The Source Book of Magic II [3 ed.] 9781890001438

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THE SOURCE BOOK OF MAGIC VOLUME II Neuro-Semantic Patterns 2017 L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

The Source Book of Magic – Volume II: Neuro-Semantic Patterns ©1996, 2001, 2004, 2012 L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. © 2017 Third Edition. Library of Congress, Washington DC. Number: TXu 604-899

All Rights Reserved. No part of this may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, etc.) Without the prior written permission of the publisher.

NSP: Neuro-Semantic Publications P.O. Box 8 Clifton, CO 81520—0008 USA (970) 523-7877

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. [email protected]

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF NEUROSEMANTICS® www.neurosemantics.com www.meta-coaching.org www.self-actualizing.org

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SOURCE BOOK — VOLUME II Foreword

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17) Meta-Stating Love 18) Meta-Stating Curiosity and Wonder 19) Waking Up to the Matrix Pattern 20) Meta-Stating Playfulness and Humor 21) Flexibility Exploration 22) Meta-Stating Pretending and “Magic” Events 23) Meta-Stating Decisiveness 24) Meta-CEO Commissioning 25) The Opening-Up Belief Systems Pattern 26) Clarity of Representation Game Or, Do it Till you Droll! 27) The Abundance Pattern 28) The “So What” Pattern 29) “It Doesn’t Matter!” Pattern 30) Meta-Stating by Metaphoring 32) Meta-Stating Multiple Perceptions 33) The Letting Go Pattern

Part I: The Foundation of Magic 1. The Magic of Meta-States

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2. The Art of Thinking in Levels

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3. Updating the NLP Model

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4. Neuro-Semantics

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Part II: The Patterns of Magic 5. Basic Meta-Stating Patterns 75 1) The Meta-Stating Pattern 2) Meta-State Texturing 3) Building Enhancing Meta-States 4) The Attractor Pattern 5) Updating Toxic Thinking Patterns

6) Therapeutic Meta-Stating 7) Accelerating Learning Texturing States and Meta-NLP

7. Dragon Slaying & Taming 148 1) Meta-Stating Negative Emotions 2) Meta-Stating Expectations 3) Handling Dragons 4) Dragon Slaying and Taming #101 5) Excuse Blow-Out Pattern 6) Fear Blow-Out Pattern 7) Meta-Stating Procrastination 8) Meta-Stating Hesitation — by Stephen Campbell 9) Meta-Stating Depression

6. The Primes

100 1) Meta-Stating Sensory Awareness 2) Meta-No-ing and Meta-Yes-ing 3) Meta-Stating Ownership of Power Zone 4) Responsibility to / For 5) Meta-Stating Acting/ Reacting, Implementing 6) Meta-Stating Permission 7) Meta-Stating Acceptance 8) Releasing All Judgment pattern 9) Mind-To-Muscle Meta-Stating 10) Meta-Stating Push/Pull; Aversion/Attraction Propulsion System pattern 11) Implied Propulsion System pattern 12) Meta-Stating Pleasure and MetaPleasuring 13) Meta-Stating for De-Pleasuring 14) Meta-Stating Ecology (Good and Bad) 15) Quality Controlling Games 16) Meta-Stating Trust

8) Patterns for Therapeutic Excellence 167 1) Change Personal History 2) Meta-Stating a New History 3) Meta-Stating “Distance” V-K Dissociation: The Rewind pattern 4) Meta-Stating New Decisions 5) Dropping Into Pure Potentiality 6) Drop Down Through to Rise Up 7) Undoing the Structure of Stuttering 8) Resolving Stuttering 9) Mind-Backtracking Pattern 10) Finishing Old Business -C-

11) Meta-Stating Prime Concerns 12) Gestalting Therapeutic Double Binds

Solving

12) Interpersonal Meta-Stating Patterns 265

9) SELF Meta-Stating Patterns 194 1) Meta-Stating “Self” as a Concept Recognizing multi-ordinal “selves” 2) Meta-Stating Acceptance, Appreciation and Awe 3) Meta-Stating a Resourceful Self (The NLP Swish Pattern) 4) Meta-Stating Dis-Identification 5) Meta-Stating “Identity” 6) Meta-Stating Being-ness 7) Gloriously Fallible 8) Gloriously Centered 9) Super-Charge your Ego Strength 10) Developing a Proactive Identity 11) Proactive Identity for Taking Action

1) Meta-States Other People 2) Giving Empowering Feedback in Coaching 3) Meta-Stating Forgiveness 4) The Recovering from Betrayal Pattern 5) Accessing your Social Panorama 6) Meta-Stating your Social Panorama 10) Time Line Patterns 1) Fast Time/ Slow Time 2) Spiraling Resources into Now 3) More Patience —> Now! 4) Linguistic Time-Lining 5) Finding the Inner Rhythm in Boredom 6) Meta-Stating Boredom 7) Time-Management Pattern 8) The Balanced Time Pattern

10. Genesis States

215 The Idea of Genius The Prerequisites of Personal Genius Accessing Personal Genius Training 1) Meta-Stating Strength 2) Meta-Stating Being Ferocious 3) Meta-Stating Intentions 4) Intentional Stance Pattern 5) Meta-Stating Personal Genius 6) Meta-Stating our Core Question 7) Meta-States Alignment 8) Meta-Stating “Core Transformation” 9) Meta-Stating “Wisdom” 10) Meta-Stating Creativity 11) The Mastery Walk

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14) Patterns for Business Excellence

296 Super-Charging Attitudes Going Around Problems Pattern Conflict Resolution Pattern Meta-Stating for Management Inside Out Wealth Pattern Conflict Resolution Meta-Detailing Game Continuous Improvement Game Meta-Stating a Triangle of Excellence 10) Meta-Stating Conflict Resolution 11) The Eu-Stress Game 12) The Relaxation Pattern 13) The Customer Service Game 14) The Defusing Game 15) Meta-Stating Understanding 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9)

11. Living Genius 248 Living & Maintaining the Focus State 1) Meta-Stating Courage 2) Meta-Stating Optimism 3) Gestalting “Seeing Opportunities” 4) Gestalting “Un-Insultable” 5) Meta-Stating Resilience 6) Meta-Stating Balance (of Polarities) 7) Meta-Stating Concepts 8) Meta-Stating Proactivity 9) Meta-Stating Magnanimity Meta-Stating Creative Problem

15) Patterns for Coaching Excellence

325 1) The Executive Coaching Game 2) The Provocation “In Your Face” Game 3) Building & Commissioning a New -D-

Frame 4) Meta-Stating Change Leverage 5) Meta-Stating Efficiency 6) Meta-Stating Success — by Mike Davis 7) Meta-Stating Sel-Application — by Rick Ashby 8) Developing a Mastery Pathway 9) Meta-Stating Problems with Externalizing Humor 10) The Layering Game 11) Meta-Stating a Triangle of Excellence 12) Designing New Game Rules Pattern 13) Meta-State Dancing 13) Meta-Stating Generalizations: Spinning Icons 14) Over-Valuing Pattern — by Douglas Cartwright 15) Symbolic Meta-Stating

16) Patterns for Systemic Thinking

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1) Riding the System Loops Game 2) Leveraging Change at the Borders Pattern 3) Binding the Double-Binding Pattern 4) The Spiraling Pattern 5) The Looping Pattern 17) Conversational Meta-Stating 366 Linguistics for Meta-States Meta-Stating Questions and Statements Meta-Stating the “Neuro-Logical Levels” Meta-NLP: Taking NLP to a Higher Level

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States: Primary, Meta and Gestalt 384 Bibliography Author

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FOREWORD

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f Richard Bandler is right and NLP is an attitude backed up by a methodology (modeling) which leaves a trail of techniques, then the two volumes of The Source Book of Magic is a collection of that trail of techniques. In 1997 I began gathering all of the core or essential NLP patterns that seemed prominent in the field. The final result became the content of what is now the first volume of The Source Book of Magic. Because the Meta-States Model was recognized and acknowledged in 1995, I included a few basic Meta-State patterns in Volume I. But just a few. The result was the basic 77 NLP patterns of the first volume. How many NLP patterns are there? That’s a hard question to answer. Many “patterns” are but slight alterations of more fundamental patterns. My guess is that there are probably today 200 or more distinct NLP patterns. One book recently published “350" patterns but the author was only able to attain that number by counting each Meta-Model distinction as a “pattern,” and every Milton Model distinction as a “pattern” as well as some short descriptions as a “pattern.” And, of course, that brings up several questions. What is a pattern? What are the qualifying criteria that distinguishes something as a pattern? You are holding in your hand the second volume of The Source Book of Magic. I first created this book in 2004, updated it in 2008, and am only now have finally putting book it into a book format. Unlike Volume I, this book focuses exclusively on Neuro-Semantic patterns that involves the meta-stating process. Who is this Book For? As a collection of patterns, this book is for anyone who works with people in terms of coaching, training, consulting, or managing people to become more resourceful and empowered. Therapists can use it in their practices with clients. Parents can use it for enabling their children to develop a healthy -1-

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self-image and ego-strength. Coaches will especially find these patterns useful in facilitating clients to make generative transformations and actualize their highest and best. Managers will find these patterns useful in enabling people to find their inner center of strength in order to own their own responses and experience greater empowerment and responsibility. Leaders will find these patterns useful in influencing and persuading followers to a new vision. Consultants in numerous will be able to use many of the patterns here for working more effectively with their clients. NLP practitioners at all levels, master practitioners, health practitioners, and trainers. Where did this Volume come from? I began collecting Meta-State patterns and putting them into the Meta-States Training manual. As the trainings grew, and more patterns were developed, the Training Manual similarly grew. There was a time when I put all of our Meta-States patterns in the Training Manual, Accessing Personal Genius (APG). But when that manual for the three-day training hit 200 pages, I decided to trim it down to just the 14 patterns that today are used in the APG training. I then turned to the thicker and more extensive collection of patterns into our NLP/ Neuro-Semantic Trainers Training Manual. In that Training Manual, which I entitled the Trainers Guidebook I put in lots of suggestions, hints, and pre-frames for training. That manual also contained much of the Meta-State theoretical framework for using Meta-States as a model. But then, when that manual was over 300 pages, I decided to reduce the number of patterns in it and to create a book just devoted to the patterns. That was the birth of this second volume of The Source Book of Magic. What’s in this Volume? The heart and focus of this book is on the 141 patterns that enables you to use these patterns for how to “run your own brain.” I have also included pages of background information about Meta-States and Neuro-Semantics. When I developed Meta-States, it became the third meta-domain of NLP. As a meta-model it followed two previous meta-models. -2-

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The Meta-Model describes the meta-representational system of language. The Meta-Model is comprised of a set of linguistic distinctions that help us discern well-formed versus ill-formed linguistic mapping. Meta-Programs is the second meta-model of NLP, a domain about perceptual filters and thinking patterns. It also is meta to the content of what we think and feel and operates like our mental software for how we think. Meta-States not only follows these two models, but also unites and combines these two models. The language of our states and layering of levels (“logical levels”) is described by the Meta-Model. And the perceptual filters and thinking patterns of our states shows how our metastates create our meta-programs. The fourth meta-domain of NLP is what we call, and for years have mislabeled as, Sub-Modalities. These sub-modalities are actually the cinematic features of the movies that you play in your mind. As such they are actually the higher level frames—the editorial frames, that all of us use to code the sensory representations of our mental movies. This means that the quality of your inner movies can be adjusted as you step aside and edit the movies with these cinematic features. What can you Expect in this book? You can expect to be challenged by a different kind and way of thinking. Learning and using meta-states involve shifting from linear to non-linear thinking. It also involves learning to think in circles, to go round and round your emotions, to spin off in upward and downward spirals. If you get lost in the process or go into a spin, or experience confusion, just trust the process, you will come out the other end just fine. We haven’t lost a person yet. Why Learn and Use Meta-State Patterns? There are lots of reasons for learning Meta-States and for adding the domain of Meta-States to your repertoire of skills. It may be that you want to learn about the next step in NLP, how Meta-States extends and expands NLP and takes NLP to a higher level. It may be in order to obtain a higher and fuller perspective on meta-phenomena. It may be in order to initiate and formulate a whole new level of state management and control. It may be to explain the problems with NLP and to offer new solutions. -3-

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What else can I read about Meta-States? If Meta-States captures your interest and fancy, then there are numerous other works you can read to further your understanding and skills. • Meta-States presents the model as a model and its roots in Korzybski, Bateson, Meta-Cognition, Reflexivity, Systems Thinking and Dynamics, NLP, Cognitive Linguistics, etc. •

Dragon Slaying applies the model to therapy and personal healing. It’s about identifying the toxic state-upon-state structures and how to tame, slay, and/or transform them using the metaphor of “dragons.”

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Mind-Lines uses Meta-States to think about the entire framing processes and how we alter, change, and transform the structure of meaning. In Mind-Lines we re-model the old NLP conversational reframing model called “Sleight of Mouth” patterns using MetaStates to identify the seven directions that we can send a brain.

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Sub-Modalities Going Meta explores the sub-modality model thereby revealing its inadequacies and flaws and then remodels it with Meta-States to show them as the cinematic editorial features.

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Secrets of Personal Mastery applies Meta-States to the subject of personal mastery, excellence, or “genius.” It presents the basic content of the “Accessing Personal Genius” (APG) training workshop. This is a great beginning book for learning about metastates and the Meta-States model. The book is built around the meta-level secrets which enable one to take charge of the higher “logical levels” and to set up attractors in mind and personality that sets in motion a self-organizing influence that does service to our best meaning frames.

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Winning the Inner Game or Frame Games is an user friendly book about the Meta-States model, designed originally to take all the jargon out of the model but which ended up introducing many new facets to the model. Running with two metaphors, “games” and “frames” the book established a new focus and initiated a series of application books. Games gives practical evidence of our states and the behaviors and responses that flow from our everyday states. Frames speaks about the inner game that we play in our heads and -4-

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mind-body systems. •

NLP: Going Meta is an advanced Neuro-Semantic book about modeling. It begins where NLP: Volume I ended as it reviews the Strategy model and how strategy detection, elicitation, and design works. Going Meta introduces the “logical levels” and “psychological levels” of Meta-States and how they create our matrix of frames and how to model experiences using that template.

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The Matrix Model takes this further as it creates an unifying framework for the four meta-domains of NLP. As a systemic model, the Matrix offers a complete template for modeling, profiling, and coaching.

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Meta-State Magic is a spiral bound book that describes more than two dozen Meta-State patterns. Written originally as part of the Meta-States Journal, this book provides a historical survey of the development of the Meta-States model, lots of applications and connections, and extensive descriptions of many of the core MetaState patterns.

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PART I THE FOUNDATION FOR META-STATES

MAGIC

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Chapter 1

THE MAGIC OF META-STATES Higher Level Magic for Source Book II

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n the first volume of The Source Book of Magic (1999), I wrote the first chapter as an “Introduction to NLP Magic.” That first chapter introduced the metaphor and idea behind the language of magic. Now this is a metaphor and that means that there is no real magic in NLP —nor is it about magic shows, illusion tricks, or any occult conception of magic. The metaphor of “magic” is just that, a metaphor. In fact it is a metaphor that comes from Gregory Bateson about the magiclike workings and effects of language and reasonings in the higher levels of the mind. The “magical” world of subjective experience is the subject of NLP and of the newer field of Neuro-Semantics. It’s about how magic-like changes, interventions, and transformations can and do occur when a person knows the structure to that magic. It is the magic of representations and symbols. Symbols operate magically in that you never know what a word, a phrase, or a symbol is going to evoke in another person. Why is that? For the simple reason that a symbol stands for something other than itself. But what? Well, that’s where things get loose. That’s where ambiguity, indeterminacy, and uncertainty arise. What does it stand for? All this occurs because meaning is an inside job. What words mean, what -7-

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any given symbol means, what any given gesture, movement, or activity means depends . . . it depends on the context, it depends on the symbol systems being used, it depends on the meaning-maker sending and using the symbol and it depends on the meaning-maker receiving the symbol. It depends on so many variables. That’s why “making sense” of our symbols and finding out what the hell someone else means, and what the hell we mean, is an exploration into the structures of the person’s matrix of frames. Beginning with the NLP Model When we begin with the NLP Model of “the structure of magic,” we focus on the movie that we play in the theater of our mind. We start there because our first level of meaning involves representation. What are you representing (the content and details that’s on your mind)? How are you representing (the structure and process you use)? What words and language patterns are inside the sound track of the movie? What words and language patterns are above the sound track at the editorial level (the so-called sub-modality level)? What other cinematic features that encode and frame the movie (sub-modalities)? What thinking patterns and perceptual filters used to encode the movie (meta-programs)? What beliefs and belief-systems hold the movie in place (the socalled “logical levels”)? What beliefs about capabilities, contexts, values, identity, and spiritual (the Dilts’ neuro-logical levels)? What layering of thoughts and feelings do we have about all of this (meta-states structures)? These are the features and variables that I described and wrote about in The Source Book of Magic, Volume I. They are the critical components of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming model. They are the factors that govern representation. And that’s the heart and beauty of NLP. NLP, as a communication model, focuses on enabling you to “run your own brain.” As a communication model, NLP focuses first and foremost on enabling you to take charge of your own internal communications, on the messages, signals, and symbols that you use inside. With the idea of “running your own brain” are numerous presuppositions that are very powerful. What are -8-

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they? If you don’t take control of running your own brain, someone else will. You run your own brain by taking ownership of the signals you send to your brain. You run your own brain by the sensory representations that you create on the theater of your mind. You do this in terms of the sensory systems—the visual images, the auditory sounds, the kinesthetic sensations and feelings, the smells and tastes are the key variables of your inner movie. In NLP jargon, this is called the VAK or the 4-tuple. Your brain runs information to make a map of what is “out there” and how you can effective navigate that territory out there. Most of the magic-like power and influence that occurs through the NLP patterns and technology involves altering, changing, and/or playing around with the way you represent things to yourself. In other words, what you communicate and the way you communicate to yourself creates your inner reality. You are the constructor. NLP, General Semantics, and Constructionism says that we do not deal with reality directly, but only through our mapping. As we map things, that’s what seems and feels real on the inside to us. But is it? NLP does not really bother much with that question. The question of the true and actual case of existence (ontology) and even how we know what’s real (epistemology) is not a focus in NLP. The focus of the NLP model is much more practical: Will this map take me where I want to go? Will this map allow me the experiences, feelings, relationships, and success in life that I want? Will this map empower me to navigate the territory more effectively? Does this map work in terms of enabling me to operate at my best, resourcefully, and to have fun along the way? The Magic of Meaning What is NLP? It is first and foremost a communication model. As you discover what and how you communicate to yourself, you are alerted to the communication processes and dynamics between yourself and others. At that point you will use the NLP communication guideline, another -9-

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presupposition. This guideline says that you never know what you have communicated to another person unless and until you get a response from that person. And when you see, hear, feel, and calibrate to that person’s response, then you can begin to get a sense of what your symbols, and your way of expressing them verbally and non-verbally, must have meant to that person. The meaning of your communication is the response you get. This guideline of communication warns that meaning is not inside of the symbols (the words or the non-verbal expressions). Meaning is inside each person. And when it comes to making meaning, we can do it in numerous ways: We make meaning inside our nervous system and brain by what we link up to the symbols and stimulus that’s offered us—associative meaning. We make meaning by the words and labels that we use to classify and categories things— linguistic meaning. We make meaning by the frames that we set around the feelings and words—frame meaning, context meaning. We make meaning by the evaluations and judgments we make about the previous meanings — evaluative meaning. We make meaning via the intentions and motives that we bring to whatever we’re experiencing—intentionality meaning. Exploring meaning and transforming it by changing the frames of reference that create the meaning is the heart of reframing. First you enter into another person’s reality through matching, mirroring, and pacing. This creates the sense of rapport and trust that allows you to then suggest new and better frames that invites the person to take on the reframe. The Magic of Modeling Given the communicational nature of how you run our brain and go into states, modeling in NLP describes the process of tracking down how and where a mind-body-emotional state goes. It allows us to follow the information that goes inside and through the mind-body system as well as to track the energy in the form of emotion, motor programs, and actions that come back out of that system. In this, modeling involves creating a map or model of how a person does whatever he or she does. This cues us in about the structure of that magic, how it works, the representations to use, the meta-frames to replicate, the content that counts, -10-

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and how to replicate it in others. It was the process of modeling what Satir, Perls, and Erickson did which began NLP. That’s Modeling Level I. The level above that level, Modeling Level II, is modeling not only the products and content of what they do, but the strategies they use, how they do such, the meta-levels of belief, values, criteria, knowledge, decisions, etc. which enable them to do that. Further, because brains run in feedback loops, they operate non-linearly. This was the problem with the original strategy model of NLP with its linear step-by-step processes. While the TOTE (test, operate, test, exit) model of Miller, Pribram, and Gallanter that Bandler and Grinder enriched with representation systems had a meta response in the model, it was a minor feature. It did not develop a full-fledge systemic model of metalevels, of feedback loops governing and modulating feedback loops. This is what the Meta-States model added to modeling (NLP: Going Meta, 2002). We first receive feedback from the world, and then we feed forward into the world our response. Yet between that first level loop there is an internal loop. We feed the information back to ourselves enriching our mental movie, then we feed newly constructed information back to the higher levels of our mind about that movie, and this continues level upon level. We draw conclusions, generalize ideas, create evaluations and beliefs, and understandings, etc. All of this we feed back to ourselves at different levels of thinking and reasoning. As we do, we also begin to feed-forward through ourselves the energy that such information creates. We feed forward emotions, intentions, agendas, etc. We activate our motor cortex and activate our motor responses and then feed that forward through our mind-body system. All of this eventually is fed forward into our world, our present, our futures via our actions and behaviors. So our brains are influenced and affected by a wide range of interacting parts, many modalities, by feedback loops at different levels The Magic of the Meta-Levels In all of this, the highest magic occurs at the meta-levels. Sure there’s magic to be performed in the movie of our mind and in our skills, competencies, and abilities to respond to the events of the world. Yet the greatest magic occurs in the inner reality we create. This is the magic of meta-states —states about states. -11-

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To fully understand meta-states and the model of Meta-States, you have to understand primary states. The first step is recognizing the terminology problem of the word “state.” It sounds like it’s describing something static, non-moving, and non-dynamic, doesn’t it?: That is the terminology problem. State is short for state-of-mind, state-of-body, state-of-emotion. State is a dynamic process. It refers to a living, breathing, changing, dynamic neuro-linguistic mind-body-emotion experience. It is not a thing, but a process. What is a “states?” It is a mental and emotional experience that functions or operates as an energy field. The energy has an actual physical quality to it because at the level of your physiology—our nervous systems metabolize fuel (food) and transform that fuel into metabolic energy. In fact, your brain consumes most of the metabolic energy as your body produces heat and fuels the energy transform throughout your nervous systems. In the kinetic energy within your body, you experience the transduction of energy from the electromagnetic vibrations “out there” impacting your body and sense receptors, to bioelectrical impulses in the neuro-pathways, to the release and activation of neuro-transmitters, to the exchange of icons at the molecular level. Several emergent properties result from all of this, what you experience as mental energy, emotional energy, personal energy, etc. This is what we mean by a “state.” Altogether, states operate as an energy field, a field of energy that we can learn to gauge and thereby control. What is your state’s intensity? If you were to gauge the intensity of how much you feel a given emotion from 0 (meaning “none”) and 10 (meaning “total” or “absolute”), how much are you experiencing that state? How strong is it? This is important because of the state dependency factor. State dependency refers to the control a state can exercise over you when it becomes dominating. This happens when a very intense state becomes so powerful and overwhelming that it begins to over-ride and govern your learning, memory, perception, behavior, communication, etc. Then you become dependent on the state for your thinking, feeling, speaking, behaving, and relating. This is state-dependency. This dynamic is called by other phrases including "emotional expectation sets" or "conceptual expectation sets,” or “mood sets,” and so on. Intensity of state plays a critical role in meta-stating. Once you begin to -12-

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experience the world in terms of your state, the state colors your world. You then use the state as a higher frame (a frame of reference) for viewing, interpreting, and feeling other things. In state dependency you put your state at a meta-level or meta-relationship to your experiences. In this, state dependency moves you from a primary state to a meta-state. It also gives you a way to meta-state (now using the term as a verb). Can you intensify your thinking-feeling and make it stronger? What happens when you amplify this state? Do you need more “juice” so that you can see and hear and feel that stimulus in terms of this state? What do you need to do to amplify this state? What resource do you need to soften, temper, and/or reduce this state? How do you best like to crank this state up? As a neuro-linguistic class of life we experience and map the territory beyond your skin, the world “out there” so that you can effectively relate to it. Most fundamentally, you operate as a pattern detector and mapper, and this gives you your most unique ability to program or frame yourself. As you map things, so you become. It begins with your neurology, how you use your nervous system and sense receptors and then it moves to your linguistics, how you use symbols, words, metaphors, and classifications to create mental and emotional programs. From your mental-emotional-somatic mapping, you create your states. You speak about this providing two royal roads to state. You can access and work with your states through mind and through body. In terms of “mind,” every state has internal representations. These are the things on your mind —the things that you internally map, that play out on the screen of your mind visually, auditorially, and kinesthetically as well as the things that you say to yourself about that movie. You have multiple layers of frames around and about your movie. In terms of mind you can also use your memory to access a state. "Recall a time when you experienced this or that emotion or thought ..." Or, use your imagination: "What would it look, sound, and feel like if you were thinking and feeling this ..." In terms of body, every state has a set of corresponding physiologies, a unique and particular neurological processing. This allows you to use your body and the things you can do with your body to facilitate and access various states. You can use your posture, breathing, moving, gesturing, etc. -13-

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What’s the importance or value of your states? It is namely this: The very quality and character of your mind-body states determine and control the quality of your life. This means that to improve the quality of our life, of your relationships, work, career, recreation, health, etc., you have to improve the quality of your states. Directly ask about the quality of your states: What is the quality of this state? How "pure" or mixed is your state? How much congruent or incongruent? How much complexity or simplicity is there in the state? What is the meaning of this state? How painful or pleasurable is the state? How is the state encoded and structured? What are other qualities, properties, and features of this state? Every state has some object. In primary states such as fear, anger, joy, calmness, and sadness, the object typically refers to something “out there” and “beyond” the nervous system.. You are in reference to some trigger or stimulus in the world. We diagram this as a person inside of a state (a circle, oval, or bubble designating the energy field) with an arrow coming from some object or event and an arrow returning to it. To elicit the structure at the is level ask such questions as the following: What do your thoughts-and-feelings refer to? What state are you in right now? What feelings are you experiencing about that event? How much do you have that feeling? How much does that thought dominate your thinking? What other states are you experience at this very moment? Of course, this kind and quality of state awareness presupposes that you have moved to a meta-level of awareness of your primary level awareness. This self-awareness (i.e., awareness of awareness) is a meta-state that gives you the perspective stance from where you can run your own brain. Awareness of your states and the multiple variables that influence them cultivate a higher level awareness. To do this you need a non-judgmental awareness. If you judge and evaluate your awareness, you turn your energies against yourself. Self-awareness also shows a change in object. -14-

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No longer are you focused on the triggering event “out there,” you have shifted awareness to what you are experiencing “in here.” Detecting states (state awareness) can be challenging because all states habituate. Repeat anything thought, emotion, or action long enough and eventually they become so automatic that they drop outside of your conscious awareness. They then become unconscious frames selforganizing your mind-body system. The dynamic and fluid nature of states means that they do not stay the same, but that they are forever changing. Count on this. Your states do and always will be altering, shifting, and transforming. Recognizing this, and catching this, allows you to take charge and to shift and change your states intentionally and mindfully. What methods do you have for altering your states? This is also where the NLP tool of anchoring offers a very powerful technology. To change or amplify a state, all you have to do is set up a trigger (a sight, sound, sensation, movement, gesture, word, etc.) and link that trigger to the state. Anchors operate as Pavlovian conditioning tools for state management. To set them and fire them depend on uniqueness, intensity, timing, purity. You can wait until you (or another person) has reached the peak of the experience, and then simply link some unique trigger to it. Afterwards, test to see if the trigger will then reactivate or “fire off” the state. If it does, you have what we call an anchor. With this tool, and many others in NLP, we can then begin using your states as resources. This leads to a whole new set of questions: Would you like to experience this mental and emotional state at other times? Where would you like to experience it? When? What would you look, sound, and feel like when you do? How does that transform things for you? This describes how you meta-state with one state and set it as your thinking-15-

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feeling experience about another state. In utilizing a state and setting it in a meta-relationship to another, you access one state and apply it to another state. You can apply one thought to another thought, one feeling to another feeling, one thought to a feeling, a feeling to a thought, you can also do this with physiology. You can breathe deeply and fully about the state of anger. You can meta-state a feeling about a physiology, etc. We can also think of our neuro-linguistic mind-body states as emotional states. NLP uses the notation of an “emotion” being a K meta. This defines an emotion as a combination of sensations and cognitions. We take higher level cognitions (language) and make an evaluation about the kinesthetic sensations. This creates a meta-level phenomena of "emotions." An emotion is made up of evaluative judgments, meanings, values, and beliefs. As states, emotions record and register for you —in your body—the difference between your map of the world and your actual experience in the world. Think of e-motions as the motions that are generated in your body (hence psycho-somatic, soma meaning “body”) by your evaluations. The difference between your model of the world (all of your wants, expectations, shoulds, understandings, etc.) and your experience of the world is registered somatically as an emotion. Actually, the emotions that we call primary emotions already operate as a meta-level phenomena, as a Kinethesticmeta. Technically we could tease out yet another level that’s been lost or hidden inside. In Meta-States language, we speak about the level having coalesced into the primary state. The emotion is a set of kinesthetic sensations plus a cognitive evaluative judgment of meaning. In working with the Meta-States Model, I have not found that this distinction adds anything truly significant, so we talk about “emotions” at the primary level as well as at the meta-levels. So even though primary emotions already involve cognitive evaluations from a previous meta-level having coalesced. into a primary state, we will seldom need to use this distinction. It is, however, important to stress the difference between feelings as kinesthetic sensations and emotions as kinesthetics and cognitive evaluations. It’s also critical to emphasize that mind-and-body, mind-andemotion are all of the same system and are not separate things. Regarding states, it’s important to distinguish between extending a state and -16-

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containing a state. Both of these processes, extending and containing states give two different directions for orienting a state. You can build boundaries and barriers around a state and thereby disconnect it and keep it safe and contained, uncontaminated by other things. When you move from that state to another, you make an impeccable state shift so that you leave the state completely. This allows you to protect that state. At other times, it’s good to spread a state around so that it sets a frame for everything you do and everyone you encounter. You may want to do that with the state of respect, care, confidence, or playfulness. In Meta-States we speak about framing state upon state to create canopies of consciousness that become one’s mental atmosphere. Thinking about state boundaries in terms of contamination, this raises numerous questions: How much do your states contaminate each other? How much overlapping between states? Does this make for or undermine resourcefulness? How fragile and/or strong are the boundaries of this state? How permeable and/or impermeable are they? How forbidden and/or permitted is this state? There’s also a difference between state expressions and state frames even though the way you express your states and the variables of the state by which you frame and set frames for other states are made out of the very same “stuff.” What is that stuff? It’s the stuff of your basic human powers or expressions. In this, you have four basic and central expressions of your states. You have the power to respond by thinking, feeling, speaking, and behaving. And these are the elements from which we create all of our higher frames. The questions that elicit such are simple: Thinking: What do you think about this or that? What comes to mind when you think about this? What ideas, beliefs, understandings, etc. do you have about X? Feelings: What are you feeling? How intense are those feelings? Are you thinking about anything else? What would you prefer to feel? What’s the best feeling that you’ve ever experienced about X? Speaking: -17-

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What do you say about this? What else can you say? When you say that, what other words are in the back of your mind? What poetry can you create about this? What story or narrative? Acting and behaving: What do you do? What can you do about this? What would you like to do? What actions have you taken? How do you stand when you feel that? What posture, eye countenance do you use?

With these four basic powers for responding to events, ideas, and people you can not only act and express yourself from your state, but you can also use these expressions for framing. You can use them to set a frame about yourself. In this realm of meta-cognition and meta-states every time you put a thought, feeling, word, or physiology at a meta-level to your states, you thereby create a meta-frame. Further, you have an infinite number of frames that you can set and that will then begin to govern your states and experiences as reference structures. You call these higher frames or metalevels, “logical levels.” They are the conceptual classes and categories that you create and carry with you as your meaning-making style. These are the entities of the mind and have no external reality (i.e., time, history, beliefs, values, self, concepts, etc.).

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Primary Emotions and Emotional States: Robert Plutchik (1980) wrote a book on emotions where he postulated that there are eight primary emotions. In Emotion: A Psycho-evolutionary Synthesis, he listed fear, surprise, sad, disgust, anger, anticipation, joy, and acceptance (receptivity) as the primary ones. For him, an emotion is— “. . . a complex sequence of events having elements of cognitive appraisal, feeling, impulses to action, and overt behavior.”

From this he theorized the emotional process in terms of “a chain reaction.” This led to the following: Stimulus Event —> Cognition —> Feeling —> Behavior —> Function Threat by Enemy —>Danger —>Fear —>Run —> Protection Loss of Parent —>Isolation —> Sadness —> Cry for Help —> Reintegration

From this he mapped primary and mixed emotions in the following way: Anticipation and joy > Optimism Anticipation and anger > Aggressiveness Joy and acceptance > Love Acceptance and fear > Submission Fear and surprise > Awe Surprise and sadness > Disappointment; Sadness and disgust > Remorse Disgust and anger > Contempt (Psychology Today, Feb. 1980, pp. 68-78).

