRIX For Personal and Business Relationships Description: Discover your Others/Relationship Matrix and the skills that enable you to gain rapport, trust, respect, listen, communicate effectively, influence, negotiate, and build teams. Challenge: Dealing with the frustrations, disappointments, criticisms, etc. of others, to find more effective ways to communicate, get r a p p o r t , understand, work through conflict, etc. Solution: To detect, empower, transform, reframe, and reload our Matrix about Others. To develop the skills and patterns so that we can work effectively with and through others.

Outcomes for Day 4: To develop a well-formed and robust Matrix of Others and Relationships. To use feedback as the way for continuous improvement. To become un-insultable. To develop richer and more enjoyable relationships. To work more effectively with and through others. To use the Matrix to develop new skills and take current skills to a new level of development.

THE OTHERS MATRIX The Blue Matrix Your Internal Audience: This matrix records how we have mapped out and developed our meanings about what we understand, believe, and expect of others. It refers to what we think and feel about the idea of connection, whether this is a good and valued thing or a dangerous and fearful thing. What do we think or feel about people? About human nature? Who are people? What are people like? What is it like relating to them? What is the nature of relationships? What can I expect of people? What skills do I have for getting along, creating rapport, understanding? What meanings have we constructed about those we like and connect with? About those we invest ourselves in and bond with? About those we dislike and avoid? Who do you play your life before?

Developmentally: How did you navigate the psycho-social stages of development (Piaget and Erickson)? Trust—distrust, bonding, safety, cooperation—competition, leading and following, giving and taking orders, etc.? Constancy of Representation in infants, "out of sight, out of mind." Dependency (immaturity), independency (maturity), then inter-dependency (healthy relationships).

Frames about "People:" This Matrix reflects our views and concepts about relating to people. Here we map out our ideas about relationships, love, associations, authority, roles, teams, races, cultures, arguments, conflicts, forgiveness and all of the other relational/social emotions. This matrix governs how we deal with the patterns and frames we have about people, how to get along, how to understand and communicate, how to resolve conflicts, how to work with and through people, etc. The social meta-programs govern this matrix as well as patterns for rapport, communication, persuasion, leadership, groups, politics, etc. It is from this matrix that we mostly define and describe emotional intelligence (E.Q).

Social and Relational Skills: The Others matrix governs our social-emotional skills and concepts that are included in love, support, affection, friendship, affiliation, connection, involvement, being included, trust, trustworthness, betrayal, etc. Depending upon early experiences with care-givers, friends, mates, authority figures, teachers, etc. we develop our maps and give meaning to the importance or fearfulness of connecting, relating, loving, being open, being vulnerable, etc.

Others and Meta-Programs: What meanings you give to Others will determine if you will turn to others when you feel down and low and need to recharge your batteries (the Extroversion meta-program) or whether you will turn inward to yourself (the Introversion meta-program). If you have mapped both as valuable and significant, that both counts, you will have the Ambivert meta-program style. This matrix is directly related to and influenced by our Self matrix. Originally we experience them as one. Then in the developmental nature of growing up, we individualize and become dependent and then eventually independent. Independence allows us to stand on our own and to have and be enough in ourselves to become inter-dependent with others in healthy relationships. Your Inner Social Panorama: Like "time" we have an inner world of people —people we carry with us and never leave home without. Explore your Social Panorama to see what's there.

DRAWING THE RESPONSIBILITY TO/FOR LINE You are responsible for yourself—what you say and do, the structures and frames that you set up. You are responsible for how you interact, treat your participants, the spirit and atmosphere that you set, etc. You are not responsible for how anyone else thinks, feels, talks, or acts. They are responsible for that. Yet you are responsible to them... to them as participants, as learners, as colleagues, as human beings. Separating out and stepping into a state of clarity about this responsibility To/For distinction therefore empowers you in relating in a healthy way, not creating sick and dependent relationships, or getting off on the "power" or "authority" that comes along with being out in front as a leader.

1) Access your power zone. Access, acknowledge, and appreciate your four neuro-linguistic powers of thinking-emoting, speaking and behaving. Step into your power zone and own it fully (bring "ownership"— as expressed in "Mine!" to the Power Zone). 2) Distinguish between For and To. I am able to respond (response-able) FOR my thinking, emoting, speaking and behaving. I own and acknowledge my ability to make such responses. They are mine and I will not hold anyone else responsible for these powers. I am not able to respond (response-able) FOR the thinking, emoting, speaking, or behaving of anyone else! I cannot and will not assume any ownership over their Power Zone, It belongs to them. I acknowledge that, appreciate that, and will honor that.

3) Step into this Experience fully and feel it as you Gesture it. Feel it in your muscles. Let it become part of your muscle memory. Invent awesome and memorable phrases for expressing this basic principle. "If it doesn't come out of my mind, my mouth, my heart, my body... it's not mine!" "I will not insult others by treating them as fragile, weak, and unable to claim their personality powers." "I have my own full time job being responsible for myself." "I refuse to act in a co-dependent way by thinking I need to rescue others. " "I will only invite others to contract with me for assistance, I refuse to be seduced into fixing them or cramming it down their throats." "I don't have to or need to rescue anyone. Others have the right to choose to be as unsane as they want to be! Especially family members!" 4) Apply to Coaching / Relating: Imagine a training group or an individual person who has contracted for you to coach. Apply the responsibility To/For distinction to that relationship. Giving permission, protecting, avoiding any feel of "manipulation" or playing with them in a negative way.

RECEIVING QUALITY FEEDBACK "Mistakes are toothless little things if you recognize and correct them. If you ignore or defend them, they grow fangs and bite." (Dee Hock, 1999, Birth of the Chaordic Age, p. 280)

We all need feedback. We need precise, accurate, useful, and sensory-based feedback that truly assists us in tuning up our skills and getting new patterns down. Yet what is feedback? It is not evaluations. It is not our interpretations or judgments. Most people do not know how to give sensory-based feedback. Why? Because they fail to distinguish sensory from evaluative based terms and to assume their projections and judgments are sensory-based.

1) Prepare yourself to receive by identifying your current frame about feedback (correction, error detection, etc.). When you think about someone informing you (telling you) that you made a mistake, error, messed up, did something wrong, etc., what thoughts and feelings come to mind? What state does that put you in? What do you believe about that?

2) Deframe the old frames to slay or tame any old dragons that might make you closed or defensive. Do these states enhance your learning abilities? Do these states, frames, meaning serve your creativity, growth, understandings, etc.? How do they represent ill-formed maps?

3) Separate feedback from the person and the style of the feedback. Many people really do not know how to give sensory-based feedback.

4) Frame and reframe feedback What do you think about feedback? Is it desirable and valuable? What good is feedback? Why would you want it?

5) Texture your basic state with the qualities and resources to make your reception ore robust and effective. What do you need to texture your reception of feedback with? Do you need more patience, acceptance, appreciation, recognition of positive intentions, commitment to yourself, your learning, your budding genius, etc.? Have you set the frames to texture your state regarding sensory-based feedback? Refuse to let another's incompetence or sloppiness in giving feedback deprive your of the feedback. Invite them to specify the feedback in sensory-based terms.

6) Commit yourself to sensory-based feedback. Do you know how to distinguish sensory-based and evaluative based feedback information? Will you make that distinction for yourself when someone has communicated judgments and evaluative responses? Will you help the speaker offer his or her response in see-hear-feel terms? Will you stubbornly refuse to immediately buy into judgment based feedback so that it doesn't do semantic damage to you?

7) Future Pace. Imagine moving forward with this way of thinking and feeling about feed back into the months and years to Do you like this? Does it enhance your interactions and relationships?

GIVING QUALITY FEEDBACK We all need feedback. We don't need judgments, evaluations, or mind-reading. We need precise, accurate, and sensory-based feedback that assists us in tuning up our skills and incorporating new patterns. All forms of coaching involves giving precise, accurate, immediate, useful, and sensory-based feedback—feedback that truly assists the client in refining responses and honing skills. Feedback differs from evaluation. The first is sensory based and behavioral, the second is an interpretation that comes from a person's model of the world.

1) Establish respectful rapport Do you have rapport? Do not start until you do! Are you and your client in resourceful states? Have you used the pace, pace, pace... lead pattern? Is your feedback sensory-based? "You have a nice way of quickly engaging and setting the frame of the exercise... it seemed however that you moved a little too fast..." Do you have physical rapport—have you matched your client's output channels? Do you have conceptual and meta-rapport—have you matched beliefs, understandings, values, etc.?

2) Identify the Outcome of the Feedback. What is the outcome, design, or objective of your client? Have you tied your feedback to the person's outcome? "In light of your goal for this exercise of integrating these two parts, I noticed ..." "In light of your desire to become more people oriented as a manager, I noticed that you didn't use anybody's first name in the meeting today."

3) Offer feedback tentatively while seeking the person's validation or dis-validation. Have you made your feedback tentative? "In view of eliciting the learning state (objective), you only paused two seconds for her to recall a memory, and just when her eyes refocused, you jumped in and asked her to make the picture brighter (sensory based), I got the impression she needed more time to process... Did you need more time?"

4) Make the feedback timely. Did you share your feedback when the action or experience was fresh? Was your feedback timely rather than waiting days, weeks, or months?

5) Elicit your client to separate feedback and from the style of the feedback. Have you invited your client to recognize self as more than behavior? Have you set the frame that distinguishes person from behavior and feedback?

6) Invite the client to set the frame or reframe feedback as acceptable and valued. How is feedback valuable to you? What other values can you give to it? What positive values and meanings do others give feedback?

7) Give sensory specific behavioral feedback. Have you avoided personalizing by translating all feedback into specific behaviors? Is your feedback completely in see-hear-feel terms? "As you fired off the anchor on her arm, I noticed that you put your fingers down about 1/4 of an inch from where it seemed you set the anchor a moment ago."s "It seemed to me that your use of the term 'you guys' was too informal for the board meeting of directors today."

UN-INSUITABILITY •

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There is a state of taking insult. We all know that one. Yet is there a state of Un-insult-able? The uninsultable state empowers you to take criticism effectively and positively, handle communication interchanges, conflicts, confrontations, and people in bad moods with much more grace and resourcefulness. Un-insult-ability eliminates the emotional black-hole of criticism and enables us to positively take communications so we can use them constructively. This allows us to hear out complaints, even harsh and cruel criticism, without getting defensive. Since everybody seems skilled at dishing out criticism, most people must have the ability to take it well and use it for learning and growth. Right? Not quite. Most of us are sensitive to receiving criticism. Few seem to know how to make good use of criticism. Most use criticism never think of responding to criticism with good feelings or of putting the best twist on criticism. Most take insult all too easily. How do you typically respond to criticism? Would you want a state that allows you to move through the world Un-Insultable? How easily can you move into a meta-state about a criticism viewing it as just information and feedback? How easy can you respond from a state where you take it with no displeasure, dismay, discouragement, depression, but with contentment, delight, appreciation, understanding, etc.?

Elicit your Strategy for Taking Insult: Insultablity

1) Identify a referent experience: When have you been insulted that you didn't handle it all that well? Have you ever took insult from someone? How did you do that? What enabled you to do that? How did you current think or feel about the criticism? How easy do you take offense? What do you think-and-feel about the person criticizing you? How aware are you that the intent behind most criticism is to make things better? What do you say to yourself when you're criticized? This is insulting! I don't want to hear this. They don't have the right to criticize. _ These words mean I am inadequate. This is attack of my self-esteem! What Dragons emerge at the first sign of criticism?

2) Explore your Strategy and Insult Matrix: How do you think-and-feel about criticism? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? What do you think-and-feel about the person of the critic? Do you inevitably feel a sense of displeasure?

3) Check for the following features: Others: Caring about what the other thought. Boundaries: Lack or weakness of personal boundaries. Self: Lack of a strong sense of "self," confidence to handle things. Intentions: Lack of a strong sense of values, Visions, etc. Meanings: Map/Territory confusion.

Design Engineer a Meta-State Structure of Un-Insultablity:

1) State Boundaries: How strong, present, how much energy and strength in your boundaries?

2) Sense of Self:

Do you have a strong and unconditional sense of your Core Self? Access your Power Zone (responsibility) and take complete ownership of those powers. Access Acceptance, Appreciation, and Awe (Esteem) and apply to Self. Access your confidence in your Skills and Abilities (Self-confidence).

3) Others: Frames of Meaning about Insult, put-downs, reputation, honor, etc. What can you believe about words and actions "out there" in order to keep them "out there?" What supporting beliefs, meanings, etc. would enable you to reframe "insult?"

Meta-Stating Un-Insultability:

1) Identify a referent event What do you want to have more choices, flexibility, and power in handling? Identify in your mind a trigger event of insult. What is that like?

Step aside from the content Psychological distance Ownership of your Power Zone Appreciation Curiosity: "tell me more..." Defusing Skills Humanize the critic Optimistic Explanatory Style Distinguish Language and Meaning Say "No!" to criticism that doesn't fit

Keep presence of mind about the criticism Refusal to take personal Self-Integrity Ability to listen with a quiet and receptive mind Discern Responsibility To / For Able to stay emotionally centered Self-Esteeming Distinguish Behavior from Person Recognize as Feedback; just words and not the territory

3) Sequence the states that you want to set as Frames in terms of being Un-Insultable. What sequence of resources makes the most sense to you? What is it like to access each individually and applying them? When you feel this and notice how it transforms that criticism, do you feel un-insultable yet?

4) Keep Layering until the Gestalt emerges. What belief frames, value frames, decision frames, identity frames, etc. will support you along the way? Have you identified the best frames for un-insultability yet?

5) Solidify with higher supporting frames. Do you like this? Want to keep it? How would enrich your life? And you'd like that? Are you willing to keep it? Provoke to elicit a meta-No in losing it. You won't remember it!

6) Quality Control the new gestalt state. Would this empower you as a person? Enhance your life? Are you fully aligned with it?

7) Future pace and Commission at a higher executive level

Menu List of Resources for Un-lnsult-ability: Power Matrix: Power up by fully Owning your Powers, responses, and resources Do you fully accept and own your responses?

Have you drawn the "responsibility to/for" line? Suppose someone screams at you: "Whatever comes at me does not belong to me. I did not produce it. It belongs to another." "Apparently you have some very strong and negative emotions you want to express. I want to hear what you have to say. But given your volume, I can only heard bits and pieces of it, would you repeat what you just said in a calmer way? I promise to listen carefully." Un-insultable! Defusing Skills: Are you skilled at defusing someone who is hot, angry, irritable, etc.?

Self Matrix: Separate yourself from the incoming information so you do not personalize: How well are you able to avoid personalizing? "What anyone says to me is not mine! I do not have to immediately believe it! I can just perceive it."

Are you able to step aside from the content so that you can think about both the information and your think about it? Are you able to get "psychological distance" from it? Esteeming Self: Will you esteem yourself even in the face of criticism and refuse to question your value, worth, and dignity? Will you refuse to put your self-esteem on the line? Others Matrix: Distinguish the Person of your critic from his or her Behavior and words: Are you willing to refuse to confuse your critic's behavior with his or her person? Are you willing to esteem your critic? "This seems pretty important to you. How does it hold so much meaning to you?" "What do you hope to achieve by this criticism that you consider of a positive benefit?" Appreciation: Are you able to appreciate your critic or the criticism? "I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. It offers me feedback that could possible benefit me." The idea that "There is no Criticism, only information," enables us to thank our critic. Humanize your Critic: Suppose someone screams obscenities to you, adopt a humanizing perspective, and listen empathically: "Interesting words. His words, of course, not mine. He has the right to say such. He must really feel insecure and grumpy to talk this way." Un-insultable! "I really want to hear what you've got to say. It sounds like you feel very angry at me, and I will hear out your anger. But when you cuss at me like this, I have a hard time hearing you. If I promise to listen to you would you promise to stop the obscenities?" Un-insultable! State Matrix: Get a sense of Distance: What happens when you imagine the criticism coming from two blocks away? What happens when you imagine the critic speaking from behind a wall of plexiglass? Meaning Matrix: Invent lots of empowering reasons for explaining the criticism. Since in order to feel insulted, we have to "take" insult, do you have some compelling reasons to stop that? It's just Information: Do you know at the feeling level that words are just information? "Would you tell me more? Just how do you think I exist as a turkey, or why I am clumsy. How specifically do I remind you of a turkey?" Optimistic Explanatory Style. Will you use the optimistic style to explain why your critic criticizes? Distinguish Language and Meaning: Do you know that we supply the meaning to words? Just Feedback: Do you understand that criticism is just words, symbols, and feedback? Power and Others Matrices: Refuse to Counter-Attack: Are you willing to respond kindly rather than counter-attack? "It sounds like you have some things about which you really want to set me straight. Does that represent your position? Do you feel that this comprises your best choice to accomplish this? What do you hope to accomplish by this? How do you expect me to respond to you as you so express yourself? I want to hear you out, would you express yourself so that I could feel you offer this within a context of care and respect?"