In the following chart on page 17, I have put 12 primary emotions along 6 continua. Neuro-Semantics and Emotional Intelligence “People with a high level of personal mastery cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, inasmuch as they wouldn’t choose to limit themselves to walking on one leg or watching with one eye.” (Peter Senge)

The following principles govern how we think about emotions in NeuroSemantics and emotional intelligence. #1. Emotional intelligence relates to how one handle your emotions. Emotional intelligence does not refer to transforming emotions from unintelligent to intelligent, instead it refers to developing a higher intelligence with regard to own emotions. Emotions as such are not intelligent or stupid, but simply the “movement” and registering in the body of the difference between map and territory. An emotion arises when you make a registering or evaluation between your internal mapping of the -19-

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world and out external experiencing of the world, intelligence does not lie in them per se. Emotions are not to “guide” per se, only to provide the map/territory information. #2. Emotion are neither good nor bad. Emotions are just emotions. They are simply the relationship between how you map and how you experience the world. They are not moral or immoral, good or bad. While most everybody has tabooed and forbid certain emotions, especially the “negative” ones, emotions in themselves are neither moral nor immoral. Morality arises from what a person does with his or her emotional states, how one expresses feelings, not from the fact that a person experiences emotions. We generally refer to the emotions that inhibit and stop us as “negative.” Yet they are only negative in the sense that they represent a warning, an alert, and an alarm of some danger. #3. Emotional intelligence begins by acceptance of emotions as emotions. Without acceptance of your emotions for what they are, you will end up wasting time and energy fighting your nature. Rejection of your emotions (positive or negative) create “dragon states.” This arises from prohibitions, taboos, beliefs, etc. #4. Emotional intelligence involves a strong and positive sense of self. If you read your “emotions” in terms of your ego, if you “personalize” or “moralize” about your emotions, you confuse the signal and message value of your emotions. Emotions are not messages about self-worth, value, morality, etc. They are signals or messages about the map/ territory difference. #5. Emotional intelligence involves the intra-personal intelligence of looking within and re-examining one’s mental maps about the world. The lack of openness, curiosity, interest, learning, etc. suggests a rigidity and closed-mind approach that prevents an intelligent use of one’s emotions. #6. Emotional intelligence involves an accepting approach to your body. Emotions are made out of the stuff of body (soma); they are somatic and psycho-somatic. They affect your body, neurology, nervous system, physiology, etc. This is where and how you register the motions of emotions. The kinesthetic part of emotions involves the sensations of your body: breath, muscle tension, posture, etc. -20-

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PRIMARY EMOTIONS CHART: Glad/ Pleasure Joy Delight

Calm Relaxed

Attraction Love

Tired Focused

Fear Flight: Away From

Anger Fight: Go At

Distracted Stress/ Tension Aversion/ Hate Energy/ Energetic Dislike/ Displeasure Sad

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#7. Emotional intelligence openly re-examines one’s evaluations. Emotions are one part body and one part mind. The mind part involves evaluations about things: expectations, understandings, beliefs, values, history, imaginations, thinking style, etc. “The emotionally intelligent person that you are can, and will be willing to, constantly question your own interpretations.“ (Merlevede and Bridoux, 2001)

#8. At the heart of emotional intelligence is a sense of power over them, choice about them. When emotions “have” you, you feel out-of-control. When you “have” (choose, elicit, generate) your emotions, you feel in control and empowered. #9. Emotions are functions of our meanings; change the frame of meaning and the emotion changes. There is rhyme and reason to emotions; there is a structure and form to them. They operate as reflections and expressions of one’s meanings. This explains why an emotion or emotional state can change in moments. Change the frame that leverages the emotion, and it immediately transforms. #10. There are two royal roads to emotional states: mind and body. These royal roads gives you two primary avenues for affecting, influencing, and transforming your emotions. #11. If you don’t learn how to effectively manipulate your emotions, your emotions will effectively manipulate you. Since all emotions are appropriate (appropriate to the maps from which they arise in relation to your experience of the world), they are of information value, and should not be valued as an independent source of information or a criteria for what you should do. Wanting to do what comes “naturally” or”spontaneously” is simply giving up the process of taking charge of them and condemning yourself to living like a caveman. It takes E.Q. as well as I.Q. to succeed to make your hopes and dreams come true. If you aren’t in charge of your emotions, you will find it next to impossible to get yourself to take effective action to achieve your dreams and plans. #12. All emotions are not equal; they do not occur on the same level. You have primary emotions and then rich blends of emotions. You even have meta-emotions that are hardly emotions at all. Primary emotions and -22-

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emotional states are in reference to the world whereas meta-feelings (or meta-states) are in reference to your own thoughts and emotions.

The Basic Meta-States Model As we tease out the structure of meta-states we go up the levels. Your meta-states operate as your executive programs for being, functioning, seeing, etc. They exist as higher levels of references and information and therefore govern your experiences as attractors in a self-organizing system. It is all mapping! Reflexivity refers to how thought-emotion reflect back onto itself to then set a higher frame-of-reference. _

Beliefs all the way Up Your inner subjective reality is comprised of beliefs all the way up. That may come as a challenge to fully understand and use. If so, the following chart will help. If you have been trained in Dilts’ Neuro-Logical levels you may have a tendency to separate “values” from “beliefs” from “identity,” etc. and to treat these nominalizations as things. Yet “identity” is a belief and so are “values.” In fact, every state that you apply to another state is at the same time all of the logical levels. That’s why when you turn the nominalized phrase, “logical levels,” back into process verbs, you then start speaking about fluid layering of levels of thinking-feeling states upon each other to create your Matrix of frames. When you meta-state learning with curiosity — you believe in curiosity as a resource, you value it, you may identify with it, it may fit into your direction and purpose, it may reflect your sense of spirituality, etc. Model of the world Frames: Paradigms about life, reality, destiny, etc. Intentional Frames: Desired outcomes, goals, intentions Expectation Frames: Thoughts of anticipation, hopes, dreams Metaphor Frames: Analogies, stories, myths, metaphors Identification Frames: Identifying with various ideas, memories, hopes, etc. Belief System Frames: Layered beliefs about beliefs -23-

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Heuristic Frames: Principles, concepts, abstract knowledge Understanding Frames: Domains of knowledge, information History Frames: Representations of previous experiences and learnings Decision Frames: Choosing certain ideas, beliefs, understandings Value Frames: Valuing or giving Importance to various ideas Belief Frames: Confirming thoughts about primary thoughts

Summary There is a higher form of magic in meta-states and meta-stating—a magic that creates your psycho-logics and mine. That’s why we all live in such unique reality structures or matrices and why communication, in the end, is a non-linear complex experience. You never know what you have communicated because you never fully know the matrix world of frames that the other person lives in and uses to hear your signals. The magic of meaning-making is where we all create our Matrix of frames and then live. Now with the Meta-States Model we can now model the structured layered and complex states that constitute this reality. As you do we move into something beyond the primary states, into neuro-semantic states—the states that carry your meanings with you and that give the specific texture and feel to your inner experiences. These states are emotional because they register your meanings and valued beliefs and so send commands to your nervous systems (neurology) regarding how to feel and respond. All of this points to the pathway for emotional intelligence, for selfmastery and self-management.

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T

o understand meta-states and to use the Meta-States Model effectively demands a different kind of thinking than the everyday thinking we use in business and even the kind of thinking that’s required to master NLP. What kind of thinking is this? How does this thinking differ from our regular thinking? Because your meta-states arise from your ability to step aside from your own thinking and emoting and to reflect back onto that experience, the different kind of thinking is non-linear and self-reflexive as you go round in round the feedback / feed-forward loops of the matrix, upward and downward spiral thinking, and the classification of layers that texture states. Now if that description sounds thick and complicated, don’t worry, I’ll pull it apart and offer descriptions of its parts. Overall, to understand the systemic functions and processes of the mind-body-emotion system, you have to shift from linear to non-linear thinking. This means expecting that things will not go forward in a straightforward way. Information will not just go through your mental “programs” and be processed. Rather the information will be responded to multiple times. You will not only process -25-

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the information once and be done with it, but you will then process it according to multiple frames, at different times, and you will respond to your responses, and do so repeatedly, again and again. So how do we track such non-linear processing? Is there a secret or trick to knowing what to attend and when to shift? Yes, there is an internal logic to how our minds go round in circles and how we reflect on our reflections. That internal logic lies in the layering of our states. That is, when you transcend from one state (say, anger or joy) to another state (say, calmness or respect) you set the second state as a frame over the first. Yet as you do that, you also include the first state inside the second one. You embed the first step inside the second. This creates “calm anger,” respectful joy, joyful learning, etc. It makes the first state a member of the class of the second. “But that’s not logical.” Yes, of course not! Rather than “logical,” it is psycho–logical. And that’s the difference we have to keep in mind, understand, and let govern our exploration of the meta-levels of our mind in the matrix of our frames within frames—the psycho-logics that we create. On the inside, when you put a state like anger or fear inside another state (i.e., calmness, respect, gentleness, courage, etc.), you change the internal logic of your nervous system and your personality. You create new psychologics. This describes the actual content and operations of what we call “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.” In this way we create a higher level of meaning than mere association or linkage. In the stimulus—>response world, we use Pavlov’s unconditioned conditioning as the first level of meaning making. When we first ask the question, “What does X mean?” the first answer looks at the thoughts and feelings that have been linked or connected to the stimulus. It means to the person whatever has been linked. When, however, we ask the question a second time, “What does it mean?” we then move inside to find out how the person has framed it. How has the person classified it? -26-

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What words and labels have the person used to define it? What evaluations and judgments has the person used to categorize it? These are the higher levels which create the psycho-logics of the meaning. Each higher level becomes a classification for the referent event or idea which becomes a member of that class. In this, remember that “logical levels” are not things, but processes. They do not exist “out there” beyond your mind and nervous system, they describe how you layer one thought and feeling upon another. The layering is the action or process. They exist only in your mind as how you represent categories and levels. Imagining Fluid “Logical Levels” Dilts, Epstein and Dilts (1991) has written this as a basic orientation to understanding “logical levels.” "In our brain structure, language, and perceptual systems there are natural hierarchies or levels of experiences. The effect of each level is to organize and control the information on the level below it. Changing something on an upper level would necessarily change things on the lower levels; changing something on a lower level could but would not necessarily affect the upper levels." (p. 26, italics added). "Logical Levels: an internal hierarchy in which each level is progressively more psychologically encompassing and impactful" (1990: 217, italics added).

When we nominalize the process of layering one awareness and feeling upon another and call it “logical levels,” we lose awareness of the actual processes involved. It therefore becomes useful to turn the phrase (logical levels) back into a verb form in order to remember the action. When we do, we get a pretty clumsy and awkward phrase, “logical leveling.” yet at least reminds us that we are talking about a process. It reminds us how we are processing information and feeling it in our body as we layer level upon level of thoughts and feelings. This is essential if you’re to understand meta-states, “logical levels,” and the way you construct your psycho-logics. You have to shift from thinking about rigid hierarchical levels to fluid levels ever in flux—ever moving, changing, and in process. And because the so-called “logical levels” are not things and so not rigid or static. They are mental and emotional energy expressions of representing and framing and they arise and vanish according to your thinking. That’s why they are so fluid and plastic and do not hold -27-

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still. The levels or layers of “logical levels” are made out of the stuff of thinkingand-feeling. They are not “real,” solid, or static in spite of the nominalizations used to describe them. We also call these “logical levels” by a whole host of other nominalizations: beliefs, values, identity, mission, understanding, intentions, etc. Another thing, there are a lot more “logical levels” than the six mentioned in Dilts’ Neuro-Logical list. In Neuro-Semantics we have actually identified more than 100 such levels. These include: decisions, understandings, expectations, domains of knowledge, pleasure, intention, non-propositional symbols, metaphors, memory, imagination, meaning, etc. There’s yet another complication about the way we layer one level upon another. Each of the “logical levels” and the terms we use to describe the levels, each are included within every level. If you bring a state of confidence to your sense of self, this operates as a belief, and because you treat this as important, you value it; you understand facets of some knowledge that area, this leads to expectations, decisions, identifications, intentions, etc. Each level is simultaneously multi-layered with all of these levels. Each “logical level” is merely another facet of the same diamond of consciousness and experience. Putting Fluidity into “Logical Types and Levels” Gregory Bateson (1987) used the theory of logical types to create his levels of learning. In defining a logical type, he noted the following: The name is not the thing named, but is of different logical type, higher than the thing named. The class is of different logical type, higher than that of its members. (pp. 209-210).

What then do we mean when we speak about layering levels, “logical levels,” of thoughts and feelings upon thoughts and feeling? We speak about — 1. Hierarchies of experience. 2. Higher levels organize and control information on lower levels. 3. The modulation effect of the system necessarily works downward. 4. The modulation effect of the system does not necessarily work upward. 5. Higher levels operate more encompassing and impactful than the lower levels. -28-

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6. There exists a discontinuity between the levels—a break. 7. The relationship of logic between levels creates "paradox" if we don’t sort phenomena on different levels. 8. Hierarchical logical levels function as a system, the higher levels arise out of the lower and feed back information into the system to influence the lower levels. This creates recursiveness within logical levels. 9. As a cybernetic system, as information moves up logical levels new features emerge that does not exist at the lower levels. This emergence at higher levels involve, in systems language, summitivity. In other words, the emergent property does not exist only as the sum of the parts, but new properties and qualities arise over “time” within the system. 10. Reflexivity describes one of the new features that emerge in logical levels. In living organisms this results in self-reflexiveness or selfconsciousness. 11. As a system with feedback properties, logical levels operates by selfreflexiveness, the whole system becomes cybernetic. It becomes a "system that feeds back onto and changes itself" (Dilts, 1990, 33). This makes it self-organizing.

What happens as we move up the meta-levels? Question: Having identified that you layer your thoughts and feelings upon each other, what happens as you set frames and classifications? Answer: You build a matrix of embedded frames. At the primary level, you experience some event (a person, a word, a situation, an experience) and you bring that event inside yourself by representing it on the theater of your mind. As you then repeat that representation over and over, running that movie repeatedly, it habituates. It is in this way that you hold a represented reference in your mind-body system. You take it with you everywhere you go. It becomes your frames of reference—your frame of mind. How do you do this? You do it by embedding level upon level, classifying one idea or belief within another. In this way you create belief systems. You create the psycho-logics of your mind which you use as your overall matrix for making sense of the world. The Matrix both reflects and generates your higher neuro-semantic states, neuro-semantic because it is your meaning making style. In common everyday talk we misuse and abuse language as symbols. First we nominalize actions which makes them static and non-moving. Then we repeat this process with every possible perspective of our layering of -29-

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thoughts-and-emotions with the result that we end up with a whole array of terms that actually refer to the same thing, namely, the layering of the mind. If we want to work effectively in any domain, we inevitably have to create a new specialized language that gives us a more refined precision. Only then can we move beyond the “folk psychology” contained in the everyday language and experience greater precision and clarity. In mathematics, we cannot speak precisely without using the language of math. The same applies to anthropology, literature, chemistry, computer science, medicine, etc. Our semantic network of the layering of our mind is made up of frames embedded in frames. What once was an external referent we bring in and make our inner referential schemas. Belief: believing, thinking a thought of confirmation about a thought, a confirmed, a validated, “true,” accurate, or “real” thought. Value: valuing, thinking thoughts of importance and significance about a thought. A valued thought. Decision: deciding, thinking thoughts that choose, separate away choices, “cuts off” alternatives about a thought. Choosing to accept a thought, refusing to accept another thought. Understand: understanding, a way of representing and thinking about something that conceptually stands under a frame of reference that offers a construct or way of thinking about something. Idea: “seeing” (literally), a way to think about something. Map: mapping, the constructing, formatting, framing, representing of one thing in terms of another. Meaning: to give meaning, to link or associate one thing with another; to use one thing as a form (or format) for another (contextual meaning). Convictions: beliefs about beliefs. Domains of understanding: understandings of understandings. Paradigms: models of models. Model of the world: larger level conceptual structures. Belief systems: interconnected beliefs about beliefs. Frame of reference: conceptually referencing something and using as your benchmark or frame, framing a thought, belief, value, etc. using some format or construction. Identification: identifying, personalizing thoughts about other thoughts, representations, and beliefs.

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Multi-Ordinality The next complication beyond turning a process word (a verb) into a noun (a nominalization) is applying a nominalization to a nominalization. When you apply the same nominalization to itself you have yet another linguistic distinction, you create a multi-ordinal term. That is, the same term at each ordinal level means something different. For example, consider the following. Level 1: Imagine the primary state of love— loving someone. That’s love1. Level 2: Can we love our state and experience of love? What do we call it when we not only love someone, but love loving them? We call it infatuation. Love of love is infatuation. This is Love2. Level 3: Can we love infatuation? Sure. Love of love of love is then romanticism. Love3. Does the primary state of love different from infatuation (love2)? Of course. And does romanticism (love3) differ from infatuation (love2)? Yes. This means that the term love means something different at each level. As metalanguage, multi-ordinality enables us to talk abut the higher layering of thoughts-and-feelings. Korzybski went so far as to say that his theory of multi-ordinality was the resolution to the problems and structure of both science and sanity. He considered it that important. Your thinking-and-feeling powers of layering empowers you to build thoughts-and-feelings (states) at many levels. It is when you do not notice the levels (the layering), confuse the levels, and/or to wish the levels would just go away—that you both create and experience confusion and various sorts of category errors. All thoughts are not equal in that they do not all occur at the same level. “Thought” occurs at many different levels and we label such thought by different terms. This generates differences in emotions—there’s primary level emotion (driven, determined, encoded, and structured by primary level thinking). Then there is meta-feelings (determined and controlled by metalevel thinking). For more about multi-ordinality, see the extended MetaModel in Communication Magic (2001, formerly The Secrets of Magic, 1998).

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Embedding states within states All of this reveals some of the ways that meta-states involves a different kind of thinking. You have to shift from linear and sequential to systemic. Yet if you know the basic format of a meta-state structure, you know that you are working with embedding one state inside of another state. What results from this is that the higher state sets a frame and establishes a context. This both explains the power and pervasiveness of meta-states, it also identifies the centrality of these formats. The embedded structure of these meta-level states means that they function as your conceptual contexts—your semantic reality or matrix. Simultaneously they establish your conscious and unconscious frames-ofreference. Within them you have your beliefs and belief systems, beliefs about what’s important (your “values”), decisions, and domains of understanding. This establishes your personality framework which is comprised of your sense of identity, vision, and destiny. In this way you construct your reality strategy which defines for you what you view as “real,” “possible,” “permissible,” etc. Given this structure of your matrix of frames, you can explore that matrix. What are your meta-states, the meta-states that you never leave home without? What meta-frames currently govern your experiences? What higher level executive states organize your everyday experiences? How well do they serve you? Do you achieve the things that you value? Do you experience the kind and quality of experiences that you desire? Do you feel in control of your life, of your mental and emotional functioning? Do you get a bang out of everyday life? Would you like to establish some new, more resourceful frames? Would you like to identify and take charge of your meta-mind? How valuable would it be to you to have access to your inner executive states? The Nature of Reflexivity—an Infinite Regress or Progress? Within reflexivity we have another process, a never-ending process that adds to the different kind of thinking that’s at the heart and soul in meta-32-

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states and meta-stating. The process of stepping back from your thinking and feeling is an unending process. You can continue to do this forever. There is no end to this process. Now while philosophers describe this as the “infinite regress,” it is in actuality the foundation for your ability to infinitely progress in your development. So in Neuro-Semantics we speak about this as the infinite progress. What is the reason for this? Because if you are stuck at any point, this process allows you to always make yet another move. You can always outframe whatever frame you have set. The ability to "go meta" is your ability to abstract about your abstractions. A meta-state essentially is your reaction to your reactions, your second thoughts to your first thoughts, and your third thoughts to your second thoughts and so on. The infinite progress is that whatever you think or feel, you can always entertain a thought-and -feeling about that! What results from this meta-cognition power is your ability to always respond in a new and fresh way. Thinking about your thinking creates meta-thinking. Talking about your talk generates meta-communication. Feeling about your feelings brings forth meta-emotions and meta-feelings. Modeling your model creates meta-models.

Thinking Systemically As the processing of your awareness reflects back onto yourself and onto the products and processes of your states, it feeds its own responses back into the system. Feedback from a state and set of interactions thereby reenters the system and becomes part of the next stage of development of the state. The feedback loop creates the next level up. This feed-backing process, in turn, creates a self-organizing system with the thinking-and-feeling of the feedback as the attractor for the meta-state. The content of your representations becomes the attractor of the higher state or frame. This, in turn, stabilizes in the meta-level formulation. It creates what we commonly call a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” In this way, the metastate generates an unconscious frame and stability. Utilizing distinctions from the field of Meta-Cognition, Norman Holland describes this as “feedback loops governing feedback loops.” The somatic embodiment of the mind-emotional state generates a “field” of -33-

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forces or energies and as the feed-backing process continues, it generates a systemic organization that continually elaborates upon itself, making it more layered and rich. Of course, you have to think systemically about these processes to recognize this. When you have an inter-active system (i.e. the mind-body-emotion neurolinguistic system) you have a context within which systemic phenomena can arise —emergent properties or gestalts. As you we think strategically about the effect of level-upon-level, you can check the ecological value of a particular meta-stating structure. What is the emergent property that arises from meta-stating? The emergent property is the gestalt states that you create. In any and every meta-state that you create, the feedback nature of your reflexivity and of the feedback loops creates numerous system processes. And with that, now new things can and do emerge. We call this emergence. New qualities emerge in a non-summary, non-additive way. A gestalt-like structure-forming, summarizing, and integrating activity emerges from the overall experience. This creates a structure-as-a-whole feeling or gestalt. What happens when you meta-state? All kinds of things can and do happen. As a system, the interface of the numerous variables allows you to create all kinds of wild and sometimes strange effects. Some can be helpful and hurtful, others can be empowering and dis-empowering. As you observe how states interact or interface at the various levels creating new gestalts, you will find some of the most mysterious feelings, experiences, and states. The interfacing of state-upon-state enables us now to expand and range of human experiences infinitely. Korzybski (1933) noted the following in Science and Sanity (1933/ 1994, p. 440): curiosity of curiosity intense curiosity attention of attention attending attention analysis of analysis study of analysis reasoning about reasoning science choice of choice freedom, lack of blockages consideration of consider. cultured thought. knowing of knowing cons. of abstracting evaluation of evaluation a theory of sanity worry about worry morbid worrisomeness fear of fear paranoia/ agoraphobia -34-

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pity of pity self-pity, pitifulness! belief in belief fanaticism, dogmatism, intolerance conviction of conviction dogmatism ignorance of ignorance innocence free-will of free-will empowering choice choice of choice empowering sense of choice anger at fear self-anger joyful about anger celebrative about freedom in using anger as an emotion sad about anger awareness of misusing anger angry about sadness inappropriate sadness fearful about sadness self-paranoia guilt about angry self-judgment for anger inhibition of an inhibition positive excitation hate of hate nullification of emotion, liking, desire to like doubt of doubt scientific criticism procrastination of procrastination. taking action interruption of interruption confusion prohibition of... anger, fear, joy, etc. stuck

Meta-Stating Effects— Wild and Crazy Interactions Questions: What happens when you meta-state? What happens when you create a state-upon-state structure, when you layer states and frames upon each other? What kind of interfacing effects result? What kind of responses, consequences can you create by using various meta-stating patterns? Answer: The following are among the key results that arise when we jump a “logical level” and set one state upon another. 1) Painfully intense states are reduced. Some meta-stating will reduce the intensity and power of the primary state: calm about anger; doubt about doubt. 2) Intensify states. Some meta-states will amplify and turn up the primary state: worry about worry; calm about calm; loving learning; anxious about anxiety (hyper-anxiety); love love; passionate about learning; appreciate appreciation. 3) Exaggerate and distort states. This increases the intensity factor. Generally, when you apply negative state to another state, you turn your psychic energies -35-

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against yourself. Anger about anger; love hatred of; fear about fear; hesitating to hesitate (talk non-fluently) creates stuttering; sadness about sadness (depression); mistrust of mistrust. 4) Negate states. In doubt about my doubt, I usually feel more sure; resist your resistance; in procrastinating my procrastination, I take action and put off the putting off. Mistrust of mistrust, ashamed of shame; hate your hatred. 5) Interrupt states. It jars and shifts the first state, it totally interrupts it. It can arrest the psycho-logic: humorous about seriousness; anxious about calmness; calmness about anxiety; intentionally panicking. 6) Create confusion. By getting various thoughts-feelings to collide and "fuse" "with" each other in ways that we do not comprehend. Ludicrous seriousness. 7) Create paradox. Paradox isn’t real—you can’t see it, hear it, touch, smell or taste it. Paradox doesn’t exist “out there” in the world, but inside the mindbody-emotion system as a map/territory confusion. It is a category error. It arises whenever a person confuses levels. The classic paradox, "Be spontaneous now!" confuses a spontaneous response at the primary level and a order or command at the meta-level. The same occurs in the command: Try really hard to relax. "Never say never." "Never and always are two words one should always remember never to use." "I'm absolutely certain that nothing is absolutely certain." The Title of book: "This Book Needs No Title." (Raymond M. Small, 1980) 8) Create dissociation. While the word meta itself does not mean or equate to “dissociation,” yet when you go meta and step back from one state you can sometimes step out of your comfort zone and reality zone so much that you feel weird, strange, outside your usual self, floating, numb, spaced out, etc. In these responses you do what we call “dissociate.” And if you dissociate dramatically enough, amnesia may result. Actually any time you states too rapidly and without a grounding anchor for reference, you can produce amnesia and other trance phenomena. When you meta-state yourself with distance from pain, observing old trauma, etc. you can create the phenomenon that’s falsely labeled as “dissociation.” -36-

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9) Create the beginning of a new process. By setting one state upon another, you can sometimes initiate the first step of a new experience. You can create a new emergent experience, for example, the courage to have courage; playful uncertainty; learning how to learn; gentle anger; willing to become willing. 10) Grab and focus attention and swish the mind. This can provoke more thoughtfulness as it leads in a different direction. It can arrest attention, overload consciousness, stimulate new thinking, and question axioms, beliefs, reasoning, memory, etc. (hence deframe). Examples: Calm about anger; appreciative about anger; lovingly gentle about anger; resistance of resistance. 11) Induce trance and trance phenomena. Most people experience third-order abstracting and above as "trancy." It invites one to "go inside" so much that the inward focus of trance develops as one engages, consciously and unconsciously, in an internal search for meaning. We especially experience metastating that shifts logical types and sets up double-binds as initiating trance. An example: Rebel against thinking about just how comfortable you can feel if you don't close your eyes before you're ready to relax deeper than you ever have before, now. I wonder if you're going to fail to succeed at not going into trance at exactly your own speed or whether you won't. 12) Create gestalt states. States-about-states frequently generates gestalt experiences so that something new emerges from the process that you cannot explain, as a summation of the parts, it partakes of a systemic and nonadditivity quality. Examples: Suppress excitement creates anxiety; worrying about what any given activity or meaning means leads to existential concern. 13) Creates humor. The jolt and jar of state-upon-state often results in the gestalt of humor (Plato: that which we experience as "out of place in time and space without danger"). It tickles your fancy, delights your consciousness, surprises, amazes, shocks, etc. 14) Qualify experiences. Higher level states qualify all lower level experiences by setting the frame for them as in joyful learning, an accomplished liar, a devious negotiation, a boring learning, a charming lie, ruthless compassion. In this you can texture the quality of your states. -37-

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15) Solidifying frames and levels. When you believe in a primary state, value it, take pride in your learning, believe in the importance of feeling fully your depression, etc., you make the lower state more permanent, solid, and lasting. This works as an installation pattern. 16) Loosening frames. Conversely, you can not only use higher states to solidify a level, but also to loosen a frame and level. Examples: Doubting in the importance of learning, questioning your confidence, being playful about your serious beliefs, etc. The Top-Down Pervasiveness of Meta-Levels Because meta-states govern, modify, modulate, control, drive, and organize the states below them and especially the primary states, they are more important and crucial than primary states. Primary states are embedded in and do service for the higher frames. Gregory Bateson (1972) described this principle in his work. This leads to the realization that meta-messages modify the lower levels. Modulating is another important term to introduce here. This term refers to the fact that you create a controlling influence when you create a higher state and put it in a meta-relationship to a lower state. Meta-levels dominate because they organize and modulate the lower states. The higher operates as a self-organizing influence or attractor over the lower Another difference in Meta-States is summarized in the word coalesce. In NLP, when you combine two states, you typically do so in order to let them “collapse” upon each other. The fact that we experience our states in our neurology means that an attempt to feel relaxed and tense at the very same time will create confusion and reduce the two states. NLP patterns for the collapsing of anchors involves “firing” two anchors for two very different states off simultaneously. When you do this, you disperse neurological energy. While this can happen in meta-stating, it is rare. Typically when you apply one state to another by setting up a meta-relationship between them, the lower state will not collapse. Instead it ut will become embedded inside of the higher state. Then the higher state as mental-and-emotional energy will seep down into the lower state. It will permeate the lower. And as the frame of the lower, it will coalesce into the lower and thereby texture it. -38-

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This is a different kind of experience and leads to some very different responses. It is by the process of repetition and habituation that you get your higher frames or states to coalesce into your lower states. When you create a metastate, that higher state will not stay meta for long. With time and repetition it will merge into the lower state to texture and qualify it. This explains how perceptual filters or meta-programs are created. What begins as a state (global state, detail state, matching or mismatching state) becomes a metastate and then permeates so that it gets into our neurology, into your muscles, into your eyes. It is the coalescing of states that creates the process for qualifying or texturing your states, and to increase your emotional intelligence. Now you can create calm fear, respectful anger, curious sadness, etc. This enables you to see what happens after you transcend one state. You include it inside of a higher frame so that it becomes a member of that class. The coalescing of levels gives the sense and feel of being of “one mind” about something even though you can tease out the layers of thoughts and feelings within it. This emerges as a feature and quality of a system. The nesting of frames-within-frames, of thoughts and feelings within other thoughts and feelings creates higher level gestalts or configurations which exist as more than the sum of the parts. In modeling we frequently tease out the features of the expert’s meta-programs in order to explore and identify the specific qualities of mind-and-emotion that textures the expertise. Given this embeddedness of states and the layers of thoughts, there are always higher frames and states governing and influencing experiences, there are always higher meta-states hiding. Knowing that there are always implied frames, you can explore and question about the frames by implication. Meta-Questioning for Teasing Out Meta-Structures All meta-levels in the mind are made up of the same “stuff” that governs the primary level: thoughts, feelings, and physiology. You use see-hear-feel representations and words to build up meanings at the meta-levels to create the matrices of your 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 energies, different facets giving us other ways to express the same -39-

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thing—the meta-frame. This is not trivial. It means that you can view a “meaning” as an idea that you “hold in the mind” as a belief, a value, an identity, an understanding, etc. Every frame has every one of these categories within it. This typically confuses people about the higher levels or “logical levels” of the mind. When you nominalize these categories, “Beliefs,” “Values,” etc. you miscue your mind-and-body so that you begin to think of them as “things.” They are not. And they are not different things. All of these words are but expressions of various mental processes— the framings that people do which creates our neuro-semantic reality (or Matrix). Think of the following questions as 26 ways to way around the diamond of consciousness and experience and see, hear, feel and explore the many facets of perception and focus. These are facets of focus that give multiple ways into the Matrix of the mind. (For the most extensive list of more than 100, see Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and Performance (2011). 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 we use to set frame of reference, structures of context in 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” we draw as summary conclusions about things. 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 eureka experience. (Denis Bridoux) How does it feel to realize this? -40-

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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” we allow and permit which open up new possibilities. 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, 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 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 used 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” we value, treat as important and significant. 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. 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” we separate and “cut off” from other choices so 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” about 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” 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? -41-

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14. Expectation / Anticipation: The “ideas” 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” about 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” about cause, influence, and contributing factors. 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” about cultural identity, definition of reality, and ways of life. 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” used as higher frames to reflect one’s assumptive world and worldview. 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” about previous experiences. 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” used to set up the rules of the games and the modal operators that generate one’s modus operandi. 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 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? -42-

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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” 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” about “self,” and self-defining. 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” that come together as more complex mappings. 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” formed 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” used as guidelines, laws, 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?

Culture as a “Logical Level” With all of these many facets of the so-called “logical levels,” where or how does culture fit into it? With all of the cultural frames, beliefs, values, understandings, perspectives, memories, language, etc.—how do we map culture -43-

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and cultural phenomena into this model? Clearly, all cultural beliefs are frames—frames of mind that we have learned about a thousand different things from all of the habits and ways of operating regarding eating, learning, education, values, greetings, dating, mating, life transitions, authority, etc. I began relating Meta-States to such from the cultural work of Korzybski and especially from all of the anthropological work of Bateson. As an anthropologist, Bateson constantly wrote about and developed models around cultural phenomena. Later I came across the work of John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (1995) and the tremendous contribute he made. That work provides a structural analysis of how a group of people create their cultural or social reality. It describes how cultures as groups of people construct their shared realities and then make real in their speech acts and rituals. The formula he created speaks about the process of how the raw data at the sensory level is elevated (in our minds) and shared with the minds of others as our social and cultural reality: X counts as Y in C Some X —as a brute empirical fact (sensory-based information) stands for, is recognized as, and counts as some Y —a meta-term (nominalization) in a given Context ©. For example, we consider certain pieces of paper which we carry with us as especially valuable. At the sensory level, it is a piece of paper that’s designed and printed with ink, just the brute fact of paper or plastic. Yet this empirical brute fact (X) can be counted as “money” as denominations of money (Y) and used to buy and sell, exchange products and services, and can drive an economy. Of course, that only works in a given culture or cultural context ©. Euro dollars work Europe for exchange, but not in America or Australia. Or we can consider the brute fact, the empirical see-hear-feel “fact” of seeing a person run across a white line on a green grass of a field inside of a set of seats (X) and we can count that act as a “point” (Y) in a football game in the context of a given University sponsored game. It is in this way that we can take various brute empirical facts of the world (X) and categorize or classify them in such a way so as to construct in our -44-

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mind and the minds of others a social reality. When all of us then act as if it is real, it becomes real to us. It becomes our shared reality—our social construct. The meaning-making this creates is not a mere individual meaning, it is a community meaning. It also calls a community as a “culture” into being. There’s a lot more in this model that Searle details regarding the construction of social reality. Other dynamics include the speech acts that we use in community, the cultural processes by which we designate certain roles and status and then assign them the power to function as the creators of social meaning. This translates their acts (performances), operations, and talk (speech acts) into the recognized frames in a culture. We can also assign status-functions that carry with it various obligations, responsibilities, and privileges. Chapter Summary NLP and other models calls for horizontal thinking, the kind of traditional “logical” thinking whereby we move linearly from A to B to C. All of this changes with Meta-States as the Meta-States Model involves a different kind of thinking. The systemic and non-linear thinking of Meta-States is driven by reflexivity. It’s this reflecting back onto ourselves and the products and processes of your experiencing that makes your mind-bodyemotion system truly a system. The infinite progress means that you can always step back from your thinking-emoting experience and progress to a higher level. This stepping back gives you the ability to change your own belief systems and matrix systems of frames. You are not stuck! Well, you are only as stuck as your frames lock you in, and only to the extent you don’t use the step back skill. “Logical” layering is a process, a dynamic process and it generates in common everyday language dozens upon dozens of “logical levels” that are neither rigid hierarchical levels nor “logical.” The inner Matrix of the mind-body-emotion system is psychological. That’s how you created it and that’s what you have to work with as you map things and move through the world. Yet while your inner psycho-logics may seem crazy and non-sensical to those on the outside, from the inside it makes sense. Thinking in terms of levels or more accurately, layering, enables you to detect and transform your frames of mind. It enables you to recognize the interfaces between state-upon-state structures. It -45-

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empowers you to know that you are the framer, and if you assume ownership, you can take charge of the higher levels of your mind and set executive frames for healthy and productive self-organizing of your mind-body-emotion system. This is the adventure of NeuroSemantics.

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O

ver the years since I first discovered the Meta-States Model (1994), that model has been taking the field of NLP to a whole new level. In this process it has been providing valuable corrections for things that were missing in the original NLP model. At first I thought of MetaStates as strictly just another pattern for working with meta-cognition, the stepping back processes, and texturing one state with another to create and design new experiences. Then as more and more Meta-State patterns arose, I began to go meta to the Meta-States Model itself which allowed me and my colleagues to see how it embraced and outframed even the other metadomains of NLP (the Meta-Model and Meta-Programs). Because of that, in 1998, Bob Bodenhamer and I began working on a Three Meta-Domain model for unifying the NLP Model. But that only lasted a short while because in 1999 I discovered the truth about the so-called sub-modalities and then, along with Bob, we wrote about that. We discovered that there is nothing sub, that is, at a lower level in sub-modalities. How could the elements of the category of submodalities exist and operate at a lower level when some of them are also linguistic elements of the Meta-Model and others are perceptual filters of the Meta-Programs, which are both meta-domains? That didn’t make sense. And we were discovering why it didn’t. I posted that question which captivated me to Bob. From that exploration we discovered that the so-called sub-modality model is actually another -47-

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meta-domain. Later we began talking about it as the realm of the Cinematic Features or the Meta-Modalities. After I made several presentations at various NLP conferences, we wrote an entire book about it. At first, I titled it, The Structure of Excellence: Unmasking the Meta-Levels of SubModalities. In the next edition, I re-titled it as, Sub-Modalities Going Meta (2004). Of course, adding a phrase like “Meta-Modalities” only added more jargon to NLP, something I was not keen on doing. So for a long time, we simply used the term “sub-modalities” putting it in quotes. Later, however, by relanguaging the VAK sensory representation systems (more NLP jargon) as the movie that plays on the screen of a person’s mind. This enabled us to speak about sub-modalities as the cinematic features of one’s mental movies. In 2003 I wrote MovieMind to fully develop that metaphor. This was a struck of luck (or genius). Why? Because everybody who has gone to a movie to watch a cinema knows about cinematic features. Everybody who was watched “the movie magic” of the visual effects that directors and editors and animators have created know about cinematic features. And everybody can also easily recognize that an editor can edit in these features—making the picture bigger or smaller, zooming in and out, adding in different sound tracks, fading a picture out, etc. Ah, that’s what you are doing when you alter the so-called sub-modalities! Everybody can also recognize that a person has to step back (i.e., go meta) in order to look at one’s inner movie of the mind to then begin to play with it. Editorial changes of one’s movie is a meta-move. So is stepping back to a Director’s point of view of the movie. You can step back also to look at the screenplay and the screenplay writers who create the script and set up the way to shoot a movie. You can even step back to the Producer’s point of view for that perspective. All of these describe the meta-levels (metastates, “logical levels,” psycho-logical levels) of the mind. Taking this more complete and complex metaphor of a movie enables us to recognize that the reason some Meta-Model distinctions are MetaPrograms, Meta-States, and Sub-Modalities or Cinematic Features. What we have here is a redundant system. You can enter into the Matrix of the mind via any one of these avenues. You can enter into it through using meta-programs, meta-states, the language of the Meta-Model, or from the cinematic features. Four meta-domains now allow you to describe the -48-

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structure of experience using four over-lapping models. This actually gives us a systemic approach to NLP. Meta-States and the Cinematic Features Representationally there are features, qualities, and properties in every sensory-based system by which you encode information in your mental movies. Richard Bandler mis-named these elements as sub-modalities assuming that they were lower level features. This term mis-named these features. It used an inadequate term which actually mis-represents things because the cinematic features are not a lower level phenomenon. Because sub-modalities operate at a meta-level, they are conceptual understandings about the cinematic features of your movies. What does this mean for the field of NLP? You have to go meta to even detect and recognize the features, qualities, and properties of the sensory representations. You have to use a meta-level distinction to think about these conceptual features: “location,” “intensity,” “distance,” “volume,” etc. Since you cannot put these nominalizations in a wheelbarrow, these do not exist anywhere except in the mind. Sub-modalities are interpreted semantically. In and of themselves, these features (close/far; bright/dim; zoom in/ zoom out; distance, etc.) do not mean anything. They are just the features, the brute facts of how you and I encode a thought, memory, imagination, etc. A person’s interpretation and appraisal of any given feature occurs at a meta-level. We use these features or sub-modalities to encode meaning, and we do that symbolically and semantically. For example, what does it mean when you encode some visual image of a memory as close? • What does it mean when you picture it as far away? • What does it mean when you see it in three-dimensions versus twodimensions? • What meanings arise or get evoked when you encode a voice with a serious tone versus a more humorous one? Because you learn to use the features of representations symbolically—as metaphors, they come to stand for higher level meanings or frames. In this way they in-form and create your neuro-semantic states and structures. This gives you the ability to cue your brain-and-nervous system to respond to something as “real” versus “just fantasy.” For most of us, we put the first -49-

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in color, close, 3-D, and panoramic, and encode the second the same except we put it “on a screen” so that it we see it with a border and not panoramic. In this way, the representational distinctions take on and elicit higher level meanings. But, this does not hold for everybody. Cinematic Quality

Meta-Programs

Meta-States

Representational Systems Thinking Patterns @ RS Semantic States Sensory-based Descriptions Evaluations Higher Level The Form and Structure of Higher Meanings @ Thought Thought

Evaluative States

Evaluations

Visual —> Representation System: VAK __ Brightness __ Focus/ Defocused __ Color/ Black-and-White —> __ Size __ Distance: close or far —> __ Contrast __ Movement __ Direction __ Foreground/ Background __ Location __ Associated/ “Dissociated” __ Changing/ Steady __ Framed/ Panoramic __ 2D (Flat), 3D (holographic) __ Speed: fast, slow, normal

Real, Current Old, Past —> Chunk Size: General/ Specific Impactful — Global / Detail Compelling Options/ Procedures Sensor / Intuitor — Uptime—Downtime Judger/ Perceiver —Controlling / Perceiving Self- Referencing — Other-Referencing/ External Ref —> —> Real/ Unreal Match- Mismatch / Same— Difference

Auditory __ Pitch __ Continuous or Interrupted __ Skepticism __ Tempo: fast/ slow __ Volume: loud/ soft __ Rhythm __ Duration __ Cadence __ Foreground/ Background __ Distance __ Location __ Clarity

Toward / Away From Values Motivation Associated/ “Dissociated” __ Assoc./ Dissoc. Goal Sort: Optimizing/ Perfectionism/ Value buying: cost, Time, convenience Time Tenses: Past/ Present / Future “Time” In Time / Through Time Affiliation: Independent/ Dependent/ Team/ Manager Extrovert/ Introvert / Ambivert Convincer/ Believability—VAK, Words Proof

Kinesthetic __ Pressure

MO: Impossibility— Possibility MO: Necessity — Desire

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__ Texture __ Temperature __ Movement __ Rhythm __ Duration __ Foreground/ Background __ Associated/ “Dissociated” __ Intensity __ Frequency __ Weight

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Thinker/ Feeler

The Meta-Domains of NLP We can now expand on the meta-domains. Classic NLP originated with one meta-domain (the Meta-Model of language) and after a few years developed the second meta-domain, Meta-Programs as the perceptual filters that can enhance or sabotage running various patterns (although in John Grinder’s version of NLP, Meta-Programs are thought of as “content” rather than process). Many years later (1994), Meta-States Model arose as the third meta-domain and one that outframed the previous two meta-domains. With the discovery that sub-modalities were not sub at all, but a meta-class of distinctions, of cinematic features, we can now understand why Todd Epstein originally called them “pragma-graphics.” They are the graphics (cinematic features) which have pragmatic effects. They are the meta-modalities of the cinematic features of our mental movies. This now gives us four meta-domains of NLP, four models which describe the same referent —subjective experience. We have four avenues for playing, exploring, and transforming human experiences and “personality.” These meta-domains articulate the structural genius of NLP. At the highest level, the Meta-States Model explains the origin and structure of MetaPrograms as well as the meta-representational system of language ( the Meta-Model) and the editorial framing that we do with our Movies. This means that you can now think systemically about the human mindbody-emotion (or neuro-linguistic) system. You can now use these four meta-domains as redundant avenues for entering the Matrix of meaning frames— yours or someone else’s. In Neuro-Semantics, we diagram these four redundant systems as what makes up the Meaning Matrix wherein we create our maps or mental models of reality. 1) The Meta-Model. The Meta-Model of language identifies the form and structure of one’s mental mapping in terms of words and language. This -51-

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provides an understanding of the linguistic magic that governs one’s mental mapping and it provides a structure for precision. From the primary representational domain of sensory-based information and language, we move up into the meta-linguistic domain of evaluative words. 2) The Meta-Programs Model. By the habituation of internal representations arises the wonder of the Meta-Programs—our structured ways of perceiving. At a metalevel, they govern everyday thinking-and-feeling and so become perceptual filters and our thinking patterns. Because these show up in language, they have counterparts in the Meta-Model. For example, we have favorite modals that describe our basic modus operandi (modal operators) for operating: necessity, impossibility, possibility, desire, etc. And because they originated as meta-level thoughts or feelings, they were first metastates. As they coalesced into “our eyes” (and so got into our muscles), they become Meta-Programs. 3) The Meta-States Model. Our thoughts-and-feelings generate our states to become meta-states as we apply them to other states. This is how we create metaprograms. When we generalize the state to our basic style of thinking or perceiving. A driving perceptual style or meta-program becomes a meta-state. For example, consider a gestalt thinker who sorts for the big picture to such an extent that he or she always frames other states with global thoughts-and-feelings. Or, someone who sorts for “necessity” and who thereby brings a state of compulsion to bear on every other thought-and-feeling state. Meta-States models the special kind of consciousness that we humans have—self-reflexive consciousness, a consciousness that can think about itself and to do so layer upon layer. The MetaStates Model follows the communication loop as it reflects back onto itself to generate second, third, fourth, etc. responses to previous responses. 4) Meta-Modalities or Cinematic Features (e.g., Sub-Modalities) We frame the cinema we play in our mind of sights, sounds, and sensations with various features, cinematic features or submodalities. 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). -52-

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From Meta-States to Meta-Programs Because meta-programs operate at meta-levels to the content of your thoughts-and-emotions, they function as the governing and predictive influences in your mind-body-emotion system. To take note of them, you have to take a meta-position to your primary experience. As you do, you can easily categorize the nature of conscious information processing at the meta-levels using the traditional categories of consciousness, namely, cognition, emotion, choosing, responding, etc. One of the first diagrams of this occurs in the book, Figuring Out People: Design Engineering Using Meta-Programs. This portrays first level meta-programs and meta metaprograms as we move up into the semantic levels of awareness. Meta-Meta-Level Conceptualizing/ Semanticizing Style About Self, Causation, Morality, Responsibility, etc. about Conceptual Categories Meta-Level Style of Cognizing

Style of Emoting

Cognition/ Reason Emotions/ Somatic Thinking Moods/ States

Style of Choosing

Style of Responding

Conative/ “Willing” Intention—Attention

Outputting/ Behavior Communication

Primary Level

Person

Content of Thoughts Represented—>

World Of Events

NLP and Neuro-Semantics as Models Because we present NLP and Neuro-Semantics as models, a legitimate and profitable exploration can be had by questioning what a model is and what are the necessary and sufficient elements that make up a model. What does it take to have a full model? How is NLP a model? How is Meta-States and Neuro-Semantics a model?

The Necessary and Sufficient Pieces that Comprise a Model 1) A Theory: A theoretical background, foundation, hypothesis, etc. that offers an explanatory model for how the model or system works, the -53-

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governing ideas and how to test and refine the ideas in order to create new applications. Ideas that can be tested and falsified, that answers the why questions and that establishes our epistemology. NLP — NEURO-SEMANTICS The NLP Ps. (Presuppositions) Map/ Territory Gestalt Psychology Constructionism Cognitive Psychology (Miller, Chomsky)

Meta-Level Principles Levels of Abstraction Cognitive Psychology Meta-Cognition Batesons’ Cybernetics Korzybski’s General Semantics

2) Variables and Elements: The pieces and parts that make up the components of the model. That answers the what questions. What elements are absolutely necessary and sufficient to make the model work? What processes? NLP — NEURO-SEMANTICS VAK—Sub-modalities Language Meta-Programs

Meta-Levels Self-Reflexivity Recursive Feedback loops Feed forward loops; system functions

3) The Guiding and Operational Principles: The “laws” or principles (presuppositions) that define and articulate the mechanisms that make it work and how to use them in a methodological, systematic, and systemic way. This gives us the ability to keep refining the model. It answers the how questions: How does the model work? What processes, mechanisms govern it? NLP — NEURO-SEMANTICS Adaptation of NLP Ps. TOTE Model for Strategies

Meta-Level Principles Thinking in feedback loops to track the recursive flow of mind Higher Frames govern. Self-organizing theory; Systems Theory

4) The Technologies or Patterns: The specific tools that provide immediate application for using the Model or System to achieve something. This answers how to questions: How do you reframe meaning? Etc. NLP — NEURO-SEMANTICS The 150+ NLP Patterns

The 200+ Neuro-Semantic Patterns

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Summary NLP, as a model, grew our of numerous models that preceded it as the co-developers enriched the former models and constructed a model about the structure of experience. This development of model building and refinement now continues with NeuroSemantics. The key to the Neuro-Semantic updating and re-modeling of NLP has been driven by the going meta process. Identify the numerous meta-domains within NLP and discovering that sub-modalities were actually meta-modalities along with the discovery of Meta-States has enabled us to remodel many of the facets and patterns in NLP. Yet the process is not complete. Thinking more strategically and systemically about the models that we now have will enable us in the months and years to come to create more comprehensive models and refine the ones we have.

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A

lfred Korzybski invented the term neuro-semantics. He also created the terms neuro-linguistic and human engineering. And when he used these terms, neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic, he used them interchangeably and as synonyms. After I turned his model of levels of abstracting upside down (he had the higher levels going down!), and pulled out “the world of energy manifestations” and put it off to the side as “the world of events” to which we respond (thereby creating a skeleton version of the basic Meta-States diagram), I began using neuro-linguistic to refer to the primary state and neuro-semantic to the higher states. While the decision to do this was arbitrary, doing this enabled us to distinguish first-order or level responses to the external world in contradistinction to the second-order (and above) or level responses to the internal world of our matrix of frames. It was in this way that neurosemantics came to refer to the higher meta- or psycho- or logical- levels where we layer the mind-body system with multiple frames of thoughtsand-feelings. Neuro-Semantics — Training in Psycho-Logics Another term from Korzybski, which reflects his wisdom about the central importance of meaning, is psycho-logics. Without the hyphen, we have the word psychology or psychological. But when he put the hyphen inside the term, Korzybski intentionally sought to highlight some significant insights. The hyphen, in fact, reflects one of the linguistic “devices” that Korzybski -56-

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invented. He argued that it contributes to a more effective use of our symbols which in turn affects both our science and our sanity. Today all you have to do is read bit in the field of Neuro-Semantics, or experience a Meta-States training, and you will hear a lot about psychologics. For us, it is a key facet for understanding what we mean by that loaded nominalization phrase, “logical levels.” You will find psycho-logics in our materials in Mind-Lines regarding the structure of meaning. You will find it regarding the layered embedded frames within frames in Frame Games, The Matrix Model, Neuro-Semantics, etc. You will find it when we speak about the negative meta-stating that creates dragon states in Dragon Slaying. You will find it in the update on the Meta-Model, in Communication Magic. In Neuro-Semantics, it’s a pretty pervasive term and concept. So, give that, let’s now ask: What are psycho-logics? What does this term mean? What significance does it have in running your own brain? Korzybski invented this term and its use as he introduced a hyphen within the words “psychology” and “psychologists.” He referred to human function as our psycho-logics and those who deal with human functioning as psycho-logisticians. Why? Because he wanted to distinguish between Aristotelian logic—the logic of science and physics that deal with the outside world and psycho-logics —as the logics that deal with the inside world, in the matrices of our mind. Gregory Bateson essentially did the same thing. He called one of these worlds—the world of physics and he called the other—the world of communication. To the first he gave the label plethora (everything) and to the other, he gave another Greek term, creatura (the subjective person). As he did, he also ushered some very strong warnings against confusing these different dimensions and different worlds. Why? Because they do not operate according to the same principles, mechanisms, or processes. And that’s the point. The point is that the dynamics of each world works in very different ways. Bateson illustrated this distinction with his example of kicking a dog. If you’ve read Bateson or read of those who have written of him, then you have read this illustration. "If I kick a stone, the movement of the stone is energized by the act, but -57-

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if I kick a dog, the behavior of the dog may indeed be partly conservative —he may travel along a Newtonian trajectory if kicked hard enough, but this is more physics. What is important is that he may exhibit responses which are energized not by the kick but by his metabolism: he may turn and bite.” (p. 229)

Using the field of physics, we examine and measure the impact of one billiard ball upon another. The motion of one ball is energized by the impact of the first. Energy is transferred. But when we use the term “dynamics” for what occurs in the nervous system, in mind, in communication, in information, at best we can only use the word metaphorically. The logic that we use to understand and map things at the level of energy transfer, measurements, mathematics, laws of thermodynamics, etc. are completely inadequate to talk about the logic that we need to understand thinking, communicating, reasoning, valuing, framing, etc. The internal logic is psycho-logical. It makes sense within its own structures, but may not outside those frames. So What? Why is this important? There are many reasons. One is that it explains why we need the NLP presupposition that we call a “communication guideline.” The meaning of your communication is the response it elicits. It is precisely because we never know what we have communicated to another person until we see and inquire about the responses we receive, that meaning operates in a psycho-logical way. This guideline makes sense due to the structural framework of any given person and the way he or she “makes sense” of things. The meaning is not in our words. The meaning is not even in our gestures and non-verbal expressions. All of that is signaling. The semantics of those signals, the translation and interpretation of the signals into the receiver’s semantics depends to a great extent on what semantic structure the person brings to the signals. Here are some critical questions: • What is the person’s style of interpreting and evaluating and appraising things? -58-

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What mental and emotional filters does the person bring to the experience? What internal library of references does the person use?

What is the person’s frames and classifications and meta-stating structures? Is it “logical” or “reasonable” that we put “anger” into the classification of “calm things?” Probably not. Or is it logical that one person classifies anger with the category of “respect?” Or, how about “appreciation?” Probably not. Yet we can do these things. There are people who see and interpret things through such meta-state frames. We can breathe deeply and calmly and access a state of calmness and then, inside that state, we can access a state of anger so that the we feel calm about the anger. This metarelationship of calm to anger sets up a new psycho-logical frame, calm anger. Any frame as a mental-and-emotional frame becomes our internal “logic” and so becomes the signals and the commands that we send to our nervous system. The same applies regarding the psycho-logics of feeling bad when other people tense their vocal chords and speak with a tense tonality. It is fully within the range of human possibilities that we can access a state of “insult” by simply putting “stressed tonality” within the class or category of events that we call “being put down.” Doing that allows us to have the ability to feel bad when others speak as they tighten and tense the muscles in their throat. Is this logical? Is this logical in mathematics, physics, or Aristotelian reasoning? No, of course not. Within those domains and frames, it is illogical, unreasonable, and it does not make sense. Yet it is psycho-logical within the neuro-semantic structures of our frames, and that’s what makes it compelling and critical. The Structure of Psycho-Logics When we access a state of mind, emotion, or body and set it in a metarelationship to another experience of thinking, emoting, feeling, we create a new psycho-logical structure. In this way we classify things. We categorize one experience as a member of the class of another. Theoretically and technically, this is what we mean by “logical levels.” And because whenever we meta-state a thought, feeling, or physiology, we create a meta-level, a meta-level that classifies, it is through meta-stating that we create these higher psycho-logical levels or layerings of our mind. -59-

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This enables us to create all kinds of subjective experiences, and given that NLP and Neuro-Semantics is all about modeling the structure of subjective experience, this dynamic structuring gives us all kinds of wonderful possibilities. We can now learn to feel pleasure about finding an error message so that we can learn how to succeed. Did you notice the meta-level structure of that? We treat errors (i.e., mistakes, activities that do not succeed the first time, disappointments) as members of the class of learning and success, which is a member of the class of pleasure. We can now actually celebrate every awareness of “negative” emotions because we see and appraise a “negative” feeling as detecting threats and dangers while they are small and manageable. The meta-level structure of that? We treat what we call “negative” emotions (like fear and anger) as members of the class of detecting potential threats. That allows us to then feel good about feeling bad because we become proactive in handling things while we’re resourceful. These describe psycho-logical structures or a person’s psycho-logics of meaning constructs. This means that in meta-stating we can design engineer new psycho-logics for our minds-body-emotion system. These new psycho-logics then remakes our life experiences so that we experience our internal world in a more empowered way that leads to more effective, ecological, and balanced responses. It means that when we find old psychologics that undermine health, happiness, effectiveness, we can re-structure our inner world. Our psycho-logics describe our frames and frames within frames. It sets up the frames of our inner game from which our outer games emerge. Principles governing the psycho-logics of the Matrix Similar to the presuppositions that we have in NLP about its assumptive frames, we have a set of presuppositions (or principles, laws, secrets) about the logic of the meta-levels. These principles describe some of the logic of meta-land (our psycho-logics). 1) Higher logical levels always and inevitably drive, modulate, organize, and control lower levels. The foremost of the meta-level principles describes the dynamic formulated by Gregory Bateson (1972). This identifies that meta-levels serve as the -60-

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frame-of-reference for the activity (thinking, feeling, responding) that occurs at the levels lower to the frame. As such, the meta-level operates as an “attractor” in a self-organizing system. Robert Dilts (1990) has described this as part of the definition of “logical levels.” Whenever we “set a frame of reference” at a higher logical level that frame will dominate all lower levels. The interface between higher and lower levels generates a whole list of effects: from intensifying the lower states, defusing them, negating them, multiplying them, creating trance, creating paradox, etc. 2) Someone (or something) will always set the frame of reference. The question now becomes, “Who set the frame?” Sometimes the frame occurs by “osmosis” in that we simply breathe and live in it as the cultural, linguistic, familial, professional, etc. frame. Marshal McLuhen noted that while he didn’t know who first noticed and specified “water” as such, he knew it wasn’t the fish. This speaks about the unconscious nature of metalevels. They exist above normal conscious awareness—and so we just assume them. Your highest and oldest meta-states now comprise many of your unconscious frames—your “way of being in the world,” your frames of mind or attitude, and your overall personality framework—your Matrix. 3) Whoever sets the frame will govern the experience (run the game). Since higher frames govern—and since somebody also sets it (no need to allow Lost Performatives here), the person who sets the frame thereby takes charge of the subsequent experiences. The resulting thoughts, ideas, concepts, beliefs, emotions, behaviors, language, problems, solutions, and experiences derive their existence from the frame. What governs the Matrix are our frames. 4) The whole determines the parts and from the parts, the whole emerges. This speaks about the systemic nature of the mind-body-emotion system. It speaks about the gestalt nature of our neuro-linguistics processes. The system that emerges from the meta-levels that govern the lower levels brings about an overall gestalt (or configuration of interactive parts) which in turn, define the character of the whole. 5) When we outframe we set up higher level frames-of-reference that we commission to govern the whole. The power to identify a frame enables us to step aside from a frame and to set a whole new frame. Doing this transforms everything. It performs -61-

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meta-level “magic” in that it installs a new self-organizing attractor at the top of the semantic system. 6) What we call “experience” or “reality” differs radically at each level. Korzybski (1933) described these in his “levels of abstraction” model regarding how the nervous system abstracts at different levels. He described the different experiences as “second-order abstractions,” “thirdorder abstractions,” etc. He didn’t have the word meta to use, so he spoke in mathematical terms, levels or orders, multi-ordinal levels. He described the fact that we can use the same word/s at the different levels as multiordinal terms—terms that we recognize as nominalizations that can be applied to themselves. These self-referential nominalizations typically have a different meaning at each level that we use them. Thus “love” of an object at the primary level differs from “love of love” (infatuation) at the second level or “love of anger,” and “love of loving love” at the third level (romanticism perhaps), etc. 7) Reflexivity endows consciousness with systemic processes and characteristics. Reflexivity describes the mechanism that drives these levels of abstraction and these meta-level experience. This refers to the fact that your consciousness reflects back onto itself or its products (thoughts, emotions, beliefs, values, decisions, specific concepts, etc.). As it does, it sets up feed-back and feed-forward processes and thereby creates a circular system. 8) Meta-level disorientation and conflict can create living hells. Generally speaking (numerous exceptions do exist), whenever you bring negative thoughts-and-feelings (states) against yourself or any facet of yourself, you put yourself at odds with yourself. And when your selfrelationships (relation to yourself) become disturbed, you begin to loop around in vicious downward self-reinforcing cycles. And when selfdisturbed (self-condemning, self-contempting, self-repressing, self-hating, etc.), this then creates a disturbance for all of your relationships with others. This creates neurosis, psychosis, personality disorders, character disorders, and other forms of personal hells. 9) “Paradox” frequently governs meta-level solutions for health, integration, balance, and empowerment. The only way to rid yourself of unwanted thoughts, emotions, behaviors, habits, etc. involves, paradoxically, welcoming, accepting, appreciating, -62-

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and celebrating that very thought, emotion, behavior, etc. This is where solutions become counter-intuitive and involve un-common sense. By paradoxically welcoming the undesired thought or emotion into consciousness you take charge of it. You can then just observe it with a non-judgmental awareness. And from that level of awareness, you can decide if you want to take counsel of it, reality check it, learn from it, decline its invitation, refuse it, stand stubbornly against it, etc. To not reckon with it leads to unuseful suppression, repression, self-rejection, etc. 10) Setting a frame necessitates neuro-linguistic energy and repetition. How do you actually set a frame or establish a meta-level state? Merely “thinking” or even “feeling” will not do it. You can think, know, feel, and have awarenesses that do not establish a higher level frame-of-reference. You can “think” without believing, valuing, and deciding. Here you need to utilize the natural processes of how your brain operate —you need to use drama, energy, repetition, etc. 11) Altering higher level frames alters identity and destiny. You can’t change what you do (so that it lasts in a pervasive and generative way), without also changing who you are. Does your higher frame of selfdefinition support the change? Your behavior is like a printout of your operating programs. 12) Meta-levels never stay “meta” in a heady way for long. Meta-Levels are forever coalescing into the primary state. While you “conceptually” move up to a higher level and layer your mind with additional thoughts, they will not stay there for long. With repetition, habituation brings them back down into the flesh, the muscle, the eyes. This explains how meta-states become your meta-programs and how the “sub-modality” distinctions code and recode your representations. 13) The sequencing of the meta-levels is critical. There is a structure to the higher levels of consciousness, and the order and sequencing of what layers of thoughts-and-emotions you meta-state yourself with determines the quality of your states. 14) The quality of our states are textured by the higher levels. In the process of layering state upon state, the energy of the higher levels eventually percolate down into the lower levels in-forming them and texturing them. This creates the rich layering of the state making it more -63-

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complex. The Psycho-Logics of the Higher Meta-States or Meta-Frames In the process of meta-stating, we set higher frames of reference. Every frame that we use in the mind functions as a meta-state and every meta-state functions as a frame. These are two ways of describing the same mentalemotional phenomena. A frames is short for a frames-of-reference. That’s what you reference in your thinking, emoting, meaning making, etc. to make sense of things. These are your mental context and mental library of references. Without knowing your frames (or those of another), you really have no idea about their meanings and states. Conceptual frames refer to those higher reference structures: history, memory, imagination, concepts, etc. that you carry with you everywhere you go, and since they put you into various states, they describe your meta-state structures. Reframing refers to exchanging one frame-of-reference (term, label, perceptive, etc.) for another. Whereas deframing refers to the process of pulling apart a frame. You can do that in numerous ways, you can simply examine the linguistic structures and ask the deframing questions of the Meta-Model. Indexing the specifics is one of the most powerful deframing processes. Outframing refers to making a meta-move to a meta-position and then setting a whole new frame above the current frames. When meta-stating from “outside” a frame of reference, you outframe. When meta-stating from within, you up-frame. Outframing creates an entirely new frame of reference. It enables you to use a different kind of thinking than what created the first frame. Outframing, as a meta-move, enables you to transform an entire experience with one fell swoop. It elicits the power of meta-levels to drive and organize lower levels according to the principle that higher or meta-levels modulates lower levels. In outframing, you set a larger frame-of-reference which classifies the lower level experiences. This semantic classification process transforms meanings at a higher logical level. This enables you to radically alter your experience. Your mind, awareness, or consciousness goes out to access events and then -64-

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reflects back onto its own products. In this way self-reflexive consciousness generates states-about-states. As it does, it induces you into various mind-body states. These neuro-linguistic states range from the positive ones (curiosity, love, attraction, interest, hope, joy, learning, etc.) to the negative ones (fear, anger, tension, disgust, boredom, etc.). Yet consciousness never stays put. As soon as you generate thoughtsfeelings about something, you then reflect back on your own products (of thoughts-and-feelings). Your self-reflexive consciousness makes metamoves to generate "second order abstractions" (Korzybski) or meta-level states (anger about fear, joy about learning, love about love, anger about love, etc.). In this, your mind-body states result from how and where you send your brain. Using Meta-States in the work on conversational reframing (Mind-Lines), we identified seven directions in which you can send your awareness. Each of these corresponds to a kind of framing. 1) Reframing: a linear movement. We send the brain forward in a step-by-step fashion to embrace the neurological stimuli that we receive from the world, representing it and responding to it sequentially. In this kind of framing, we play a mental movie about a process, or we say, “It is not this, it is this.” 2) Upframing: a moving up movement: We move upward vertically so to speak as we reason inductively. We move up into higher states or levels of awareness, drawing conclusions, creating new generalizations, classifications, categories, etc. “This is a member of the class of ...” 3) Reflexive framing: a movement that goes up and reflects back upon itself. We reflexively generate abstractions about previous abstractions, and then reflexively reflect back on that, so that we repeatedly layer mental and emotional frames create a matrix of frames around something. Looping framing: a movement that goes around and around in spirals—when reflexive loses its bearings and is not longer grounded, we can loop round and round repeatedly, experiencing either a vicious negative downward spiral or a virtuous positive upward spiral. 4) Reverse framing; moving inside-out. We can turn a thought or feeling inside out as we inverse things, reverse things, and create mental reversals as we imagine opposites and negations.

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5) Outframing: a moving out so that we go above all abstractions. We make a jump above and beyond everything so that we quickly transcend the entire matrix of thinking and feeling and step out of the Matrix to run quality control checks, checks for something being realist, relevance, etc. 6) Deframing: a moving down into the structure of the experience. We use deductive reasoning and thinking so that we analyze and break things down into smaller elements. This fragments the structure, unglues the construct, and enables us to see the elements and relationships that came together to create the gestalt. 7) Analogous framing: We step aside from our thinking and feeling processes and engage in abductive thinking and reasoning. This takes us off to the side allowing us to think about it using metaphors, stories, and nonpropositional symbols. Attractors as an expression of Psycho-Logics To perform “magic” at meta-levels you need to make a meta-move and outframe things in one fell swoop. Doing this enables you to run your metalevels of consciousness for greater levels of resourcefulness. By taking a perceptual position of various meta-positions you can make pervasive transformations. This allows you to set the frame and meta-frame that then govern, organize, and modulate perception, states, emotions, behaviors, and orientation. You can outframe yourself (and others) at meta-levels so that with "one fell swoop" reorganize life from the top down. Meta-Messages perform "Magic" at meta-levels: Bateson illustrated “setting the frame” as the ultimate meta-move which in turn creates Meta-Magic. The following operates from the principle that messages and messages-about-messages structurally relate to each other mathematically. Communication signals can operate as either pluses (+), minuses (-) or multiplication (X) or even division (-) processes. "All messages and parts of messages are like phrases or segments of equations which a mathematician puts in brackets. Outside the brackets there may always be a qualifier or multiplier which will alter the whole tenor of the phrase." (Bateson, 1972, p. 232).

Analysis At the primary level, if we horizontally (linearly) experience messages #1 through #4, we add pain to pain. Message after message (each comprising -66-

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a primary state of pain, distress, and negative emotions) offers additional content messages arising from the original experiences and additively increases mental-emotional pain. M6 ( M5

[ message1 + message2 + message3 + message4 )

M6: These old messages all involve misbeliefs. The best thing that you could pull off at that age, but still only the thinking an mental mapping of an eight-year-old. M5: If you have a painful childhood it will plague you for the rest of your life and determine your future #1 Painful Ex. with dad

#2 I'm good at nothing

#3 Life sucks!

#4 People are painful.

Message #5, as a meta-message, functions differently. As a message-aboutthe other messages, it provides information of a meta-level painful message. It does not merely add to misery, it multiplies misery since it multiplies the primary messages/states (#1-#4). Message #5 represents a painful message, yet structurally its syntax provides a kind of pain that amplifies and intensifies the lower-level messages. The meta-message in Message #6 also multiplies the other messages. Yet instead of increasing pain it has the effect of negating the personal distress. Structurally, its message about all of the messages at lower levels reverses the sign from - (minus) to + (plus). This negation message multiplies a - to the lower level messages and thereby effects a transformational reversal. Bateson's (1972) noted: "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." (233).