Hold a critic responsible: "If I do this wrong, what do you suggest I ought to do? Will you help me to do it right?" Graciously Take reproof: "A wise man listens to advice" (Prov. 12:15). "A scoffer will not listen to rebuke" (Prov. 13:1). "A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool" (Prov. 17:10). "Whoever loves disciplines loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid" (Prov. 12:1). "When a fool is annoyed, he quickly lets it be known. Smart people will ignore an insult" (Prov. 12:16 TEV). Frederick Douglas: "A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me." Just say "No!" to criticism that does not fit. Are you willing to say "no thanks" when someone offers a criticism that you think inappropriate? "Thanks, but it does not fit at this time." Listen to criticism and explore it without buying it wholesale. Evaluate it: true or false, accurate or erroneous, useful or irrelevant.

PLAYFUL HUMOR There's nothing more basic or prime than a child's playfulness and humor. Throughout meta-stating processes you will have noticed how much playfulness we have typically applied to other states. Humor creates an excellent state for learning, exploring, and developing. Humor provide a healing force for trauma, both mental and physical. Humor provides an excellent resource for the disease of "seriousness." 1) Access a simple and pure state of Playfulness. Have you ever felt really curious and in utter wonderment? Recall two very strong instances of each. Re-access and fully recall a time when you were very young and very curious and step back into that experience fully and completely so that you can use your wide-eye curiosity to explore playfulness. 2) Amplify this state of playfulness. Crank it up through the ceiling. Use exaggeration to increase it so that it become ludicrous, silliness, etc. What are the cinematic features in your Movie that amplify this? What are the best physiologies that assist you in re-accessing humor? 3) Inform all of your muscles, neurology, face, etc. of this state. Take a breath of playfulness, let your eyes sparkle with it. Let it affect your breathing and moving and speaking. Find your humor and playful tonality. 4) Quality control and meta-state your learning, driving, walking, etc. Playfully imagine meta-stating various facets of your everyday life with this state Meta-state the humor with respect, care, love, etc. 5) Apply your playfulness to your sense of self To your fallibility add humor so that it becomes "glorious fallibility." 6) Future Pace with both internal and external anchors.

FROM MAGNANIMITY TO FORGIVENESS If there is any dragon state that can mess up relationships and getting along with people it is the state of holding a grudge, feeling resentment and bitterness, and nursing anger about grievances. Re-sentiment tells it all—we keep re-feeling a hurt or pain and so re-living an upset, distress, trauma and so we keep refreshing the pain within. This will not make for mastery at all. This will undermine mastery and waste lots and lots of mental-and-emotional energy. There are two complex meta-states for this— Magnanimity and Forgiveness. Magnanimity is defined as a loftiness of spirit that enables one to bear trouble calmly, a disdain of meanness and revenge. (Latin: Magnus: "great" and Animus: "spirit"). It is a lofty and courageous spirit, a nobility of feeling and generosity of mind. "Let your magnanimity be manifest to all" (Phil. 4:5 NEB) is also translated forbearance, moderation, considerateness, gentleness, sweet reasonableness. A reasonableness of mind that holds complete control over the passions. • Magnanimity is about the size and quality of our heart. Is it big hearted or small? How big are your thoughts about yourself, others, and the world? Do you ever struggle with resentful, bitter, and grudging thoughts? That induces dragon states that will undermine happiness, success, and empowerment. To fly off the handle, become intolerance, boorish, grumpy, etc. sabotages personal resourcefulness. To truly transcend the frustrating events of life, to win a victory over our own spirit, to deal with self, others, and life in a big-hearted way! • Magnanimity is a state about the very quality of our heart. To meta-state ourselves into the gestalt of big-heartedness as our frame of mind as we move through life and handle the smallmindedness of others. Forgiveness, the other state, is releasing and letting a significant violation go and not holding it against the perpetrator. • It is needed for a situation of hurt where a person feels a sense of violation, insult, betrayal, or something that has harmed the fabric of a relationship. It's for the big stuff. It goes beyond mere irritation, frustration, and little hurts. To effectively interact with fallible human beings, we must handle the fact that via our interactions we will inevitably and inescapably give and receive hurt. Forgiveness enables us to not get stuck in the hurt. • To develop an empowering state of forgiveness wherein you cease to resent an offender, pardon, give up a resentment or a claim for requital, and thereby keep one's own spirit sweet. • Forgiveness is not reconciliation, but it can make relationship possible. Forgiveness is for oneself, to keep one's own spirit clean and sweet, then can be for the other. Forgiveness keeps us healthy, present, open, and loving. 1) State: Access the primary state of a significant hurt. For Magnanimity: For Forgiveness: What hurts or violates you in a significant way? How do you know that it is a big hurt? 2) Power; Identify your menu list of Resources. Self: Have you stood your ground and refused to let the hurt take away your value, dignity, worth, importance? How robust is your self-esteeming so that you don't let the hurt rob you of your dignity? Others; Person/Behavior Distinction: Are you distinguishing your person and the other's person from the behavior?

Are you clear that people are much more than their expressions? Are you over-identifying the other person with his or her expressions? States: Self-Respect and Honor: Are you able to esteem and appreciate the person as a human being? Rage: Have you gotten as mad as hell at the wounding behavior? Decision: Deciding to Release: Have you intentionally make the empowering decision that you will quit holding the hurt against the person and in your consciousness? Releasing: Letting go: Are you willing to let the hurt go? Compassion: empathy and understanding to the person who did the harm. Are you able to recognize with honor the person as a fallible, insecure, limited, ignorant human? How well are you able to feel and express compassion to the person? Responsibility: Do you know that hurts very seldom occur in a vacuum? And that they arise in the context of inter-actions? To what degree have you played a contributing part in the hurtful experience? What part did you play that you need to recognize and change? 3) Access and apply the Resources to the triggering Event. Distinction of Person/Behavior. Respect and honor to self. Rage to the event. Compassion to perpetrator. Decision to release.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN THE MATRIX Intention: What skills do you want to develop? Skills that are important to you and that would take you to the next level of experience and development?

1) Meaning: Why is this important to you? What does it mean to you? 2) States: What states do you need to pull this off? What feeling states? 3) Self: Who would you have to be to fully own this skill? What adjustments in your self-definition would have to occur? 4) Meanings: What frames of mind would you need? What attitudes? 5) Others: Who would be a wonderful mirror to give you feedback? Who would you like to appoint as someone to hold you accountable for developing this new skill or taking your skills to the next level? 6) Intention: How committed are you to this? How much more committed do you need to be? What would do that for you? 7) Intention — Choice: Are you going to develop this skill? How much better will you become at it this month? This year?

Day 5:

MASTERING YOUR WEALTH MATRIX Inside Out Wealth: Using Talent and Passion to Add Value Description: Wealth is an inside-out phenomenon. Learn that and you can operate from an abundance that sees and seizes opportunities and that creates value everywhere. Challenge: Dealing with financial stressors, the lack of funds, learning the secrets of wealth, how it is created and how we can begin to create a plan for financial independence. Solution: Discover the meaning and essence of "wealth," develop a plan for holistic wealth in all dimensions and create an inside-out wealth plan for ourselves. Outcomes for Day 5: To find the interface between our talents and passions and the marketplace world. To begin our wealth building plan from within—building up inside wealth. To discover how to add value and to use the perspective of adding value as our attitude. To experience seeing and seizing opportunities. To build up more personal efficiency in getting things done.

LIVING WITH PASSION While talent is the foundation, it is passion that truly makes the difference. Living life with passion makes everyday life an adventure, turns up the commitment and pleasure, and expresses living by a higher intention. How much passion have you textured into your flow states and genius states? It is passion that feeds persistence, continual learning, commitment, and resilience. 1) Identify your passions. What is your passion? What are some other passions that you have? What do you find wonderful, magical, exciting, captivating, etc.? What wakes you up and fills your body with a sense of excitement about being alive? What would you like to do if you didn't have to work for a living? If you have any problem accessing a passion, then check inside: Do you have permission to feel passionate about things? Do you have permission to dream, to hope, to feel excited? Are there any fears, worries, apprehensions, guilts, etc. that stop you from knowing your passions? 2) Identify your Passion killers. What throws cold water on your passions? What fears hold you back? In what contexts do you tend to become more cautious, fearful, or apprehensive? 3) Identify Resources for Passions, Are you willing to claim your right for passion? Are you willing to practice turning on your passion? Are you willing to surrender to the feelings of passion? 4) Identify supporting frames for passion. Suppose you became a passionate person, would you like that? What other belief, value, identity, understanding frames would support your passions? 5) Identify passion's energies in your physiology. What actions and behaviors would activate your passions? Where in your body do you most fully or expressively feel passion? 6) Access, Amplify, and future pace. Fully access each resource that amplifies your passion. Future pace into your life contexts.

"SEEING OPPORTUNITIES" Opportunity Eyes: We did not "see" opportunities with our eyes. Opportunities do not occur in the sensory based world where you could catch them on a video-recorder. To see an opportunity, we have to use our mind and see with the eyes of our mind. That's why lots of people miss them. They don't have their mental eyes trained to see them.. Penetrating Eyes into the Fabric of Possibility: The ability to look at the events of everyday life ... those that others think of as boring, problematic, stressful, stupid, etc., and to see them as offering opportunities for fun, profit, development, adventure, etc. is a special kind of seeing that takes special frames in our minds. Building up an Richer Attitude: To do this you will need to meta-state yourself with the ideas, feelings, understandings, beliefs, expectations, emotions, etc. which will allow the gestalt state of Seeing Opportunities to emerge. Begin by hallucinating "possibilities," "a great future," optimism, a friendly universe, etc. Use the design engineering questions to personalize this pattern for you: What possible ideas, thoughts, beliefs, values, understandings, feelings, etc. do you need "to bring to bear" on yourself so that you build the Matrix where you can See Opportunities all around you?

1) State: What do you see? Pick an area where you need to be able to see opportunities. What do you currently see? When or where in the process of doing business, creating wealth, succeeding, etc. do you most need the ability to see opportunities? What situation might tempt you to become blind to such? Where in life or business do you feel stuck?

2) Core Competencies: Add the foundational elements of opportunity seeing. Do you have a strong and robust sense of your response power? Do you have a strong and vital sense of Optimism? Self-Esteem? Self-efficacy in learning what you need to know? Do you have a sufficient attitude or frame of mind for seeing opportunities?

3) Layer frames for texturing the desired state. What ideas, thoughts, beliefs, values, understandings, feelings, etc. do you need to build the mental matrix where you can "See Opportunities" all around you?

Gestalt #7: Seeing Opportunities: Possibility thinking/ Potential Problem Solving Skills Adventure/ Fun Playfulness. What would it be like

Excited about problems Knowledge Seeker Detective Skills if I did this or that?

Curious, Researching Creative Brainstorming Networking

4) Put the resources into a spiral.... until "Seeing Opportunities" emerges. Does this yet generate the perspective, frame of mind, or state?

5) Layer frames for texturing "Seizing Opportunities." Gestalt #2: Seizing Opportunities Sense of Risk Taking Fittingness Vision Values— Criteria

Timing

Priorities Decision Making: Evaluating / Weighing Boldness Going for it! Just do it. Reality Testing

Testing, Experimenting

Small test steps

6) Solidify to put into your future Time matrix. Do you like this? Do you want to keep this? Imagine moving through life with this attitude in the weeks and months to come.

ABUNDANCE This pattern is designed to provide more opportunities for abundance, to install within an Abundance Map.

1) Self: Access a supporting meta-state of self-esteem. To prevent yourself from stepping out of the Abundance Frame and into the Ego-Concerned Frame, access fully and completely a strong meta-frame of self-value, worth, and dignity—one totally independent of your behaviors, one totally unconditional. Use this "My esteem and dignity is a given" frame in order to avoid getting sucked into a one-upmanship spiral.

2) Meaning: Fully represent "abundance" as a self-renewing process. "Abundance" means there's plenty for all. It speaks about collaboration, cooperation, sharing, and trusting. What pictures, sounds, and sensations come to you as you think about the idea of abundance ? Generate a Movie for yourself of what you see, hear, feel, and say as you move through the world operating from abundance. See it as a process, as loops that get richer and fuller. Make this as vivid, dramatic, and compelling as possible. 1

3) Meaning: Identifying the supporting beliefs, values, and frames for abundance. What beliefs support this state of abundance for you? What beliefs about yourself? Others? The world? What beliefs about the process of collaborating? What values? What identify beliefs? What other frames of references? What meta-states?

4) Contrast your Abundance Frame with your current model or with the Scarcity Frame. Note how you represent scarcity and compare that to your representations of abundance. Turn down and de-energize those representations ... let the pictures fade out, the sounds get further away and more quiet.

5) World/ Others: As you now step into the abundance frame fully, imagine using it as your way of thinking, feeling and acting in the world, how does that feel? Future pace yourself tomorrow, next week, next month ... using various contexts (work, personal relationships, hobbies, friends, etc.).

6) Systems Check: Check for any objections: If you find any, answer them by establishing some higher frame or state that effectively answers it or that allows the installation of the abundance frame. Treat every objection as legitimate and important. Inquire of the part of you that doesn't want to release Scarcity as to its fear or concern. Then respond to it appropriately by building in various safe-guards. Build in a temporary time-frame: "We'll do this for a week or a month and then check to see how this works." You may want to build in some good personal boundaries. "To stay alert to anyone who may want to take advantage of me because of my collaborative spirit, I'll keep aware of anything that seems disadvantageous to me and not mutual."

7) Make an Enhancing Decision to Commit Yourself to Living by Abundance. Go to a meta-position and grant yourself permission to fully accept and commit yourself to Abundance. As you observe your representations of Abundance, say "Yes!" to it, as you observe your beliefs and values of Abundance, say a strong confirming "Yes!" to those meta-frames.

INSIDE OUT WEALTH What is at the very heart and core of "wealth?" What is the "engine" that creates and drives wealth? What are the secrets that really tune us into the process of wealth creation? The surprising, even shocking answer is that wealth is not money. At best, money is only an external sign of wealth, a financial scorecard. To develop an engine of wealth, we must first become wealthy within. The heart and core of wealth is a rich mind and heart full of ideas that can solve problems. Wealth is created when we add value to our lives and the lives of others. If our ideas, products, and services makes life richer, then it will build wealth.

1) Meaning; Access a sense of "value" and valuing. What can you think of that gives you a strong sense of the value of something? When you think of that, notice the feelings and experience of valuing, of giving importance to something. What else allows you to experience valuing? As you recall these, keep amplifying this state until it is a 9 on a scale of 0 to 10.

2) Self: Apply this sense of valuing to yourself As you feel this state about yourself, and apply to self, what does it feel like when the gestalt of self-value, self-worth, self-esteem emerges.

3) Power: Apply to your Powers of Response. Notice what happens when you apply this to your thoughts-feelings and speech and behavior. What gestalts emerge when you do this? Let it emerge as an appreciation of your talents and skills, "I have much to contribute." Notice your sense of creativity, that you have a rich mind-heart system, that there's much abundance.

4) World/ Others: Use this valuing state for your work and the whole of life. Scan your world of work with valuing in mind and notice how that transforms things. Install the words, "How can I add value here? If this was my business, what could I do that might make it more valuable to the customers, to my fellow employees, to my boss, etc.? What problems can I find and how can I bring my internal richness of mind-and-emotion to this?

5) Meaning: Add sufficient supporting frames. Add in belief frames about abundance, creativity, opportunity.

As you imagine taking this into the days and weeks to come, are all parts of your mind-body system aligned with this? Do you like this? Are you ready to do this? Are you really to allow this to increasingly become your program in the future?

ADDING VALUING The essence of wealth is valuing, adding value, creating value and doing so via our talents, passions, and circumstances. To create a wealth orientation and to set out to create wealth without knowing the essence of "wealth" leaves us in the dark about how it works and what we can do. When you know the essential heart of "wealth," we can go into a very special state of mind-and-emotion. Do you know what that is? Because wealth is value, we create wealth by valuing, creating value, and adding value. Wealth is that we say is valuable and wealth is making things more valuable.