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procedural messages index for the recipient meta-information about the source, sender, intended recipient, date, time, etc. All of these "messages" in the text communicate about the text thereby modifying the text. In other words, they frame the text and create the context of meaning for the text. An unlabeled fax, on the other hand, would offer one a message, but one that the recipient might find confusing and ambiguous, thereby inducing a state of doubt. The Psycho-Logics of our Spinning Mind Reflexivity is the strangest frame of them all, and yet the most fundamental frame in Neuro-Semantics. Reflexivity is what gives us “selfconsciousness”—consciousness about our sense of self as a living breathing organism, as an organism that was born and will die, as a self that we define by experience, culture, beliefs, etc. It gives us “time consciousness” —consciousness about the concept of time. In fact, reflexivity gives us all of the conceptual or semantic states of our Matrix. If we could not “rise up” in our mind, or “step back” from our mental-and-emotional processing, we could not conceptualize, and we could not become conscious of our conceptualizing. If you don’t have a referent experience to elicit a state of awe—use this one. Reflexivity describes a core power that allows us to transcend our mundane everyday awareness, then transcend that transcendence, and so on. What is this frame of reference? What does it mean and what does it suggest? How do we develop it as a frame of mind? How do we use it in framing ourselves and others? Reflecting back onto yourself with your thoughts and emotions enables you to experience a very special kind of awareness. We call it “self-reflexive consciousness.” This means that you can rise up in your mind (conceptually) and Think about your thinking Feel about your feelings Think about your feelings Feel about your thinking (thoughts) Move, breathe, gesture, etc. about your thoughts (or your feelings) Think or emote about your moving, breathing, gesturing, etc. Etc. Language is so completely inadequate to describe your reflexivity powers. We use the term, “self-reflexiveness.” We use the term meta: -68-

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“going meta,” meta-communication, meta-cognition, meta-awareness, etc. We talk about transcending and transcendence. Reflexivity is a mysterious and marvelous and sacred-like power. Yet it is the very heart of our humanness. This explains why “meta” does not mean dissociation. Those who have been mistaught about this and who confuse these ideas will not understand the Meta-States Model. Nor will they understand Meta-Programs, using the meta-position, or the meta-function that Bateson speaks about. “Isn’t this just dissociation?” they will ask you as they have asked me. “No it is not!” “Associate” and “dissociate” as verbs (association/ dissociation as nominalizations) are two of the most unfortunate words in the field of NLP. I recommend that you eliminate them entirely from your vocabulary. You do not need them. When you use them, you will get responses from people that you do not want. As relative terms, “associate” and “dissociate” speak about stepping into and stepping out of experiences. Yet in so speaking, this is just a way of talking and a concept, and not a literal description. There is no stepping out of one state or experience without, at the same time, stepping into something else. We are always out of some states (thousands of them in fact) and always inside of some state (or a mixture of them). You step out of depression, anger, frustration, upsetness, etc. when you step into joy. You can step into courage, boldness, and ferocity by stepping out of timidity and fear. Instead of “associate” and “dissociate” use the more specific verbs, step into and step out of. Then, when you use the terms metaphorically for the mind, it will be more readily recognized that it is just a way of talking and not real. Use the term “dissociation” and most people treat that nominalization as if it is real, and as if people can really, actually get outside of their bodies. Talk about non-sense! We are always embodied. Even the pseudo-feeling terms “numb,” “out of myself,” “disoriented,” “confused,” “not feeling,” etc. are just metaphors. It is reflexivity that allows you to bring any idea, any metaphor, any referential experience, any concept, any feeling, etc. and set it as a frame for -69-

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other thoughts, feelings, experiences. That’s how we can create the gestalt of “dissociation” as we bring a sense of blankness, emptiness, nonfeelingness, etc. and set it as a frame for fear, anger, love, lust, etc. In human experience, this creates Dragon States or human pathology. Animals don’t suffer from this. They don’t have enough “mind” to do that much damage to themselves. It takes a human to become that muddled that we become afraid of our emotions, think that we can’t feel our body, believe that feeling our body feelings is bad, etc. The Challenge of Reflexivity The mechanism of reflexivity is the process by which you meta-state yourself and others. You reflexively bring one state of mind, emotion, or body to bear upon another. This is the heart of Meta-States. But it doesn’t stop there. This is just the beginning ... child’s play ... and nothing like what it grows up to be when full systemic consciousness emerges in the adult. Then, you use your reflexivity to build up all kinds of Matrices of frames within embedded frames. When your reflexive skills develop you mentally and emotionally go round and round ideas, thoughts, memories, imaginations, ideas, concepts, experiences, etc. This can create the greatest heavens in the mind and most miserable hells on earth. It all depends on how you use it. Let it get out of control and you will have a monster on your hands. Manage it well and you will access personal genius. If you attack this—hate the spinning of your mind, fear going round and round the loops, dread confusion, dislike ambiguity, or anger at the spirals of consciousness—then you will turn your very reflexivity against yourself. Talk about a prison! That will do it. Talk about a toxic thought frame. That’s one. Enjoying the Ride of Reflexivity Over the years of developing Meta-States, I have come to appreciate how much the Neuro-Semantic training involves enabling people to learn how to go for a pleasant and enjoyable reflexivity ride. It’s not natural and most people will fight it—at least at first. That’s why we have to frame it as fun and enjoyable. We have to frame it as inevitable so that our attitude about it is really the only choice we have. Love it or hate it. Enjoy it and learn to manage it or despise it and get more out of control.

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People who have set frames of “control” and need or want to be “in control” will have a hard time with the reflexivity ride. Like the first time on a rollercoaster ... or riding in someone else’s car when they are driving too fast for our tastes—when you take the mind on a spin, these people will tighten their fists and stomp on the floor for their imaginary emergency brakes. They will holler and scream. They will want off! People who like lots of very clear and specific procedures will also have some trouble during their first rides with the circularity of reflexivity. They will want to know first step, second, third, etc. But you can’t give it to them. They can’t give it to themselves. Not at first, at least. Later as they learn the spirals of their own mind and their own unique Matrices— they will be able to sequence it out a little bit. But not at first. Tell them to just raise both hands, shout, and enjoy the ride! “You will come out on the other side okay!” This explains why I have written the Meta-State patterns so that they contain both the essential and the elaborate. What is essential about appreciation as a state, for example, is access a reference of appreciation, amplify it until you beam with the eyes of appreciation, then apply it to self, others, learning, etc. Next analyze it to make sure that it is balanced and ecological for you. Finally, appropriate it out into your future imagining taking it with you in various contexts. The elaboration of the state involves all of the extra things that we can do with the process to juice it up even more and make the pattern even more exquisite. With appreciation we might coach the full body for appreciation. “Give me the face of appreciation. Give me the voice of appreciation.” We might create a ritual or ceremony, or a metaphor. We might add dignity to it, joy, playfulness, etc. We can do all kinds of elaborations. In this way (and many others) Neuro-Semantics differs from NLP. NLP is mostly linear and procedural; Neuro-Semantic is reflexive. It takes people on spiral rides up the levels of the Matrix. And now you know. Defining the field of Neuro-Semantics NLP made a major mistake by failing to ever define the field, its heart and its boundaries. Early in its development, people brought in all kinds of things and mixed them with NLP. This confused the public about what -71-

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NLP was. Many thought it was some facet of the New Age Movement, others thought it was just hypnosis, or just therapy, or manipulation, or personal development, etc. Although NLP can be and has been applied to these, it is none of these things. NLP grew out of the context of therapy and for that reason it is often confused as a psychotherapy. It is not. NLP is a model of models, a meta-description of the structure of experience —whether that experience is therapy, hypnosis, family systems, systems, sales, business, relationships, etc. NLP is about modeling and so falls into the category of the cognitive sciences (information theory, cybernetics, etc.) and operates strictly as a scientific model of how things work. Robert Dilts devoted several pages to this theme in NLP: Volume I. (1980). So with Neuro-Semantics. It grew directly from NLP as well as from General Semantics and Cognitive Linguistics. I developed the foundations of Meta-States from modeling and “mining” the riches of Korzybski. Later I conducted trainings in London on “The Merging of the Models: NLP and GS” which now is called “Advanced Flexibility.” I also took a lot from the Cognitive Sciences since that was the focus of my doctrinal work. I took much from systems theory, Ericksonian models of Brief Psychotherapy, Narrative Therapy and Solution Oriented therapy. More recently I have taken much from chaos theory, fuzzy logic, mathematics, etc. This means that Neuro-Semantics as a model is first and foremost a description of the structure of experience and especially the higher levels of mind or consciousness that creates contextual or framed “meaning.” Neuro-Semantics takes a neutral position regarding religion and spirituality. On the other hand, we do take a stand about moral and ethical issues —mainly the ethics of the scientific model: honesty, truthfulness, disclosure, respect of colleagues, openness to new and different ideas, willingness to test, experiment, and validate results, the human treatment of people and animals used in research, etc. Further, philosophically, unlike Bandler and Grinder who tried to make NLP philosophically free and neutral by saying they had no theory, and then snuck in the theory via their unquestioned presuppositions, I have sought to make the theoretical and philosophical foundations and frameworks of Neuro-Semantics manifest and explicit. These include the NLP presuppositions and the list of Meta-States presuppositions or principles.

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In terms of philosophical frames, this means that NS is: A facet of the Cognitive Sciences and the Neuro-Sciences Partly Constructionism: we construct maps of the territory. Partly Pragmatism: we seek to identify what works, but without making the end justify the means. Cognitive Linguistics: we follow Lakoff and Johnson’s work in Philosophy in the Flesh to a great extent, recognizing the embodied nature of our metaphors by which we live and frame our thinking. Democratic: we seek to find the structure of the best experiences in order to equally support and validate all people in all cultures and to encourage the democratic ideas of equality of all, fairness, justice, etc. Human Potential Movement: as NLP, Gestalt Therapy, Family Systems, Rogerian Counseling, etc. grew out of the Human Potential Movement, so Neuro-Semantics is a beneficiary of that tradition and similarly seeks to promote human well-fare, empowerment, health and vitality, etc. Generative focus: we seek to find and promote generative models rather than remedial because we believe that except for disease, genetic damage, etc., people are not broken, but work perfectly well. It’s not the lack of the ability to become resourceful, the lack of genetic possibilities that’s the problem, but the lack of top-notch maps (frames). Summary Neuro-Semantics is taking NLP to the next level and to a higher level through the way our innate reflexivity creates our psychologics. Knowing and understanding this opens up the whole focus on frames, framing, reframing, outframing, etc. and therefore on the matrix of our meaning frames that make up our sense of reality. As we have been seeking to make explicit the meta-level principles that govern meta-stating, we have been identify the processes within the other meta-domains as well—within the way the Meta-Model of language works, Meta-Programs, and the Meta-Modalities of our cinematic features. The “logic” of our psycho-logics even leads to and opens up the whole subject of the inner mathematics of how our states and frames interface with each other. Bateson began to explore the mathematical role of how state frames operate in terms of adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying. -73-

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T

he patterns in this book are designed for working with another person, and sometimes with two others. As such, they are for group work rather than individual and so have been written as if you are using the pattern to coach another person through a particular process. Typically in trainings, we practice these patterns by pairing up with a partner and taking turns playing experiencer and coach. There are times, however, when we find it valuable to make a trio by adding a third person who then operates as a meta-person to observe the process. In the exercises where a meta-person plays a role, he or she will monitor the process, keep checking in with the coach to see where he or she is in the process, and to keep things on task. The following is a caveat for working with these process. When you work with others in practicing these patterns, to be successful your attitude and style is critical. Effectiveness comes from treating the whole process of working with another human being with respectful care. To do that, put yourself into a state of total respect and awe of the other person. • Thank that person appreciatively for the opportunity of working with him or her. • Handle the patterns with care. These patterns represent very powerful, life-changing, and transformative processes. • Use the patterns with the intent of learning everything you can about them, to develop your own expertise, and commit yourself to assisting the others to get everything they want from the processes. Remember the prime directive: Never attempt to “make” or “force” anyone go through a processes. Respect the other’s absolute right to choose when -75-

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they feel ready and to stop whenever they need to. Take the attitude of a guide, facilitator, or meta-person who is given the privilege of assisting the other at his or her discretion. If you get stuck, acknowledge such, stop, do a Step Back with your partner. Then debrief on the pattern. Always Thoroughly Prepare When using these patterns, first thoroughly acquaint yourself with the pattern until you understand the process—its objective, purpose, distinctions, elicitation question, and steps. Tolerate no excuse for anything other than a thorough understanding and competence in developing skill with these. At first, always follow the patterns as written without adding or subtracting anything. As you begin to use and learn these patterns, follow the instructions as given, you’ll become a technician. Later, you can become a creative artist with the patterns having learned and practiced them from the inside out. Constantly calibrate to the person so that you can effectively track and pace his or her experience. When you don’t know—ask what the other is experiencing. And remember, each person has the final right to say what he or she is truly thinking, feeling, wanting, and experiencing. Our guesses (even if we call them “intuitions” or “inner guidance”) is mind-reading. Even if the person is confused, deceived, or just wrong, responsibility for each person lies within each person. Continually monitor your own interactions to avoid imposing any of your own ideas, views, experiences, etc. We all have our own unique format and structure of our subjective experience. As we all do not think alike, sort alike, feel the same, view the world using the same map, so the experiences individuals will have throughout the process of these patterns will also differ. Expect this. Go in with a curious wonderment and a commitment to let the other learn and map as best suits him or her. If the temptation to impose arises, if you feel a compulsion to “tell,” “teach,” or give good advice, bite down on your tongue severely. Do so until you are in agony. Refuse feeling responsible for how another person runs his or her brain. Just be there with the person as a concerned observer, a witness to the process, a coach and facilitator. When giving feedback—give sensory-based information. As you have learned the difference between sensory-based (see-hear-feel) predicates and statements and evaluative (interpretative) language, use them. The only -76-

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useful feedback is about behavior and actual performance, not about our intuitions and feelings about the other person. This is what makes our feedback professional and productive. Essential and Elaboration Each of the following meta-stating patterns have an essential center that we can elaborate upon in many ways to enrich the pattern. We will start with the essential process. In live demonstrations at trainings, you will often see the trainer elaborate upon the process by adding other features. Most of the time the trainer will let you know the essential structure and process so that you don’t attempt your first learning by using the more elaborate form. Many of the following patterns contain a more elaborate presentation than just the essential so that you have that structure when you want to use it. If you’re unclear about the essential process versus the more elaborate process, consider the patterns printed here as the bare-bones or skeleton of the process. In learning meta-states, aim first to discover and use the essential, then move on to other elaborations of the pattern. Because you can expect that people will get into recursive loops, it is easy to get lost in these processes when first learning them. If you do, relax and go just with it knowing that you’ll come out in the end and that you can always revisit the pattern. Elicitation Elegance Because eliciting states and meta-states lies at the very heart of NeuroSemantic NLP, this makes the art of elicitation crucially important. Elicitation is the natural and inevitable process whereby you invite and facilitate (coach) another person to access, create, and/or experience a mindbody-emotion state. In NLP, we typically focus on using memory and imagination in elicitation as well as modeling. 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? 3) Modeling: Who do you know who can do this? What’s it like taking his or her perceptual position? There is a lot more to the art of elicitation. The following offers some finetuning so that you can become much more skilled and artistic in your elicitation skills:

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1) Get into your own best resourceful state for eliciting. What state do you need to access and operate from in order to most effectively elicit states in others? Find that state, develop ready access to it, then anchor it so that you can quickly “fly into” that state. Typical state for elicitation include: relaxed and at ease, fun and playful, respectfully mischievous, curious. Set your own frame for the state that enables you to be at your best as you focus on getting someone into a state. Most people find that they are best when they are relaxed, calm, caring, in sensory-awareness, focused, respectful, etc. 2) Use all of your output channels when eliciting. Do not just say the word (confident, relaxed, powerful, learning, etc.), but speak in a way that sounds like the state. Use your facial, tonal, postural, etc. elements to convey the state. Being fully congruent in all channels has the effect of amplifying your elicitation power. To improve this, continually listen to your voice, tone, volume, tempo on the outside. Then, keep adjusting your output until it has the variability and flexibility to elicit lots of states. 3) Provide a menu list of choices to assist the elicitation. A factor that helps with eliciting states is to give the person or audience a menu list of examples and sample references. Usually you can simply make a list of 3 or more items that typically induce people into a given state. You can also tell short stories about people who move to or experience the states that you’re suggesting. This more indirectly elicits the state and supplies specific sensory information for the frames and physiologies involved. 4) Create the context for your client to “go inside” and access specific information and emotions. When you do that formally as in coaching or counseling, you can set the frame for the person explicitly: “In just a moment, I want you to close your eyes and just let your mind float back to a time and a place when you learned something so easily and naturally that it hardly seemed like learning, like when you first began to play baseball...” As you do this, use a downward inflection to speak in command mode. The person accessing an experience will often need to feel protected and guided in the process. As a facilitator you are essentially communicating specific instructions for the client, “Go back and see the pictures in your mind that correspond to -78-

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appreciation. Now, go back and do that.” A sign that you may not be providing enough assurance and direction is if you get lots of “I don’t knows.” [To command drop your tone, even your facial gestures and eyes. Conversely when you ask questions, make your output channels go up.] 5) To make the elicitation and accessing easy, use questions and statements that presuppose the result. When eliciting avoid asking questions which start with “Can ...” Exchange, “Can you think of a time...?” with, “Think of a time when...” “Can...” will evoke a yes/no response without an action. Use a phrase that presuppose that the person will. “As you do this...” “While you ...” 6) Help the person sort things out. Once a person or a client has begun to access a state, or to even help them begin to access, ask lots of indexing questions: When does it start? Where? What color is the picture (not, “Is there color?”). If you ask a question like that after you have already presupposed that there is a picture, you will more than likely induce confusion. 7) Give the person enough processing time. Gauge your pace to the person as you calibrate to his or her speed. When the person “goes inside,” shut up and give him or her enough time to process. Check from time to time to see where the person is and what he or she needs in accessing. When in doubt, ask. “And what would help you to fully access this state?”

1) THE BASIC META-STATING PATTERN Meta-Stating is very simple. Access a state and apply it to another state, thought, emotion, or physiology. That’s it, short and simple. The longer version involves five processes that all start with A. This simplifies things and makes it easier to remember. It also works in Spanish and French. Denis Bridoux and Gilles Roy made it fit for French. Distinctions: A resource can be a thought, feeling, idea, belief, value, memory, imagination. An anchor is a trigger and can be sensory-based (a touch, sight, sound, word, etc.) or an evaluative based term (a word or phrase). Future pacing refers to thinking about your future in terms of the experience that the pattern facilitated. -79-

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1) Access a resource state. What resource state do you want and/or need? What state would enhance your experience of some primary state? 2) Amplify fully and anchor. What’s your best way to amplify the resource state? How will you increase it, intensify it, or juice it up? Have you established an anchor for it? 3) Apply to the primary state. Apply the resource state (Y) to the primary state (X). When you think about X in terms of Y, how is that for you? Feeling this fully (accessing the anchored Y) notice how this (Y) changes your (X) experience. As you now bring this state (X) and embed it into this resource state (Y), notice how things look now. Do you like that? 4) Appropriate to your life by putting into your future (future pacing). As you imagine having this resource (Y) in your mind as your frame when you experience (X) and you move out into your future, how does that change things? Is that enough to empower you as you move out? 6) Analyze the quality, health, balance (ecology) of the system. Would this enhance your life to set this resource (Y) as your frameof-reference for the primary state experience (X)? Is every facet of your mind-and-body align with this? State Landscapes If a state operates as an inner world (or universe) that is created neurologically and psychologically as a field, then metaphorically we can speak about a state as a landscape. This becomes especially true with metastates and gestalt states. Running with this metaphor here are some questions: • What kind of weather or atmosphere occurs in the state: sunshine, rain, wind, calm, gentle breeze, bright, gloomy, cloudy, snowy? • What kind of landscape contours: flat, hilly, rough, smooth? • What color does your internal canopy reflect: blue, golden, dark, yellow, red, etc.? • What objects and events occur therein—what attractors and aversions? Gestalt States A complex meta-state configuration wherein the gestalt of the experience -80-

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is “more than the sum of all the parts.” So for example, in boldness there are your hopes and dreams at a meta-level plus a commitment to face the primary fears. From this emerges "courage." Yet courage could also arise from other configurations: outrageousness about hopes/dreams plus notcaring about embarrassment in presence of others. In gestalt states we see the system principle of equilfinality at work. This refers to the fact that in a system we usually have many ways to get to the same outcome. How we have organism-as-a-whole evaluating/emoting. Here emergent qualities arise that we do not find in any of the parts, hence, it has non-addictive characteristics that induce what we might call a "feeling-as-a-whole."

2) META-STATE TEXTURING To meta-state yourself and others, apply one state of mind-and-emotion to another state. Doing this you can create marvelously powerful, enhancing, and resourceful states. We call this the gestalting of states. In this way we can design engineer entirely new states using meta-states. It is what allows the states to coalesce and become textured by higher frames. It all begins with the simple idea of making a meta-move and applying a state to a previous state. That embeds one state within a larger set of frames and contexts. Now, thoroughly enjoy the possibilities of all of the other states, concepts, mental-and-emotional resources that you can apply from a meta-level on other experiences. The Pattern 1) Choose a primary state you want more choice with. What primary state do you need or want to enrich with some meta-level frames? If you were to pick two or three states or experiences you have in life that you want more choice and resourcefulness over, what would they be? When, where, with whom, etc.? 2) Identify your desired outcome. As you access a creative and playful state so you can fully explore the resources you want to apply to those states, what qualities do you want to apply to your primary state? Menu list: calmness, humor, pleasantness, confident, ferocious, playful, distance, meditativeness, contemplativeness, professional attitude, acceptance, welcoming whatever “is.” What resources in thought or emotion would temper and texture the primary state effectively? 3) Specify the meta-stating process. How do you want to apply the resource to the primary state? -81-

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Do you want to apply it by embedding, through the use of metaphor, kinesthetically? 4) Explore additional outframes or meta-level states. What else would enrich the primary state? Menu list: Centeredness, good boundaries, clarity of your desired outcomes, etc. 5) List as many values and reasons why you would like to have this. Why have this? How would that be valuable to you? What else? 5) Solidify the gestalt state and confirm. What meta-levels would support and solidify the meta-state? Examples: appreciate negative emotions (i.e. fear, anger, grief, upsetness, stress, etc. Acknowledge and accept our fallibility, tenderness, spirituality, etc. Evaluate the ecology. Menu list: Meta-Yes, believe in, value, take pride in, etc. 6) Step into the meta-state and fully experience it. When you step into the meta-state, how does it feel in terms of your breathing, posture, gestures, etc.? 7) Future Pace.

3) BUILDING ENHANCING META-STATES The following process describes a fuller description of how to access and build positive and empowering meta-states. This meta-stating offers a way to design those that will work for you. You can custom-make those most appropriate for yourself— a kind of "human design engineering." 1) Identify a positive and empowering meta-state. Move to a meta-position and consider what resourceful meta-states you would like to have as part of your "model of the world" for moving through the world. What state-upon-a-state (thought-and-feelings about thoughts-andfeelings) do you want to have as a resource? 2) Design with well-formedness conditions. Use everything you know about well-formed conditions in designing desired outcomes to customize a meta-state that will "do a person good." State positively what you want in this meta-state in vivid detail (VAK), in process terms, in small chunk size bits, one that informs you as to what you can do, that identifies steps and/or stages, that provide you evidence of what it will feel like, that specify what you will say to yourself, etc. -82-

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Does this state have enough vividness for you to elicit it? As you describe it does it provide enough process information so that you know what to do? Do these feel like small enough pieces so that you can take each step? Do you have clarity about the steps and stages of the process? Can you specify the evidence that you have accessed the meta-state? What words will you say to yourself? Since every thought does not put us into state, apparently we can think in un-energized ways, dissociatedly, analytically, doubtfully, etc. thereby causing our thoughts to lack the "juice" to induce state. What kind of thoughts will induce, access, and/or create a state? Thoughts that we energize and empower. A "desired outcome" so structured represents a well-formed semantic thought. To energize thoughts do the following: Make it Vivid! Rich in detail, graphic. Give it enough completeness so that it compels you. Value it— give it meaning/significance Desire it— turn up your want and passion for it Language it— state it in compelling, cohering words Repeat it until your mind quickly goes to it Act on it to connect it to your physiology via actions 3) Sequence the state and glue the meta-state/s together with compelling linguistics. Create some empowering and compelling linguistics to glue the meta-states together for you. Utilize your knowledge of the Meta-Model about how language works to build the kind of cause-effect statements, complex equivalent statements, nominalizations, etc. that you find as "just the right words" for you. These will pull on your neurology and induce you into the desired state. Use the Milton Model languaging patterns offer a great resource in your linguistic constructions. Write out a Meta-state Induction. What words put this meta-state together for you? How else can you express this meta-level structure of state-on-state that will make this even more entrancing, compelling, and attractive? 4) Eliminate any incongruency in the meta-state. To check for internal objections to the meta-state—notice internal acceptance/rejection responses to the state. Eliminate incongruency by outframing it with an integrating higher frame or by reframing its positive intention. Use the basic process of six-step reframing to use the internal objections to build the necessary representations. Your "objections" -83-

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provide wonderful feedback information about your own internal "programs." Use and answer the objections by building them into the metastate. Does any part of you object to this meta-state experience? As you check, what responses arise when you think about taking this meta-state into your future? 5) Sequence the meta-state and rehearse the process. Sequence the set of primary states that build the strategy for it. Now rehearse those pieces of the meta-state individually and together in an efficient sequence. This rehearsal process shows another difference between primary states and meta-states. The layered consciousness and complexity of linguistics and sequencing necessitates abundant rehearsal that allows the meta-state to cohere. Access your creative part/ dream part to create, invent, dream a dream of this new process. When you access this meta-state, what comes first? Then next? And after that? How many times do you need to repeat this so that it becomes automatic? 6) Step into the meta-state and experience it fully. Allow your consciousness to expand as you notice how the meta-state can now drive your lower (primary) states in new and different ways. As you experience this meta-state—how does it transform things? How does it set the frame for your life and response? What other effects will result from this resource? 7) Future pace yourself with the meta-state. Future pace to the specific environments you desire and imagine the state vividly, step into those contexts to feel them from the inside. This assists in installing the meta-state. Where do you especially want to have this way of referencing, giving meaning, thinking, feeling, and responding? Where else? 8) Symbolize the meta-state. Allow yourself to relax and access a light trance state so that your conscious mind can provide you some symbol of your meta-state: a picture, word, sound, diagram, proverb, koan, riddle, etc. What picture or icon comes to mind about this whole meta-level structuring of consciousness? What metaphor or song or proverb could you use to summarize it? Where would you want to store this icon inside you?

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4) THE ATTRACTOR PATTERN Meta-Stating by Setting Attractor Frames in a self-organizing system “Self-organization theory is a branch of systems theory that relates to the process of order formation in complex dynamic systems. ... According to ‘self-organization’ theory, order in an interconnected system of elements arises around are called ‘attractors’, which help to create and hold stable patterns within the system.” (Robert Dilts, Strategies of Genius, p. 255)

What is an Attractor? In perceptual and representational mapping, an attractor is a focal point in a phenomenon around which the rest of our perceptions become organized. What line or shading pulls your attention to see the Old Woman or the Young Woman in the gestalt picture above? In conceptual mapping, an attractor is the content of some idea, some thought-and-feeling that pulls on other thoughts-and-feelings to support it. It is a higher level frame or program that energizes our human neuro-linguistic system. How does an Attractor work? It works by configuring the images (representations) inside of a frame so that it attracts a certain way of seeing, hearing, feeling, languaging, or responding. It works by structuring the way we foreground and/or background our perceptions or meta-programs. It works by organizing our computations as we construct a model of the world, belief formulas (i.e., Cause-Effect, Complex Equivalence, Identity structures). It works by organizing all of our states to fit its implied ideas, beliefs, values, etc., and so governing or modulating our experiences. It works by setting up feedback and feed forward loops which creates our “resonant signature” that defines how we move through the world.

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THE ATTRACTOR PATTERN This pattern is designed to enable you to find out what attractors work inside your mind-body system and that initiate the self-organizing dynamics within your neuro-semantics. What are you attracted to? What functions as an attractor in your world? The Pattern: 1) List the ideas, beliefs, understandings, values, experiences, references, etc. that pull on you. What are the beliefs or ideas that keep you repeating a pattern or style of responses? What are the thematic patterns in your life? What are you attracted to? What ideas seem magnetic in your personality? [It’s important to free-flow in your thinking and just let whatever comes to mind or heart to just come without judgment or censor. This is an exploration of the programs that are running your system, and not a moral judgment on them. You get to do that after you evaluate them for usefulness, quality, toxicity, etc.] 2) Explore the meta-frames driving the attractors. What drives these ideas? What empowers them? 3) Explore old attractors that are no longer active. What attractors have you had that have become non-operational? How did that atttractor become de-commissioned? What destablized the attractor? How did it become destablized? 4) Identify a wish list of new attractors. What new attractors would you like to set (meta-state) as your neuro-semantic frames? 5) Quality control your list of new attradtors. Are they ecological for all domains of your life? Are they balanced and supportive? Would they enrich your life? Would they empower you as a person? 6) Represent fully, meta-state as your frame and confirm. What is the attractor? Describe fully. Let it induce you into state. Confirm by Meta-Yes-ing. -86-

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5) UPDATING COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS 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. We now recognize these as solidified meta-states which operate as our frame or program 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 and 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. The Pattern 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 has 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 metaprograms 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 -87-

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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 an empowering thinking pattern. Check the list of the more enhancing ways of thinking. Cognitive Distortions – Thinking Patterns that Dis-empower These are the thinking patterns (similar to meta-programs) that dis-empower and create toxic formats or frames for those who use them. 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: Using labels to delete distinctions or use to call someone or something a name as if that tells the whole story. 4. Blaming: Accusatory thinking that transfers blame and 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 and actions of others as targeted toward oneself, perceiving world through ego-centric filters. 9. Awfulizing ... Terriblizing: Imagining the worst possible scenario and then amplifying it with a non-88-

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referencing pseudo-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 and 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: To counter the ways that thinking becomes distorted (ill-formed, inaccurate) use the following list. This list provides an antidote to the previous list and gives us a more empowering way for our cognitive processing. 1. Contextual thinking: Inquire about the context of information and 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?" Metamodel 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, -89-

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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?

6) THERAPEUTIC META-STATING The design in applying the model and principles of meta-stating to psychotherapeutic processes is to bring healing and renewal, to correct mismappings, and to set new frames that will empower a person. While meta-stating is, by its very nature, therapeutic, the therapeutic use of meta-states allows us to put an end to old distresses. The access and apply structure of meta-stating invites us to ask, What resourceful thoughts, emotions, memories, or imaginations would set a healing frame of mind for this person? Structurally, the most powerful therapeutic processes in NLP has a meta-state format: the Movie-Rewind pattern by which you can neutralize a phobia or strong negative emotional experience, the Swish Pattern that re-directionalizes the brain, the Time-Lining patterns for ReInventing History and Destroying Toxic Decisions. See section Four: Patterns for Therapeutic Excellence. The Pattern 1) Identify the primary state and the sensory-based components. What are the see-hear-feel components about which the person has constructed un-enhancing maps? Where? When? In what context? For what end? 2) Flush out the meta-level frames that inadequately map the experience. What do you think or feel about the primary state? What do you believe about it? What do you understand and what identifications have you created about -90-

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it? How do you know to call it this? 3) Continue to flush out the meta-level frames until you begin to loop or “hit the ceiling.” Use the list of meta-questions or the Opening-Up pattern to enter and detect the entire Matrix. 4) Opt for deframing, reframing, upframing, lateral framing, or outframing. What needs deframing? What needs reframing? What needs outframing? The key to the structure of human experiences lies in the frames that we set and then live within. Changing the frame changes the experience— the neuro-linguistic “reality.” Deframing pulls the unresourceful experience apart so that it can no longer function as it has. Reframing exchanges the old frame for a new frame of reference: “It is not this, but that.” Upframing moves up to abstract from the current frames in an attempt to set a higher frame that transforms things. For example, Time-Lining moves up to the concept of “Time” and offers a way to reprogram the past. Outframing steps aside from the whole toxic structure and offers a whole new kind of thinking and feeling from the thinking-feeling that created the destructive frames. 5) Make the meta-level intervention and systemically change the entire system. Movie Rewind Pattern The Swish Pattern Time-Lining Patterns Meta-States Patterns 6) Check ecology and future pace

7) ACCELERATING LEARNING What kind of (learning) state do you need to construct so that what you learn will automatically get integrated and implemented into your everyday activities and behaviors? 1) Dream about an accelerated learning state. Pair up with one or two others and brainstorm for a few minutes about how you want to refine and texture your own personal learning state. What resourceful states do you want to bring to bear upon your basic learning state? -91-

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How would you want to sequence these states-upon-states and then write it as a spell? 2) Access and apply each resourceful state to your learning state. It really does not matter what state, frame, or context you set and “bring to bear” upon your joyful learning state. Only one thing makes a difference: Does it generate the effect of having a program inside your head and nervous system for implementing and installing new learnings? Menu List of Possibilities: Playfulness Experimenting Going for It! Future-pacing Tenacious Learning

Frolicsome Learning Calm Learning Optimistic Learning Confident Learning Decisiveness

Lustful Learning Awesome Learning Outrageous Learning Implementing Curiosity/ Wonder

Belief: “I always take immediate action on new learnings that I value so that I get it into my neurology.”

3) Embed meta-level states to design engineer new gestalts A gestalt is something that is “more than the sum of the parts.” Understanding and using systemic processes. When we have an inter-active system (i.e. our mind-body-emotion system) we have a context within which systemic phenomena can arise—emergent properties or “gestalts.” This means we need to strategically thinking through the effect of level-upon-level in order for us to check the ecological value of a particular form of meta-stating. For many people, mere learning operates as an “intellectual” exercise apart from installation. Somehow they operate from a meta-level structure that holds them back from and prevents them from transferring their learnings and insights into their practical everyday behaviors. This strikes me as an unproductive frame that needs to be corrected. What resourceful thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, understandings, emotions, etc. would you like to set over your learning state that will accelerate and empower your learning?

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THE TEXTURING OF STATES Becoming a “State” Connoisseur Suppose you could texture your mental and emotional states... Suppose you could add various tastes, feels, qualities to your current frame of mind... Suppose you could make the way you move through the world richer and fuller and radiating with a delightful and fascinating aroma... Suppose that you’re not stuck or limited with just the plain vanilla states... If we begin with these supposing questions regarding the quality and nature of our everyday mind-body states, we can then begin to design engineer the very quality of our lives. When we do this, we move to one of the most exciting and captivating features of Meta-States. Plain Vanilla States Consider the nature and quality of some of the following mental and emotional states. Examine the following list of terms that summarize these common everyday states and take a moment to explore them in terms of how you experience the quality of these states. You could ask about their: Intensity and Strength Accessibility and Development Features and Feel Ecology and Balance Confidence Clarity Commitment Courage Congruence Curiosity

Anger Fear Anxiety Sadness Discouragement Tension

Joy Playfulness Respect Interest Enthusiasm Relaxation

What kind of texture do you experience with these states? What are some of the qualities and properties that characterize them? Perhaps you experience — Hesitating confidence; courageous confidence; foolish confidence; playful confidence, bold confidence Slow Clarity; dull clarity; bright and brilliant clarity, developing clarity, curious clarity. Fear of commitment; total commitment; stressful commitment, playful commitment, miserable commitment. Aggressive curiosity, rigid curiosity, humorous and silly curiosity, -93-

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serious curiosity. Hostile anger; dreadful fear of anger; shame about feeling guilty for being angry Shameful fear; bold fear; curious fear; playful fear The Meta-State Flush Out The fact that we have and experience our mind-body states in terms of other qualities and properties informs us that we have, and carry with us, metastates. Typically, however, we don’t experience them as “meta.” It all seems part and parcel of one state—one experience. This only means that the higher level thoughts and feelings that we have applied or “brought to bear” upon the plain vanilla state has completely coalesced into the state and now comprises its texture. In this way, our meta-states get “into our eyes.” They coalesce and percolate into our muscles. When this happens, we cease to notice them as separate or apart of our regular everyday states. They become a part of the state and no longer apart. They enter into the state as the higher level qualifying and governing frames-of-reference. In this way, our meta-states seem hidden and invisible to us even though we never leave home without them. Yet we can easily tease out the higher levels. We can use the qualities of our states as a way to flush out meta-states (your own or those of someone else). Simple inquire about the quality of a state. Say, when you get angry, what’s the quality of your anger? Would I like you angry? Are you respectful and thoughtful when you’re angry? Or do you lose your head and go ballistic when you get mad? Can you maintain civility and patience when you’re feeling upset and angry? Or do you become impatient and insulting? The answers and responses that emerge from the quality question about a state flushes out the higher frames. And typically, there are many of them. You can also ask about other meta-level phenomena. What do you believe about anger? What memories in your personal history informs you about this? What values or dis-values do you have about experiencing anger? What moral judgments do you make about this? How does this affect who you are? -94-

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How does anger play into or fail to play into your destiny, mission, and vision? What do you expect about anger? About people when they get angry? Understanding the Meta-Levels in our States Far from exhausting the subject, these questions just get us started in this domain of the meta-levels in our Neuro-Semantics. Yet to fully understand what we mean by meta-states and their importance, we need to step back and think about our everyday states. At first reckoning, they seem ordinary, plain, and of vanilla flavoring. But they are not. They are textured. They have properties and features and characteristics that go far beyond “plain vanilla.” Over the years, via everyday experiences, we come to qualify them. We set them inside of various frames-of-reference. And every time we do, we create a meta-level state. Remember, we’re using the term “state” here as a holistic and dynamic term that includes state of mind, state of body, and state of emotion. Using “anger” as a prototype, we experience thoughts-and-feelings and neurological somatic sensations about the state of anger. We like it or dislike it. We fear it or love it. We dread it or long for it. We believe it can serve us; we believe it only turns things ugly. All of these are meta-states. Dynamic, ever-moving and changing mental and emotional states about other states. Structurally, a meta-state stands in special relationship to our states. They relate to the primary state as a higher state of awareness about it. This makes them about the lower state as a classification of it. The junior state functions as a member of that class. The higher or meta-state functions as a category for understanding and feeling about the lower. That’s why “fear of our anger” (fearful anger) differs in texture so much from “respect of our anger” (respectful anger). That’s why “shame about getting angry because it only turns things nasty” differs so much in texture to “appreciation of my powers to get angry because it informs me that some perceived value or understand feels violated and allows me to respectfully explore the situation anger.”

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organizes, and governs. It functions like a self-organizing attractor in the mind-body system. That’s why meta-states are so important. In your metastates, you will find all of your values, beliefs, expectations, understandings, identifications, etc. The Systemic Nature of Meta-States While I have teased apart the structure of our higher frames-of-references (or meta-states) from the primary experiences, we can only do that for sake of analysis and understanding. In actual practice primary and meta levels of experiences or states merge into one unit. Research scientist Arthur Koestler introduced the term “holons” many years ago to describe reality as composed of whole/parts. These whole/parts holons refer to any “entity” that is itself a whole and yet simultaneously a part of some other whole. Consider our “states” as holons. We experience our “states” as a whole. Confidence, courage, commitment, playfulness, joy, flow, etc. We experience each as a whole within itself. And yet, they also all exist (and actually only exist) as a part of some larger whole. We would have no state without a body, a functioning nervous system, a thinking brain, “life,” oxygen, an atmosphere, etc. A mind-body state operates as a holon also in terms of all of the higher mental and emotional frames (beliefs, values, expectations, etc.) that support it. The state of confidence is a whole and it is also a part of many other higher level frames. Ken Wilber speaks about holons in terms of agency and communion, and transcendence and dissolution. Each holon has its own identity or autonomy. It has its own agency or identity as a whole. Yet as a holon within a larger whole, it also communicates and has communion with other wholes (i.e., confidence with respect, within esteem for self, within possibilities, etc.). This allows it to transcend itself and to go beyond what it has been to become more of what it can be. It can add novel components to itself. Or it can dissolve. A holon can be pulled up or pulled down. Yet when a state as a holon moves up and experiences a transcendent of itself (self-transcendence) something new emerges. This occurs when we develop a compelling outcome so that we’re empowered to boldly face a fear. Here courage emerges. And while the lower was transcended and included in the higher, this continuous process produces discontinuities. -96-

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Yet the leap upward does not work in reverse. In systems theory the new gestalt is “more than the sum of the parts.” Some new configuration has emerged. Merely adding all of the parts together does not, and cannot, explain it. Emergence has occurred. There was a leap upward to a higher form of organization and structure. Wilber (1996) writes: “So there are both discontinuties in evolution—mind cannot be reduced to life, and life cannot be reduced to matter; and there are continuities ..” (p. 24)

He also says that “holons emerge holarchically.” (p. 27) . This term, holarchically, also comes from Koestler and replaces “hierarchy.” Holarchically describes what we mean by a natural hierarchy, not the ones that we create which involve dominations. Natural hierarchies describe an order of increasing wholeness: particles to atoms to cells to organisms or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes a part of the whole of the next. Each higher level embraces and engulfs the lower. That’s why when we take a primary everyday state like anger or confidence and set various frames on it, we create new emergent properties to nurture the mind-andbody on. Imagine embracing your anger with acceptance, appreciation, and then wonder. Imagine engulfing it in love, respect, and honor. Imagine applying mindfulness, values, and patience to it. Imagine bringing ecology concerns, moral uprightness, and honor to it. Mix well. Put into the oven of your mind, let it bake for awhile... Imagine embracing your power to take action in the world with acceptance and appreciation. Imagine engulfing it with ownership, excitement, and joy. Imagine applying hope, desired outcomes, willingness to take intelligent risks, love, and concern for others, to it. Mix all of these well in a state of contemplative relaxation. Let it bake as you learn and explore and develop...

With Meta-States, you can now take charge of the process and design the kind of quality states that will turn you on to life in new and exciting ways. States Plus: Transcend and Include To transcend any everyday plain vanilla state, we begin at the primary level of consciousness as we notice our thoughts and feelings about something “out there” in the world. This defines a primary state. Our awareness focuses on something external to ourselves. We fear driving fast, closed in -97-

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places, particular tones of voices. We get anger at violence, insults, and threats to our way of life. We delight in and enjoy the beauty of a scene or a piece of music. We transcend this experience while including it as we move up to a higher level of thought, emotion, and awareness. This creates a new level of organization. We have something higher that still contains the essentials of the lower plus something else. In respect, considerate, and patient anger —we still have anger. We still have the sense of threat or danger to our person or way of life, yet the anger is now textured in larger levels of mind and emotion. That causes something new to emerge. We have the anger state plus something that transcends “mere” anger (that is, animal-like, brute anger). Now we have a higher kind of human anger, even spiritual anger. We have hierarchy (levels) of states or holoarchy because as Aristotle first pointed out: All of the lower is in the higher, but not all of the higher is in the lower. Molecules contain atoms, but atoms do not contain molecules. As we move up levels, the higher level includes the lower and transcends it. As it transcends the lower, it adds new features, qualities, properties, and characteristics to it. In Meta-States this provides us the ability to engineer new emergent properties for our states. It gives us the key to the structure of subjectivity as experiences become more complex and layered. When our learning is taken up into playfulness and appreciation, when we engulf it with passion and the intention to improve the quality of life—something new emerges. We have a passionate learning state that’s much accelerated and that’s a real turn-on. It takes on more of the qualities of “genius.” Each higher level has added new components that enrich the emergent gestalt. Now something bigger and more expansive arises. Now we have the learning state plus.

Meta-State Permeation When I first wrote the text for Meta-States (1995), I made numerous mistakes in conceptualizing and theorizing about the structure of the model. These have been completely updated and the mistakes eliminated in the totally revised edition (2000). One of those mistakes involved thinking that -98-

the higher levels could not be anchored kinesthetically. At the time I didn’t understand how the higher levels operate as holons, how they not only transcend but also embrace and include the lower levels. I now understand how they permeate the lower levels giving what had been a plain vanilla state all kinds of rich textures, tastes, aromas, etc. Accordingly, we have been developing a whole series of patterns and processes for “mind-muscling” the mind-body integration that fully allows the higher levels to percolate down through the levels. This completes the process by which we layer thought upon thought and feeling upon feeling so that in the end we have holons— whole/part states within a hierarchal or holoarchical systems. These state plus experiences then offer us top-notch high quality states that we have textured with the very best of resources. When you get to this place, you have entered into the highest of design engineering with Meta-States. Now we have a powerful process for texturing our states so that they respond to our intentional designs. Summary In meta-stating we texture our states giving them a richer and fuller feel. This gives more quality to our states and, in this sense, enables us to quality control our states. In texturing our states with various qualities, we often create gestalt states. When this happens, a systemic dynamic occurs so that an emergent property arises that’s “more than the sum of the parts.”

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THE PRIMES “Every child, before self-consciousness begins to interfere, acts spontaneously with total abandon and complete involvement. Boredom is something children have to learn the hard way, in response to artificially restricted choices.” (Flow, 229)

From Prime States to Meta-States For several years now I have been calling the Meta-State patterns in this section Primes (e.g., prime states). As foundational states and meta-states, they are extremely powerful in that they provide the foundation for later developments. In that sense, they prime or primal states. In Lifespan Developmental Psychology, numerous theorists have identified various psycho-social, psycho-sexual, and psycho-mental stages that we go through and complete in order to move on to higher development. These are the states we are calling the prime states. The rest of our powers of mindemotion are based upon them. This explains why we feel them so powerfully and yet at the same time are often tempted to dismiss them as too obvious and simple. It is normal and typical that at around two years of age, we go through a stage of differentiation where we say “No!” We do this to begin the individuation process as we separate ourselves from our early caretakers. This then allows us to say “Yes!” to life. This shows up in the simple enthusiasm and excitement of small children. Prior to that, we go through the psycho-social stage of trust. Here we learn to trust our caretakers, world, etc. When we fail to negotiate one of these stages, we tend to get “stuck” at that level of development. We can now “finish that business” -100-

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and move on developmentally by revisiting these areas and reclaiming these fundamental powers. List of prime states and meta-states: Trust: Is the world and people safe or not, can I trust them? The Yes/No primes: Yes-ing and No-ing as validating and invalidating, confirming and disconfirming. "Mine!" for ownership, responsibility, sense of power, control. Valuing, esteeming, standing in awe. Learning: openness, receptivity, curiosity. Eyes wide open: sensory awareness Acting: claiming basic powers of action, proactivity, movement. Aversion / Attraction: the foundation of any propulsion system of motivation. Pleasure and meta-pleasuring: delight, happiness. Good/Bad: good for me, bad for me, foundation for ecology checking. Play, pretending: foundation of the miracle question and the As If frame Deciding: saying no/ yes, cutting off alternatives, trusting self. Matching, mirroring: mimicking, foundation of bonding/ connecting, modeling.

1) META-STATING SENSORY AWARENESS Stopping the World “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” (Fritz Perls)

Learning necessitates being able to truly look, listen, and feel the things present. We need to be able to see-and-see, hear-and-hear, feel-and-feel. To do this, stop your internal mental “world” —the matrix of your mind. The prime state here is that of sensory awareness. The Pattern 1) Design engineer a rich resourceful uptime state. Do this by accessing an simple state of pure observation (uptime) wherein you just observe such that you see and see, hear and hear, sense and sense (“feel”) and do so with no evaluation, and no V—>K, A—>K synesthesias. This does not refer to merely an “empty” observing state. Don’t bring emptiness to bear on this, but rather simple, -101-

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pure, direct observation. “Just observe...” “Observe with no judgment at all...” “Just see and see; hear and hear; feel and feel...” 2) Do so with safety knowing you have distance and calmness. As you just see-and-see, hear-and-hear, feel-and-feel—breathe fully and completely and “be present to the moment of sights, sounds, sensations, etc.” As you do, expand the landscape of your state—its boundaries, expansiveness, broadness, etc. 3) Anchor and solidify by moving around practicing uptime. One meta-partner keep firing the anchor, the other meta-partner continue to linguistically cue you for see-seeing, hear-hearing, etc. “This sight, sound, sensation, smell, taste means nothing inherently and you can experience it as it ‘is’ — for itself, apart from meaning.” Meta-Level Just listen/ don’t judge “It is just... the VAK” Acceptance/ Calmness “I don’t have to give it meaning...” PERSON

>

Uptime — observing

2) META-NO-ING and META-YES-ING Belief Change Pattern Two prime states that we learn very early in life is expressed as Yes and No. These are the states of confirmation and disconfirmation, of affirming and dis-affirming. In the first, we welcome and bring the world into ourselves—ideas, emotions, experiences, people, etc. In the second, we set up boundaries and distinguish between “me” and “not me.” In the second, we push out and make space in our world. This pattern corrects the problems with merely attempting to change a metalevel phenomena like beliefs with mere “sub-modality” shifts. Once you have discovered some limiting beliefs that you want to get out of your head -102-

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and neurology so that they no longer operate as your programming, you can use this Meta-State pattern for changing limiting beliefs. It will give you a clear, quick, and effective way to deframe the old unenhancing beliefs and to install the empowering beliefs that support your commitment to success. Preparation: All of the ecology for this pattern has to occur before you begin. Make sure you have a high quality idea that you want to confirm and transform into a belief, a belief that is congruent and ecological for your health, relationships, work, enjoyment, etc. What enhancing and empowering beliefs would you really like to have running in your mind-and-emotions? Which belief stands in your way? How does this belief sabotage you or undermine your effectiveness? Have you had enough of it? Or do you need more pain? What empowering belief would you like to have in its place? Is the new idea realistic? Is it useful, productive, enhancing in all aspects of your life? Take time to meta-model the limiting belief with the person so that the person has a clear understanding of his or her mapping of the old belief, check out the positive intentions that have held the old belief in its place, and refine the new belief until the person has a clear and succinct expression of it. Often it is in finding “the right words” for that person that the belief “takes.” The Pattern: 1) Access a good strong “No!” Is there something that you can say No to with every fiber in your body in a way that is fully congruent? Good. Now express that “No!” again and again until you begin to feel it more and more on the inside. How much do you now feel it? What would be the best anchor that you could create for this No! with your hand gestures? Good. Feel it even more fully and what is your best voice for “No!”? Would you push a little child in front of a speeding bus just for the hell of it? Would you eat a bowl of dirty filthy worms when you have delicious food available? 2) Meta “No!” the Ecology of the Limiting Belief. Feeling all of this powerful “No!”, even “Hell No!” feel this fully as you think about how stupid, useless, limiting, dis-empowering, -103-

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unecological that belief is ... now. What is that like? Keep on saying No! to the ecology of that limiting belief until you begin to feel that it is no longer welcomed and no longer has any power to run your programs. Does it have any room in your presence? Is it welcomed in your mind? How many more times and with what voice, tone, gesturing, do you need to totally disconfirm that old belief so that you know —deep inside yourself—that it will no longer run your programs? 3) Access a Strong and Robust “Yes!” Is there anything that you can think so that every fiber of your being says “Yes!” without any question or doubt? Is there anything like that? As you now notice your “Yes!”, notice the neurology and feeling of this yes, the voice of yes, the gesture the yes, how much do you now feel that “Yes!”? How much more can you amplify this “Yes!”? 4) Meta “Yes!” the Enhancing belief. As you now feel that “Yes!” even more fully, what is it like when you repeatedly express it to the empowering belief that you want to have? Do you want this? Really? How many more times do you need to say “Yes!” right now in order to feel that you have fully welcomed it into your presence? 7) YES the “Yes!” repeatedly and put into the person’s future. This is only an exercise and so you can’t keep this! You really want this? Would this improve your life? Would it be valuable to you? Debriefing the Pattern A thought by itself is nothing. A thought, however, embedded inside of a frame of confirmation is everything when it comes to creating a powerful neuro-semantic state. It creates a belief state which operates as a command to the nervous system since the state itself is a confirmation of what is real and true. And it is yes that expresses confirmation, “Yes, that’s true.” “Yes, that’s right.” “Yes, that’s real.” There are several kinds of “Yeses” and “Nos.” There is the resigned yes, the ferocious yes, the matter-of-fact yes, the emotional yes, the neurological yes, etc. Here we use the emotional yes in order to fully feel the sense of -104-

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confirmation and to use it repeatedly until we get to the matter-of-fact yes. We use the emotional “yes” to get the feeling of validating and confirming and repeat it until it becomes a matter-of-fact yes. This actually is a much stronger and more powerful yes. But we want to get the sense of validating into our body, muscles, neurology first. The key is to get a person to strongly feel the prime states of yes and no. When eliciting a yes response, don’t ask questions that include the universal quantifier (“all”). “Do you always do this?” “Do you want this forever in every situation?” These questions invite the person to recall counterexamples. Simply ask, “Do you like this?” “Really?” “This would improve your life?”

3) META-STATING OWNERSHIP OF YOUR POWERS Among your most basic states is your power to think, feel, say, and do. These are your fundamental powers. They establish all of the higher and more complex powers. Begin with awareness to recognize and own these core powers. Then access a sense of ownership (expressed in the word “mine!”). Do this to establish the basis for personal empowerment, responsibility, proactivity, and initiative. Distinctions: The power to respond to the events and triggers of your life lies in your ability-to-respond (responsibility). When you take ownership of your powers you take control of your life. Elicitation Questions: Would you like to become completely response-able and empowered in your life? Would you like to totally eliminate the victim-attitude of feeling controlled by others? Are there ever times in life when you feel dis-empowered or out-ofcontrol?

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1) Identify one or more events that invite dis-empowerment. Have you ever felt dis-empowered? What triggers that feeling? Has anything ever invited you to feel that you don’t have the inner power to choose your response? Do you know of anything that might elicit a sense of being a victim? Good. Set that aside for now, we will use it later. 2) Access a full experience of your four central powers. Have you ever felt empowered? On top of your game? Have you ever felt really strong and at your best? As you go into that state now, allow yourself to become aware of your inner personal powers: Thinking: representing, believing, valuing, understanding, reasoning, etc. Emoting: feeling, somatizing, valuing, etc. Notice also your two public or outer powers by which you can influence yourself and the world: Speaking: languaging, using and manipulating symbols, asserting, etc. Behaving: acting, responding, relating, etc. How does it feel as you just notice and enjoy these powers? How fully do you feel them now? Access them so that you begin to feel these powers. What do you need to do to amplify them? Do you appreciate these powers? What is it like for you when you use your hands to mime out these expressions of your powers in your own personal “space” to create a circle of power for yourself? 3) Access and amplify a state of ownership. What do you completely and absolutely own? What can you say “mine!” to with every fiber of your being? [Anchor with a touch and/or invite a self-anchor.] Feel it when you strongly sense that something is yours, when every fiber in your being says, “Mine!” Keep it small and simple: “My hand!” “My eye.” “My cat.” “My toothbrush.” [Make sure your referent for “Mine!” is a positive one.] As you now think about something that, let every fiber feel it fully—how is that? How strong is your sense of “Mine!”? What do you need to do to increase it? -106-

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As you listen to your voice of “Mine!” what do you need to do to make this voice more compelling? Is it yours? Really? 4) Amplify your ownership state until your neurology radiates. Feeling the sense of ownership fully, now feel this about your mind, your emotions, your speech, and your behavior. How well does this set the frame for your responses. Do you like that? What is it now like as you apply ownership to your response-powers? “This is my zone of power. I am totally responsible for my responses of mind, emotion, speech and behavior...” Notice how that transforms things. How much do you feel this? Do you need to amplify and make stronger? 5) Appropriate your ownership-of-your-powers-to-respond to the disempowerment (#1). Now with all of these radiating inside your bubble of energy ... what is it like when you feel this about that event or situation? Notice how this transforms your response to that. How well can you maintain your sense of your power to respond in that context now? Do you like this? 6) Future pace to install At a rate and speed just right for you, bring in the original trigger and notice how this changes that. 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? As you notice how it transforms things as it allows you to fully claim you mind, heart, voice, and response powers, will you keep this? 7) [Optional] Distinguish responsibility to and for While inside your power bubble, notice how you feel when you say, "I am response-able for my thoughts, feelings, speech, and behavior. Response-ability for is my Accountability." Notice how well this settles. How many more time do you need to say this -107-

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until it settles well? Are there any objections to it in the back of your mind? Now say, "I am response-able to others but never for what others think, feel, say or do. Response-able to others is Relationship with others." Notice how this settles and any objections. Now say, "The boundary of our Power Zone Bubble is the line between responsibility to and for . . .”

4) META-STATING RESPONSIBILITY TO/FOR 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 people, the spirit and atmosphere that you set at work and home, etc. You are not responsible for how others think, feel, talk, or act. 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. The Pattern: 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 your Power Zone). 2) Distinguish between For and To. What is it like when you say the following? 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 -108-

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not hold anyone else responsible for these powers. What comes to mind when you say and mine this? 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 a selected reference. Imagine a training group or an individual person who has contracted for you to train (a relationship, a job, etc.). 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.

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5) META-STATING IMPLEMENTATION When it comes to responding, we can unthinkingly react (we do this automatically by defaulting to whatever programs we have available), we can thinkingly act (by using a moment of awareness to become conscious and mindful), and we can think ahead of time to proactively plan for our future responses. When we do so, we take effective action and implement our newest learnings and take our responses to the next level of development. Implementing what we know empowers us, it enables us to turn knowledge into action, ideas into reality, and principles into practice. 1) Recall a time and place where you thought, planned, and then took action. When have you thought about something you would like to do, planned it out in your mind, and then took action to make that happen? Think of something small and simple that fits this category of actions. What was that like when you step back into it? Be there fully. How pleasant and exciting was it? (Be sure to pick a positively pleasant experience.) What would be the best way to anchor this feeling and awareness for you? (Do so) 2) Where do you need more proactive implementation? Where in life do you need to be more proactive in the way you think about things, plan them, and then carry them through? Why is it important to do so for you? What will be the benefits? What will come of that if you do this? How much do you really want to be proactive in this area? What do you need to do to make this even more so? 3) Meta-state the proactivity to the new desired places. When you feel this kind of proactive thinking and responding about that referent experience, notice how it transforms your inner game of thinking and feeling... How is that? Do you like that? Would this feeling transform things for you? What? How? (Detail the changes in see-hear-feel specifics.) 4) Confirm and Solidify. Do you really like this? Is there anything you can do inside yourself to fully remember this in the future? What? -110-

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How will this change how you experience yourself? How much of an “Implementer” of your desired plans and outcomes will this make you? What other resources do you need to make this stronger so that you will maintain this? Can anything stop you? What? What resources do you have to address that? Are you going to do this from this day forward?

6) GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION Another set of prime states involves feeling or having permission versus being forbidden or tabooed. Permission refers to a higher level of mind wherein we are granted access to experience, think, feel, say, or do something. The frames by implication above it set the criteria for whatever we are sorting for: proper/ improper; right/wrong; moral/ immoral; authorization/ lack of authorization, etc. Do you have permission inside yourself to be absolutely excellent in your field? Will the higher levels of your mind allow that? What will it allow? At the higher level of your mind, do you have permission to let go of old frames, say “Hell, No!” to them, and then create and set new frames? Merely having our basic primary human powers or functions does not suffice for empowerment. We have to also feel and experience the right and the authority to own, claim, and use them. Do you have such permission? What occurs in human personality (mind-and-emotion) if you do not? Taboos: inhibitions, prohibitions, rules against, demands against, etc. Lack of Permission: uncertainty, skepticism about “right” to use, etc. The Pattern: 1) Check out your level and nature of permission. Go inside and say, “I give myself permission to X...” Then just notice what arises to awareness. Do you have any sense of an objection? Do any voices, words, conversations, memories, images, etc. come to mind? Do you have a sense of “NO!” at a higher level of mind preventing, forbidding, objecting? -111-

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2) Test it repeatedly until you develop a crystal clarity about permission. Repeatedly go inside and declare your permission. Begin to notice the quality, nature, and texture of the permission. Do you have full permission? How much permission do you have? To what degree? Under what conditions? 3) Quality control your sense of permission How enhancing? Empowering? Validating your sense of your self, your relationships, skills, etc.? 4) Integrate valid objections into the permission. Use any objections that you consider valid to re-write a new permission that honors the concern: “I give myself permission to speak up to authority figures and will do so in a professional and considerate way, recognizing my own equality and rights as a human being, willing to listen to the other person...” 5) Accept and release (or refuse) invalid objections. Use the power of “No!” to reject any objection that you know isn’t valid.

7) META-STATING ACCEPTANCE Acceptance is a very simple and low intensity state. When we accept, we put up with something. On a continuum, acceptance welcomes, but with no fanfare. When we accept the rain, we acknowledge it, welcome it as what is, and don’t fight against it. We just grab an umbrella and get on with things. This is the power and magic of acceptance. We stop fighting reality for whatever is, and use our ego-strength to find the resources and solutions that enable us to get on with things. Dejection Giving Up or In

Rejection Condoning

Acceptance Mere acknowledgment Unemotional welcoming

Appreciation Adoration Warm Welcome

1) Identify a reference experience for Acceptance. What do you, or can you, easily accept? What about — the rain, traffic, changing the baby’s diaper, nothing good on TV, etc.? 2) Access the feeling of acceptance and fully experience it. While acceptance is an emotional state of mind-body, it is not a very strong or intense state, just a “shrugging of the shoulders” type -112-

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of state. How do you experience it? What is the breath of acceptance for you? What is the face, eyes, posture, voice, etc. of acceptance? What is it like within your body? (Anchor this state) 3) Apply the acceptance state to yourself, life and specific referents. Now feeling this (fire the anchor), feel it fully about yourself — there you go, how is that? And feel this about life and the challenging things that you would now rather just accept rather than fight and resist. How does the feeling of acceptance transform things? 4) Confirm and solidify. How does this experience of applying acceptance change or alter your sense of self? How does this influence or transform your sense of being resourceful to handle things? Do you like this? Would you like to keep this? Is there anything you can do to make it yours and to have it available in those times when you really need it? What higher frames of mind would support this and hold this in place in your Matrix?

8) RELEASING JUDGMENT PATTERN Distinctions: The judgments that you have spent a lifetime developing are valuable and useful in most contexts of life. It is not useful in the coaching context. The mind-set and attitude of automatically judging yourself or others works against you in coaching. It will undermine your progress and interferes with hearing the client on the client’s terms. Both self-judgment and judgment of others are unresourceful states and undermine your ability to effectively listen and support your client. Elicitation Questions: When and where does judgment arise when you are coaching? When and where does your judgments interfere with your ability to listen and support? The Pattern: 1) Identify your experience of “judgment.” When and where does judgment arise in you? Identify specific time -113-

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when you experienced judgment: When and where does it interfere with your ability to listen and support someone? How do you know it is judgment? How do you know it interferes? How do you represent that? Voice, picture, words? What is the state you experience? 2) Quality control the judgment experience. Is this state enhancing, enriching, empowering of you or the other person? Does this state enable you to listen and support in a caring and compassionate way? Will judgment help your coaching? Do you need it then? Are you ready to release it and replace it with better resources? 3) Access the replacement states. In Coaching Genius (APG) you already access acceptance and appreciation. Here we will access observation and use as states for replacing judgment. A) Pure or mere observation. When have you just observed something without judgment? Have you ever been in an audience and watched a movie, a play, a concert? Have you ever sat in a balcony and just watched? Have you ever gone to a mall where there were levels of floors and looked down? What is it like in your body when you are just observing? B) Acceptance What best enables you to access a state of acceptance? What is that like for you? How feel? C) Curiosity What triggers you to feel absolutely curious, fascinated, and in wonderment? What is that like? 4) Transition: Access Releasing State for transitioning from judging to just listening and supporting. How do you release and let go of something? Menu list: muscle tension > relax; breathing; saying goodbye; closing a door; relieving yourself, balloons floating off, opening a window, tossing something into a river to let it be carried away, etc. 5) Recall the Judgment and Apply Releasing. Recall the experiencing of being in a state of judgment when coaching. Now apply releasing to the judgment state or experience when you are coaching. -114-

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Being in the “judgment” take it in and then release it. Do that repeatedly until you have let it completely go. [Use your kinesthetic sense of “releasing” over and over until you get the sense of letting the judgment state go.] What happens? How is that? Is the judgment released and you are completely clean of judgment? Is the space cleared of judgment? 6) Replace judgment with new states. Now having released the judgment, bring in the 3 resourceful states to replace the judgment. Bring in observing and just observe what is there that you previously judged. Bring in acceptance and just acknowledge what is there. Bring in curiosity and notice what is there to wonder about and explore. Let observing, accepting, appreciating settle in— what do you call this new state? Notice how much better you can handle the previous judgment trigger. 7) Check for objections. Are there any objections to doing this? If yes, what is the objection? What is the meaning, the belief, etc. to be reframed? Retest until there are no objections and the releasing of judgment settles well within. Test to see if in the place of judgment there is now witnessing, acceptance, and curiosity. 8) Future pace. Imagine the coaching session you will do tomorrow ... As you put this in your future in the coming days, what is that like for you?

9) MIND-TO-MUSCLE Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap The design of this meta-stating pattern is to turn highly informative, insightful, and valued principles into neurological patterns. You do this when you learn to type on a keyboard. The original learning may take a considerable amount of time and trouble in order to get the muscle patterns and coordination deeply imprinted into your muscles. Yet by practicing and training, the learnings become incorporated into the very fabric of the muscles themselves. You then lose conscious awareness of the learnings as you let the muscles run the program. At that point, you have translated -115-

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principle into muscle. The same holds true for expertise, excellence, and mastery in all other fields, from sports, mathematics, teaching, to surgery, selling, and public relations. Begin with a principle—a concept, understanding, awareness, belief, etc., and then translate it into muscle. I have found this especially true in our modeling projects regarding resilience, leadership, wealth building, selling excellence, learning, coaching, etc. This pattern creates transformation by moving up and down the various levels of mind so that you map from your understandings about something from the lowest descriptive levels to the highest conceptual levels and back down again. Pick a great principle to coach your body how to feel. Pick one that’s true and reliable, the ecology of this pattern lies in picking a good one. Distinctions: Your mind-body system naturally enables you to incorporate or embody ideas. You incorporate higher level ideas into your muscle memory as you learn, use repetition, and invite those learnings into your body. Procedural knowledge can easily be put into the neurology of your muscle-memory. Elicitation Questions: What concept do you know intellectually but do not practice? What great principle do you know in your mind that would make a great difference if you could only get yourself to act upon it and do it? The Pattern: 1) Principle: Identify a principle you want incorporated into your muscles. What principle do you want to put into your neurology? What is your conceptual understanding of this idea? What do you know or understand or believe about this that you want to set as a frame in your mind? How do you state it in the a way that’s clear, succinct, and compelling? Use the sentence stem and fill it in — “I understand . . .” 2) Belief: Describe the principle as a belief. Are you ready to believe this? State it as a belief. Do you believe it? Would you like to believe it? If you really, really believed that, would that make a big difference in your life? Use the sentence stem — “I believe . . .” -116-

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3) Decision: State the belief as a decision. 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? Use the sentence stem — “I will . . .” “I want . . . it is time to...” I choose to . . .” or “From this day forward I will ...” 4) Emotion: State the Decision as a feeling or an experience. As you state the belief decision, noticing what you feel, what do you feel? What do you feel as you imagine living your life with this empowering belief and decision? Be with those emotions . . . let them grow and extend. Use the sentence stem— “I am feeling . . . I am experiencing ...” 5) Action: Step forward and state as an action. What one thing will you do tomorrow that will begin to manifest this in your life? And the day after that? “The one thing that I will do today to make this real in my life is . 6) Put the action with the spiral of your higher levels of mind. 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?