1) Access a state of "Valuing" What do you value? What's important to you? Identify some things you value and notice the state of valuing. "Values" (a nominalization or verb turned into noun) hides the process of valuing, giving value, creating value. Every "value" is a belief about the importance of something. When we value, we appreciate, we esteem. The states of appreciation and esteeming.

2) Access the Valuing State of Gratitude. Gratitude is appreciation, contentment, and ability to find and create a sense of pleasure. So, take an inventory of all the things you have to be thankful for. What would you miss if you didn't have...? What prevents a grateful attitude? Inner Wealth describes an affluence of the soul that has the ability to enjoy life everyday. "Wealth" and "riches" speaks about something of value, valuable, something that adds or gives value. We create wealth as we add value—to ourselves, to our minds-and-emotions, to our skills and abilities, to our relationships, to others, etc. Valuing is the very heart of wealth and of wealth building. Wealth is not about money, but about value and about the value and quality of life. Moving Toward: We value those things that move us toward what we want (Toward Values) Moving Away from: Those things that we want to move away from (Away from Values). End Valuing: We value some things as the ultimate end to which we desire. Means Valuing: Those things that facilitate our movement to that end.

3) Step into Valuing as finding your passion to become absorb. We build wealth through finding a passion and giving ourselves to it for a decade or more. Absorption means being passionately committed to, and absorbed in, some task that you just absolutely love. Stanley (2000): "If you love what you are doing, your productivity will be high and your specific form of creative genius will emerge." (61). "If you want to be successful, select a vocation you love. It's amazing how well people do in life when their vocation is one that stimulates dedication and positive emotions." (65). "Those who were better at becoming absorbed by their work looked forward to being caught up in it and also found it inherently rewarding (p. 212) Charles M. Schwab: "The man who does not work for the love of work, but only for the money is not likely to make money, nor to find much fun in life."

4) Get a great big Why propels our neurological energies: "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." (Napoleon Hill). If we turn an idea into a burning desire which then grows up into a Magnificent Obsession that we keep reality testing, ecology checking, and developing so that it stays current and appropriate, then we set up an self-organization process that will ready us to create and receive the passion. "Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind. Thoughts which a man deliberately places in his own mind and encourages with sympathy, and with which he mixes any one or more of the emotions, constitute the motivating forces which direct and control every moment, act, and deed." (Hill, 1960, p. 53)

META-STATING BOLD RISK TAKING Entrepreneurs are a bold bunch. They boldly go where others, at best, only dream and wish and long. They boldly take risks that scare and intimate others. Like passion, boldness is a powerful resource state that allows us to face our fears, overcome our timidity and to live with more courage. The boldness to just "Go for it!" equips us with enough outrageousness to own our uniqueness, to believe in ourselves, and to listen to our heart. We often do not get started right, but start out timidly, fearfully, and with lots of worries. To be resourceful, we need to install some bold ferocity so that we have something powerful inside that can get us to take bold actions to make our dreams come true. What is "risk" and how can we develop top-notch risk management skills? 1) Access one of your key Passions in life that you want to become bold about. State: What are you passionate about? What else? How hungry are you for that? What if you began to feel yourself drool for it? Hear a growl rising up in your throat! World: In what area, activity, situation, context, etc. would you want bold courage? Where is that? When? In whose presence? 2) Meaning: What does "Risk" mean anyway? "Risk" is in the eye of the beholder. How much risk are you willing to take on? What is a "risk" to you? How do you evaluation something as a "risk?" Have you ever taken a risk? What's the biggest risk you've ever taken? What's your style in terms of risk avoidant or risk approach? Is it a "risk" to you? If not, what do you call it? 3) Power: What risk management skills and resources do you have and/or need? What factors and resources do you need so that something that was a "risk" ceases to be a risk? What are the pros and cons of your decision? The advantages and disadvantages? What do you need to get the advantages to outweigh the disadvantages? Checklist: Skill in the designated area: Knowledge: Continency plans: Level of Risk comfort: 4) State: Put your passionate resolve and ferocity into your Power Bubble. Now imagine turning this loose... and letting it rip .. how does that feel? How intense do you feel it? How intense do you need to feel it? What is the optimal level that allows you to operate effectively? As you let yourself say "Yes!" to this ... Feel it and enjoy it and wonder, really wonder, what parts of you will have to shift and transform to stretch this far.... now. The "raw power" of the Bandler Puma Induction "Before you look at your client, what I want you to do is to stop, and I want you to just put out in front of you, float up in your mind, and look down and see a forty foot puma. Sleek with big white teeth, black fur, shining, and what I want you to do is, in your mind, I want you to float down inside of that Puma. Look out of its eyes. See. And what I want you to do is to put a big mountain on either side of you and be at the beginning of the ravine that goes down and way down that ravine, and look at your client down at the beginning of it, I want you to paw the ground and see them actually lift off of it. I want you to lick your chops and roar for a minute and feel yourself purr, that purr that says, 'Your ass is mine.' "But I'm not hungry just yet. I want you to look on the mountain on either side of you and see the electricity crackin' down that ravine, striking on either side of that client of yours, and realize that the lightning is coming from your fingertips. Now, when you look down at the client in your mind, right now, my question is, 'Do you feel the same?'... {Persuasion Engineering, pp. 88-89). 3) Texture (meta-state) the Boldness so you can take action on it. Are you, could you be, a bold risk-taker? Experiment with boldness, passion, compelling outcome, excitement, curiosity, playfulness, etc.

THE TIME MATRIX The Yellow Matrix "Are you in earnest? Seize this very moment. What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. " (Goethe) The Coded Structure for Time: Since there is no Time at the primary state, this matrix deals with events. Some events have occurred (past), some are occurring (the present), and some will occur (future). How do we represent, think about, and feel "time?" This Matrix refers to our ideas and concepts of "time" and how we encode our sense of "time." "Time" as our accounting and comparing of events is a meta-cognitive awareness. When we are not aware of it, we are in an event and unaware of other events. We are in-time and lost in time. We experience an eternal now. And this powerful enriches a great many experiences from love making, being totally present with a friend, or engaged in a project. Of course, it can frustrate those outside of that event waiting on us to get to the next event! Do you live in the past, the present, or the future? Do I experience time as a primary state ("in time") or as a meta-state ("through time" or "out of time")? How easily do you move in and out of the various time zones? Do you have time or does time have you? Do you have a positive or negative relationship to this idea of "time?" Do you have enough time or are you under a lot of time pressure? Do you feel rushed and limited by the lack of time? How well can we slow "time" down or speed it up? (Fast and slow time)

Kinds of Time: There are three Time Zones (past, present, and future) on which hat we can focus our attention. With primary state time, we get lost in time and experience life randomly or all at once —In Time. With metastate time, we operate more sequentially, and in a step-by-step fashion— Through Time. These distinctions are also meta-program distinctions. Healthy IQ / EQ relates to time so that we live in the now with an eye on the future and are able to use past for learning. It is the ability to sequence activities and plan and to get lost in them in relationships and creative expressions. Meanings about Time: The meanings we map about the concept of time powerfully influence a great many of our emotions and influences our skills and performances. If we map time as a friend or an enemy, we come to think and experience it as something to simply recognize and embrace or as something that we fight against and have to fend off. When we are comfortably and pleasurably aware of time, we can plan, sequence events, and operate efficiently in the modern world. Of course, this can drive loved ones and friends crazy if we're on holiday or needing to be totally present! How we map Time, represent it, and the meanings we give it significantly impacts our experiences, emotions, skills, etc. Some people and cultures put almost all value and meaning on the Past, others on the Present, and yet others on the Future. Beliefs, "If I haven't been able to do something, I never will be" maps the Past as governing the Future. "I can't do this because I have never done it before." What we believe about "time" affects what and how we map About Self, Power, Others, the World, etc. In the West, we map "time" in terms of events that start and stop, that go and end, that end and so we

create discontinuity between the Past, Present, and Future. This allows us to map the Past as "over and done with" rather than continuous and ongoing. This makes it easier for us to put tragedies and failures behind us and to stop referencing them. Not so in many places in the Past. Time and the other Matrices: Our mapping about the Present enable us to have time for direct sensory experience and for action. How much time do you have in this present moment? Much or little? Do you have time for pleasure, for being fully presenting in and to an event? Making love, eating, dancing, enjoying a sunset, playing with children, engaging in sports, etc.—these are the kinds of experiences that we do best when in the Present. The power to pleasure is the Power matrix and the ability to take time for others in building rapport occurs in the Other matrix. Actually, because everything we do, we do in the Present, the present moment is the only actual "time" we have and the only time to do anything. Our mapping of the Future enables us to have possibilities and an open-endedness to our future. Then there is the power to change and development (the Power matrix). We can use the future to imagine new and different things, develop new skills, and plan (the World matrix). When we conjure up an imagined future to which we then respond, we use the Future in a bold and creative way.

TIME FOR A CHANGE Prioritizing Activities: Combining Time and Meaning How you choose to allocate time to something is an important message about what matters to you. Integrity arises when what you say matters to you and the time you devote to the activities that manifest your dreams are congruent.

How do we make time for what's truly important? How do we let it feel more urgent?

1) Identify an important goal (Meaning) What's important to you? You want to do, you know it's important, you may feel it, but you don't' seem to get around to actually doing it? What would you like to achieve that's important to you? For yourself as a coach? For what you do as a coach? For your coaching as a business practice? A goal that you feel may be hard or challenging. 2) Access your Time Frames. (Intention about Time) How much time would you ideally like to devote to this goal? Minimally: daily or weekly? Maximally?

3) Identify your Actual Time Structures. How much time do you actually devote to it? From what numbers to what numbers? How much time would you typically allocate to it?

4) Access Resources. (Power) What are the 3 most critical resources you need to be able to pull this off? What is the 1 or 2 other resources that may not be critical, but would flavor the quality of your experience in a new and unique way? What frames would you have to have in order to experience the integrity so that you would do this?

5) Access Self Frames. (Self) Who do you need to be to make this happen? What resources for your self-definition, self-esteem, identity, and so on?

6) Access Intentionality. Do you really want this? How much do you? Do you want this enough to devote the minimum time? Can anything now stop you?

PERSONAL EFFICIENCY "Do what you can, with what you have, right where you are. " (Theodore Roosevelt) Knowing what's right isn't the hard thing; Doing the right things—that's the hard thing.

Entrepreneurs are an efficient group. They get things done. They are efficient in their use of energy, time, and mind. How do they do this? What enables and empowers their efficiency levels?

"Efficiency is one of the most important components of wealth accumulation. People who become wealthy allocate their time, energy, and money in ways consistent with enhancing their net worth." (The Millionaire Next Door, p. 71)

Primer: Are you ready to increase your efficiency by becoming better at your core competencies? Are you willing to become better at the most important things you do? Think of something that you have learned do very efficiently, but which you did not always do efficiently. Think of that behavior when you did it inefficiently and now when you do it efficiently. What's the difference? Inefficiently Efficiently Wasted time and energy Used time and energy wisely Didn't plan ... scattered, unfocused Planned, focused, making notes Disoriented Thinking strategically, on purpose Inactive, procrastinating Sorting out Important things Back and forth indecisively Making a decision and acting Slow: unskilled, laborious Effective in organizing Failure to delegate Unimportant activities Clutter Excessive socializing Balance between activities Failure to say "No." Good Boundaries Standards too high Optimizing What saps your energy and focus? Indecisive, bored, unfocused, fear, at cross-purposes, too many choices, overwhelmed, regret, status quo, self-judgment, meaninglessness. What puts energy into your step? Meaning, focus, purpose, challenge, courage, commitment.

1) State/Skill: Access and fully represent "Personal Efficiency." Would you like to become more efficient? What have you done with "efficiency? " When have you not wasted time, effort, energy, or resources doing that thing? Has there ever been a time like that in your entire life? What would it look, sound, and feel like? How do you think about personal efficiency? How do you represent it? What's your inner map about it? What key skills or core competencies do you need to continually practice to increase your output and productivity?

2) Meaning; Check Neuro-Semantic frames about Personal Efficiency What does personal efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, mean to you? What do you think/ feel about the concept of "personal efficiency?"

What comes to mind when you think about personal efficiency? Do you access a positive or negative state? What's your frame of mind about it? Does it improve the quality of your life? 3) State: Access and Amplify your Personal Efficiency State How efficient are you? (0 to 10) How much do you feel personally efficient? What happens when you let these feelings double? What else can you do to step even more fully into this state? What prevents you from being efficient? What gets in the way? Undermines your efficiency? 4) Meaning: Check your higher frames about Efficiency, Do you have permission to be efficient here? Does it settle well? Can you give yourself instructions and positively just follow those instructions? Give yourself permission if you need to. Apply this state to your area of efficiency. Holding this state... notice how it begins to transform the tasks and core competencies of writing. 5) Others: Check your relationship matrix. Do you have permission to "take orders?" What comes to mind when you think about being "under orders? When you have to do something? What's your attitude about the things you "have to do?" 5) Meaning: Neutralize an semantic reactions, As you feel this fully... and let it grow... You can recall how that others call this state of personal efficiency "work. " And you can too... know that it's not really work, but fun and efficiency. As experiencing this in this positive way, you can recognize that others may look at this and call it selfdiscipline, and so can you. But when you exercise your personal power to get yourself to do what you want to do, should do, when you need to do it, regardless of whether you feel like it or not, you know it's just being efficient! Do you yet have the habit of just doing the things that need to be done? Neutralize any semantics around "work," self-discipline, fear of losing alternatives, etc. 6) Intention: Connect and align your everyday activities with your highest intentions. Are you clear about your goals and objectives? Since your efficiency arises from clarity of intention. What are your top 10 goals for this year about this area of efficiency? If you were to accomplish one of these goals, which one would have the greatest positive impact on my life? What is your most important goal? Second? Third? 7) Self: Loop back to Identity and other higher frames If you moved out into your future with this ... day after day, week after week, etc. would this affect your self-definition? Your identity? Would you like that? This is who you would become more and more? Self-disciplined, a disciplined person, focused, efficient. 8) Time: Future pace, Systems Check: Is every part of your mind full aligned with this efficiency in the area of training? Any objections to being resourceful in this way? Imagine doing this into your future... What is this like? What symbol or metaphor... a color, song, whatever comes to mind that you can use as a symbol for this way of being.

Day 6:

MASTERING YOUR BUSINESS MATRIX Business skills and intelligence for top performances

Description: As there is I.Q. & E,Q. for emotional intelligence, so there's a B.Q. — Business Quotient relating to our business intelligence. This Matrix enables us to play the great Game of work, identify critical success factors and think like an entrepreneur. Challenge: Keeping current with the ever-changing market and the ever-changing nature of business itself. Solution: Developing a robust matrix about the world of business that enables us to effective navigate that territory. Outcomes for Day 6: To build a robust World of Business Matrix. To develop a solution focus orientation and attitude. To learn top problem-solving skills. To learn how to create a well-formed solution. To meta-detail from principles to critical details.

THE WORLD MATRIX The Green Matrix The Big Bright World "Out There." The World Matrix refers to everything outside of ourselves in all of the contexts or worlds in which we act and relate. It refers to work and career, to expertise in a given field, to recreation and many other things: the world of professional organizations, physics, economics, politics, etc. This matrix concerns our ideas and concepts about what's "out there." Developmentally, began exploring the world when our Self had the power to move and adapt. The way we map our sense of the world then affects our sense of self, other, and our power to interact in the world. This matrix includes all of the specific worlds out there: work, business, culture, etc. It answers the following kind of questions: What is the world like? Is it friendly or unfriendly? Is it a place full of scarcity or abundance? Is it fearful or exciting, dangerous or wonderful? Ego-Strength: the Ability to Face the World: The ability to adjust effectively to reality or to the world is called, ego-strength. This refers to the ability to look at what is, at what exists, without blinking. To accept what is as a given and to then inquire about what we can do to address it, cope with it, or master it. Adjusting well is a definition also of "sanity." Unsanity (Korzybski) refers to the lack of a good and healthy adjustment to reality and insanity refers to a total break with the constraints of reality. Our EQ and IQ intelligences enable us to adjust well to the changing times culturally and economically and to the world of relationships. The World matrix governs all of the worlds that we call social, political, economic, business, career, racial, etc. When we have a strong sense of Self and of self-efficiency, we naturally care about and want to experience competence in relating to the World in general or to some specific world in particular. We may want to be and experience and express our competence in career and business, in wealth making, in groups, clubs, associations, politics, economics, etc. Empowering meanings about and in this matrix opens us to the whole of multiple opportunities for expression, mastery, achievement, and success. Significance and Importance: However, when we map fearful, limiting, and impoverished meanings in this matrix, the World becomes a frightful and dangerous place. We may want to engage it, but fear doing so. We may feel overwhelmed by it, incapable of dealing with it, unsure about it. The meanings we map about the World lead to and create various styles of dealing with it. We may adopt an orientation style, a modus operandi, of trying to make the world adapt to us (the Judger meta-program) and so move through the world seeking to organize it, structure it, make it serve our purposes. Or we may adopt a style of adapting to the world, just perceiving it, flowing with it (the Perceiver meta-program). The meanings we map about how to learn leads to two learning orientation styles: Sensing by attending to facts, data, the sensory-based "givens" and so we use the scientific method for figuring things out (the Sensory meta-program). Or we may use the Intuiting style by attending to patterns, possibilities, ideas, meanings, etc. the Intuitor meta-program). This is the philosophical method of reasoning from ideas and patterns and previous knowledge (in-tuit-ion, in-knowing).

BUSINESS PRINCIPLES What is business all about? What is the essence of business? 1) Business is all about relationships. Treating people well. Customer Service. Networking, connecting, understanding, etc. 2) Business is all about adding value via products and services. We only have something to sell if it is valuable to someone for something Business will only grow and continue if we add value. 3) Business success is measured by a multitude of things. Finances: income, equity, investment. Accomplishments and achievements Status and Recognition Life/ Work Balance: Enjoyment: Vitality factor. Contribution: enrichment of others, the world. Congruence: Self-actualization, becoming one's fullest self.

WORLD MATRIX EXPLORATION 1) Identify a facet of the World that you 're interested in. Example: Some facet of the business of coaching which you find challenging What do you find challenging about coaching? 2) Explore Your Matrix about this item. How or why is it challenging? What memories do you have about this? What imaginations? Hopes or fears? What does it mean to you? What words, labels, and descriptions? What are you thinking patterns, frames, beliefs, etc.? What business principles would enrich and empower you? 3) Step Back for a Systems Check. 4) Play with the Possibilities for transformation and identify Preferred Frames, What frame of mind would you like to have about that domain? What beliefs would support you in that? What values? 5) Solidify by Confirming and Provoking.

META-DETAILING Meta-detailing means taking great ideas and detailing out the details to generate a list of specific things to do about some brilliant concepts. About Hill, Empire Builder of the Northwest (1996), "His genius lay precisely in his abilty to master details while fashioning broad vision and strategy." "Good fund managers have to be able to immerse themselves in minutiae one moment, zoom out, and look at the big picture from thirty thousand feet, then dive back into the details again." (Fortune Mag. Dec. 29, 1997, B. O'Reilly). Meta-detailing gives us the ability to combine and synthesize both inductive and deductive thinking, perceiving the whole and the specific details. We can think in global ways and specifically. We can zoom in on a picture and zoom out. We can foreground a sound or sensation and background others. We can chunk up to handle larger units of information and to get a larger perspective as well as chunking down to very small and even tiny bits. We can use the language of precision and pull apart a linguistic model of the world. We can also use hypnotic language patterns to construct new enhancing realities. Putting these facets together, we facilitate a new synthesis and distinction. Synergistically a new gestalt emerges, meta-detailing. The Heart and Essence of Genius lies in the Meta-Details • What can a person with expertise and excellence in a particular field do that the regular person typically does not do? • What distinguishes a genius from the lay person?

A genius sorts for, pays attention to, and recognizes details from a meta-position. Whether trained or "natural," the genius can recognize and operate from some meta-pattern or principle which empowers him or her to see, hear, and sense the richness of details. We call this meta-detailing. Meta-detailing refers to the gestalt of small chunking from the perspective of the large chunk It involves seeing, hearing, discerning and differentiating crucial details using meta-level frames. *

The Power of Meta-Detailing Meta-Detailing gives us the ability to see the big picture and to zoom down to take care of the necessary details. In this way, we do not get caught up in or lost in the details. We operate from a higher sense of where we stand with things, what we are doing, why we are doing them, what we seek to achieve. This keeps our work with details clean. Otherwise we might forget where we are and what we're doing. Otherwise we might go off on tangents and side-alleys and get lost Otherwise, we would not be able to discern a trivial detail from a critical one. In this way, meta-detailing enables us to stay focused, directed, insightful, and persistent. It enriches our abilities to make decisions. Having a higher sense of how various details play into the larger picture enables us to operate from an almost intuitive "knowing" about what is truly important and what is not. Meta-Detailing saves us from "living in the clouds " with great plans and tremendous visions, but without the practical knowledge involved in how to take care of the details. Visionaries suffer from this one. They can develop "a bad relationship" to details. The person who says, "I'm a global person; I don't do details," will also be a person who probably will not develop expertise and excellence in their field. Meta-Detailing Supports Patience and Persistence In the domain of Wealth Building, Blotnick (1980) noticed how a poor relationship to details undermines a person's ability to succeed. Such an attitude typically arises from some other attitudes and states (impatience, greediness, dislike of work, etc.) that further undermine success. "His intense desire to be a wealthy executive made him scornful of small details of any sort. 'Why should I have to deal with this sort of crap?' he asked exasperatedly. Unfortunately, petty details are an essential and abundant part of every aspect of business. "Their existence therefore isn't the real issue. Your response to them is. You can make a mountain out of any molehill, if you want to. And what we discovered is that someone is likely to do precisely that if they

don't happen to like their job. In fact, the more they disliked it, the more resentful they are likely to be about its petty details. To put it more positively: people who enjoy their work usually didn't notice the many details connected with each task they had to attend to." (p. 60) By way of contrast, he spoke about some of the meta-frames of values, beliefs, understandings, ideas, decisions, etc that would enable and enrich the details. "It gave Rita enormous satisfaction to do her job well. In a business in which even minor errors may look major to customers, Rita enjoyed seeing quality work produced. 'We don't always do it flawlessly,* she said, but she was indeed prepared to try." (Blotnick, p. 61) His found that those who found the minor details of their work a major annoyance simply did not persist, and so they became wealthy significantly less often. "Neither focusing solely on the details nor ignoring them altogether is wise. Something in between is obviously called for. And strangely enough, the people who accidently located that Golden Mean were those who profoundly enjoyed doing their work. Their absorption in it also allowed time to pass far more quickly than it did for others." (p. 68) The META of Meta-Detailing The devil," it is said, "is in the details." In wealth building, the details will involve specifics about finances, book keeping, quality control over product and services, dealing effectively with customer satisfaction, employees, investments, real estate, taxes, etc. In sales, the details will involve specifics about product knowledge of features and benefits, one's market, prospect profiles, communication and negotiation skills, closing, cold calling, making lots of contacts, relationship skills, etc. In health and fitness, the details will involve specifics about food, calories, exercise, health, etc. But what higher level principles empower us for handling the details? What higher level beliefs, concepts, visions, outcomes, etc. will equip and prepare us so that we feel motivated to take care of the details? What meta-frame of reference to you need? What meta-states for your attitude do you need to build? From Blotnick to Thomas Stanley and William Danko (1996, The Millionaire Next Door) and almost everybody in the field of wealth building, the meta-level state of excellence lies in becoming passionate and absorbed in your field. "What kind of businesses do millionaires own? All kinds. You can't predict if someone is a millionaire by the type of business. After 20 years of studying millionaires, we have concluded that the character of the business owner is more important in predicting his level of wealth than the classification of his business." (Stanley & Danko, p. 228, emphasis added) "A missing ingredient, a key one which operates so quietly it had previously been overlooked, had to be present if someone was ever to become rich: they had to find their work absorbing. Involving. Enthralling." (Blotnick, p. 6, italics added) "Enjoying work: doesn't mean thrilled to death every minute. If the quantity of consciousness happiness people experienced and the amount of visible joy they demonstrated were the criteria, we'd conclude that no one enjoys the work they do. We adopted another approach: how absorbing people found their work. (Blotnick, p. 37)

DETAILING BUSINESS SUCCESS 1) Identify 3 to 5 Principles that govern success, excellence, expertise or genius in your business. What do the experts in your field know that give them an edge? What principles, concepts, understandings enrich and enhance their performances? What frames of mind are involved in these or are presupposed in these? 2) Express 1 of these Principles fully, Write it out in full until you have a clear expression of it. Be precision to make it crystal clear Rewrite it until you can describe the principle with both clarity and succinctness. Rewrite again until the clear and succinct statement feels compelling to you. 3) Step into the state that the principle evokes. As you read and feel the principle that you've clarified, made succinct and compelling, see, hear and feel it Experience it fully in the context of your work. Identify one specific behavior that corresponds to this principle—that enables you to express the principle through that behavior. The behavior would fit and be congruent with the principle. What will you see, hear, and feel? When? Where? With whom? In what context? Repeat until you see-hear-feel 5 to 10 details that give flesh-and-blood to the principle. 4) Step into the details fully and as you experience them, go meta to the Principle. From within your vivid imagery of the detailing, shift upward to the governing principle that drives and organizes this detail. Open your eyes and ears to experience your world from the meta-level of the detailing. Repeat several times. 5) Future pace.

WELL-FORMED PROBLEMS The heart of business is solving problems. It is finding something that needs to be done, and doing something that adds value to people's lives. Business intelligence begins as we identify what we offer that solves a problem or that adds richness and value to life. What's a "Problem?" How Do we Identify the REAL Problem? Martin Roberts {Change Management Excellence, 1999), writes: "All too often in business 'quick fixes' are applied to a perceived problem, and it is only realized afterwards that the fix chosen only fixed the symptoms and not the underlying cause." (p. 155) A problem is the Gap between present state and desired state. We speak to this difference gap when we speak to a "problem" and a solution solves the Gap. "The word problem always identifies a Present/ Desired State difference" (Grinder, McMaster, 1993, p. 52). "A problem is defined as any difference between Present State and the Desired State." (P. 38) Find a gap and fill it. What gap does this or that fill? Does it need filling? The S.C.O.R.E Model enables us to establish a strategic orientation and a trajectory that gives us a sense of direction, movement. It enables us to more clearly differentiate where we are and where we want to be. Context

Methodology

Outcome Desired State

Present State Causes

Symptoms

Resources

Outcome

Effects

Effect

1) Poorly defined, over-generalizations

1) Specificity: Precision in Description. What's wrong? What is/was worst example of this?

2) Indistinct Boundaries

2) Distinct Boundaries Where does it begin, end, etc.? Who is affected by this problem? Who else is affected by it?

3) Time Element: Long History

3) Time Element: How long have we had this problem?

4) Unspecified Multiple Causes

4) Specific Causes and Contributing Influences; What has caused or contributed to this? 4a) Consequences specified: What will happen if the problem remains? 4b) Attempted Solutions specified: How have we tried to solve this problem?

5) Unaddressed Political Dimensions

5) Political Frames/ Dimensions addressed (Unconscious contexts): What is the explicit company policy about this? The implicit policy? Who wants this solved the most? Who does not want it solved?

6) Focus on the many symptoms rather than causes and contributing factors

6) Symptoms specified & recognized as symptoms, not causes. What are the symptoms of this problem? How do the symptoms dominate focus & attention? What is the actual problem? Are we solving the problem's source or symptom?

7) Lack of Ownership

7) Ownership of the problem: Who is responsible for solving this?

WELL-FORMED SOLUTIONS What makes a Solution well-formed in structure so that it enables us to map new ways to solve difficulties and problems? SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realizable, and Timing. "To deal effectively with a problem, or to know whether one should deal with a situation at all, a clear definition of the difference between the present state and the desired state is required. This ... requires a precise definition of the two states themselves." (McMaster and Grinder, 1993, p. 104). "It is true, as the saying goes, that a problem clearly stated is already half solved. It is also true that a problem cannot be efficiently solved unless it is precisely described..." (Charles Kepner, Benjamin Tregoe, The Relational Manager, 1965, p. 73). 1) Specific and Precise: Clearly stated outcome or goal What do you specifically want in this solution and from it? What is your objective? Is it solution oriented? Is it positive? Is it compelling? Are you attracted to it? Have you stated it with precision and clarity? When do you want this solution? Where? With whom? Under what circumstances? 2) Positive Motivations: Outcomes of Outcomes (motivation, intention driving the outcome) Why do you want this solution? What will this outcome get for you? When you have achieved this solution, what else will improve? 3) Evidence/Measurable: (Empirical indicators of the solution) How will you know when you have achieved this solution? What will you see, hear, and feel? (Sensory based information) what criteria and standards will you use for evaluation of success? When will you be satisfied? How will you measure it? Quantify it? 4) Constraints: (Interferences) What (if anything) is stopping you from achieving this solution? Is the goal realizable? Is it realistic? What's the possibility that you can reach this goal? What are the risks? What are the larger systemic concerns? What (if anything) will be put at risk in achieving this? How will this effect the larger system? 5) Resources: Can you do this? Is it within your control and power? Will you be able to pull this off? Can you initiate and sustain it? What current resources can you apply to achieving this solution? What new resources will you need to acquire to achieve this? What else do you need? 6) Decision and Actions. What will be the first step you can take in order to achieve this? When will you start? How often will you have to do this? Until when?

SOLUTION-FOCUSED Business excellence and success is created through brain power, not muscle power. It occurs through the guidance of great ideas. It all begins with Vision.

1) Think about a problem, difficulty, challenge, unpleasant task, etc. that you have at work or in your career. Run through two or three possible choices.

2) Explore the problem with the following Questions: •

What is the problem? What's wrong? How long has it been a problem? What will happen if it is not solved? Is there a worse example of this?

• • • •

Why do you have it? How does it make you feel to have that problem? Who or what prevents you from getting what you want? How does that limit you? Who's fault is it? Who's responsible?

3) Quality Check on your State: Answer the following questions after you have explored the problem with the questions: 1) As you notice your Energy Level, how high would you register it from 0 to 10? 2) How positive or negative is that energy level? How optimistic do you feel? 3) How do you feel about yourself? 4) How do you feel about the others involved in the situation? 5) Gauge your level of motivation regarding the problem. 6) Gauge your level of clarity regarding the problem. How clear are you about the problem?

4) Now explore the problem with the following set of questions: • • • • • •

What do you want to accomplish? When, with whom, what circumstances do you want to have this? Why do you feel it's important to achieve this goal? What will that get for you? How will you know when you've achieved it? What resources could assist you in obtaining that objective? How can you better respond to your problem or challenge? What is the first step to take to begin to achieve this?

5) Repeat Step # 3 in reference to the Questions of Step #4.

Day 7:

MASTERING YOUR LEADERSHIP MATRIX Leading Yourself into your Future with an Entrepreneurial Attitude

Description: Lead yourself and others by finding your vision and by super-charging your attitude that you can play and win so that you can create many win/win arrangements with others.

Challenge: The frustrations and stresses that invite us to become negative, give up, feel defeated, fail to lead or pioneer in new directions.

Solution: Super-charge our attitude as we take ownership of self-leadership to find our passion and keep it alive and then persist with resilience until we make it happen.

Outcomes for Day 7: To learn how to super-charge our attitude. To develop the emotional vitality to stay alive and passionate. To develop and operate from states of optimism, persistence, and resilience. To commit ourselves to continuous improvement. To develop more of an entrepreneurial attitude.

SUPER-CHARGING YOUR ATTITUDE If an attitude is a gestalt state that we can now install as a frame of mind, then an attitude is a holistic term referring to a our full mind-body-emotion stance toward something. This means that an attitude involves our mental stance, our emotional stance, and our physical stance. It includes our physiology. Can attitudes be taught? Yes, you bet they dan! Components of attitude are the components of state. What attitudes do you need to eliminate? What attitudes do you need to build, develop, and install? What attitudes do you need to juice up or super-charge? What attitudes would you like to build around your genius states of flow and focus when you are engaged in something that will maintain and enliven and make that genius state even more robust?

1) Intention: Identify an attitude that you want to juice up. Is there any attitude that you'd like to have that would make your life better? Why do this? How would you describe that attitude? What is it like? What would you call it? Who else has that attitude? How is it valuable? What would it allow you to do or to experience? 2) Meaning: Specify how you want to super-charge the attitude to make it more powerful or profound In what way would you like to super-charge that "attitude?" With what new qualities or properties? How compelling and memorable would that be for you? How would that affect you in mind-and-body? What would you be feeling if you had that attitude fully installed? 3) State: Access, amplify, and apply to the primary state. Where, when, and with whom are you in a state of mind with an attitude that needs charging up? As you access each resource, amplify until it has sufficient charge, and apply and then notice how it changes things for you. 4) Time: Install for your tomorrows. So you'd like this attitude as part of the way you go into tomorrow? When you future pace it into the weeks and months to come, how do you like that? Are you fully aligned with it? Does any part of you object to it?