10) META-STATING PUSH/PULL AVERSION/ATTRACTION When we use and combine the propulsion feelings of Aversion and Attraction (push/pull) into a single system, we can create an accelerated motivation system that automatically propels one toward desired objectives and away from dis-values. 1) Preparation: Identify the person’s meta-program styles of direction and time. Does the person first or primarily move toward or away from? Do either direction style drive their internal experiences? Where does the person store his or her time-line in space: to their right, left, immediately in front, etc.? -117-

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Direction sort: ___ Toward first __ Away From first __ Both Toward and Away From “Time” spatial sort Direction: __ Right __ Left __ Directly in Front __ Other Which feels more fitting for you, when I move my finger up your arm and saying that this represents “more and more confidence” or when I move my finger down and out along your arm? Test for “More” and “Less:” Anchor up or down on the arm? __ Up __ Down 2) Elicit fully the person’s “state” propulsion system experiences of attraction and aversion. Obtain three answers to the elicitation question: What do you feel strongly compelled toward in your life? As you think of it— identify what you simultaneously strongly move away from as you move toward your desired outcome. Now pick one of those experiences and assist the person to fully access each state. Begin with the Attraction state or the Aversion state depending upon the person’s metaprogram direction sort. Anchor each by setting each up as a sliding anchor on the person’s arm while alluding to and facing the person’s “future.” Amplify, deepen, expand the state until the person gauges that they experience the Attraction and the Aversion states between 7 and 10 on a scale from 0-to-10. (“I really, really want to get away from this!”) Test to make sure you have made the Attraction/Aversion states fully explicit and re-accessible. 3) Recycle through the Aversion/Attraction by eliciting and solidifying the meta-level frames that support each. What beliefs support your Attraction and Aversion? What values, identify, understandings, decisions, etc.? 4) Elicit the Attraction/Aversion forces for the propulsion “What do you want to become compulsively attracted to ... the converse of which you will feel increasingly revolted from so that you feel increasing pleasure as you move toward the attraction and more and more pain as you stop moving toward it?” Access fully the Attraction using your anchors... slide the -118-

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anchor to set the feel and direction of ever-increasing when moving toward... Access values, beliefs, the cinematic features, etc. Access fully the Aversion using your anchors... Slide the anchor to set the feel and direction of ever-increasing pain when hesitating... 5) Future Pace and Check Ecology Future Pace ... sliding the anchors. Use the links: “The more Aversion —the more I have I get away from it.” “The less Aversion—the more I Go For the Attraction.” “The more Attraction—the more I get to Go For it even more!” “The less Attraction—the more of the Aversion.” Check Ecology. Make sure it is balanced, tempered and productive. 6) Identify an Icon (symbol, word, etc.) to stand for the propulsion system... As you take that inside, where do you want to keep it? How does that feel? 7) Check the ecology and future pace.

11) IMPLIED PROPULSION SYSTEM Douglas Cartwright This pattern sets up a propulsion system using implied frames. The set up originates from, and begins with, frame refusal, and asking, Once a frame's been thoroughly refused, what's next? We externalized the pattern by standing in 4 positions which then makes it easier to do internally. Frame Games presents the idea that implied frames are as real as explicit frames. In following this process, you will be activating several the frames by implication: There is something you can do to move from the undesired frame to the desired state. The negative frame is just part of a feedback system. Progressing from the undesired frame towards the desired one is as natural as walking forward. A desired frame can squeeze out [eliminate] an undesired one. 1) Establish Position 1: Undesired frame game Stand in position 1 of the undesired frame game and name the -119-

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undesired game/frame. As you do, then amplify it sensorially, and refuse it. Say “No!” or use other suggestions for refusal in frame games. When if feels refused and out of the way, ask: What big, important, and desired state did this frame block me from? 2) Establish Position 3: Desired state Take two steps forward to position 3 where you will locate your desired state. What is the name of this desired state, frame, and goal? Have you made it sensory? Do so and build up a desire for this goal, saying, “Yes” it. Take two steps backwards to Position 1. You can now see the desired state of position 3 in front of you in your line of sight. Reassociate with the undesired frame, and ask the question, “What attitude, behavior, statement, frame, etc., could I use to absolutely nullify this undesired state, and put me on the road to the desired state? [While the desired state may be “pie in the sky,” the answer you come up with here ought to be something immediately within your reach and your power zone: the point is to get moving in the right direction.] 3) Establish Position 2: New Frame Now take one step forward to Position 2 where you have that new resourceful frame of the desired state. What is the name of this frame? Have you solidified it? When you rehearse this frame so you get in the new frame of reference, how does that feel? [This is the place you want to be able to 'fly into' at a moment's notice.] 4) Meta-Appreciate the Feedback Loop. As you now step out to the side from the whole thing, you can see in front of you, from left to right or right to left three positions: an Undesired Frame (1) , then a Desired Frame (2), then the fruit of the new frame—the Desired State (3). Enjoy and appreciate the feedback loop you've created. 5) Walk the Line. Notice now what happens when you step into Position 1 and then step through to Positions 2 and 3. How many times would you like to do this? As you do so and notice what you experience (or want to) in each part of the system, how you will recognize when you're in this position, and how you move from one position to the next? -120-

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12) META-STATING PLEASURE Pain and pleasure are two primary states. In this pattern you can explore your subjective experiences of pleasure and the meta-levels of “happiness.” Doing so will enable you to more fully understand and explain your motivation, propulsion, and addiction patterns. Why does something “mean” as much as it does to you? Somehow you have attached pain or pleasure to it. Distinctions: Your body is wired for a thousand pleasures and those pleasures have natural thresholds. You also have pleasures-of-our-pleasures, meta-pleasures and by these you can (and do) over-ride the natural thresholds of your pleasures. Giving pleasure to your pleasures creates the gestalt of values and semantically loads things with rich and governing meanings. You can link pleasure to anything! Anything. What would you like to give more pleasure to? As you move up the levels, listen for “edge-of-the-map” language: Just, only, obviously, “that’s the way it is,” is, really, etc. These words will let you know when you are at the top of the person’s mapping about pleasure. You can even ask, “Anything above this?” Expect and look for lots of looping and synonyms. This is where you get to go for a ride— enjoy the trip! Distinguish between expression of a state (feelings, actions, urges) and the frames of the states (the meanings). So before move up another level, ask: Is this just another synonym of that previous pleasure? How do I express this state? What feeling? What I feel like doing about the state? Actions Is this a meta-level of thinking-and-feeling about the state? Elicitation Questions: Do you have any basic pleasure that is so over-loaded with pleasure that you are naturally motivated for it? What primary pleasure is so pleasure that you would pay to get to engage in? The Pattern: 1) Identify a pleasure and fully describe it. After you make a fun list of all the things that "make you happy,” -121-

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have you picked one? Include anything that gives you a sense of enjoyment, happiness, thrill, pleasure. “What I really have fun doing, experiencing, seeing, etc. involves . . .” If you were to pick one item of pleasure that you really like, what would it be? Is it sensory-based? Can you see, hear, feel, smell or taste it? Menu list: taking a hot bath, watching a sunset, playing with a kitten, reading a book, taking a walk, sexual intimacy, etc. Pick something small and simple—yet full of pleasure for you. 2) Identify your first meta-states about the pleasure. Take the primary pleasure that you really like and generate as many answers as you can to the question: “What positive meaning of value and significance do you give to this pleasure?” [Get the first line meta-state pleasures, 3 to 5 of them, then begin to go up from those.] 3) Move up and identify all of your meta-states and frames. What positive meaning of value and significance do you give to this pleasure? What does this positive meaning of value and significance mean to you? — Sketch or diagram the meta-level structure and keep repeating. — Draw a circle to designate your primary pleasure with each answer as a "state" of meaning and feeling about that pleasure. — Continue to repeat this process for all of the higher-level pleasurable meanings that you give to the primary pleasure. For each ask the questions above. 4) Step back and appreciate the gestalt of the complex pleasure experience. As you step back, notice all of the meanings, beliefs, understandings, values, decisions, and states that drive your pleasure. Do you now know why it holds so much meaning for you? Does this really, in the long term, enhance your life? Does it empower you as a person? If you took away one line of states about it—how much would that reduce your enjoyment? 5) Step in and fully experience the pleasure then begin to spread it -122-

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around your world. What other everyday activity would you now like to creatively imagine using as a trigger to generate this feeling of meta-pleasure? Imagine fully being in this state in some particular context doing that activity (future pace), and how is that?

13) DE-PLEASURING Meta-Stating to Un-Do Addictions at a Higher Level From the Pleasure pattern we can now create a de-pleasuring pattern. Start with a sensory-based primary pleasure that you do not want to function as that pleasurable in terms of motivation and/or addiction. Use this pattern to reduce the level of pleasure that you take in a thing, idea, experience, etc. Use it to reduce negative addictions. 1) Identify disliked pleasure. [Smoking, over-eating, drinking, etc.] What primary level pleasures have taken on far too much meaning and value in your life that you would like to devalue and reduce in meaning and pleasure? 2) Identify the meta-state levels of meaning that drive it all the way up the Matrix. What positive meaning of value and significance do you give to this pleasure? Again, draw a circle designating your primary pleasure with each answer as a "state" of meaning and feeling about that pleasure. What are the higher-level pleasurable meanings that you give to the primary pleasure? What positive meaning of value and significance do you give to this pleasure? What does this positive meaning of value and significance mean to you? 3) Sketch out the full enjoyment/happiness structure with all of its metalevels. What are all the meanings, values, beliefs, understandings, etc. that drive and give meaning and value to the experience? How layered is it? 4) Appreciate the gestalt that drives the pleasure and quality control it. As you sit back and notice all of the meanings, beliefs and states that drive your pleasure, do you now realize why it "holds so much meaning" for you? Does this in the long run empower you as a person or enhance your life? Do yo need this? -123-

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What other things in daily life can you use to get these pleasures? 5) Explore its structure. Which meta-state ladder do yo need to eliminate? Put your hand over each set of meta-level meanings. If you took away this line of states about it, how much would that reduce your enjoyment? How many of the meanings do you need to take away before it ceases to exist as just whatever it "is" at the primary level eating, drinking, etc.? 6) Commit yourself to de-pleasure the old pleasure. Are you ready to decide at the meta-level that you will not give the primary pleasure that much meaning, significance, or value? Are you willing to say “No!” to the old pleasure? To say, “This is just food...” Will you refuse to accept this meaning for the experience? Use “edge of the map” type of words and expressions: only, just, it is... Set frames that limit the meaning. 7) Future pace the de-enjoyment. Go to your highest meta-pleasure states and access fully. Allow your creative part to identify other behaviors that you can do that will allow you to experience this meta-level meaning... Imagine fully stepping into this state and experiencing it fully and realizing fully that you can do so without needing to engage in that behavior.

14) META-STATING ECOLOGY QUALITY CONTROLLING We “run an ecology check” on our states when we move to a meta-position and from a higher perspective think thoughts and feel feelings about the balance, well-being, and health of our entire neuro-linguistic experience. This creates a meta-state of ecology and outframes our entire mind-body system in terms of ecology. What are the primes here? Good and bad; for me / against me; healthy / unhealthy. The Pattern 1) Ask meta-level questions to quality control your states and brain. Because our brains lack any innate quality control function, we have to take charge of this and consciously provide it. Run an ecology check on the quality of your thinking. Accurate/ Inaccurate: Useful/ Unuseful: Cognitive Distortions: -124-

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Enhancing/ Un-enhancing: "Does this state, belief, decision, part, meaning, etc. enhance my life or not, create resources or limitations, empower or disempower, etc.?" 2) Evaluate those evaluations. Keep going meta and keep evaluating your evaluations. This enables you to keep stepping out of the thinking that creates lower level problems so that you can access beyond-the-system thinking. This also expresses the essence of the scientific attitude; "consciousness of abstracting," the central mechanism for science and for sanity. 3) Install empowering "floater meta-states." Establish your quality control meta-state so that it continually and constantly evaluates things for productivity and resourcefulness. (Meta-States, 1995, p. 55). Go inside to the part of your that makes decisions, to your executive self and give yourself permission to always check the ecology of your states. Invite that higher part of your mind to take responsibility to always check for ecological concerns. NLP has asked the question: “Does any part of you object?” In NS, we turn it around and rephrase it more positively. First ask, “Is every part of you fully aligned and congruent with this as your desired way of living, being, and moving through the world?” If not, then we refine and reframe. This question frames things so that the person will more easily look for alignment and congruency rather than look for problems to the new pattern. Checking the ecology or “Quality Controlling” the higher levels of our mind provides us one of the greatest, most powerful, and strongest leverages when working with people. How do you get leverage on a client, customer, friend? Check to see if something really fits, enhances, empowers.

15) QUALITY CONTROLLING “Evaluation has to take place at a different logical level than the detection of difference.” (John Grinder, 1987) 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 good and healthy frames. “Ecology” refers to consequences and -125-

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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 short-term 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. This is a quality controlling of our matrix, a Matrix Check. 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?

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16) META-STATING TRUST Another prime is trust. Truth refers to opening and extending our ego boundaries out to others, to the world, for the purpose of embracing, receiving, exploring, etc. represents one of our central and most important powers. Developmentally we move through the stage of “trust/distrust” during our first years. We naturally do this unless something interferes with it. If we have loving and trustworthy parents and if the world we’re born into is relatively safe, we develop an adequate and enhancing map for knowing who and when and how to trust. Trauma messes this up. We can fail to build the proper kind of trust maps and so become afraid of trusting, distrust of ourselves and our skills, over-protective, fear-oriented, etc. The Pattern 1) Access a simple state of trust. Keep it small and simple as you identify trusting sitting in a chair, using a spoon, taking a step, breathing. As you notice how you represent trust, notice the full range of sights, sounds, sensations and the meta-level things you just “know” or say to yourself about this experience. What do you trust? How do you know you trust the object? How do you know you trust that you can handle it? 2) Identify the qualities of your trust. Now think of something larger and more important, something that you might have some difficulty trusting. What are the qualities of this trust? For example, hesitating, cautious, doubtful, confident, piece of cake, etc. 3) Quality control your trusting states. Where on the continuum do you fall: From Under-Trusting (Doubting, Skeptical) to Over-Trusting (Naive, Easy)? How useful, effective, enhancing, empowering? 4) Balancing your trust with higher resources Identify the higher resources that you would like to “bring to bear” or apply to your primary state of trust: self-confidence, strength, ego boundaries, sensory awareness, etc. Embed your trust into these higher resources and states of mind by meta-stating the resource to the trust. 5) Future pace this. [Comment: This is a crucial pattern. I have been using it with -127-

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several people struggling with cancer and other significant health problems. To date, every person has told me that they don’t trust their immune system since it did not protect them and/or made a mistake. So I have started there—establishing a trusting relationship with their body, immune system, autonomic nervous system, etc.]

17) META-STATING “LOVE” Another prime is love. Love as attraction, excitement, wonder, and desire to give of oneself. 1) Access a state of human warmth, connection, closeness Have you ever been held, cuddled, or touched? Return to those memories and just be there enjoying the feelings of being valued in this way. Be that baby being given a bath again ... Construct the images so that they are the best representations possible for a human being. If you have held, cuddled, or rocked a baby... recall that experience and then step into the role of the baby. What would it be like to feel loved, honored, adored? Imagine that fully. Amplify the feeling of connection. Apply to yourself, then to others. 2) Access a state of acceptance and appreciation Access acceptance, then crank up to warm appreciation ... amplify through the ceiling and apply to self, then to others. What would it be like if you fully accepted and appreciated the feelings and thoughts of love? 3) Access a sense of “good will” When or where or with whom have you ever recognized the presence of simple human “good will” toward another without any hidden agenda or motivation? Find a good representation of people expressing “good will” —perhaps the firefighters at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001; thousands of people sending millions of dollars for the families of those who died — that kind of thing. When have you extended yourself with good will for another? Access and apply to self, then to others. 4) Combine warmth, appreciation, and good will to your Self Definition Accessing all of these resources, apply them to your Self-Definition. Would you like to be known and recognized as “a loving person?” Yes, you would? Then I want you to feel this ... and this ... and this -128-

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... about yourself. 5) Future pace and check for ecology As you imagine moving out into the world with this self-definition, notice how it changes things ... and what possible additional resources you might need in order to have this fully ecological and balanced. For example: firmness, recognition of boundaries, joy, longsuffering, personal strength, etc.

18) META-STATING CURIOSITY AND WONDER A central prime state of childhood and part of our heritage as human beings is that of curiosity and wonder. Sometimes, however, this curiosity is beaten out of us in various ways. “Curiosity killed the cat.” Little children are fabulously curious and full of wonder at things. The Pattern 1) Access a simple and pure state of Curiosity and Wonder. Re-access a time when you were very young and very curious and step back into that experience fully and completely. Or, imaging the wide-eye curiosity of one of your children or grandchildren or that of a baby, become that child and look around at the world from that perspective. Be there fully and completely. What is it like in your mind when you are curious? How curious do you feel right now? What’s the most curious thing that sometimes captures your attention? 2) Amplify this state of Wild Wonderment. Crank it up through the ceiling! From 0 to 10, how curious are you? What would it take to become a 10? What would that be like in your body? Give me the eyes of wild wonderment. What’s that like? 3) Inform all of your muscles, neurology, face, etc. of this state. Take a breath of appreciation and then a walk of wild curiosity. How much more silly and outrageous can you make this? Is that all? A child could do better than that? What do you need to let go all the way into curiosity? 4) Quality control and meta-state your learning, driving, walking, etc. Play around with meta-stating various facets of your everyday life with this wild wonderment. -129-

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What would it be like to be of this state of mind-body-and-emotion at work? As you move through the world? When you study? 5) Give yourself permission to be even more curious. Do you have full permission to be curious? What happens when you give yourself even more permission?

19) WAKING UP TO THE MATRIX Game Consciousness of maps and frames gives us frame mindfulness. This allows you to then develop your skills in detecting frames. Begin by learning to think in terms of patterns, clues, shapes, forms. Moving from content to structure enables you to become a meta-detective. The Matrix is everywhere—in words, actions, stories, rituals, etc. Every word that comes out of a person’s mouth is not the world, but a map of the world, a frame. 1) Welcome and accept awareness of frames. Represent your understanding of frames so that you develop a frame about frames awareness which you find compelling, succinct, and memorable. As you represent this understanding—make some internal picture that vividly and powerfully represents this. “Frames are everywhere! I can find frames everywhere, in every statement, thought, emotion, behavior, etc.” “Everything that I can recognize, punctuate, and relate to occurs in a frame.” Since frames hide, inquire: “What frame is operating here?” Refuse to be seduced by content— that the great seduction. 2) Set frames for intense detection awareness. Access a sense of exploration and relate it to the previous state (step 1). As you feel the curiosity and excitement of the exploration, imagine the wonder and power that will be yours as you become a frame detective (your Sherlock Holmes Columbo, Nancy Drew state). As you make a decision to orient yourself toward frames, find some words to express this succinctly and compellingly. “I shall open my eyes, ears, and sensory channels to detecting frames.” Erickson said: “I greet my clients with a blank mind...” What Qualities do you want to texture into your detecting? Menu list: patience, playful, respectful, compassionate, generosity, -130-

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etc. 3) Now imagine the days and weeks to come as you go out on the frame search. Frames: “What Frame is this?” “What frame is suggested, implied, presupposed by this?” Listen for meta terms: “about, of, relating to, in terms of, first, second, then,” etc. Reference aboutness: “What is this X (thought, feeling, behavior) about?” Reference referencing: “What are you referencing?” Play the thought ball game: Free association, free intrusion of thoughts... “What comes to mind...?” Layers: What layers of thoughts and emotions dance in your mind? What thoughts are chasing your first thoughts? 4) Feel the state and then name the game. Use your senses to sniff it out. If it looks like, sounds like, smells like... As a frame detective, you will want to classify the frames that you discover. What will you call this or that particular frame? Give it a name! Give it a succinct, vivid, memorable, dramatic, descriptive, colloquial name. “The name of the game is naming the frame.”

20) META-STATING PLAYFULNESS AND 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.” The Pattern 1) Access a simple and pure state of Playfulness. Build this experience onto the curiosity and wonder pattern. Similarly, re-access 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. When have you been really playful? What was that like? What are the best triggers for laughter and humor for you? -131-

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Do you have permission to be humorous and playful? If not, make sure that you give yourself such permission. 2) Amplify this state of playfulness. Crank it up through the ceiling. Use exaggeration to increase it so that it become ludicrous, silliness, etc. How much more playful can you be? 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. How silly do you feel when you become playful? How resourceful? 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.” How much seriousness and over-seriousness does that blow out?

21) FLEXIBILITY EXPLORATION Flexibility is another prime. Adaptability is the power of flexibility to adapt, stay current, be relevant, and stay ahead of the trends and market. This challenges the need for comfort, security, and the need to be right. We need to be flexible to our environment so that our actions are appropriate, fitting, relevant, and meaningful. A great way to gain high quality information about a frame is to step inside it and the game it elicits, and then to step out. This provides a double-description, then a triple-description of the game. We do this to enter a Matrix and understand it. As we can become aware of neuro-semantic systems, our flexibility expands. We can use this also to do System Checks. 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?” -132-

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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 well-formed 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 and 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?

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22) META-STATING PRETENDING AND “MAGIC” EVENTS Then there is the prime state of pretending and imagining. Remember that one? As children we lived in a world of make-believe and magic. In Brief Therapy, Steve de Shazer has used the “Miracle Question” to invite this kind of thinking to create some new possibilities. I here use it as a way to step aside and out of the problem space so that we can do a different kind of thinking. This empowers us to engage in some solution-oriented thinking. This pattern utilizes fully the “as if” frame in order to construct a new outframing perspective. The Question: “Suppose that tonight after you go to bed and while you’re sleeping, a miracle happens, and the problems that brought you here were immediately solved, gone like that [snap fingers], now you have what you have longed for. Yet because you were asleep, you don’t know and cannot know that it happened or how it happened. How will you discover that a miracle happened? How will your loved ones? What will be different? What will you notice?” The Pattern: 1) Identify a problem. What prevents you from getting on the highway of life and living in a vital, happy, and ferocious way? What holds you back? Make list of all of the words and beliefs that arise. Or, think about some conceptual category that you don't like. Use the sentence stems, “I don't like ....” (i.e., cause, time, relationships, justice, power, dependency, independence, manipulation...) Or, “The category that really rattles me is...” 2) Identify your beliefs-about-beliefs structure (the Matrix you’ve built). What do you believe about that problem? What meanings do you give to it? What do you think about that? What does that mean to you? 3) Move all the way up the embedded frames and sketch the meta-level structure. What is that belief embedded in? What belief supports that? [Fully identify the meta-state structure using a sheet of paper.] 4) Check the ecology on the meta-beliefs. Does this kind of thinking-feeling about that help? Make things better? Empower you as a person? Have you had enough of that? [Get leverage by asking Quality Control questions.] -134-

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5) Imagining the night of the miracle. Close your eyes. Imagine it’s night and you’ve gone to bed. Suppose that tonight something special happens... a miracle happens and tomorrow you will wake up thinking-and-feeling in a completely different way... Take your time to do this thoroughly and vividly. What thoughts-feelings, beliefs, states do you need to explode into tomorrow with grace, power, love, passion, confidence? What state would this state presuppose? What supporting meanings/ beliefs would empower this? How would you represent this? When you are ready... I want you to open your eyes, move to this other chair... move to the chair of the day after the miracle... [Expand and extend as needed using hypnotic language patterns.] 6) Describe the Day after... If this was indeed the day after the miracle, how would you know? What would be different? Describe this day after the miracle. Who would be the first to know? What would that person notice? [Describe fully... accessing the states and beliefs.] 7) Invite the Construction of a new belief Matrix. Using the meta-questions, inquire about the new experience to invite the person to build up his or her own support for it. What belief would support this? What values? What new ideas or insights does this give you? Do you like that? 8) Confirm and future pace. Do you like this? Do you want to keep this?

23) META-STATING DECISIVENESS In “cutting” off one choice (No) and “affirming” another choice (Yes), we de-cide (de- and cision, “to cut”). Becoming decisive is about finding, identifying, empowering, and commissioning the higher part of ourselves that can turn our central self to life enhancing choices. What do you need, or would like to decide, with regard to your learning that would enhance and accelerate your ability to learn confidently? The Pattern: 1) Access a resourceful and definitive decision. Have you ever made up your mind or decided on something that -135-

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turned out great? What was that like? Recall it fully and completely. Associate back into it so that you see, hear and feel what you saw, heard, and felt then. Re-experience the sense of decisiveness. 2) Make a meta-move to the part of you that makes decisions. Explore: How do you know to respond decisively? What allows you? Validate: There’s a part of you—a part of your mind—that makes decisions, that made that decision... is there not? What is it like? Invite: So just now, for a few moments, go inside to that part of you that made that decision... and acquaint yourself anew or for the first time with this decision making part of yourself—this executive part that weighs choices, makes decisions, and that turns your central self toward values, desires, hopes... And just enjoy the experience as you bring acceptance and appreciation to this part. 3) Make another meta-move and run an ecology check on the quality of your decisions. How well has this executive managing part of you made decisions? What additional resources would you like to program into this part so that it makes even better decisions for you? Patience, Thoughtfulness, Reality Checking Skills, Proactivity, etc. 4) Own and commission this manager or controller How much do you fully own this executive level of your mind? What is it like when you bring thoughts-and-feelings of ownership to your executive level? Go to this controller’s controller, the executive over it, and commission it to work for you with confidence, decisiveness, patience, etc. 5) Fully appreciate and esteem your highest executive state Bring Appreciation and Esteem to bear on it... Bring Trust ... Say “Yes!” to it... 6) Future pace and install.

24) META-CEO COMMISSIONING Do you need to become more decisive about some things? This pattern uses the prime of a basic decision state of mind so that we commission ourselves to take effective action and to make our dreams come true. This allows us to set up a self-organizing attractor with decisiveness. Have you, at a higher -136-

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level of mind, in the part of your mind that makes decisions actually commissioned your internal executive to do the thing that you want to do? Check for permission: Go inside and say, “I give myself permission to do this thing ... in X context with Y persons ... for the Z purpose.” How well does that settle? Do you sense or hear any objections or fears against doing it? The Pattern: 1) Access your higher executive. Because there’s a part of your mind that makes decisions, go inside and recall a time when you make an executive decision in your life to go in a certain direction, make a major commitment to another person, to a job, a company, etc. What is it like as you do so? As you recall it fully so that you step into it again and notice it, how does that feel? When you finally made your decision, what was that like? How do you know when you finally experienced the sense of decisiveness? What let you know? 2) Amplify and anchor. Notice the meta-state frame of mind of “making up your mind” in a powerfully decisive way and set an anchor for that meta-state. Do you like it? How would you describe this frame of mind? What did you eat for breakfast last Monday? [Break state question.] Now notice what this brings to your mind [fire anchor]. Did that bring back the state? 3) Apply to your new area of doing. Imagine moving through life in the days to come with this kind of decisiveness... Would you like this? 4) Commission into your future. Will the part of you that makes decisions take full and complete responsibility to access and use this frame of mind in the weeks to come?

25) THE OPENING UP PATTERN Embed and Activating a Focused System of Belief Frames We do not just have one belief about anything, we have many beliefs, and we have the beliefs embedded within beliefs. In the Matrix, it is beliefs all the way up, -137-

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belief frames all the way up. This pattern offers a way to open up a belief system and to explore a matrix of frames around a subject or experience. 1) Think of some action behavior that you do or would like to do. What sensory-based action do you need to take to make your life more effective and successful? Menu list: exercise regularly, read and study on a daily basis, make calls to promote your business, express myself in a kinder and gentler way, speak up with more confidence, etc. 2) Design the qualities that you want this behavior to have. What qualities and properties do you want in this behavior? What kind of feeling do you want to texture this action with? Menu List: Assertive, gentle, caring, thoughtful, sensory awareness, passion, compassion, intensity, relaxation, elegant, professional, etc. 3) Designate the Corresponding Mental/Emotional States for these Qualities. What states do these qualities imply? What mental and emotional states would you need to experience these qualities? Example: If you want passion and excitement then you need a state that corresponds to those qualities. In this case, passion, enthusiasm, ferociousness, etc. List all of the presupposed and implied states that texture the action in the way that you want it textured.

What would you have to remember or imagine to have that state? What would you have to represent and how would you represent it? 4) Identify the supporting beliefs. What would you have to believe in order to experience that state? (Access) [Supporting beliefs by definition are strong and robust, so make yours robust.] Do you believe that? (Confirmation) You really do believe that? (Strengthening the confirmation) And what else do you have to believe in order to fully experience that state? As you stay with that belief for a moment, what opens up for you in terms of even higher and more supportive beliefs? 5) Elicit each belief in order until it elicits the next highest belief. What belief supports this belief? (To elicit the next higher belief) Staying with that belief, what belief opens up for you that fully supports that belief? “And when you believe that, how much do you fully feel this belief?” Repeat these questions several times as the person discovers the higher beliefs that open up in support of previous beliefs. Make sure the person represents vividly enough to feel it. Test that by asking the second -138-

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question. Continue to move up the levels by repeating these questions. In this way you will have the person move up and moving down the levels of his or her mind, connecting, linking, anchoring, using both feedback and feed forward mechanisms. Continue upward through the holoarchy of the person’s Belief Frames.

Belief Frames that Open Up _____________________________________________________________ #4 Saying “No” to the things that get in my way allow me to say a hearty “Yes” to all of the good things in life. Decisiveness comes from knowing my mind and my values. Living life on purpose gives me a sense of direction and meaning. _________________________________________________ #3 Learning itself is a very special and exciting thing for all of the benefits it brings to my life: it makes for better choices, increases my sense of choice, etc. ________________________________________ #2 Being light and playful keeps me open to new learnings _______________________________ #1 Not-knowing something When you belief this, is a great and wonderful experience. do you fully sense and Not-knowing something is feel this belief? a rare and unprecedented opportunity for discovery What belief supports this?

6) Now, run the entire program quickly. Once elicited and designed, run the program of the embedment structure for the entire belief sequence by asking the series of questions: 1) “What do you want to do with more power, grace, elegance” (whatever qualities the person mentioned in step 2)? 2) “And, what belief supports that?” 3) “And as you now believe that, how much do you fully feel this belief?” These questions that you have iterated over and over should now set off the entire embedded holoarchy, the embedded system of your Matrix of belief frames. 8) Quality control the whole system and future pace. -139-

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Does any part of your object to having this as you way of moving through the world? (No) Do you like this? (Yes) Does it empower you as a person and enhance your life? (Yes) As you imagine moving through the world with this in the days and weeks to come, can you affirm this as what you definitely want? (Yes)

26) CLARITY OF REPRESENTATION DO IT TILL YOU DROLL! Clarity is another prime, so is excitement, and feeling “juiced.” Clarity arises when you identify the essential elements of a process and recognize the patterns in the details of a complexity. With such clarity, there is tremendous power. Clarity is the power to send clean, discreet messages to our mind-body-emotion system. It gives us the power to know precisely what we want and the critical distinctions. Clarity enables you to more fully install patterns, knowledge, and skills. Use the stuff of frames, the raw material of representation (the see-hearfeel elements) along with words to take charge of the frame setting process. Since vividness installs, use words more elegantly, dramatically and vividly to captivate your consciousness. The power of expressiveness lies in painting vivid and dramatic word pictures for ourselves and others—word pictures that grab attention so powerfully that it will not let a mind go until it does its bidding. As we would grab someone by the lapels and pull them so close to our face that there would be no avoiding of our presence, so we can set compelling frames. We grab attention compellingly. We rivet every bit of attention on the frame. We make it memorable, dramatic, and unforgettable. We can use emotion-laden terms to conjure up new possibilities. 1) Identify 5 wonderful, dynamic, exciting ideas that you would like to install. What idea would you like to install within yourself as your frame of mind? What NLP presupposition inspires you? What exciting idea pulls on you and compels you to make it yours? As you state it and find words to express it, how much does even this put you into state? 2) Step into a state of playful outrageousness. Have you ever been playful? I mean outrageously playful? Ludicrous even? As you recall the feeling of playful outrageousness from a memory or imagination, something that invites you to be a bit of outlandish, notice what happens when you use this state to express the great idea. How does that feel? 3) Literally sensationalize it. What can you do to make the idea dramatic, vivid, and wild? -140-

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What moves you to feel that it has become an internal Sensorama Land for you? As you re-write the idea, do so until it becomes refined and honed as more and more compellingly attractive and just notice what happens to you. How else can you load the expression of the idea with the qualities and features that make it more sensational, memorable, powerful, etc.? As you play with it by finding the voice, gestures, movements, etc. that give expression to the frame, what expressions work to really juice it up? 4) Appreciatively enjoy and have fun with the dramatization. Do you yet appreciatively joy the idea? Do you have a lot of fun just thinking about how dramatic the idea now seems to you? 5) Say “Yes!” to it ... powerfully. As you confirm it repeatedly with a bigger and bigger Yes, just how much are you drooling yet? 6) Future Pace As you stick it as a compelling idea into your future., and imagine running into it and then through it, what is that like?

27) THE ABUNDANCE PATTERN The sense of abundance is another prime and stands in contrast with scarcity. Use this pattern to access and build a mind of abundance so abundance fills your inner world. Install in yourself the abundance map. 1) Access a supporting meta-state of self-esteem. Would you like to avoid ever stepping out of the abundance frame and into the ego-concerned fame? Then 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 oneupmanship spiral. 2) Fully represent “abundance” as a self-renewing process. What internal Movie with 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. Have you made it fully vivid, dramatic, and compelling as possible? 3) Identify and elicit the supporting beliefs, values, frames, and meta-states 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-141-

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states? 4) Contrast your abundance frame with your current model or with the scarcity frame. How do you represent scarcity? 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 quiet. 5) Step into the abundance frame fully and imagine using it as your way of thinking, feeling and acting in the world. Future pace yourself tomorrow, next week, next month ... using various contexts (work, personal relationships, hobbies, friends, etc.). 6) 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 that doesn’t want to release scarcity regarding its fear or concern. Then respond to it appropriately by building in various safe-guards. For example, you may want to 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.