EMOTIONALLY VITALITY Emotional aliveness or vitality enables us to be open to life, to love, to people, to dreams, to hope, and much more Emotional closedness, repression, fear cuts off emotional intelligence (EQ), wastes energy in defense maneuvers, and cuts off creativity. Regarding emotions, two things are equally true at the same time: * Emotions are just emotions. The difference that we register in our body (soma) between our map of the world and our experience of the world. • Emotions are very important. They provide critical information about our mapping and our encounter of the world via our skills. Emotions make us feel alive! They make us feel a sense of energy and vitality.

1) Access awareness of your Response Zone of Feelings and Emotions. As you scan through the positive and negative emotions that you have experienced this week, how do you feel about these emotions that you've felt? How aware are you of your emotions? To what degree do you know that they are just emotions? 2) Quality Control your Emotions. Are you willing to recognize your emotions as just emotions? Would that improve the quality of your life? In what way? What has been your style of responding to your emotions? Acknowledgment, appreciation, acceptance, repression, fear, avoidance. What are the thinking patterns that may be cognitive distortions that create some of your emotions? See menu list. 3) Meta-state (texture) your emotions with various resources. Add richer qualities to your emotions. How does it feel when you simply accept and appreciate your emotions as emotions? What happens when you bring curiosity to this awareness? How does it feel when you're curious about the meaning of the emotion? And when you bring openness to all of your emotions? Appreciation of your emotional life? How much vitality and aliveness does that create? 4) Future pace and Solidify. Transform fear into excitement, anger into firmness, persistence, sadness into compassion, etc.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT If you have a good and valid process, then success will be almost inevitable if you only stay with it. Staying with what you know works gives us a chance to learn it really well, to even over-learn it. This then allows it to become thoroughly installed. Suppose you aimed to become 1/2% better per year? Entrepreneurs know that the core idea and vision develops incrementally. They add new elements as new knowledge and experience is acquired and keep modifying the original idea.

1) Begin with your Intentional Stance What do you want? What are your holarchy of outcomes? How are these important to you?

2) Access a state of patient persistence Have you ever stood your ground, knowing what you wanted and knew that it was important enough? What are the qualities of a positive and pleasurable waiting for the best like?

3) Access a state of Kaizen. If kaizen means....

4) Texture your continuous Improvement What properties, qualities do you want to texture your continuous improvement with? Menu: curiosity, playfulness, committed,

5) Test Can anything stop you?

LEADERSHIP SKILLS While leaders come in many different forms so that there are many different kinds of leadership, leaders arise and express themselves in a given context. That context is the particular values, expectations, needs, style, and culture of the referent group. This realization, of course, leads to numerous other questions—questions that are more precise to our concerns. • What qualities and traits do we look for in recognizing leaders in Neuro-Semantics? • How will we recognize and qualify the men and women who will arise in Neuro-Semantics as leaders? • What criteria of leadership will we set? • If we want leaders who lead from the Neuro-Semantic vision, what will be the prerequisites of leadership? In Neuro-Semantics, we will look mostly and preeminently for leaders who embody the principles of the neuro-semantic vision—its principles and practice. We will look for practical leaders who are excited about the vision, who apply that vision to themselves, who look for adding value to others, and who work at translating their talk into their walk. Conversely, we will not be interested in leaders who are driven by visions of personal glory, the rank and status of privilege, or the ego satisfactions of someone driven to be a guru. To that end, we have set forth the following leadership criteria. This criteria comes immediately and directly from the Vision and Mission statement of Neuro-Semantics. As such it reflects the very qualities of individuals who are in actuality leading out in directions which fit the meaning and purpose of NeuroSemantics. In recent years, we have become aware that we should not only wait for men and women with these special traits and qualities to arise, but that we should intentionally plan to facilitate this kind of leadership development in people. Also, recognizing that most leaders in Neuro-Semantics will come through the Training and/or Coaching Tracks, we have set forth the following 7 criteria as the foundation for leadership. These are divided into two categories: Being and Doing criteria. Being Criteria: Authenticity: being and acting from one's true self without masks and personas Integrity: being as good as one's word, impeccably honest and fair-minded Congruent: applying the principles to self so that one walks the talk Doing Criteria: Contributing: giving of oneself to others, serving from the NS principles Collaborating: operating as a team player, cooperating with others Pioneering: leading out into new areas Communicating: sharing and disclosing in ways that are clear, precise, succinct, engaging, and compelling

OPTIMISM Business experts operate with an attitude of optimism. Optimism allows us to endow most of our experiences with a sense of delight, joy, pleasantness, motivation, warmth, etc. It just makes things go a lot better than to approach things with an attitude of pessimism. Optimism is an attitude of excellence that enables us to stay motivated, determined, open, creative, persevering and resilient. When we bring the attitude Optimism to our everyday activities, it enables us to see things with a sense of delight, joy, pleasantness, motivation, warmth, etc. It makes things go much better than approaching things with a pessimistic attitude.

1) Identify a reference situation calling for Optimism. When or where in the process of taking action in your profession do you most need optimism? What situation might tempt you to become pessimistic? (Trigger situation)

2) Stubbornly Refuse to Play the "P" Game. Seligman (1975, 1990) offers an analysis of both attitudes. Pessimism frames events as: • Permanent in time (hence unchangeable, insoluble, insurmountable); . Pervasive in space (hence effecting everything and undermining every facet of life); and • Personal in source (hence positing the problem with the self). This leads to seeing ourselves as inadequate and deficient, lacking the means, ability and motivation to make a difference. Imagine that referent and then meta-state yourself with the anti-Ps of pessimism. Access the state of "Not-Me!"... "Me and not-Me" in the context of the trigger. Bring "Not everywhere ... not forever" to your PS. "This event, this day."

2) Commit yourself to playing the Game of Optimism. Optimism frames "negative" and hurtful events in terms of being— Temporary in time, about this particular person, situation in this moment; Specific in space, and • External in source. • •

Playfully experiment with bringing some other resourceful states of mind/emotion/body to the trigger. • • • • • •

Possibility: It's possible to achieve or accomplish something. Hope, Passion. Desirability: It's desirable to aim for, work toward, and invest time, energy, money, etc. into making a difference. Abundant Resources: There abundant resources available to us; we can even bring abundant resources that don't now exist into existence. Self-Worth and Awe: My worth and value is a given. Significance and Value: It's worth doing, valuable, and we have the esteem, value, significance that makes us worthy and deserving to do it.

3) Identify the elements that you need to make up a rich and vibrant state of Optimism. Customize the state of mind/body so that it seems compelling enough to create an optimistic motivation for yourself.

4) Access and Amplify each Resource. Use small and simple examples until you access the state, then keep layering it with more of the resources.

5) Apply to your Work Situation and future pace.. Continue until the Gestalt of Optimism emerges. Does this yet generate the perspective, frame of mind, or state of optimism?

Put into your future. Imagine moving through life with this attitude in the weeks and months to come.

6) Install by making an empowering Decision for it.

Are you willing to make this your program? How will it affect your self-definition? How do you language yourself when adversity comes your way? • What do you say about the difficulty? About yourself? About life? About God? About people? • What re-languaging can you create/invent that would enable you to use the optimistic explanatory style to induce you into a more resilient state? Statements that help you put the best possible interpretation on things. Statements that enable you to frame problems as solvable. (These statements will enable you to language yourself into resilience.) Learned Optimism means reversing the 3 "P's" of Learned Helplessness Personal: Not Personal: not about me, I am more than what happens to me. It's about me THIS! Pervasive: Not Pervasive: about some particular thing. Index event. It's affects everything. HERE! Permanent: Not Permanent: Is now, and not forever. Index time. It will last forever. NOW! SUPER-CHARGING YOUR ATTITUDE WITH "OPTIMISM" 1) Access a state of "Not me!" Think about anything that you clearly recognize and know is "not me." Are you sure that this is not you? [Yes!] How do you know? Represent "Me" so fully that you can distinguish the "not Me" and fill up your Me space with your values and visions. Establish a sense of Boundary between self and not-self. 2) From a Vigorous and Robust "Me" Index Time and Space. Think about an event that you find negative, hurtful, upsetting, undesired, etc. and from the fulness and richness of all your values and visions ... index when and where it happened. Specify the "aboutness" of the event. Now ... not forever Here ... about this ... not abut everything. 3) Access the frames by Implication in this. What frames by implication do you need to access and set in your mind? I have the choice to interpret it this way or that way. I have the power to index or to not index I can use my intentionality to run my own brain, be true to my own values and visions. 4) Solidify with a Validating affirmation Do you like this? Does it enhance your life?

Does it empower you as a person? Will you opt to think this way and use this as your frame?

5) Access more resource frames and cycle around until Optimism emerges. Check and see, has a sense of optimism yet emerged for you when you think about this? • Possibility Thinking: It's possible to achieve or accomplish something. • Desirability: It's desirable to aim for, work toward, and invest time, energy, money, etc. into making a difference. • Abundance: There's an abundance of resources that can bring new possibilities into existence. • Worth and Esteem: It's worth doing, valuable, and we have the esteem, value, significance that makes us worthy and deserving to do it.

RESILIENCE Power to Bounce Back from Set-Backs When things go wrong and we suffer a set-back, we need the resilience of mind and emotions to bounce back. Resilience is the ongoing ability of the body, mind, spirit, etc. to recover health. As a complex meta-state, resilience programs us to "bounce back" from misfortunes. Stages of Resilience: I researched the field of resilience in 1992 through 1994 and wrote a paper on the Strategy of Resilience, "How to Go for It-Again!" That brought about the discovery of Meta-States: In modeling the strategy of being Resilience, of having a sense of bounce inside, the following elements are crucial. 1) The Set-Back: knocked down, a negative, hurtful, undesired event that creates a sense of loss, disruption, stress, etc. 2) The Loss, Trauma, Hurt, itself The experience of not having what one previously had, of suffering consequences of that disruption, of experiencing the emotional ups and downs about it. 3) The coping process: The internal and external actions taken to address the set-back and the coping mechanisms involved in coming back. 4) The Come Back: "I'm back!" 1) Access a primary state context in which you want more resilience. Explore and slay or tame any dragons you have that torments that primary state. What set-back, defeat, or misfortune do you need to bounce back from? What do you think-and-feel about that situation? What holds you back from bouncing back? What keeps you down? What meta-states and frames do you now default to about the set-back? What are your Dragon States? 2) What meta-level resources do you need to access and apply to the Set-Back? Shift from the pessimistic to the optimistic explanatory style. The pessimistic explanatory style attaches pessimistic meanings to the occurrence of "bad" things. It frames and interprets events as: * Personal in source (positing the problem with the self). * Pervasive in space (effecting everything and undermining every facet of life). * Permanent in time (unchangeable, insoluble, insurmountable). The optimistic explanatory style: attach more enhancing meanings when "bad" things happen: * External in source—This. * Specific in space — Here. * Temporary in time — Now. Check-list of resource menu: Self-esteeming. Non-personalizing Self-Appreciation Centered in Values and Visions Strong Compelling Outcome Forgiveness Meaning-making Power Flexibility Sensory awareness Response-able Non-victim Ownership of Power Zone Larger perspective Perceptive Long-Term thinking Acceptance of what is Feedback thinking about failures Conflict Resolution skills Healthy nurturing relationships Kind toughness Ego strength to face reality Living in the present Self-disciplined Ability to follow through An Optimistic Explanatory Style

3) Sequence the states that you want to set as frames in terms of the stages in bouncing back, What comes first? Second? Third? 4) Access and apply each resource state and layer on until the gestalt of "resilience" emerges. Identify supporting belief frames, value frames, decision frames, identity frames along the way. 5) Future pace and commission at a higher executive level Install by Meta-Stating: 1) Access frame states that build in "Bounce:" Unconditional Self-esteem Optimism, Etc. 2) Anchor and solidify and then apply to Set-Backs Add resources that give you bounce. 3) Set Higher frames that will Support the Resilience What ideas do you want to operate as a self-organizing attractor in your mind-body system to give you bounce?

PERSISTENCE To persist at something is to stay with it until we begin to develop skill, understanding, and then competence with it 1) Identify what you want to give yourself to. What do you want to become skillful and masterful in or with? How his this valuable and important to you? What else do you get from this? What else could you get from this that would also count? What is it like when you are experiencing this? Who do you look to for mentoring or as an expert in this? 2) Identify what stops you from persisting. What stops you from persisting? What holds you back, sabotages, or discourages you? What takes the wind out of you so that you begin considering giving up? 3) Tame or Slay that Dragon. What is the name of the Dragon? How do you feed it? What do you feed it? How often? When? What tames or slays this dragon? 4) Identify the things that empower your persistence. What would enable you to hang in there and persist regardless? What else? What other empowering and supporting beliefs, values, and frames would enable you to persist? 5) Set an Identity Frame that encourages persistence. Can you see yourself as a persistent person? What would that you look, sound, and feel like? 6) Conform, validate, future pace, quality control.

Mastering the Matrix of your Mental Frames

"WAKE UP, NEO! THE MATRIX HAS YOU!" L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

The sci-fi movie hit of 1999, "The Matrix, " described life in the Twenty-Third Century, after the great war between humans and A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). The Machines won. As the movie opens, most humans are imprisoned in egg-like structures where they are harvested for their brain energy. There's a few who live on the outside, but only a few. They are about the only ones who know "the truth." Everybody else lives in a computer-generated world. This creates the illusion that they are living in New York City, Toronto, or Sydney in 1999. They are not. Actually, they are experiencing the electrical signals that cue their brains to represent the world of 1999. The Matrix is sending them these signals. It's all an Alice in Wonderland world. Their mind is in the Matrix of those representations. To keep these humans occupied so that their brains stay activated and emits lots of energy, the Machines created a "1999 World" Matrix. It's richer and fuller than the holideck on the starship Enterprise. This is what we call "Sensorama Land" in NLP—a rich, vivid, 3-D, close, in color, etc. world. Electrical signals to their brain induce them into experiencing the sights, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes, etc. of life at the end of the Twentieth Century. That's why they have plugs up and down their spinal chord and on ail of their major muscle groups. It's the ultimate in a computer generated virtual reality. It was a hypnotic state with no exit. Well, almost no exit (and that's the story, of course!). This "1999 Matrix," however, was not the first Matrix. The Machines had originally created the "Perfect World" Matrix. It didn't work. The humans didn't buy it. And so, as Agent Smith said, "whole crops were lost." After that, the A.I. Machines set up the "1999 Software Matrix" to deceive and occupy the humans in order to keep their brains intensely activated as they harvested their energy. Yet the 1999 Matrix is

really a fictitious reality, presented as real, to create a false consciousness that will allow the Game to go on. There were still some free humans. Some lived in Zion, "the last human city," and the others worked from hover crafts like the one Morpheus operated, the "Nebuchadnezzer." Being free from the Matrix, Morpheus and his crew could hack into it. In that way, they could enter and exit it as they chose. Yet they had to be careful. Sentinel programs, the Agents, roamed the Matrix and had never been defeated by a hacker. The Matrix of Our Minds We too live in a matrix—a matrix of our frames. Because we do not deal with the world (the territory) directly, but via our maps, we relate to the world via three mapping levels: neurological mapping, representational mapping, and conceptual mapping.

We relate to the world via our neurological maps, that is, the "perceptions" that emerge from the interaction of our sense receptors with the energy manifestations "out there." These seem so "real," we can easily confuse what we "see" with what is truly out there. We also relate to the world via our representational maps, that is, how we encode our internal movies of things using sights, sounds, sensations, smells, etc. and all the cinematic features or distinctions that we can make in the sensory systems ("sub-modalities"). We relate to the world via our conceptual maps, that is, by the concepts, categories, beliefs, values, expectations, decisions, etc. that we bring to our thinking. All of these frames of reference combine to create the matrix of the frames in our mind. They comprise our "reality strategy." They give us our sense of the fabric of reality (subjectivity reality). These make up our Meta-Programs, Meta-States, and the domains that make up various logical levels.

Entering and Exiting "the 1999 Matrix" At the beginning of the movie, a message appears on Anderson's computer. Trinity sent it. The words quietly scrolled across the screen, "Wake up Neo.

The Matrix has you." Our matrices also have us to the extent that we are not aware of the existence of our subjective world or matrix of frames. Our Matrix has us to the degree that we are blind to our Frames. We have partially inherited these frames from the cultures that we are born into and partly from the ones that we create. This makes waking up and detecting our frames our highest priority. NLP talks about this in terms of Korzybski's classic statement, "the map is not the territory." This allows us to distinguish the frames that we map from the "real world" out there. In the movie, a particular feeling brought Neo (Thomas Anderson) to Morpheus (the leader of the hackers). It was the feeling that "something is wrong with the world. " What created that feeling? The fact that the frames and the software of the matrix did not support and promote human vitality, aliveness, or freedom. This feeling emerged into a question in Neo's mind. He asked, "What is the Matrix?" The same happens for each of us. We also experience our frames first and foremost in terms of our feelings and emotions. For instance, those who play "The Blame Game" experience a very different set of feelings and intuitions from those who play "The Solution Game." Each frame (and all of the frames that they are embedded within) create a set of feelings, states, and behaviors. And frequently it is the feeling that "there's something wrong with my world" that makes us ready for a new game. When you feel that, welcome that dissatisfaction. It can open you to leaving that old matrix of frames. Taking the Red Pill After I conducted the Frame Games Workshop in Austin Texas, a good friend and Master Practitioner, Addison Woods wrote me. In an email he said, "The Frame Games training was an 'experience ' analogous to taking the red pill." Ah, taking the red pill.

In the movie, Morpheus first greeted Neo (and others he had freed from the Matrix) by saying, "It seems you're feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. You know that something is wrong with the world.

You can't explain it, but you feel it, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." Neo says, "The Matrix?" Morpheus said, "Yes, the Matrix. The world has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." "What truth?" "That you were born into slavery, into a prison that you cannot see or smell... A prison of the mind ... Unfortunately, no one can tell you what the Matrix is; you have to see it for yourself." In his invitation for Neo to see the Matrix for himself, Morpheus showed him two pills. He held them out, a blue one and a red one. "Take the Blue Pill," he said, and "you will wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe." "Take the red pill and you stay in Wonder Land, and I'll show you how deep the Rabbit Hole goes." Neuro-semantics is like that. Taking the red pill opens our eyes and ears and feelings to the map/territory difference and we begin to discover the depth and height of the rabbit holes of our minds. We begin discovering the cultural rabbit holes that we live in, the labyrinths of meaning. It's all a fictional bio-computer generated world. We (and many, many of our ancestors) made it up. It's but a human construct —subjective experience, and it has a structure, we can even model it, and yet, in the end, it is just frames within frames within frames. Maps. Matrix Training Once delivered from the Matrix, the crew prepared Neo to re-enter the 1999 Matrix. Why? So that he could learn to become "The One " —the one prophesied that would come. He would be able to change the matrix at will and to eventually destroy it. Morpheus and his crew used other computer programs (Training Matrices) in "the construct." The software set the frame: a sparing program, detecting agents program, jumping program, etc.

In the Jumping Tall Buildings Matrix, Morpheus invites Neo to jump from one skyscaper in New York City to another. "I'm trying to free your mind... Let it all go. Fear. Doubt. Disbelief. Free your mind!" This is also the challenge before us as we work within our frames of reference and frames of meaning. When

we are in the construct, they seem so real to us. And as we believe in them, they are real to us—subjectively real. We build (or inherit from our culture) our frames of reference in order to organize a consistent picture of the world.

comprised of such meta-phenomena that we call "beliefs, understandings, language," etc. Our cultural and conceptual programming creates the Frames that we live in— the Matrix of Frames that we call "reality."

Eric Fromm (1968), writing about another context and from the frame of psychoanalytic sociology, said: "The human being... would indeed go mad if he did not find a frame of reference which permitted him to feel at home in the world in some form and to escape the experience of utter helplessness, disorientation, and uprootedness. ... He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions." (The Evolution of Hope, p. 63)

This highlights our nature as Matrix makers. We create frames and then play the games that the frames permit because that's how our minds and nervous systems work. Again, Fromm explains what today we call the Constructionist viewpoint about reality, "Man not only has a mind and is in need of a frame of orientation which permits him to make some sense of and to structuralize the world around him; he has also a heart and a body which need to be tied emotionally to the world—to man and to nature. The animal's ties to the world are given, mediated by his instincts. Man, set apart by his self-awareness and the capacity to feel lonely, would be a helpless bit of dust driven by the winds if he did not find emotional ties which satisfied his need to be related and unified with the world beyond his own person." (pp. 67-68)

This is the wonder of our maps. When we're on the outside of our maps, when we look upon the maps of others—it is easy to recognize them as maps. We sometimes feel surprised, "How could you ever believe that?" But when we step inside them, when we step into the universe that our frames create, suddenly it becomes more difficult to remember that they are just maps, just the encodings of our mind. They seem so real. When inside the matrix of our frames, they signal our nervous system to make them real (to us). We feel this in our body as our emotions. If we only use our feelings, we become frame blind. The magic lies in stepping outside. We do that in the "Phobia Cure" (Movie Rewind) with the metaphor of a movie theater. We do that in the "Time Line" metaphor, and we do it in many other meta-level jumps to higher states —higher states of mind. And, of course, that's what the Meta-States model is all about. This is how we "get an exit" from the Matrix— by Stepping Back, Stepping Up. During the first time that Neo goes in, he can't believe that the chair, his hair, etc. are not "real."

Discovering Our Powers to Transform the Matrix In the scene where Neo meets the lady that they call "The Oracle." Located in what looked like a 1950s kitchen, she looked Neo over and said, "You have the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something."

NLP operates with very similar ideas. It operates from the presupposition that we have all the resources we need to enrich the world we live in. If we suffer from an impoverished model of the world, the fault lies not in the world, but in our map of that world. The MetaModel was originally designed to elicit and coach in others a fuller linguistic model. By meta-modeling, we invite people into new levels and quality of framing. Why? To get us to find our gifts and to "go for it!" with ferocity.

Morpheus says, "What is real?" Do you mean the electric signals sent and interpreted by your brain?" Then he explains, "You've been living in a dream world."

Later in the subway, after Trinity and Morpheus escape the Matrix, Agent Smith turns to confront Neo. From outside the Matrix, Trinity yells, "Run, Neo, Run!" And then, when she sees Neo turn to take the agent on, she asks, "What is he doing?" Morpheus says, "He is beginning to believe."

Actually, we all do. We live in a "dream world" of our mind— hypnotized by our meanings and cultural inductions. We too live in a computer generated world. The only difference is that ours is made by the biocomputer of our brain and neurology and it is

Ah, belief! It takes belief—belief that we can challenge and change our matrix. That is, we have to utter a profound and strong "Yes!" to our desired frames in order to activate our own powers within whatever Matrix of Frames that we have created. When we do

that, we transform mere "thoughts" into a dynamic meta-phenomena that actually sends commands to the nervous system. We create "beliefs." We create beliefs which then activate the Matrix World of our skills. The Metaphor Every metaphor can only take us so far. And so it is with "The Matrix " metaphor. In the movie, the actors could move in and out of the Matrix. We do not have that choice. Given the frame constructing nature of our mind and nervous system, we can only think, feel, act, and relate via some framework. We have a different choice. We only choose between various Matrices.

We have been born inside of a Matrix, a matrix of frames—of ideas and beliefs that have ever so subtly infiltrated our brains and that now run our programs. As "time-binders" we are culturalized to various frames of mind. We have no choice about that. But we do have a choice about which Matrix we want to live in. We do, that is, if we know about the Matrix and have developed the Matrix entering and exiting skills. Then we too can master our Matrices. Where did you get your current frames of mind, your points of view, your mental styles for perceiving things? Did you invent them all on your own? Of course not. Most of them you just absorbed from your family and cultural environment. You sucked them in as you breathe in air—paying no attention at all to the frames that people, groups, culture, and language itself set for the working of your brain. And, given whatever Matrix you entered into, that controls the games that you can now play. All of the games that we play in life spring from the higher frames that are set in our minds. We learned to play these games and to play within the rules of the game. Some Matrices of frame empower us to use our mental and emotional powers efficiently, other Matrices sabotage our effectiveness, manipulate the hell out of us, poison our emotions, and imprison us. Only through frame awareness can we begin to develop the skills to play mindfully and elegantly. Otherwise, the Matrix will have us— will imprison us. However, once we become conscious of our map making, able to jump logical levels in a single bound, then we can detect frames, challenge them, shift them, transform them, set and solidify new ones, and layer frame upon frame to build up a Matrix World that's a lot of fun to live in. Then we become a frame game master. Then like Neo, we develop the power to

change the Matrix of our frames at will. That's when we can bend the fabric of our subjective "reality" to do us service in living richer, fuller, and more vibrant lives. We can then keep opening up a whole world of possibilities as the deceptions and illusions are exposed, and as we reclaim our powers of Matrix making. Seeing the Matrix in Code After being in the Matrix and learning to maneuver in the constructs, Neo happened into the central computer on the hover ship. There he found Cypher who was watching the Matrix. On the screens before him was a flow of numbers. Now he was seeing the Matrix in code. "You look at it in code?" he asked. Cypher said, "I don't even see the code. You get used to it. All I see is blond, brunet, and redhead."

We do this in Neuro-semantics when we learn to see and hear the structure of the frames and the way we encode our representations. Apart from the code, we experience things as behaviors, emotions, talk. Content. But after we learn how to deal with structure, we can see and hear the code as people talk, act, and emote. This gives us a higher level of awareness of understanding. This leads to frame mastery and frees us from frames having us. It gives us true choice and control— kind of like the promise in NLP that we will learn how to "run our own brains" and access our own highest resourceful states. Summary This introduces the newest developments in Neurosemantics, the models that began with Frame Games and that now includes The Matrix Model. In Frame Games trainings we enter the meta-zone of the Matrix of our frames in order to develop skills and learn patterns for working with the matrices of our minds. It leads to frame game mastery where we can explicitly work with the embedded frames of mind. The games (states, actions, emotions, talk—all of the actions and transactions) that our frames format and structure. References Fromm, Eric. (1968). The revolution of hope: Toward a humanized technology. New York: Bantam Books.

WELCOME TO THE MATRIX OF YOUR MIND We—you and I, were born in a Matrix. We didn't create it. We didn't wish for it. We didn't particularly want it, and we didn't even recognize it at first... but we were born in a matrix of frames within frames within frames. We call that Matrix by numerous terms, "culture," "civilization," "the human condition," our mind-body system, "reality," etc. The Matrix had been coming together for thousands upon thousands of years as man engaged in time-binding activities and encoding their learnings in symbolic form (language, mathematics) and thereby allowing those who came later to have the chance of beginning where they left off. In this way, the belief frames, value frames, understanding and knowledge frames, the identity and religious frames, and a hundreds of other kinds of frames came together to offer a whole set of filters, constraints, and maps about self, others, and life. In way in this way that the Matrix is given birth or more accurately, evolves. The Matrix comes to us not only as all of the see-hear-feel-smell-taste-balance sensory information from the outside world but also all of the internal sensory information—remembered and imagined—and all of the conceptual frames that sets mental contexts around that information. This is the Matrix.

"Wake Up Neo! The Matrix Has You!" • Like Neo in the Movie, The Matrix, we also live in a Matrix— a mind-body Matrix comprised of multiple embedded frames. It is made up of belief frames, value frames, understanding frames, meaning frames, and many more. •

Our Matrix is our internal model of the world made up of multiple belief frames about many things.

The Matrix Model The Matrix is made up of multiple sub-matrices that's made up of multiple sets of embedded frames about all kinds of things. Together it gives us our model of the world—the internal map that we use to navigate life. Unlike animals who operate in the world with genetically encoded programs for what to do, how to be, and what to pay attention to, we experience a freedom and responsibility to construct those meanings ourselves. It is precisely from constructing meanings as we develop and move through life that we construct the matrices in which we live. And with that the adventure begins. Yet before the full Matrix develops, it all begins with a state—just a simple mind-body state of awareness.

States and the Matrix The Foundation of the Matrix • It all starts with our everyday states of consciousness. • These are mind-body-emotion states that we never leave home without. After all, we are always in some state of mind or emotion. • These neurological energy fields govern our perception, communication, behavior, memory, and learning and so color our world. • These states are also driven by frames of meaning. Matrix Grounding • The Matrix is grounded in a neuro-semantic State. Without this grounding, we lose our sense of reality and our ability to effectively adjust ourselves to the world as we find it. This reduces "sanity" and so makes us "unsane." • Each of the matrices in-forms and influences the Cinema playing in our primary state. This is the work station so to speak of our mind where we present and represent things to ourselves again and again. • As states rise up to a higher level or as we say, "go meta," they stay —and they stay as the matrices of our mind and become the higher level frames that establish contexts of meanings.

First Encounter with the Matrix

When we first encounter the a person, we don't see the Matrix. We don't even see the person's state. It's invisible to us.

The Matrix "Within" • As we learn how to recognize the meanings and the framings that create our internal world we are enabled to see the invisible matrices of our mind. In that way, they become visible to us. • Our Matrix is our internal world of frames embedded within frames of frames. This makes them layered and complex and our assumed reality. • The Matrix of our mind is made up of the thoughts, feelings, and physiology that we use to map the world we live in—the "stuff that makes up our states.

Our Matrix Movie We map the World inside as we re-present mental movies inside our mind. These maps or movies in turn create our states. The particular content that plays out on the theater of our mind puts us into state by sending signals to our body.

Movie Frames Above and beyond our internal Cinema are our Frames of Meaning that influence the movies. We never just "think"—we think about our thinking. We observe our thinking, direct our thinking, etc. This describes the higher levels of our mind. In this, we think in more ways that just representation. We also think in terms of editing the Cinema, and the camera shots we use. We think in terms of directing the focus of our mind. We think in terms of the Cinema that we produce.

As we map things, we generate meanings that we encode into our movies which in turn create our states. This is the foundation or core or funnel of our neuro-semantic system. With regard to our states, it is the "meanings" or frames that count. They drive and create the layered nature of our consciousness. When a stimulus occurs, we frame things which activate our state and that in turn evokes our feelings and behaviors. And with that, the Game begins, "Meanings" Drive States Multi-level Meaning Making • We make meanings at many levels and though we use different words to describe these different meanings, each of these processes are involved at each level of meaning-making. • We first create meanings through associations, then through classifications, framings, and evaluations. • At the primary state it begins by making associations—we link our emotional states to our experiences in the world. Then from there we make a meta-move to frame, classify, and evaluate the experience. And while these are different terms and each describes a little different facet of the structure, they all refer to the same process. • Our reflexivity creates our meaning making "funnel."

\Meaning the Meaning Making Funnel • Via the central and core Meaning matrix we create all of the other matrices in our mind. We give meaning to things by associating states with experiences, by framing, classifying, evaluating, etc. and this calls other matrices of the mind into existence. • It is in this way also that we are able to stabilize our highest meta-states so that they become our frames-ofmind or our attitudes. • What we hold in mind becomes our "meaning" precisely because we hold it in mind and use it as our reference structure. We hold such meanings in our mind mostly through language. This explains language as "the structure of magic." • We have six essential matrices that we almost never leave home without: Self, Power, Time, Other, World, and Intention. The Self-Organizing Nature of the Matrix • The core Meaning matrix creates frames upon frames that make up the other six matrices. These provide us understandings, definitions, values, beliefs, decisions, expectations, etc. about a given domain like "Self." • These embedded frames also work as self-organizing attractors so that each and every matrix attracts and organizes itself according to the meanings incorporated in its highest frames. • An attractor frame dynamically stabilizes a matrix and can put it in conflict with another matrix.