28) THE “SO WHAT?” PATTERN Here’s another prime. The simple thought and feeling that something just doesn’t mattered. Have you ever felt that? What if it meant nothing? What if we said, “So what? It’s nothing!” Would that de-energize the experience and make it less semantically loaded so you become less semantically reactive? Would you like that? There are numerous things in life that one person will care the world about and another will “not give a flip.” Caring, investing with meaning, and treating as important reflect the meanings that we create and then install inside ourselves that then form our inner responses. Nobody cares equally about everything. And everybody has an attitude of “so what?” about some things. 1) Access a lighthearted and non-caring state of “So what?” -142-

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Think of something small and simple that you easily and naturally say, “So what?” What evokes a sense of “It doesn’t matter!”? What do you really not care about? What do you see-hear-feel when you “don’t give a flip” about something? What does this state feel like? How do you breath, move, look, speak, etc. when in this state? 2) Texture this with respect and playfulness. What do you need to texture this state with so that it is useful, practical, ecological, etc.? What brings for a sense of respect for people? Access and apply to the “so what?” What puts you into a playful state? Access and apply. What other resources of mind-and-heart do you need to access and apply so that you don’t come cross as a smart-aleck or that your response seems disrespectful or insulting? 3) Identify a frame or fear or concern that you want to reduce the seriousness of. As you listen to the other say things and get all caught up in concerns that really don’t matter, say “So what?”

29) THE “IT DOESN’T MATTER” PATTERN Similar to the “So what?” pattern is the feeling of “It doesn’t matter” pattern. As we can semantically over-load ideas, concepts, experiences, and events, we can also unload them. Do you need to do that with something that has become “too important” in your response (and body), but “intellectually” you know that it is not worth that much investment of your time and energy? The Pattern: 1) Identify something that doesn’t matter. What do you notice around you that just doesn’t matter? Does it matter if you sit next to the window or not? Does it if you see a toothpick on the road? What doesn’t matter to you about something that you can notice on the ground? Does it matter if it is 75 degrees or 78 degrees f. (or 22 or 23 c.)? Does it make any difference if someone wears long or short sleeves? -143-

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2) Access and anchor the state of “It doesn’t matter.” When you fully access this state, set a kinesthetic anchor for it. Amplify the state and mime or gesture the idea that “It doesn’t matter.” Contrast this with the gestures you naturally use when you think about something that “does matter.” 3) Apply this mind-body-emotion state. What would you like to give less meaning and significance to? Apply the feeling of this state to something you have given too much meaning to. If you didn’t care all that much about X, how much of a problem would it be to you? 4) Stubbornly refuse to let it mean that much. Do you really want this to have that much influence on you? Are you willing to stubbornly refuse to give it that much meaning? How do you “make up your mind” so you can stubbornly refuse something? Access and apply. 5) Future pace and check for ecology. How does that feel as you think about living into the next weeks, months, and years with this new orientation? How aligned are you with this? Any objections that you need to deal with?

30) META-STATING BY METAPHORING Comparing one thing to another is the prime that creates and establishes symbols and language itself. Using and creating metaphors allows us to “bring to” (phorein) another subject and set it above it (meta) so that it operates as a frame (or meta-states). How do we metaphor? 1) Begin with a primary state. Any referent will work for the primary state—whatever you’re doing, experiencing, addressing. A referent may also be any concept— any meta-level meaning (i.e., a belief, value, understanding, etc.). What primary state would you like a new way of thinking or feeling? Wherein do you feel stuck or limited and have a sense that it involves the way you’re thinking and framing it? Menu: dealing with a boss, conflict with someone, cold calling, etc. -144-

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2) Access a silly state and describe the referent in terms of something else. Access playfulness, silly-ness, being goofy, and thinking out of the box. What are 20 concrete see-hear-feel objects, activities, or things in fields far removed from the referent state? List them right now? (Bugs Bunny, layers of an onion, misty haze in the morning, etc.) Run through your list of concrete referents and apply them one by one to the primary state. “I will meet this project with the ferocity of a lion devouring a prey.” “When the boss enters the room I have always become a wet dish rag, weak and soppy, but now I will be a clear mirror, reflecting back what I see and hear without any evaluation.” “I will respond to his retorts with the speed of a turtle to give me time to think.” “If this was a game, would you call it, ‘My Guru can beat your Guru up!’ What game would you prefer that we play? What if we played, Discovery?” 3) Check the ecology and entailments of the metaphor. What frame or frames does the metaphor set? What implications and assumptions do you find within the metaphor? What entailments come along with the metaphor? What are some of the unused parts of the metaphor? 4) Keep cycling. How many times will you need to cycle through the process until a powerful, useful, or fun metaphor arises? Make it so!

31) META-STATING MULTIPLE PERCEPTIONS Developing Flexibility of Consciousness Definitions: 1st Self 2nd Other

Position needed in order to speak with authenticity, to present yourself, your thoughts, feelings, and responses congruently, to disclose, listen, inquire, be present with another. To understand, feel with, experience empathy for, and see things from another’s point of view. Here you’ll feel in accord with the other and have a strong sense of his or her perceptive. -145-

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3rd Meta

To step back, gain a sense of distance, observe, witness, feel neutral, and appreciate both positions fully. 4th System To understand the contexts (cultural, linguistic, business, family, etc.) that influence all of the larger systems and contexts of our world. Think about a time when you expressed something in a strong, powerful, and persuasive way and which worked out in a way that really delighted you and the other person. Then think of a time when you were not very resourceful in responding to a criticism or something—a time in which you ended in an argument. Set up spatial anchors in the room for each of these positions so you can step in and out of them. The Pattern: 1) Recall a time when you were most resourceful in handling a challenge. Step back into that memory so that you recall it as if inside it again, seeing, hearing and feeling what you saw, heard, and felt then. Answer the following questions from first position using “I” statements. What did you experience that was a valuable resource to you? How were you able to access that resource? 2) Step out of that memory and Step into the Other’s Position. When you step into the position of the person you were interacting with, how do things look? From that person’s point of view, look at the You who just a moment ago accessed and expressed that resource. Literally step aside from where you were in step 1. From this expanded perspective, what you are you seeing, hearing, and feeling? Use the language of the second perceptual position: “you, he, she.” How would you describe the person demonstrating that resource? He... She... What did that person do or say that seemed resourceful? 3) Literally step aside from this memory and the first two positions as if you are now an Invisible Observer to the whole experience. From the position of an uninvolved Witness, what do you see, hear, or feel about that interaction? What do you think about that resourceful interaction from this position? 4) Step out yet another time to a position out beyond the whole systems of interactions. What additional awareness do you have, understand, feel, etc. as you look at all of that from a larger systems point of view?

32) LETTING GO PATTERN Sometimes we just need to let go. This is good for focus, sanity, coming into the moment, creating a bright future, de-stressing, and much more. -146-

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And, everyday all of us let go of various things— every breathe we take involves letting go of our previous breath. Our body has innate intuitive knowledge and skill for letting go of many things including the liquids and substances that it processes, if you know what I mean(!). So also with our mind and emotions, there are things there that we need to release. The Pattern 1) Identify something you want to let go. What do you need to let go so that you can come into this moment? What memory, frame, belief, understanding, feeling, etc.? What old mapping no longer serves you, but actually gets in your way? Where do you keep this awareness? Is it above you like a frame (high) or is it within you like a muscle memory (deep)? 2) Access the sense and feeling of letting go. What does it feel like when you let go of something? Access several things in this category of letting go and notice what it feels like when you fully and completely release something. Menu list: breathing, muscle tightening, squinting, pissing, etc. Access the feeling, amplify, and anchor. 3) Apply to the limiting item. Hold the letting go anchor ... apply it to whatever you need and want to release. 4) Commission, quality control, and future pace. Would letting this go enhance your life? Would it empower you as a person? Would it make things better in the long run and let you get on with life? Will the executive part of your mind that makes executive decisions willing to let this go? Thank that part and imagine taking this feeling with you into your future. Are you fully aligned with this? Any objections?

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I

f you never leave home without your states, and if the quality of your states govern the very quality of your life, this makes your states the most critical variable of life. Well, almost. Actually, more important than your first-level everyday states are your meta-states. Why is that? Because the states you bring to your states set the frames and higher mental contexts for your states. If your states are full of thoughts-and-emotions and action tendencies, your meta-states are the “rules” for them. Yet this is precisely where things can go wrong. Mostly, things go wrong for the simple reason that we take a “negative” state (a state of negative thoughts, mis-evaluations, and “negative” emotions like fear, anger, grief, sadness, tension, etc.) and you bring it to your primary states. Doing this essentially puts you at odds with yourself. You bring these kinds of mentaland-emotional states against yourself. This creates what we call dragon states. You feel upset, bad, angry, frustrated, tense, stress, fearful, anxious, etc. because you messed up. You failed to satisfy the challenges of a situation, you disappointed someone, something went awry, etc. This is a problem. Yet these negative emotions are typically healthy and useful. If I don’t want to hurt someone (my map about people and relationships) and yet somehow I say or do something that does hurt someone (my actual experience), then my upset feelings, my disappointment, my anger, etc. are all appropriate to that context and can be put to good use. -148-

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That’s what an emotion is—the difference that I feel in my body (soma) between my map of things and my experience in the real world. It’s a signal. My body registers the difference somatically. And it feels “bad.” Negative emotions operate like warning signals similar to the warning signals in a car. The lights and bells that go off alert us to some danger, some threat. The signal calls us to stop, slow down, look, listen, pay attention. But if I hate, resent, despise, judge, anger, depress, guilt, shame, etc. myself for experiencing one of these “negative” signaling emotions—then I have two problems. At the first level, the signal that of the difference, and at the second higher level, my attack on myself for having the signal. It’s the second level “negative” emotion that does the greatest damage. That’s the dragon state. It is those higher level “negative” emotions which give the most problem. Yet you can also create the same problem for yourself with “positive” emotions. What we call “positive” emotions is the somatic registering of the difference between maps and actual experience, except this time a person is getting more than what expected. The person’s maps are being fulfilled, and more so. Experience that and you will then register the emotion as a signal that things are going well, are going your way, that you moving right along just fine! “Positive” and “negative” emotions are both signals of how you are doing in terms of actual experience in relationship to your maps about things. When things support your maps and reflect the rightness of your maps, you feel good. When things violate your maps and reflect their wrongness, you feel bad. Map fulfillment is cued in your body as positive emotions: joy, peace, contentment, relaxation, excitement, love, attraction, pleasantness, hope, anticipation, etc. Map violation is cued in your body as negative emotions: fear, anger, upsetness, stress, guilt, grief, sadness, anxiety, etc. An emotion in an of itself tells you nothing about what to do. It only signals the relationship between map and actual experience in the territory of reality. Frequently negative feelings arise due to a misguided or erroneous map. Toxic ideas, limiting beliefs, stupid understandings, myths, falsehoods, etc. misguide you. The emotion therefore signals you to look at the map and re-evaluate it. Emotions are not absolute signals but relative—relative to the maps from which they come. -149-

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At the same time, emotions are always right. That is, they rightly reflect the map/experience relationship. This means that to become emotionally intelligent (that is intelligent about your emotions), the first thing you need to do is to develop a strong and positive relationship to all of your emotions— to the positive ones and to the negative ones. They are just emotions. Just as you would not put cardboard over the dashboard so that you wouldn’t have to see the “negative” signals of the car when you need oil or gas or need to check the engine, so there’s no need to deny, block, repress, or hate our “negative” emotions. “Negative” emotions provide you a great and wonderful source of information. They are responses of the mind-body system to honor, and accept and even appreciate, to even feel joyful about! Woe be to the person who will not or cannot feel bad. Feeling bad, when that’s appropriate, is a wonderful gift. Honor and accept your tears and sadness when you’ve experienced a legitimate loss. Honor your ability to feel angry when your values of life are in danger. That’s what it’s for. You creates dragon states when you meta-stating your emotions with judgment, hate, anger, fear, etc. So the primary secret for emotional health and intelligence is to never turn a “negative” emotion against yourself. That’s the origin of most of your troubles. That’s what sends the wrong signals to our body and what ends up as psychosomatic diseases. The principle is this: When we bring negative emotional energies (negative thinking and feeling) against ourselves (or against any conceptual facet of ourselves) we put ourselves at odds with ourselves. This turns our psychological energies against ourselves in unuseful, nonproductive, and typically toxic ways. This creates the dragon states that attack us. Therefore the solution is counter-intuitive and “paradoxical:” Welcome and honor all emotions— the negative ones as well as the positive ones. Celebrate them and use them as signals—as information about your mind-body-emotion system. The term “dragon” is the metaphor for any non-enhancing, non-productive, problematic, un-useful, and toxic state. Obviously, all states do not serve us equally well. Some can make life a living hell. Some feel like dragon -150-

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states; some even 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.

1) META-STATING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS Generally speaking whenever you bring negative emotional energy (the psychic energy of negative emotions and thinking) against yourself, or any conceptual facet, puts you at odds with yourself. You attack yourself. It turns your psychological energies against you in unuseful ways and creates dragons and dragon states. While exceptions occur, they are the exception rather than the rule. Use this pattern as a general process for handling “negative emotions and thoughts.” The Pattern: 1) Identify an emotional state with which you have difficulties handling, controlling, or managing. What negative emotional state of thought-or-emotion do you not like, can’t stand, hate, wish you didn’t experience? What negative states do you feel as “taboo?” For example: anger, fear, disgust, sexual, religious, etc. Describe this state. How is this a problem? What do you think-and-feel about this? What emotional states do you not allow? Fear? Dread? Will not tolerate? 2) Check your permission level. Go inside, quiet yourself and say, "I give myself permission to feel X." Upon doing this, notice your internal responses in terms of your inner Movie. What would happen if you did accept or experience this negative emotion? How well does that settle inside? What objections, if any, may arise to this? What resources would you need to access in order to more fully accept this? 3) Design engineer a new meta-stating structure. Go inside and give yourself permission congruently with a strong and resourceful voice that reframes the objections and notice how that settles. “I give myself permission to feel anger because it allows me to recognize things that violate my values and to take appropriate action early.” “I give myself permission to feel the tender emotions because it makes me more fully human.” -151-

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4) Meta-state the negative emotion with a powerful mental-emotional resource. For example: acceptance, appreciation, calmness, thoughtfulness, etc. Access, Anchor, Amplify, Anchor. 5) Quality control the permission and add needed reframes. Imagine fully and completely moving into your tomorrows with this outframe on the negative emotion ... does any part of you object to letting this operate as your orientation style? If so, recycle back to step 3. 6) Future Pace and install. Use what you know of the persuasion language patterns in NLP (the Meta-model and the Milton Model) to construct a nice induction for a more resourceful future.

2) META-STATING “EXPECTATIONS” One “logical level” of the mind is the level we call “expectations.” We map things, create a sense of the territory out there about people, activities, relationships, etc., then we come to expect that such and such will be “the way it is.” Identify your expectations to see what you have meta-stated as some of your operational expectations. Examine them to see if they operate more as Dragons to you than Princely States. The Pattern: 1) Flush out your out-of-awareness (unconscious) expectations using some sentence stems. When I think about X, I expect ... I can count on Y acting or saying ... 2) Test for the “reality” and ecology of the expectation. Does the expectation serve you? Does it enhance your life? What emotions, states, behaviors, etc. does it evoke in you? How accurate is the expectation? Does it map out things the way they are, or the way you want them to be? Would you want to update, refine, hone, etc. the expectation so that it more accurately provides a map for navigating life? 3) Refine and re-language the things you can actually expect in context X. Re-phrase so that you have the expectations in sensory-based language. Re-phrase it so that the judgments and evaluations you make about X are owned and recognized as your evaluations. What’s the best way to rephrase it? What would be a more accurate expectation? How demanding is your expectation? How tentative? 4) Access a state of acceptance. Since acceptance involves acknowledgment, welcoming, and perceiving, how much do you need to apply these to your expectations? Since acceptance is not resignation, quitting, or skepticism, have you avoided bringing those states to bear on your life and thinking? -152-

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How much do you accept X? What stops you from accepting X? What would happen over time if you did? 5) Anchor, amply as necessary, and Apply What new frames and resources would help you to outframe the expectation with a kind and gentle acceptance that acknowledges reality for what it is? “I make myself a friend to reality...” 6) Future Pace

3) HANDLING DRAGON STATES Negative states can fall into two broad categories: 1) those that need taming and transforming and 2) those that need slaying. We tame our dragons that involve legitimate emotions in their own right, emotions which simply need to be contextualized, tempered, and qualified. We slay the dragons that are comprised of thought viruses and that are sick and toxic through and through. 1) Identify and explore the primary state reference and content. What works as a “dragon” to you? An emotion, behavior, tone, volume? What belief, memory, concept, etc. serves as a meta-level dragon? How do you represent this? What lets you know to call this a “dragon?” 2) Identify the meta-level meanings that you have given to the external behavior. Listen for beliefs, values, understandings which articulate and drive the “dragon.” What meaning frames and higher level understandings govern the experience? How does this work as a “dragon?” What is the thought virus? What’s sick and poisonous about it? 3) Explore the meta-level meanings as purely linguistic constructions (Meaning Matrix). Meanings about Causation (Cause—>Effect). What causes or contributes this? How does that work? Meanings about Meaning (Complex Equivalence). What meanings do you give to this? How do you know to call it that? Meanings about Identity (Identification). What does this mean about you? How do you use it for selfdefinition? 4) Identify and explore the frames-by-implication (FBI) about those meanings. What has to be true in order for that meaning to exist and to operate so powerfully in your mind-body? -153-

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What other frames have you just assumed? 5) Quality control the ecology for of the entire semantic system. Does this enhance your life? Does it empower you as a person? Do you want or need this? What resources do you need and want? Identify and apply to your primary state, then put into your future.

4) DRAGON SLAYING The design of this pattern is to eliminate states and frames that undermine resourcefulness. We cannot truly or fully succeed until we take care of our internal “dragons.” As long as we have internal conflicts that tear us up, sabotage our best efforts, turn our energies against ourselves, or that prevent us from becoming congruent and aligned, we can’t move on. We know this experientially. We already well know that every program of internal conflict inside us puts the brakes on our efforts or undermine those efforts. This is why we need to slay and/or tame our Dragons. There are 5 basic steps. These are not necessarily in the order or sequence you will use. Start by attempting to Name the Dragon and then do whatever seems most appropriate as you chase the Dragon and circle his cave. You may have to do that many times before you get the real dragon. While I have set forth these steps in a sequential way, you will only occasionally use them in this order. Usually you will Dance with the Dragon and go round and round these steps, flushing out the real dragon and slowly entering the Dragon’s lair and fighting with the real issue in the back of the mind. 1) Name the Dragon 2) Embrace the Dragon: Kiss the Dragon 3) Analyze the Dragon (Use the Meta-Model sword on it) 4) Starve or Interrupt the Dragon 5) Meta-state or Frame the Dragon STEP 1: FLUSH THE DRAGONS OUT. Name the Dragon. Throw your linguistic net over that ol’ dragon. Turn your laser beam headlight on it so that it comes out from the darkness. Dragons hate to be named and exposed. “Ah, the anger dragon!” “The ol’ self-pity dragon.” “The ‘I really feel grouchy and really need a nap’ dragon!” What mind-body state do you not have a good relationship to? For what reason? Do you experience any of the following states as morbid, toxic, non-enhancing, etc.? Stress, tense, uptight Anger, sarcastic, rage, peevish Fearful, apprehensive Timid, dreadful -154-

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Pessimistic, negative Worrisome Self-contempt, rejection Sullen, hateful Bitter, resentful Over-serious Guilting Self-contempting/ Self-shaming Self-pitying/ Victimization Revenging/ Reactivity Cynical pessimism Revengeful, greedy Guilt about anger Upsetness about worry Consumption oriented Competitive Addicted to Approval Depressive: Quick to Give Up Self-Obsessed Living in the Past In what area have you turned your psychic energy against yourself? What have you tabooed in your life? What states, feelings, experiences, etc. do you become intolerant about? What states do you not allow yourself to experience? What states do you forbid yourself or others? What wishes do you not allow into awareness? What impulses do you condemn as not acceptable? What do you fear about X (any negative emotion)? (Disgust, hate, fear anger, embarrassment, shame, built, religious feelings, awe, optimism, hope, love, sexuality, revenge, to be grand and glorious, to hurt someone, etc.) What do you believe (know, hope) about yourself? How do you feel about (think, perceive) your negative states? What negative judgments do you make about yourself? about the future? Self-Expectancies: Explore Self-Expectancies to flush out Dragons. Complete the following sentence stems by generating 5 to 12 statements. Just begin writing. Do not censor whatever comes to mind. Let whatever thoughts come and intrude... just to find out what comes up for you in regard to the following experiences. When disappointments occur (Primary State), I can expect myself to think-andfeel ...

When someone rejects me, I can expect myself to think-and-feel ...

When someone criticizes me...

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When I recognize a character flaw in myself...

When I feel angry...

When I feel afraid...

When I feel obsessed by money, greedy, desperate...

When I feel guilty...

When I feel weak or vulnerable...

When I recognize I've made a mistake...

When I feel disappointed in myself...

When I work (or, make calls, relate to Authority Figures, venture forth on something new)...

To Become Wealthy: If I became wealthy.... To become wealthy, I would have to.... To save money on a regular basis would mean... When I think about Frugality... Budgeting -156-

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The Process of Wealth Building Keeping Receipts Not Knowing the future What else might stop you? Sabotage your success? STEP TWO: WELCOME AND EMBRACE YOUR DRAGONS Kiss the Dragon! Dragons really hate to be kissed! Kiss it with acceptance. Think of something small and simple that you accept that you may not particularly like. (Menu: a rainy day, lots of traffic on the road, paying your bills, cleaning the bathroom, etc.). Access that state of simple, matter-of-fact acceptance, feel it in your body. Now feel that kind of acceptance about your “dragon...” and just notice what happens when you do. Welcome the dragon in knowing that it is just an emotion, just an experience, just a facet of life or of being human... Kiss it with permission. Do you have permission to experience this emotion, thought, awareness, experience, etc.? Go inside and give yourself permission in a calm and resourceful voice. “I give myself permission to experience this emotion (anger, fear, etc.)... because it is just an emotion... and I am so much more than my emotions... “ ”I give myself permission to experience this activity, event, etc. because it is just an event and it doesn’t define me anymore than I let it...” How does that settle? Do you need to give yourself more permission? How many more times do you need to give yourself permission before it will begin to settle more? Who took permission away from you? Does the taboo really enhance your life? Or does it simply turn your psychic (mind-body) energies against yourself? STEP THREE: ANALYZE THE DRAGON Language drives and encodes most of our meta-states. We create languaged frames about our emotions and experiences and thereby construct meaning. Too often we construct dis-empowering meaning as we over-generalize, delete important understandings, use cognitive distortions in our thinking, etc. We end up with dragon meta-states made up of painful meanings that undermine our resourcefulness. If language creates the mess, then it by languaging (deframing) that we can pull the “dragons” apart and re-map in much more effective ways. The Meta-Model of language operates as a way to question, challenge, and index specifics so that we can test how well-formed is our language map. The questions of the Meta-157-

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Model have the effect of un-gluing the dis-empowering meaning. We can tear dragons apart linguistically by analyzing them with questions. And I can tell you, dragons hate that! The questions enable us to discover how we meta-stated ourselves into the painful meaning states and that can inform us about how we can stop the non-sense. If a meaning is sick and toxic and you ask enough questions about how it works, you will be able to slay the dragon. You will be able to pull apart the morbid states of negativity and pessimism. Meta-modeling the dragon: What do you call this dragon? How does it operate as a dragon to you? When did you learn to think-feel this way? Who taught you to experience X in this way? Does this enhance your life or empower you as a person? Does it always work this way? Every time? For everybody? How do you know to call it by this term or phrase? What specifically “causes” this? How do you have to feel or think when this happens? What are you presupposing in order for this to work in this way? Typical types of linguistic inductions that create and call forth dragons are the following: "I am a failure." "I'm a worthless, good-for-nothing bum." "I don't get half the breaks others get. It must be because I grew up in a dysfunctional home." "Nothing ever goes right for me.” Example: “I am a failure.” Implied Modal Operator of Impossibility _____________________________________________ / Complex Equivalence: Failing = “Self” Definition \ ________________________________________ / Cause—> Effect: X — Self as a Failure \ _______________________________ / “I Am...” Identity \

Primary State:

/ Values: Criteria — succeed, don’t fail \ ________________________ / “Failure” - Nominalization \ implied U.Q.: that’s all there is. There is nothing else; Person — Activities ...

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STEP FOUR: STARVE OR INTERRUPT THE DRAGON Dragons have to be fed to be sustained, so kick away the food tray and watch the dragon begin to quickly shrivel up. What fuels dragon metabolism? The very components that make up a mind-body state: internal representations, beliefs, ideas, ill-formed language, symbolizing, and physiology. Eliminate the old selftalk and the dragon evaporates. What specifically would help you starve your dragon? Are you willing to stubbornly refuse to allow the old ways of thinking, talking, imagining, remembering, etc.? What referents will you have to say “Hell No!” to? Interrupt the Dragon: Pattern interrupts can spoil dragons so that they no longer function in the way that they have. Stand on your head. Stick out your tongue. Take 100 long deep breaths while trying very hard to not imagine Elvis Presley dancing a jig. What would interrupt your Dragon? What behaviors, thoughts, imaginations, etc. would make your Dragon flee? STEP FIVE: META-STATE OR FRAME THE DRAGON Bring a resourceful state to bear on the dragon state. Begin with such resourceful states as the following: acceptance, appreciation, calmness, quality controlling, not-me, not-forever, not-everything, positive intention and value, originally useful, etc. Use the basic meta-stating pattern of Access, Amplify, and Apply. As you recall a time of personal empowerment, clarity, relaxation, etc., and feel this fully about that (the dragon), how does it begin to transform things? Meta-State your dragon with refusal: Are you willing to utter a strong and definitive ‘Hell No!’ to your dragon? To say, ‘I’m going not to let you ruin my life!’ Cast a Meta-State Spell to bring forth your inner Prince or Princess: Once you have slain or tamed the Dragon, use your power of selfreflexive consciousness to become even more resourceful as you build up some positive meta-states that leaves you fully integrated, centered, congruent, empowered, etc. With self-reflexiveness build, create, and install empowering meta-states such as self-esteeming, resilience, proactivity, forgiveness, un-insult-ability, inner serenity, magnanimity, etc.

5) 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 are choosing our excuses over our values and visions. Some excuses are legitimate and useful while most are illegitimate, stupid, and useless. Most -159-

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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 wellformed 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 out all of the value and positive intention 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. Have you fully and completely stood your ground and stubbornly refused -160-

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the excuse? Will it stop you anymore from reaching your goal? 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? Can anything stop you now? 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. Do you like that? Will you keep it?

6) FEAR BLOW-OUT When fear gets in the way, we often step back from taking action on those things that we value and which are part of our personal vision. This prevents us from effectively implementing even well-formed goals. It dampens our passion and makes us timid. If you have had enough of that, then let’s blow-out such fearfulness and timidity. The Pattern: 1) Access your inspiring knowledge or goal. What is your desired outcome? What do you what? How much do you want it? Do you know how to represent it fully so that you feel the excitement from it? How much more energy can you put into it to make it even more compelling? 2) Now think about acting on that knowledge or goal. As you now think about acting on it— notice and welcome every fear that might arise in your awareness. How do you know to call this “fear?” What does it feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? How much? When you gauge it from 0 to 10, how much are you experiencing it? -161-

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3) Consult with the fear. What is the fear about? How accurate or inaccurate is the message of that fear? Is it truly dangerous? Dangerous to what? In what way? To what degree? How useful is the fear? Do you need to take counsel from this fear? To what degree? What learnings and insights do you want to take from this fear? What resources do you need to face it? What do you need to do about the fear? 4) Decide on the limits of the fear. Where do you want to put the border and boundaries of the fear? How much power do you want to give to this fear? 5) Access resources to temper the fear with. What resources would you like to access to temper the fear with? What about calmness, confidence, a stronger appreciation of your outcome? 6) Blow-out any residue of the fear with your resources. When you meta-state the fear with your resources, when does the fear blow-out so that you feel a sense of courage and boldness to face things? As you access your powerful “No” state, how does it feel to stand up to fears that only get in your way?

7) META-STATING PROCRASTINATION Do you put things off? For how long do you delay and procrastinate? Has procrastination become one of the habits that undermine your effectiveness and sabotage your success? 1) Access a trigger for procrastination Do you ever procrastinate on things? Really? When? Where? With What? You put off doing something that you ought to do and that would improve your life? How do you know to put it off? What triggers you to do that? Is the trigger—an unpleasant feeling, discomfort, tension, emotionally painful? The idea of the effort or work that it would take? Boring, menial, trivial, insignificant, like a tiresome chore, tedious paperwork or housecleaning? 2) Acceptance: Just notice the sense of procrastination and welcome it into awareness. Use acceptance to just accept, acknowledge, notice, and welcome into your awareness. Think of something you accept like traffic or rain, feel it, anchor and apply. -162-

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What happens when you just welcome in the uncomfortable feelings? What happens to the procrastination when you just let the negative feelings come in? 3) Identify the map/territory distinction that creates the emotion. What map are you using to evaluate the experience as the feeling? What standards are you using to evaluate the activity and/or the emotion? What expectations? What does the feeling of procrastination mean? How perfectionistic are those expectations? 4) Permission: Check and/or give permission for the feelings. Do you have permission to experience the X feelings that urges you to procrastinate? Do you have permission to engage in this activity that you’re putting off? Do you have permission to be imperfect, fallible, to take risks, to not know everything? Give yourself permission and notice what happens to the sense of “putting off.” What happens? 5) Identify the importance and value of the task or activity. Is this activity important? How? Why? In what way? How does it benefit you? Your life? What is important about that value? Step into the state of positive intention for the activity, and on up several levels to the highest value of the activity... and amplify... now, with that in mind... think about this activity ... and notice what happens. How do you now think or feel about it? 6) Additional resources for meta-stating. What other resource would you like to bring to the procrastination state to blow it out? What if you put off the putting off? What if you felt fully passionate about the activity? What if you refuse to be a person who sells yourself short? 7) Quality control this and future pace it for continuance.

8) META STATING HESITATION PATTERN By Stephen Campbell 1) Identify the hesitation. What do you block or feel not confident about doing? What would you like to feel confidence about? See what you see, hear, what you hear and feel what you feel when you imagine yourself doing that....whatever it is. When you have that associated into it, anchor it, break state....shake it out, and test to see if you have the hesitation state anchored.

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2) Anchor confidence. What have you been confident about? On your time line walk back to a time in your life where you were very confident about something. What has been a “cake walk” for you? You knew then and you know that you can do it! If you could register your confidence meter on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being supremely confident where would it be? Do whatever you need to do to ramp it up to 9.5— 10. Once it is at this high level, take an inventory of what you see, what you hear, and what you feel when you are doing that which you do so superbly and with such a massive amount of confidence. Anchor it with a symbol, a sound or a movement. Step off your time-line and break state. Come over to this Resource Space and fire off the anchor and re-access it. “Juice it up” some more if you need to. Re-anchor it and then break state. 3) Collapse the hesitation. Re-access your less confident incident— blocking— whatever it is. Fire off the confidence anchor and bring it to bear fully and completely on your old less confident state. Notice what happens to it. If it is gone in the first round, great. Go to step 5. If not. apply confidence to the hesitation. Re-access the confidence state, strengthen, renew...then meta-state the hesitation with it. 4) Anchor more confidence resources. Go back on to your time-line and find a second activity or process that you are highly confident about being capable of doing or performing and repeat step 2. Load these feelings on to step 3 and the highly confident state and bring them both to bear on your old less confident state. You'll knock that ball out of the park. If needed, do this one or more times loading other highly confident states to the mix. 5) Future pace and confirm. Future pace and see, hear and feel yourself doing that activity which in the past you were not confident with. What's it like? Can you give that activity or action a meta-Yes? 6) Quality control for alignment. Are you sure you want to keep this high level of confidence? Is every part of you aligned with you having this much confidence? What if I could take it away from you?

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9) META-STATING DEPRESSION Depression involves attachment and loss. When we lose something or someone precious and important to us, we naturally and inevitably experience sadness and grief. So we should. In the experience of attachment we have become connected to that valued person, experience, thing, or event, so in the experience of loss, we feel disconnected and apart from what we value. Our sadness and grief enables us to disbond, to de-cathect and to begin to heal by replacing the lost value with an internal appreciation of that value or by an external replacement. 1) Access the sense or state of loss. What have you lost? What is missing that you wish you could have back? What feels like an emptiness in your life? 2) Access the resource of acceptance. Access acceptance and apply it to your sad feelings and sense of grief. Clinical depression begins from non-acceptance of our loss or our sadness and grief. We refuse to accept our loss or sadness and so turn our psychic energies against ourselves, getting stuck at the point of loss. Yet if we have lost something/someone, then we have lost that thing or person—and our refusal to accept reality as we find it only imprisons us into a corner with no place to go. Paradoxically, by accepting and having a willingness to accept reality on its own terms so that we makes ourselves "a friend to reality," we find that our thinking-emoting about losses becomes more appropriate, accurate, and healing. 3) Access other resource. Access appreciation the values of what you loss, the values to keep with you. What can you keep in your memory, in your self-definition, in your reference system, etc. that’s an important resource to keep with you? What other resources would you find empowering and enhancing in life to bring to bear on your loss? Menu list: A Reality Orientation. Name the resources, or inquire of others who have loss and recovered, what resource of thought and emotion that they brought to bear upon their loss that enabled them to master their situation. 4) Deframe the sadness of sadness. Primary state sadness and grief, while a blessing and valuable emotional resource (though painful), stands in dire contrast to meta-state sadness and grief. When we grieve our grief, when we feel sad about our sadness, when we anger and hate and despise our sadness, when we reject and refuse to receive consolation for our loss, etc., then we create a dragon inside that we call "depression." -165-

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As you recognize this, how much of a de-depressing process does it begin? 5) Bring the higher level frame to bear on the lower level state What higher level frame will bring and apply needed emotional resources for your experience? What higher meanings will give you the frame and perspective of wisdom, maturity, and insight?