Neuro-Semantic Energy And the Movie in the Mind

Levels of our Movie-Mind • We experience our awareness of things in terms of the Movie that plays in the Cinema of our mind. What's "on your mind?" Take a look at the movie that's playing inside. These movies typically are two-second movies that flash on and off very quickly, so you have to be fast at catching them. • Each matrix in-forms and frames the Movies that we watch through how that matrix edits the movie, chooses camera perspectives, directs the production, etc. It goes this through using the various belief frames in the matrix. • These cinematic features work semanticaily to encode the meaning in sensory-based terms. NLP traditionally called these features "sub-modalities," but in Neuro-Semantics we recognize them as meta-frames governing the Movie itself. They stand for higher semantic frames and incorporate within them those meanings. Psycho-Logics: • As we think and construct our maps—our frames and embedded frames all make sense. That is, from the inside they make perfect psycho-logical sense even if they are not useful, productive, or logical to the outside world. • Every meta-move sets a higher frame as a "logical" level and so creates our internal matrices. Every meta-state is another "logical" level as it classifies or categories the experience in that way. The Intention or Purpose Matrix • The idea of having an intention and wanting to do something about whatever we're thinking and feeling creates the Intention matrix and this leads to the intentional matrix emerging in every matrix. These sets of frames arise from how we map our goals, objectives, outcomes, and purposes. It creates our sense of motivation which we experience as our agendas. • So within every matrix we generate motives and intentions about what to do and what we need to do. Sometimes these conflict with each other. • We experience or feel this Intention matrix in terms of what our motor programs create an urge within us to do. The "Self" Matrix: • We never leave home without our "Self matrix. This is the set of frames-within-frames that influence nearly every experience and which is nearly always ready to be activated. • How have you meta-stated your "Self?" What frames of beliefs, understandings, concepts, classifications, etc. have you set that creates your Self matrix? • Conceptual frames about the following: Worth or Self-esteem: Conditional or Unconditional. Competence in a skill: Self-Confidence to do that. Social Self: Self as seen in the eyes of others. Self-Definition: Self-image. Conscience: Self- as super-ego. Ego-Strength: Self that faces reality. • There are many facets of our "Self as a concept. How this most intimate map is constructed and what it allows us to do or not do fundamentally influences all of our thoughts and feelings. The Power Matrix: • We also make meanings as we meta-state ourselves about our sense of Power and Resourcefulness. This matrix governs are core mapping about what we can or cannot do as we move through the world. • Can I handle the world? Do I have the skills and ability to cope with things? What things can I do with competence and confidence? Am I helpless or can I do something? Can I grow and develop more skills and become empowered? • This matrix governs whether we will approach or avoid the events of life.

The Time Matrix: • As we move through the world, we map our understanding of events that have happened, are happening, and that will happen. It is this identification and comparing of events that allow us to conceptualize of the idea of "time." • This allows us to live in various time zones: the past, present and future. It enables us to relate to Time as a friend or as an enemy, as a resource or a limitation, sequentially (through-time) or all at once (in-time).

The Others or Relationship Matrix: • As we move through life, we also make meanings about People. We create a map about who they are, whether they are a threat or not, and whether we can effectively relate to them. The classifications, evaluations, and associations around people creates yet another matrix of our mind. • This matrix governs our social skills, relational skills, and our ability to work with and through other people. It determines whether we approach or avoid, whether we like or dislike, whether we fear or desire or in what combination. • This matrix also reflects our meanings about ethnic and cultural groups, communities, politics, and persuasion.

The World Matrix In this matrix we map how we have created meaning regarding all of the worlds we live in: the world of work and business, culture, physics, family, etc. • In this matrix we answer such questions as: What's out there? Is the World friendly or unfriendly? • Then, when we put all of this together, we get our world-view

The 7 Matrices of our Frames

When the Invisible Becomes Visible\

The Matrix becomes visible as we see and recognize the various frames of the submatrices become activated. We can see this in neurology and physiology as a

person goes into a state and we can hear it when a person uses the language that activates a given matrix. Think of the Matrix as a hologram in space... with the individual matrices flashing on and off as they are activated.

Seeing the Matrix • When the internal semantics are activated, the Matrix becomes visible as it is activated by an event or by information. Via the Meaning matrix we construct the other matrices which together becomes our model of the world.

The System Loops of the Matrix: • There are multiple feedback—feed forward loops in the neuro-semantic system. • At the primary state we have input-output that we recognize as Stimulus- Response. This is the most obvious and overt of them. Situation occurs and we respond. • At the core meta-state loop of meaning making, we feed information to the higher levels of our mind which in turn, informs the matrices. • Then each matrix offers a system loop as information and energy enters each one and activates the frames within it... and then that matrix responding and feeding forward its information.

Background Matrix The Matrices in the Back of the Mind: • The six matrices are always ready to be activated according to current conditions and stimuli. • These matrices lie in the back of our mind— outside of conscious awareness and make up our "unconscious" mind. • They all influence the Cinema of the mind. Matrix Analysis: • Matrix analysis allows us to understand the neuro-semantic system as a system: how it works, what drives it, the spiraling loops within it, and the leverage points for transformation. • Matrix analysis allows us to identify the driving and critical matrix within and behind every experience. Matrix Holarchy: Holons (the whole in the part; the part in the whole) enables us to understand the system as a system.

The Matrix is a holarchy. The levels of the mind do not operate as a hierarchy with steps and ladders, but as a holarchy. We can find in every part of the Cinema the whole. The whole shows up in the cinema as he Cinematic Features of the Movie.

FRAME GAME QUESTIONS What is the game that you're playing in life? Describe it. Who are the Players in the Game? Who do you play the games with? (Just self or others?) How many people do you invite into the games? Are all of the players living? How healthy, productive, useful, enhancing, etc. is the Game? Do you like the games you're playing? Do they serve you well? Do they enhance your life? Do they empower you as a person? Are they useful, practical, or productive? Would you recommend them to your children? What are the hooks that pull you into the Games? How do the games hook you? What's within the games that's seductive, tempting? What are some of the triggers that get you? What bait does the game depend upon to get you? What are some of the cues that indicate the presence of a Game? How do you know when you're involved in playing a game? What lets you know? What are some of the linguistic cues? (The way that you talk) What are some of the physical cues? (Things that you are doing) What are some of the environmental cues? What are the Rules of the Game? How is the Game set up? How do you play? How do you "score" points in the game? What comprises a "win?" What lets you know that you are "losing?" Who makes up the rules? Do you like the rules? What would you like to call this Frame Game? Now that you have described many of the facets of the game, what would you like to name this game so as to take control of the frame games that you play? What funny, silly, memorable, and colloquial name would really summarize this frame game? What frames of reference support and drive this Game? Are you using historical referents? Imagined referents? Vicarious referents (something that happened to someone else)? Health or unhealthy referents? Conceptual referents? Enhancing or limiting referents? What's the Agenda of the Game? What's the intention or motivation that drives the game?

What payoffs do you get from the game? What hidden agendas may be motivating the game outside of your awareness? What's the Emotional Intensity of the Game? How much intensity does the game generate from 0 to 10? Are there any somatic responses that the game produces? Are there any other symptoms that the game produces? What are the Leverage Points in the Game? What ideas, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, expectations, etc. operate as a leverage point in how the game is set up? If you wanted to change the game, where's its weakest point? What would be the easiest thing to do to mess up the game? What New Frame Game would you prefer to Play? If you had a magic wand and could play a better, more empowering, more enhancing, and more productive game, what game would it be?

Frame Games Worksheet — 1 Diagnosing a Toxic Game 1. What's the Game? Describe the "Game" being played out in terms of states meta-state, gestalt state. What's the script of the game? What sub-games or sub-frames are part of it all?

2. Players: Who plays the game? With whom? Who else has games going on? What's the larger social system of the game? (Use another Workshop 1 for each additional person). 3. Quality Control: Do you like this Game? Just how sick is this game? Ready to Transform it?

4. Hooks (triggers, baits): What hooks you into the game? How does the game hook others to play?

5. Cues & Clues: What are some of the cues (linguistic, physical, environmental, etc.) that indicate the presence of a game? How do you know? What cues you?

6. Rules of the Game: How is the game set up? How do you play? (Commands, Taboos)

7. Name the Frame Game: 8. Frames of References that you use. What are you referencing? Is that a reference? Literal & actual Conceptual: Imaginary: Vicarious (referencing what happened to someone else) Personal:

Meta:

9. Style: What is your Frame of Mind? Style of thinking? Meta-Program or attitude? _ Matching / Mismatching _ Reactive/ Thoughtful — Fast/ Slow _ Aggressive/ Passive/Assertive _ Rigid / Flexible _ Options/ Procedures _ Self/ Other _ Global / Specific 10. Agenda of the Game: What's the intention, motivation, or payoff of the Game? What's the payoff?

11. Emotional Intensity of the Game: How intense (0 to 10)? Are there any somatic responses or symptoms?

12. Leverage points: Where is the leverage in this game to stop it, change it, transform it?

13. Preferred Frame Game: What game would you rather play?

Frame Games Worksheet — 2 Design Engineering a New Frame Game 1. Desired Game: [Questions 2 through 6 summarize Worksheet 1] 2. Target: Name the Person/s you want to influence: 3. Current Frame Games: What is the current game or frame? What is the Quality of it? How sick? What consequences can it have? How serious (0-10)? What frames will have to be broken?

4. Evidence of the current Frame Game: Symptoms, cues, evidence, source of evidence?

5. Emotional Motivation: What concerns, him or her most? Values? What's really important to this person? What would hook X into this game? Vested interests?

6. Players: Who plays the game? What's the larger social system of the game?

7. Objective and Outcome: What do I want in this? What do I want for the other/s in this?

8. Description. What frames will work best? Describe.

9. Process: How can I set up these frames? How can I implement my persuasion process? 10. Leverage points: Where is the leverage to change, stop, or change the game? What frames will best leverage this person?

/ / . Patterns for Shifting, Loosening, and Transforming the Frames: Which patterns or techniques would provide the most leverage?

12. Patterns for Installation: Which patterns would work best for installing new Frames?

© 2004 Mastery Skills

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

MODELS FOR MASTERY NLP — Neuro-Linguistic Programming • •

• • • • • • • • •

A communication model about human processing for running your own brain. We run our own brain by using the languages of the mind, the languages that we use to create our cinemas that we play out on the theater of our mind. These are the sights (visual), sounds (auditory) and sensations (kinesthetics), smells (olfactory) and tastes (gustatory) senses. We make sense of things with our internal senses. We internally process information and represent such in our MovieMind. This induces us into mind-body-emotion states, neuro-linguistic states. The quality of our life is the quality of our states. NLP was developed by a linguistic and computer student about human excellence or genius to provide step-by-step processes (patterns) for running our own brain. NLP is about human excellence. Linguistics: The meta-representation of language. Neurology: our nervous system and physiology. We have two royal roads to state: mind and body; thinking and acting. State assessing and inducing: Memory: Remembering a state ("Recall a time when...") Imagination: Creating a state ("What would it look, sound, and feel like if...")

META-STATES® — THE UPPER STATES • • • •

Definition: A state about another state as in joyful about learning, playful about being serious, curious about anger, calm about fear. The thoughts-and-feelings about other thoughts-and-feelings as mind reflects back onto itself and its products. Primary states are primary emotions like fear, anger, joy, relaxed, tense, pleasure, pain, etc. and involve thoughts directed outward to the things "out there." Meta-states are higher level structures like fear of fear, anger at fear, shame about being embarrassed, esteem of self, etc. In these states, our self-reflexivity relates (not to the world), but to ourselves, to our thoughts, feelings, or to some abstract conceptual state. Gestalt states are emergent properties from layering or laminating mind repeatedly with other states. It gives rise to a new neuro-semantic system, an emergent state that's "more than the sum of the parts" such as courage, self-efficacy, resilience, and seeing opportunities.

Meta-State Factors: Frames: As a model Meta-States describes our higher frames-of-references. We set these up and use them to create stable structures (i.e., beliefs, values, understandings, etc.). We develop these frames which we can keep with us. Reflexivity: We ever just think. As soon as we think or feel—we then experience thoughts and feelings about that first thought, then other thoughts-and-feelings about that thought, and so on. Our self-reflective consciousness works as an "infinite regress" to recursively iterate. Layering: In meta-states we layer states onto states to create higher levels of awareness. In layering thinking-and-feeling, we put one state in a higher or meta (above, beyond) position to the second. This creates a "logical type"or "logical level." Psycho-Logics: A special kind of internal logic arises from layering of states. When we transcend from one state (say, anger or joy) to another state (say, calmness or respect) we set the second state as a frame over the first and include it inside it. This gives us "calm anger," respectful joy, joyful learning, etc. It makes the first state a member of the class of the second. Non-Linear: It's not logical in a linear or external way, yet it is psycho-logical. Internally when we put a state like anger or fear inside another state (calmness, respect, gentleness, courage, etc.), we change the internal logic of our nervous system and person. This is what we mean when we talk about "logical levels." When we put one state in a "logical" relationship to another state so that one is at a higher level then the higher one is about the other. This about-relationship establishes the

"logic." Self-Organizing: There are no such "things" as logical levels. They do not exist "out there." But only in the mind as how we represent categories and levels. With this logical typing or leveling, the effect of each level is to organize and control the information on the level below it. In logical levels each level is progressively more psychologically encompassing and impactful. Coalescing: By repetition and habituation higher frames or states coalesce into the lower states. The higher thoughts-and-feelings soak down into them to qualify or texture the lower state.

NEURO-SEMANTICS® Definition: Via our states and meta-states we translate the meanings in our minds (our semantics) into feelings in our bodies (neurology) to create our neuro-semantic states. Neuro-Semantic Factors: Emotions: When something means something to us—we feel it in our bodies. The meanings show up as "emotions." The meanings take the form of values, ideas, beliefs, understandings, paradigms, mental models, frames, etc. Meaning-Making: Neuro-Semantics is a model of how we make meaning through evaluating experiences, events, words, etc. It's a model of how we then live in the World or Matrix of Meaning that we construct and inherit. Matrix as Frames of Meaning: Neuro-Semantics describes the frames of reference we use as we move through life and the frames of meaning that we construct. It creates the Matrix of Frames in which we live and from which we operate. Semantic Reactions: The reactions that occur which indicate our semantic structures. Generative Neuro-Semantics: Building up new gestalt states which offer new experiences which are more than the sum of the parts. Systemic: The meta-state structure of Neuro-Semantics involves a different kind of thinking as it shifts from linear to non-linear thinking. Systemic thinking involves reflexivity, recursiveness, and spiral thinking. It means following feedback and feed forward loops around the loops of the fluid Matrix Frames. Neuro-Semantic Models:

The first model of Neuro-Semantics is the Meta-States model that maps our reflexivity and describes our layering of states upon states. Second is the Mind-Lines model for conversational reframing. Third is the Frame Games mind for diagnosing, understanding, and working with states and behaviors as "games" driven and modulated by "frames." Fourth is the Matrix Model that specifies seven matrices as a diagnostic and modeling tool. Fifth is Axes of Change model that maps the process of change and transformation. Our Matrix of Frames: Matrix of Meaning: We live in an internal World of frames within frames within frame built around ideas, events, emotions, hopes, dreads, fears, passions, and so on. This matrix of frames of meaning and reference create our "sense" of reality and the structure of our subjective experience. Mastering our Matrix: Waking up to our Matrix enables us to detect the matrix and then to master that Matrix. The Matrix Model: We have several kinds of matrices: process matrices that create the structures, content matrices around key concepts and semantic realities, and the grounding matrix of state. This comprises the 7 Matrices of our mind-body-emotion system.

THE 4 META-DOMAINS The NLP meta-models fit into the Matrix as processes of how we construct meaning. To think systemically about the mind-body system, we can use the four meta-domains as four avenues to the same thing—to the structure of inner or subjective experience. Go meta to the meta-domains and use them as a unifying model for NLP; see how they track the meaning-making processes of reflexivity. 1) The Meta-Model of Language: • The Meta-model identifies the form and structure of mental mapping in terms of words and language. It unpacks the linguistic magic that governs our mental mapping and provides us the structure of precision. • From the primary representational domain of sensory-based information and language that make up the Movie in our mind, we move up into the meta-linguistic domain of evaluative words. 2) Meta-States of the Layering of States: • From our thinking-and-feeling states come our states-about-states or meta-states. Reflecting back onto our own states and experiences, layers levels of experiences ("logical levels") to create our unique psycho-logics. As we continue to reflexively "apply to self we build the frames within frames matrix structure of our mind or neuro-semantic system. 3) The Meta-Programs of Perception: • From meta-states we create meta-programs. We generalize the state to our basic style of thinking or perceiving. A driving perceptual style or meta-program operates as a meta-state. • A gestalt thinker who sorts for the big picture will frame most other states with global thoughts-and-feelings. Someone who sorts for "necessity" thereby brings a state of compulsion to bear on every other thought-andfeeling state. Habituation of internal processing gives rise to meta-programs —to structured ways of perceiving. They then govern our everyday thinking-and-feeling as out perceptual filters. • As they show up in language, we can detect them using the Meta-Model. For example, our basic modus operandi (modal operators): necessity, impossibility, possibility, desire, etc. originated as meta-level thoughts or feelings (meta-states) then coalesced into "our eyes" (neurology) as our Meta-Programs. 4) Meta-Modalities (or "Sub-Modalities") as Cinematic Features: • As we frame the Cinema in our Mind, we code the sights, sounds, and sensations with various features, cinematic features or "sub-modalities." These features or distinctions enable us to take an editor's position or perspective to our own mental movies. We can then use "close" or "far" to stand for and mean some semantic frame (real, unreal; compelling, less compelling). The meta-domains unite to describe our experiential reality in everyday life (our mind-body states). Our states are systems of interactive forces that generate our felt "force fields" within which we live, think, perceive, feel, and act. Each meta-domain describes the structure of subjective experiences, looking at such through three different lenses: • Cinematic Features: The qualities and distinctions with which we code our mental movies. • Language: Linguistics and the VAK sensory systems. • Perception: Our filters for seeing and perceiving, for sorting, paying attention, and thinking. • States: Our mind-body states in which we live, and from which we operate.

GLOSSARY Game: a set of actions that play out some concept, idea, etc. for some purpose, i.e., to "win" something, another emotion, stroke, transaction, etc. A frame generated realm that describes and creates our virtual reality or matrix. Game Consciousness: Awareness of a game, who it works, who sets it, how it invites people into it, the states it elicits, etc. Gestalt: An overall configuration, impression, feel. Frame: Short for frame of reference. We frame things; we frame people, ideas, events, experiences, etc. Frame Ambiguity: The fuzzy edges of a frame, the lack of clear bracketing of a frame. It may lead to Frame Failure.

Frame of Mind: Via the process of repeating and habituating a frame of reference, we send our mind and emotions out to a particular referent again and again. Over time this leads to making the referent that we merely represented and thought about occasionally something always on our mind, in fact, the frame of mind that we operate from. The referent "gets in our eyes," so to speak, so that we view the world and all of our experiences through the lens of that experience, idea, etc. This turns the referent experience into a perceptual filter. Frameworks: When a particular frame of mind becomes so solidified in our orientation, it then becomes our characteristic mind-set or attitude, this transforms it into one of the very basic frameworks of our mind and personality, thereby giving it even more power and influence over us.

Frame Analysis: The process of analyzing our frames, detecting them, identifying the leverage points for shifting them, the processes for transforming them, the games that they engender, etc. Frame Analysis provides a way to clearly articulate the levels of mind and the influence they exert over life's experiences.

Frame Terms: using the metaphor and structuring device of "frames" we can now "think in terms of and work with" something. This creates our frame terms.

Frame Argumentation: The argument that a frame makes in defense of itself, or from out of its perspective. Frames argue for themselves when they feel threatened. This is a function of what cognitive psychology calls state or mood dependency.

In-Frame: Living, feeling, seeing, experiencing, etc. from within a frame of reference or frame of mind. Living in a virtual reality governed and informed by our ideas, ideals, concepts, beliefs, values, etc. See Matrix.

Frame Breaks: Breaking a frame, interrupting it.

Matrix: a metaphorical way to think about the "world" or universe of discourse that we create perceptually, mentally, and emotionally via our frames. As we build meta-levels of the mind, we tend to become "paradigm blind" and to see the world "in terms of our ideas and concepts." Thus the Matrix arises.

Frame Clearing: When we deframe, dissolve a frame, or bust up a frame—we clear out mental and emotional room in a person's model of the world for a new frame. Frame Confusion & Frame Clearing: The quality of clarity/ confusion within a frame. Frame Cues: the signals, indicates, clues, linguistic markets that give indication to the presence of a frame. Frame-of-Reference: the reference that we use to understand something else. The reference can be an actual experience (an event), a person, idea, etc. A referent can be something real and actual or imaginary and vicarious.

Frame Wars: When we conflict with another person, it is typically a conflict of frames.

Meta: Something "above or beyond" something else and therefore "about" it. A relationship of levels, as when a thought is about another thought, a feeling about a feeling, a thought about a feeling, etc. Meta-Detective: The ability to step aside from our thinking and feeling and to recognize our thoughts and feelings, their layers, etc. Meta-State (M-S): A meta-state arises as we think-feel (T-F) about (@!) our T-F. In this, our conscious

awareness reflects back onto itself (self-reflexive consciousness) to create T-F at a higher "logical level." This generates a state-about-a-state. Such meta-states relate to, or reference, a previous state. So rather than having to do with something about the world, they have to do with something about (@!) some previous "thought," "emotion," concept, understanding, etc. In meta-stating we create and set frames. Meta-stating: As a verb: bringing a mind-body state to bear upon another state accessing a higher "logical level" to organize, drive, and modulate a lower state. Out-of-Frame: Activities, thoughts, scripts that do not fit a given frame. This creates a loosening of the frame, a threat to the frame. When we step out of a frame of reference, we "break frame" or "lose frame" and so become out of frame. Outframing: Going above all frames to create new frame-of-reference. References: The idea, person, event, belief, etc. that we have in mind and use in our thinking. A Reference Point identifies a singular idea, person, or event. A Reference Frame involves understandings of how the points are related. Representation Systems: Representation Systems: sights, sounds, sensations, smells and tastes make up the basic primary RS, language makes up the meta-RS 1) VAK: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic; the 3 primary modalities. 2) A : Auditory digital representations, i.e. words, language, symbols d

State: A state of mind- body, which never occurs in isolation, hence a mind-body state driven by ideas and meanings (conceptions and the significance we attach to things, a neuro-linguistic or neuro-semantic state). Our states generate an feel or gestalt— thus we refer to our states as emotional states. We notate thoughts-feelings as T-F, and the state as a circle. A primary state relates to or references some object (person, event, thing) out in the world (->). overall

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Neuro-Semantics® International P.O. Box 8 Clifton, Colorado 81520 USA (970) 523-7877 www.neurosemantics.com L. Michael Hall is a visionary leader in the field of Neuro-Semantics and today works as an entrepreneur, researcher/modeler, and international trainer. His doctorate is in the Cognitive-Behavioral sciences from Union Institute University. He worked as a psychotherapist in Colorado when he found NLP in 1986. He then studied with Richard Bandler and wrote several books for him. When studying and modeling resilience, he developed the Meta-States model (1994). Soon he began traveling nationally and then internationally, co-created the field of Neuro-Semantics with Dr. Bob Bodenhamer. The International Society of Neuro-Semantics (ISNS) was established in 1996. As a prolific writer, Michael has written more than 30 books, many best sellers in the field of NLP. Michael first applied NLP to coaching in 1991, but didn't create the beginnings of Neuro-Semantic Coaching until 2001 when together with Michelle Duval co-created Meta-Coaching trainings. In 2003, the Meta-Coach Foundation was create. Books: 1) Meta-States: Self-Reflexiveness in Human States of Consciousness (1995) 2) Dragon Slaying: Dragons to Princes (1996) 3) The Spirit of NLP: The Process, Meaning & Criteria for Mastering NLP (1996) 4) Languaging: The Linguistics of Psychotherapy (1996) 5) Becoming More Ferocious as a Presenter (1996) 6) Patterns For "Renewing the Mind" (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) 7) Time-Lining: Advance Time-Line Processes (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) 8) NLP: Going Meta — Advance Modeling Using Meta-Levels (1997/2001) 9) Figuring Out People: Design Engineering With Meta-Programs (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) 10) A Source Book of Magic (w. B. Belnap) (1997) 11) Mind-Lines: Lines For Changing Minds (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) 12) The Secrets of Magic: Communication Excellence for the 21 . Century (1998) 13))) Meta-State Magic. From the Meta-State Journal, (1997-1999) 14) The Structure of Excellence: Unmasking the Meta-Levels of Submodalities (Hall and Bodenhamer, 1999) 15) Instant Relaxation (1999, Lederer & Hall) 16) The Structure of Personality: Modeling "Personality Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics (Hall, Bodenhamer, Bolstad, Harmblett, 2001) 17) The Secrets of Personal Mastery (Fall, 2000) 18 Frame Games: Persuasion Elegance (2000) 19) Games Slim People Play (2001) 20) Games for Mastering Fear (2001, with Bodenhamer) st

21) Games Business Experts Play (2001) 22) The Matrix Model (2002/ 2003) 23) User's Manual of the Brain: Master Practitioner Course, Volume II (2002) 24) MovieMind (2002) 25) The Bateson Report (2002) 26) Make it So! (2002) 27) Source Book of Magic, Volume II, Neuro-Semantic Patterns (2003) 28) Games Great Lovers Play (2004) 29) Propulsion Systems (2003) 30) Coaching Conversations (2004) with Michelle Duval

TRAININGS AVAILABLE

ISNS: INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF NEURO-SEMANTICS® L. Michael Hall and Bobby G., Bodenhamer trademarked both Meta-States and Neuro-semantics in 1996 and began the first Institute of Neuro-semantics. Later the USA Society was bom and then the International Society. The central NS web site is: www.neurosemantics.com where you can read about the ISNS, the community, membership, etc. NLP TRAININGS: Meta-NLP Practitioner: An intensive 7-day training in the Essential NLP Skills. This training introduces NLP as a model for discovering the structure of human functioning with a focus on how to run your own brain and to manage your own states. Learn the basic rapport-building, listening, and influence skills of NLP, as well as how to access and manage states through anchoring, reframing, and using dozens of NLP patterns. Discover how to use language both for precision and hypnotic influence. Required reading, User's Manual

for the Brain and The Sourcebook of Magic. Meta-Masters NLP Practitioner: An intensive 13-Day Training in mastering all three of the meta-domains of NLP: Language (Meta-Model), Perception (Meta-Programs) and States and Levels (Meta-States). This training focuses on the pathway to mastery and how to develop the very spirit of NLP—curiosity, accelerated learning, flexibility, confidence, passion, playfulness, etc. Basic Meta-State Trainings Accessing Personal Genius (The 3 day Basic). Introduction to Meta-States as an advanced NLP model (3 days). This training introduces and teaches the Meta-States Model and is ideal for NLP Practitioners. It presupposes knowledge of the NLP Model and builds the training around accessing the kinds of states that will access and support "personal genius."

Basic Meta-States in two other Simplified forms: 1) Secrets of Personal Mastery: Awakening Your Inner Executive. This training presents the power of Meta-States without directly teaching the model as such. The focus instead shifts to Personal Mastery and the Executive Powers of the participants. Formatted so that it can take the form of 1, 2 or 3 days, this training presents a simpler form of Meta-States, especially good for those without NLP background or those who are more focused on Meta-States Applications than the model. 2) Frame Games: Persuasion Elegance. The first truly User Friendly version of Meta-States. Frame Games provides practice and use of Meta-States in terms of frame detecting, setting, and changing. As a model of frames, Frame Games focuses on the power of persuasion via frames and so presents how to influence or persuade yourself and others using the Levels of Thought or Mind that lies at the heart of Meta-States. Designed as a 3 day program, the first two days presents the model of Frame Games and lots of exercises. Day three is for becoming a true Frame Game Master and working with frames conversationally and covertly. Meta-States Gateway Trainings 1) Wealth Building Excellence (Meta-Wealth). The focus of this training is on learning how to think like a millionaire, to develop the mind and meta-mind of someone who is structured and programmed to create wealth economically, personally, mentally, emotionally, relationally, etc. As a Meta-States Application Training, Wealth Building Excellence began as a modeling project and seeks to facilitate the replication of that excellence in participants.

2) Selling & Persuasion Excellence (Meta-Selling). Another Meta-States Application Training, modeled after experts in the fields of selling and persuasion and designed to replicate in participants. An excellent follow-up training to Wealth Building since most people who build wealth have to sell their ideas and dreams

to others. This trainings goes way beyond mere Persuasion Engineering as it uses the Strategic Selling model of Heiman also known as Relational Selling, Facilitation Selling, etc. 3) Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds. Based upon the book by Drs. Hall and Bodenhamer (1997), now in its third edition, Mind-Line Training is a training about Conversational Reframing and Persuasion. The Mind-Lines model began as a rigorous update of the old NLP "Sleight of Mouth" Patterns and has grown to become the persuasion language of the Meta-State moves. This advanced training is highly and mainly a linguistic model, excellent as a follow-up training for Wealth Building and Selling Excellence. Generally a two day format, although sometimes 3 and 4 days. 4) Accelerated Learning Using NLP & Meta-States (Meta-Learning). A Meta-State Application training based upon the NLP model for "running your own brain" and the Neuro-Semantic (Meta-States) model of managing your higher executive states of consciousness. Modeled after leading experts in the fields of education, cognitive psychologies, this training provides extensive insight into the Learning States and how to access your personal learning genius. It provides specific strategies for various learning tasks as well as processes for research and writing.

5) Defusing Hotheads: A Meta-States and NLP Application training for handling hot, stressed-out, and irrational people in Fight/Flight states. Designed to "talk someone down from a hot angry state," this training provides training in state management, first for the skilled negotiator or manager, and then for eliciting another into a more resourceful state. Based upon the book by Dr. Hall, Defusing Strategies (1987), this training has been presented to managers and supervisors for greater skill in conflict management, and to police departments for coping with domestic violence. 6) Instant Relaxation. Another practical NLP and Meta-States Application Training designed to facilitate the advanced ability to quickly "fly into a calm." Based in part upon the book by Lederer and Hall (Instant Relaxation, 1999), this training does not teach NLP or Meta-States, but coaches the relaxation skills for greater "presence of mind," control over mind and neurology, and empowerment in handling stressful situations. An excellent training in conjunction with Defusing Hotheads. 7) Games for Mastering Fear. To play the Game of Fear, a person has to run his or her brain in a certain way using special frames. The same is true for mastering fear—the power of transformation lies in knowing how to identify the right frames and set them at the higher levels of our mind. This training uses the very best of NLP and Neuro-Semantic patterns to provide true mastery over any kind of fear that might sabotage or limit living up to our Visions and Values. Based upon the book by this title by Hall and Bodenhamer. 8) Games For Mastering Stuttering (Blocking). There's a structure to the meta-state experience called "stuttering," it is blocking our non-fluency and layering it with a painful kind of self-consciousness. There's also a structure to mastering that experience and moving toward a less Semantically over-loading. This training is based on NLP and Neuro-Semantic patterns arid structured according to the 7 Mind Matrix model. 9) Games Business Experts Play. Succeeding in business necessitates develop a certain expertise and business wisdom about oneself, others, skills, markets, finances, managing, etc. Those who do it best, the experts, have a strategy and a certain set of frames of mind that allow them to play those Games. Based upon the book by this title, this training invites you to set the kind of frames of mind and meaning that will bring out your business expertise. 10) Games Slim and Fit People Play. How do they do it? How do some people relate to eating and exercising in such a way that it is "no problem" to them? What are the frames and games that slim and fit people play so that food does not dominate their lives and so that they have plenty of energy and vitality? That's the focus of this training, based on the book by the same title. The training offers specific guidance about how to stop psycho-eating and to develop a much better relationship to both food and movement. 11) Resilience for Managing Change.

12) Living Genius: Advanced Meta-States Patterns for Sustaining Mastery. Advanced Neuro-Semantic Trainings Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels: Advanced use of Meta-States by focusing on the domain of modeling excellence. This training typically occurs as the last 4 days of the 7 day Meta-States Certification. Based upon the modeling experiences of Dr. Hall and his book, NLP: Going Meta—Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels, this training looks at the formatting and structuring of the meta-levels in Resilience, UnInsultability, and Seeing Opportunities. The training touches on modeling of Wealth Building, Fitness, Women in Leadership, Persuasion, etc. Advanced Flexibility Training, An advanced Neuro-Semantics training that explores the riches and treasures in Alfred Korzybski's work, Science and Sanity. Originally presented in London (1998, 1999) as "The Merging of the Models: NLP and General Semantics," this training now focuses almost exclusively on developing Advanced Flexibility using tools, patterns, and models in General Semantics. Recommend for the advanced student of NLP and Meta-States. Neuro-Semantics and NLP Trainers Training. An advanced training for those who have been certified in Meta-States and Neuro-Semantics (the seven day program). This application training focuses the power and magic of Meta-States on the training experience itself—both public and individual training. It focuses first on the trainer, to access one's own Top Training States and then on how to meta-states or set the frames when working with others in coaching or facilitating greater resourcefulness. Neuro-Semantics Coaching Certification Training: Meta-Coaching. This is an advanced 7 day Training for those with Meta-NLP training (or Coaching Essentials) and APG for Coaching Genius). Meta-Coaching is based on five meta-models: the NLP Communication Model, the Meta-States Reflexivity model, the Matrix model, the Axes of Change model, and the Self-Actualization model. Credentials for Meta-Coaching Certification begins with ACMC (Associated Certified Meta-Coach) and moves to Professional (PCMC) and Master (MCMC) as well as Internal (ICMC). See the website for detailed information or the Meta-Coach Pathway brochure.