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W

hat was the original source of NLP? Interesting enough, even though the developers of NLP were not therapists or psychologists, they created NLP by modeling three world-class therapists. NLP therefore arose from the information gathered by modeling the skillful and “magical” communication powers of these three therapists. Yet while NLP began with therapy models and practices, NLP is not a therapy, and not even a model of therapy. NLP is a model of human functioning as described by the intra-personal and inter-personal communication patterns that we develop and use. Yet many, if not most, of the original patterns in NLP were therapeutic patterns. In this chapter I have collected some of the original therapeutic NLP patterns. Most of these patterns are actually meta-state patterns. At first, this was not recognized. With that in mind, Bob Bodenhamer and I have “updated” many of those patterns using Meta-States and making the metalevel structures more explicit. You will see this in the Change History Pattern, the Phobia Cure pattern, etc. The Meta-States of NLP Most NLP patterns involve meta-states, that is, multiple meta-levels. Yet though most are, all are not. There are some patterns that are primary state processes. Anchoring is certainly a primary state process. Anchoring, as a user-friendly stimulus-response pattern, connects new triggers to states. -167-

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To speak about the meta-levels in NLP and to highlight the meta-state structures I have taken the following from the book, Meta-States. This describes how many of the therapeutic patterns involve meta-states. "Running Your Own Brain" If “it’s your brain,” and you can learn to “run it,” then you are more than your thoughts and feelings. This implied dis-identification of self from our thoughts, enables us to realize that we think thoughts, and yet "are" not merely our thoughts, we emote, but we "are" not merely our emotions, etc. This understanding moves us into a meta-level position of awareness so that we can begin noticing, observing, and taking charge of our brain. Asking a client questions about mind-body-emotion states implies that they can step aside and think and feel about such. “What are you thinking?” “How are you thinking?” “How much are you experiencing that emotion?” This uses self-reflexive awareness and activates the meta-function that we call the step back skill (see The Matrix Model, 2003). "Running an Ecology Check" To check the ecology of a state, belief, experience, we ask a meta-level question and again invite a meta-move to a higher level of awareness. Does this state, belief, decision, part, meaning, etc. enhance my life or not, create resources or limitations, empower or dis-empower, etc.? The frames-by-implication within this question automatically invites us to move to a meta-state of evaluation of our evaluation. This allows us to be able to Quality Control our brain, it’s products and processes, and we can do so at multiple levels in our inner Matrix. This move powerfully creates both the motivation and the leverage for productive change. The V-K Dissociation Pattern or the Phobia Cure This is the Movie Rewind pattern. This is the pattern wherein we put our internal Movie of something unpleasant, ugly, obnoxious, hurtful, or traumatic up on a screen and take a spectator's viewpoint. As we then move back in the theater to just watch. Then we move back from our watching to the projection booth and observe our observing while in the control booth where we can feel safe behind the plexiglass barrier. These moves are metaphorical step-back moves. In doing this, we move into a meta-state of objectivity, thoughtfulness, “just witnessing,” and the ego-strength of facing old realities for what they were. Doing this enables us to think comfortably -168-

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about painful things. In this pattern, we keep bringing one layer of thoughts-and-feelings upon another layer of resourceful thoughts-and-feelings upon the original awareness that we found unacceptable. We meta-state that first thinking with just observing, comfort, distance, “past and not-now,” thoughtfulness, editing, a sense of control, backwardness when we rewind the Movie, etc. (See The Rewind Pattern in MovieMind, 2003). Reframing If meaning arises in and results from contexts, from the frames that we put around something, then a frame-of-reference is, by definition, a meta-state. When we then change the frame (or reframe), we transform the meaning of an event, behavior, or words. Reframing involves a higher “logical level” shift from one context to another. We set a new frame-of-reference (or context) which changes the meaning of the lower level events. And all reframing involves making a meta-level move, it involves a meta-stating of one frame with another. And since the higher frame classifies the lower, it governs the content and energy of the lower state. Six-Step Reframing The six-step Reframing pattern obviously describes a meta-stating pattern. Conceptually, when we ask about “the part of me that runs an undesirable behavior or that prevents a desired behavior” we move to a meta-level and identify the frame-of-mind that controls or prevents our action. “My nailbiting part” is some state, perhaps a state of anxiety, or worry, or distraction. It is a state about some other state of mind or emotion. And because every state is motivated, there’s some positive intention (another higher frame or meta-state). So we “go inside” and invite a conversation with that state which we call a “part” or frame. Then we access our “creative part” —the frame of mind or state wherein we feel creativity, insightful, and innovative. The entire Six-Step Reframing pattern is simply a ritual that allows us to reformulate our framing about some trigger which thereby allows us to of reframe more positively. Time-lines Because we cannot see, hear, feel, taste, or smell "time," this nominalization is a concept, a Kantian category, and a semantic state, not a sensory-based one. We have to think-and-feel certain thoughts and feelings about our idea of "time." That makes it a meta-state. What we call “the past" or "the -169-

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future" are not externally real, but ways of representing events. We represent events that have occurred (“past”) and those that could occur (“future”). We can even represent imaged historical events. Yet “time” is not real. It’s just a way of thinking about the things that happen. It’s a way of comparing and measuring the duration of those events. We measure our “days” and “hours” (the activities that occur within such frames) by measuring it in terms of the spinning of the planet and its orbit around the sun. In this we have to go meta to our primary state of doing things, and think about it in terms of other events. Time-Lines therapy and Time-Lining patterns in NLP involve moving to a meta-level of the mind and using various metaphors like lines and circles. It is in this way that we can and do create different representations about "time.” (See Adventures in Time-Lines) Hypnosis Is there any question about the meta-levels of “going inside” our mind and inwardly focusing on something that we represent in a relaxed and concentrated way? Hypnosis involves a certain kind of languaging. We then take the words and images about something that is not present and make inward representations on the Movie in our mind, and then find ourselves entering that Movie so fully that we get lost inside those thoughts and feelings. We transition (trance) from the outside state to the inside one. The early NLP books of Patterns (1975) and Trance-formations (1981) described the structure of hypnosis in terms of “hypnotic language patterns.” And while we can use see-hear-feel language and invite people into an inner world, the more trancy words are nominalizations and causation statements or complex equivalences that invite the listener to create internal worlds. Meta-States, as states-about-states takes us inside our mind to the embedded frames that we have about various things, past, present, and future, into the frames that are outside of awareness. In this the entire meta-stating process is a trance phenomena and provides a new way to look at hypnosis. Metaphor I like the word metaphor. It’s really telling. A meta-phor literally refers to how we “bring to” (Greek, pherein) one thought, experience, feeling, or state some other more concrete story or illustration. We bring the referent -170-

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so that it is set “over, above, beyond” (Greek, meta) the first thought or feeling. All language is metaphorical to the extent in that words are symbols that “stand for” something else. Metaphors show up in our use of story, non-propositional language, illustrations, narrative, images, etc. Change History Pattern “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood” said Richard Bandler as he made the point that “the past” is only internally real, and not externally. Actually and literally, the “past” does not exist. Only the present exists. Our represented “past” only exists in the present as we make it so by representing it. Yet to change history we have to go meta in our mind, then travel back in our representations and concepts of “time,” and then re-map or create a new Movie in your mind? When we go back in history to an event, we’re only doing so in our mind. We do so by going to the metalevel representations we have of that “history.” Then, we set new frames, new images, new and better resources.

1) CHANGE PERSONAL HISTORY Because the “past” only exists in our mind and is no longer exists in any external sense, it has passed away. The only way we can keep it is to keep it inside of our mind-body-emotion system via our current representing of previous events. We do that by playing the old Movie again and again in our mind (whether consciously or unconsciously). When we do, we call the “past” a memory. Today’s neuro-sciences have demonstrated that our memories are continually changing just as our bodies and cells are constantly changing. With every new understanding, development, learning, and experience we keep revising and updating our past memories. Since our memory only exists as a construction, Richard Bandler says, "It is never too late to have a happy childhood." What we remember, our current reasons as we why to remember that, and how we use our memories all lie within our personal response-ability. To carry around "accurate," but hurtful and traumatize memories just because "That's what really happen," only empowers those events and dis-empowers us. When we do this, we are continuing to cue our mind-body system to “live in the past” and to keep re-accessing negative emotional states. Doing this creates ongoing hurt and dis-empowerment. It is not a wise way to run a brain.

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One solution is to change our personal histories. This pattern allows us to recode the “past” in our minds so that it no longer serves as a reference for destructive feelings or for defining self in negative ways. We can now recode our memories so that they become resources for positive learnings. We can now reformulate them to set an enhancing orientation for moving into the future with a positive attitude. Use this process to find a problematic memory, trace it to its source, reframe it with resources and bring the new construction up into the present. The Pattern 1) Access a problematic memory. What memory or memories do you have that you find problematic, unwanted, or unpleasant? Do you have any memory that triggers you to feel less than resourceful? Good, feel that and let’s anchor this state. 2) Invite a transderivational search (TDS). As you feel this (fire the anchor) I want you to move back in time ... that’s right ... and find a previous experience where you felt this feeling. Do you have it? Take this feeling (fire anchor) and let it guide you back in time to help you remember other times where you felt this same kind of feeling. Allow yourself to float back, in your mind, all the way back to previous times and places where you felt this ..." Good, now just stop and I want you to know, how old are you in this memory? What is your age in this experience? 3) Continue the TDS. [Transderivational Search] As you feel this, allow your unconscious mind to take you back even further, going back ... through time and let it find three to six other experiences of this negative state. And each time just call out how old you feel at that time. And when you get back to the earliest one, just stop. Okay? 4) Break state and to anchor resources. Now I want you to step out of that younger you and to watch that person from your adult self. Good. How’s that? And as you look back on those experiences, what specific resources would you need in those past situations for that younger you to have responded in a more effective way? Do you know that resource? As you recall it and elicit fully, seeing and hearing and feeling it, let it amplify (anchor). Good. Is that resource enough? Do you need any more or other resources? -172-

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5) Collapse the resourceful anchor with the unresourceful state. Now I want you to return to the earliest experience ... nod when you are there ... Good. And when you are there, feel this (fire the resource anchor and negative anchor simultaneously, the Collapse Anchor pattern). What happens to that past memory when you know you have this resource with you back then? As you notice the changes, how does this resource change that past and make it different? Do you like that? Now come up through history with this resource ...and as you stop at each past experience with this new resource, just allow your history to begin changing ... and allow each experience to become more resourceful and satisfying. [Trouble-shooting: If the person has difficulty changing the past experience, bring him to the present and construct and anchor more powerful resources so that his resource anchor becomes stacked with resources.]

6) Break state and test. Now that you have changed all of those past experiences ... let’s shake all of that off. Stand up and stretch. Good. Now as you think about that past event, what do you think about it? What’s happened to it? How have your memories changed? In what way? How much more resourceful do you feel now? 7) Future pace. Now as you think about a possible similar experience that may occur in the future, I want you to feel this fully.” (fire off the resource anchor). Is that a lot better?

2) META-STATING A NEW HISTORY Meta-Stating a New History 1) Identify the problem event. What is the primary state that triggers or evokes some old memory? Do you have anything in your memory of the past, of your personal history that you still find troubling or problematic? What? How has it given you trouble? What problems has it created for you? -173-

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2) Take an observer’s viewpoint of that experience. Good, so you know about some event in history that has created that problem state for you? And you’d like to put that away from you and gain perspective or resourcefulness over it? Good. For just a moment, open your eyes ... really open your eyes and look around this room and as you do, open your ears and skin so that you come into sensory awareness of this moment. Good. And I’d like you to just see, see and see; hear and hear; feel and feel. And as you access this neutral observation state ... isn’t this nice? Just witnessing something. Good, let’s anchor this. (Set an uptime anchor). Now as you feel this neutral observation state, you can float up above this moment, up above your time-line, and float back, all the way back to whatever memories you have of when the problem started ... And this time float back above it all as a neutral observer, as a witness. And what is it like, from this meta-position, to see that younger you in that event? 3) Gather learnings about the event from the observer position. From this perspective above that historical event, what are you seeing, hearing, and feeling that’s new and more resourceful? What could you have learned from it that perhaps you didn’t learn until later? What resources did that younger you need? What resources did the others in the situation need? What is the one or two most powerful resources that would have changed that whole event? 4) Return to the present to fully access the resources. Let’s return to the now, to this moment, and from the position of the here-and-now, I want you to access, amplify, and anchor each and every needed resources. Amplify these until they feel like very strong and powerful resources, test your anchors. Do you have them all? Are they powerful enough? Good. 5) Transfer the resources from the observer meta-position. Now I want you to float up above this moment and back on your time-line to that historical event. Just return to the past event and give the younger you each resource as a gift from your present self. How’s that? Now with those resources, let the event play out with those resources. What is it like when you see the younger you acting, thinking, feeling, etc. in a transformed way? -174-

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From this position, you can also give the others in the movie the resources that they needed, can you not? 6) Come forward through your history with the added resources. Now float down into that Movie, and become that younger you again ... and imagine yourself moving up through your time-line experiencing the resources so that as you move through each subsequent year of life, the resources transforms your history and enriches your life. Let the resources transform yourself and the others. 7) Return to the present and check ecology. Does this new edition of your memory provide you a sense of closure? Does it encode better learnings and responses? Does it enhance your life? Would you like to live with this new edition? Does it provide you a more useable map for navigating life? 8) Future pace. Look out into your future from the perspective of having made these changes in your sense of your personal history and imagine them continuing into your future ...

3) META-STATING “DISTANCE” The V-K Dissociation or Phobia Cure Pattern This is the Rewind Pattern. The design of this pattern is to allow us to reprogram and recode our mind-body-emotion system so that when we simple “think” about something, it will no longer evoke or induce a phobic state, or out-of-control semantic reactions. We can think and feel comfortable. For another updated version of this, renamed Movie Rewind Pattern see MovieMind (2003). 1) Think about the representation or memory as if just witnessing it. I want you to imagine yourself sitting in a movie theater. Now upon the screen in this mental theater, you see a black-and white picture of the memory, of the younger you in some situation just before the fearful, traumatic, or unpleasant event or events occurred. Got that? Now freeze-frame this scene just prior to the Movie so that it appears as a snap-shot. Is it a black-and-white snapshot? If not, then let the color of the picture fad out. Next sit back to watch it, -175-

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aware that you have taken a spectator's position to that younger you. Notice that you have stepped out of the picture and observe it from outside. This changes how you are feeling about it, doesn’t it? And you can sit comfortably eating your popcorn or whatever you like to snack on. And as you gain this psychological distance, just be a witness to that old snapshot, delighted that you can step aside even further. Because taking this spectator position to your old memories enables you to begin to learn from them in new and useful ways. You might notice that your younger self in the memory thought-and-felt from a less resourceful position than you have now, setting here, and observing with your adult mind. And this can give you a new and different perspective, does it not? 2) Float back to the projection booth to watch yourself watching. Imagine now floating out of your body as you sit there in the tenth row and just float back to the projection booth that’s behind you and above you. From this point-of-view, you can see your observing self in the tenth row watching the black-and-white snapshot on the screen, can you not? From this position, you can put your hands on the glass or the plexiglass to remind yourself that you are not in the picture, not even in the theater, but way back here in the projection booth, the place where you can control things. How much distance do you have between yourself and the movie? How safe and secure do you feel here in the control booth? Now as you watch this movie, notice the cinematic features. Notice it’s size, whether it is clear or fuzzy, the sound track, volume, pitch, tone of voices, etc. Be a good film critique about the cinematic features. As you begin with the visual system, just notice whether you have the picture—in color or black-and-white? A movie or snapshot? Bright or dim? Close or far? As you make these distinctions, you can begin to choose which coding would enable you to think comfortably about that memory so that you can stay resourceful and thoughtful in a relaxed and comfortable way. Next notice the sound track and the auditory qualities. Do you even have a sound track? What sounds do you hear coming from that movie? What quality of tones do you hear? At what volume, pitch, and melody? And what about the words being used? What words do you hear from that younger you? From where do you hear these words coming? Notice their tone, volume, and location. As you -176-

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notice how that younger you feels, what sensations does that person have in his or her body up that on the screen? Where and at what intensity, weight, pressure? 3) Now let the old memory play out as you watch it from the projection booth. From the projection booth, let the initial snapshot turn into a blackand-white movie, and just watch it play out to the end from this control booth. Watch it from the beginning to the end ... Good. And if it needs to speed up to get through it, just fast forward it. Let the Movie play past the end to a time when the unpleasantness is over, when those scenes disappear and play it until you can see that younger you in a time and place of safety and pleasure. And when you find that scene of comfort .... whether it occurred at that time or whether you have to fast forward your memories to some future event of pleasure, even years into the future, do so. Got it? Good. Now stop the Movie and freeze frame the comfort scene. 4) Step into the comfort at the end of the movie and rewind. Now I want you to step into the comfort scene where there’s pleasure and delight and just be there. Step in ... at the end of the Movie and be there, and feel that comfort fully ... Do you like that? Let it grow and fill all of your body. Isn’t that nice? Now in just a minute we are going to fast rewind this memory and do so in super-fast rewind speed. You have seen movies and videos run backwards, haven’t you? Well, I want you to rewind this movie at the fastest rewind speed imaginable, in just a moment or two and to do so while you are inside this Movie. From your vantage point, you might see a confusion of sights and a jumbling of sounds as everything zooms back to the beginning and as you zoom backwards to that original snapshot. Ready? Step into the comfort scene at the end of the movie, feel the feelings of comfort, turn on some pleasant music ... Do you feel that comfort scene? Good. Now push the rewind button and experience it rewinding ... zooooooommmmm. All the way back to the beginning. There you go. It only takes a second or two to do that fast rewind, and how did that feel... rewinding from inside the movie? When you experience the fast rewinding, all the people and their actions go backwards. They walk and talk backwards. You walk and talk in reverse. Everything happens in reverse, like rewinding a movie. 6) Repeat the rewind five times. -177-

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Was that weird or what? Well, let’s do it again. Are you ready for this? Clear the screen in your mind. Take a short break and shift your awareness; open your eyes and look around. Now, go to the scene of comfort at the end again, and as soon as you step it, feel, see, and hear it fully... rewind the movie even faster. As you do this over and over your brain will become more and more proficient and the rewind will go faster and faster until the rewind takes only a second each time. Zoommmm! 7) Test. [Break state from this exercise for a few minutes.] How was that? You know things come apart when you rewind things. How about this? Sense makes nothing then and apart comes syntax the, backwards, a sentence a read we when. When we read a sentence backwards, the syntax comes apart and then nothing makes sense. So with our memories, scrabble them with this rewind method, and it’s hard to even call up the original memory and feel bad. See if you can do it? Can you, can you get the unpleasant feelings back? Try really hard and see if you can recall the negative Movie.

4) META-STATING NEW DECISIONS IN “TIME” The Decision Destroyer The concept of “time” with the conceptual meta-levels of “past” and “future” can make life a living hell or a wonderful place of bliss. How do your thought-maps of the past and the future serve you? Does it create a sense of empowerment and effectiveness? To undo false, unuseful, and toxic mappings from past events that we no longer need to drag with us and use to torture ourselves (or others). A decision map created at some previous time does not have to be treated as unchangeable. We can re-code an old decision and update it. Elicitation question: What decision did you make at some time in your past that no longer serves you? The Pattern: 1) Identify your time-line. Think of some simple activity that you did this morning, then think about it last week, last year, 2 years ago, 5 years ago ... next week, next month, next year, 2 years from now, 5 years from now. — Where do you locate these memories and imagination? — What kind of a configuration do you have these in: a line, circle, drawer, roll-a-deck, etc.? — Differences in pictures, sounds, feelings? -178-

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2) Float above your sense of “time” and draw a time-line. Now float back to a specific memory, then float forward through now to a time in the future. 3) Identify a decision, belief, experience, etc. in your history in which you experience some hurtful, ugly things and made some very unuseful maps from. What limiting decision have you made? What limiting belief? How do you know? What results from that limiting decision? Has there been a limiting hurt that you carry with you and that you can still feel bad about? 4) Access, anchor, and amplify some resources. What resourceful states, ideas, understandings, beliefs, decisions, etc. would have totally have transformed that old experience? What would have been a much better decision? Do you know how to feel decisive? What is that like? 5) Float up and then back on your time-line to 15 minutes before the event. The nice thing about going back before an event, is that the event hasn’t happened. In our minds, the future is yet undetermined. So you can anticipate that in a minute, when you float back down into your time-line, 15 minutes prior to the old experience and look into your future, you will not see the old stuff—because it has not happened from that perspective. Are you ready to fully and completely re-access the resources that you want to experience? Good. Then feel this (fire anchor) and float down ... with the resource ... and bring it through the experience and up to the present and now, as you live through the experience again with the empowering decision just enjoy watching and feeling it transform everything. There you go! 6) Future pace and check ecology.

5) DROP INTO PURE POTENTIALITY Here’s a funny question. Where were you before you were born? As you take a moment to imagine being there before actuality began, in that piece of pure potentiality, then you can now imagine this wild idea, can you not? So, let’s use it for therapeutic healing. We can use the idea of the place of pure potentiality with all of the images, feelings, etc. that comes from that idea (i.e., the formless void, formless potentiality, etc.) and set it as a frame in our mind. While this meta-stating is very conceptual and trancy, it is yet an aspect of how our brains work. 1) Begin with the concept of “before time” What is it like when you consider your existence "before time?" If primary "time" involves the occurrence of events, happenings, -179-

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activities, rhythms, etc., then before "time" we have no activity, no event, no rhythm—we only have thought. We only have potentiality. What if before "time" there is only "the quantum" (Overdurf) or "pure potentiality" (Bodenhamer), what would that be like for you? 2) Access the void. As you now quiet yourself so you don't experience any distractions, relax comfortably into a nice trance-like state as you concentrate on the void. Then gently allow yourself to see, hear, and feel the formlessness of you, of you before your existence—yourself as in the formless void of unlanguaged being. How that? Just feel yourself moving back further and further into that time before "time," before any events, any happenings, any actualization ... and just enjoy it. 3) Fully experience the void. As you enter into this dimension of the unformed, the unarticulated, the unexpressed, the unactualized ... enjoy it ... gently, wondering at how old constructions and formats so enmeshed and so compounded now so gently just come apart ... taking things back to a time when they existed as unformed ... And you can wonder, really wonder, about all the potentialities that you now see and hear and feel in all of the component parts... can you not? 4) Construct the possible. As you notice all of the building blocks for effective human experiencing and functioning, for creativity, openness, bonding, love, effectiveness, excitement, passion, learning, helping, inventing, contributing, etc., you can begin to allow the process of reconstructing a more glorious potential you— a you that you would like to experience in the way you think and feel and speak and behave and relate ... and as you gain greater awareness that in this place of pure potentiality you can construct this coming potential self with all of the component resources ... and you can... now. 5) Re-language the potential. Now begin to move forward toward "time" but not into "time" ... yet, but just hesitating as you imagine yourself ready to take a first step into "time" and ready to language yourself for experiencing resourcefulness—ready to utter your first logos ... feel all the excitement and anticipation of a new beginning... 6) Step into "time" with your pure potentiality. And now step into "time" languaging yourself with the words that keep your future open, that empower you for flexibility and learning and creativity ... and as you do then zoom up through the days and years of your life bringing these resources with you as you come...

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6) DROP-DOWN THROUGH TO RISE UP This pattern involves using the metaphor of dropping and/or falling, and using that idea and feeling as the frame that we then apply to some experience. Applying the feeling of falling to an experience is a meta-stating process even though “dropping down” shifts the basic meta-state metaphor. Here we applying dropping until we get to the bottom of things to a feeling. Eventually we get to “the ground” or to a void, and then we drop below that. The pattern starts with a painful emotional state that a person actually feel in the body. We then invite the client to drop below that feeling to what was before that. Typically as we drop, we drop into less and less intense states. Then, frames-by-implication, after we pass through the ground, we move into increasingly more positive states. After the third or fifth positive states we use that to meta-state the first and to “clean the pipes” so to speak. 1) Identify the experience and emotion you want to transform. What emotion, feeling, memory, or experience would you like to transform? Where do you feel it? What do you feel in your body that dis-empowers you? How does this emotions or experiences undermine your success? 2) Step into that experience. For the purposes of transformation, recall that experience and step into it so that you see what you saw, hear what you heard, and fully feel what you felt. Be there again. .... Good. Where do you feel this in your body? What does it feel like? How intense are you experiencing this emotion? Good, just be there with it for a moment, noticing ... just noticing it fully... knowing that it is just an emotion and that you are so much more than any emotion... 3) Drop down through the experience. This may feel strange, but you do know what it feels like when you drop ... so feeling that feeling of dropping, just drop down through that experience until you drop down underneath that feeling... What feeling or emotion lies underneath that emotion? And now just imagine dropping down through that feeling ... [Use the person’s language precisely.] And what feeling comes to you as you imagine yourself dropping down through that one? [Keep repeating this dropping-down through process until the person comes to “nothing...” That is, to no feelings ... to a void or emptiness.] 4) Confirm the emptiness Just experience that “nothingness” or “void” for a moment. Good. Now let that nothingness open up beneath you and imagine yourself -181-

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dropping through and out the other side of the nothingness. What are you experiencing when you come out the other side of the nothingness? What or whom do you see? [Repeat this several times .. to a second, third, or fourth resource state.] 5) Take the positive states and meta-state the first problem state. Use each resource state to meta-state each problem state. And when you feel X about Y, how does that transform things? And when you even more fully feel X — what other transformations occur? Valid and solidify: just stay right here in this X resource and as you experience it fully, what happens to the first problem state (#1)? When you feel this (fire anchor for each resource) ... what else happens to those old problem states? 6) Test Let’s see what now happens when you try, and I want you to really try to see if you can get back the problem state that we started with. When you try to do that, what happens? Do you like this? 7) Check ecology and future pace. Are you fully aligned with this? Any objections to this in the back of your mind? Would you like to take this into your future? Into all of your tomorrows and into all your relationships?

7) THE STRUCTURE OF STUTTERING This pattern is designed to reverse the pattern of stuttering. Much of it will feel counter-intuitive. People develop the stuttering pattern because they hate it and/or even identify with it. What follows is the set of frames that leads to a very different world, that of non-stuttering, actually to stuttering and just not noticing. That’s how I do it. When I stutter, I just don’t pay much attention to it. My attitude is that it doesn’t matter much. “So what?” It is in this why that I don’t over-load it with semantic meanings. Stammering, halting, or stuttering only means “I’m searching for my words” and nothing more. I refuse to psycho-speak. It’s like psycho-eating. Those who eat for psychological purposes and reasons—to feel loved, rewarded, fulfilled, valued, given the good life, to de-stress, to be social, etc.—eat for the wrong reasons. That’s why they of all people are the ones who seldom taste the food or enjoy it. They don’t eat food for food, for fuel, for energy and vitality. They psycho-eat. (See Games Slim People Play, 2001). -182-

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Psycho-speaking has the same structure— speaking to prove that you are adequate, aren’t a fool, to avoid feeling embarrassed, to avoid feeling powerful, to avoid feeling angry, to avoid feeling ... Harrison notes that by over-valuing “fluency” as if it is some magical cure, we make fluency the golden key to all of the goodies of life. That’s the lie. I love what he wrote: “Ask your friends if their lives are terrific simply because they talk fluently. You might even ask them how comfortable they are when they speak in front of others. You’ll discover that fluency is no magic pill for anything except being fluent.” (v) 1) Undo the classification. What would happen if you stopped punctuating speech in terms of stuttering or fluency? When you imagine letting your speech be speech and talk be just that, talk, what do you feel? What do you have to think, believe, or feel to make that happen? What if you said something like this to yourself, “Some speech is more effective than others. Some is more to the point, more succinct, and some is searching for words. No big deal” 2) Welcome non-fluency and play with it. Are you willing to spend five minutes a day stuttering on purpose? Do you know that if you can turn it on that you are then in charge of your tongue and speech? Practice with a friend and try to outdo each other. Turn it into a game. Attach fun and joyful and playful and social feelings to it. Harrison recommends doing this with an entire audience! 3) Create a solid semantic basis for your sense of self, resourcefulness, relationship skills, and ability to take effective action in the world. What “belief damage” has the stuttering or the original event created? What beliefs about yourself, others, stuttering, etc. has undermined your effectiveness? Self: Unconditionally esteem your self as a human being whose worth and dignity is a given. You are a somebody, now live your life expressing that. Power: Develop new and powerful resources to increase your sense of power and vitality. Which empowerment processes will you use? Others: Recognize that connection is with others is based more on thoughtfulness, consideration, sharing of values and visions, love, compassion, and a thousand other things than fluency. -183-

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4) Welcome in every negative emotion, make friends with it, embrace it. Turn any negative emotion against yourself and you have not only missed the whole point of having “emotions” but you have created the foundation of a dragon state. (See Dragon Slaying, 1995/ 2000). Get comfortable with discomfort. Stretch yourself. Get out of your comfort zone. Enjoy embarrassment.

8) THE STUTTERING RESOLUTION PATTERN 1) Access and anchor a state of liking. What do you really like? Is there anything that you really, really like? As I touch your arm here, I want to set an anchor for this state ... because this is a good and pleasant and powerful state, isn’t it? And when I move my hand up your arm like this ... does that give you the sense of increasing the pleasure or decreasing it? When I move my fingers down your arm, do you feel the liking increase or decrease? [This sets up a sliding anchor.] 2) Extend and expand the liking state from acceptance to awe. Now just enjoy that thing which you really enjoy and feel it fully and congruently ... that’s right ... because this is a state of pleasure and appreciation, isn’t it? Because you do appreciate that, do you not? Good ... just be with that ... and notice what appreciation of a highly desire object feels like... Turn it Down: And let your mind begin to think about something that you just barely like as we turn it down ... because you don’t need to appreciate everything, there are some things to just like ... and some things to just accept ... the traffic, cleaning the toilet ... no need to appreciate that ... just accept it, put up with it. No need to dislike or hate it ... just accept it ... welcome it into your world but you don’t need to throw a party. This is just acceptance. Turn it Up: Good, now lets turn this up to the point of warm and exciting appreciation again ... and think about something else you really appreciate ... There you go ... that’s right. And if we turn it up more and more ... notice how the appreciation becomes a sense of awe ... standing in awe of something so big, so wonderful, so majestic like the universe and the heavens on a clear night. It’s like being speechless before something so valuable ... that you’re beyond words, are you not? -184-

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3) Apply to self and your life. Self: Now as you feel this awe and ultimate value ... I want you to feel this about yourself ... about the wonder and mystery of your mind and your person.... and to build self-esteem ... as you esteem yourself as having worth and value ... unconditionally ... because you are a human being and therefore a somebody. Power: And now you can easily feel appreciation for your skills and abilities and mind and creativity and your powers to respond to the world ... World/Life: And you can feel acceptance about those things in your life that you may not like, that you might hate and fight about ... and now you can just accept ... not condoning, but just welcoming ... Self: And when you feel self-acceptance like this ... it takes the fight away ... does it not so that you can now feel appreciation even more for yourself ... selfappreciation ... and notice how that changes things ... because you are a somebody. And as you feel esteem for yourself as a human being and appreciation for your abilities and skills ... there’s no need for any judgment against yourself, is there? In fact, every time you are tempted to feel critical of yourself — you can feel this! Can you not? Yes, that’s right. Beyond self-criticism ... only accurate selfevaluation so that you can become everything you can become ... you can appreciate moving in that direction, can’t you? [This collapses “contempt”.]

4) Access the feeling and experience of stuttering and set sliding anchor. So keeping all of these feelings in your mind and in your body so that nothing we do from this point forward needs to elicit any negative emotion ... I want you to feel so resourceful and centered ... And just inside answer this question ... When you think about the last time you stuttered, what were you aware of that might have been the triggering stimulus? Go back and see, hear, and feel that experience. As I touch your arm here, I want to set an anchor for the stuttering experience. So as you feel that sense ... whether it is tension, pressure, anxiety, fear, frustration, or whatever emotion you experience... just notice it. [Set anchor for stuttering, then break state, and test anchor.] When I touch you like this ... does this elicit that experience? And when I move up your arm does this feel like you’re experiencing more or less? And when I move down your arm, does it feel like you’re experiencing more or less? [You now have a sliding anchor indicating more and less.]

5) Access the primary frames that trigger the stuttering experience. I want you to think of one of the worst times when you stuttered ... and as you feel that ... just go back and be in that feeling for a moment.... That’s right... And nod when you are there. Now rise up in your mind above that experience ... perhaps even seeing yourself down below you in that experience ... and as you rise up ... I want you to just notice — and notice without judgment ... what that person thinks and believes that supports the stuttering ... for example, maybe “I have to speak fluently... to stutter is bad, people will think you -185-

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are stupid...” That kind of thing. 6) Kiss the dragon. Now with all of your self-esteem and self-appreciation, I want you to feel this stuttering and notice how the feelings and thoughts of stuttering transform ... as you feel this ... and as you do ... just accept the nonfluency as just talk ... just speech which means nothing more than trying to find your words ... And as you do ... hear these words and notice how the dragon may roar in the back of your mind ... “I give myself permission to stutter and to enjoy it knowing that I am so much more than my talk and I refuse to let this mean anything about me .... I am a somebody and I have the power of speech and I can and will learn to stop giving so much power and meaning to stuttering... How well does that settle? How many more times do you need to give yourself this kind of permission so that it settles well and changes the internal “logic” that created the stuttering frames?

7) Gather up objections and complaints from the dragon. So are there any objections from the dragon? What reframing of meaning do you need to build into the permission so the permission settles well? 8) Re-access the stuttering experience and Drop Down through it. Now let’s see if you can get the stuttering feeling back. I want you to feel this [fire the stuttering anchor] ... try to talk ... try really hard to stutter for me [fire the self-esteem and self-appreciation anchors as you say these things] ... come on, is that all you can do? Good ... there’s some ... and I want you to just drop down through that feeling and notice what’s below it ... [repeat several times until you get to a void or emptiness]. Now be with that nothingness ... and in just a moment drop down again to see what’s below the emptiness ... [do three times]. 9) Apply the positive frames to the original stuttering. Now as you feel x, y, and z about this (stuttering anchor) ... notice how they transform the experience of finding your words. 10) Access highest Intentional executive state. Now as you rise up in your mind feeling self-appreciation and self-esteem [fire anchors], I want you to notice all of your reasons for resolving stuttering. Why is that important to you? Just inside ... notice why ... this is important. And when you get that fully and completely— what does that do for you? What do you get from that? Nod when you know. .. . good. And again, when you get that fully in just the way you want it, what does that do for you? [Continue until you get to the top]. As you now step into that ultimate and highest intention ... and imagine moving through life with that frame of mind ... and speaking in an easy and comfortable way ... is the part of your mind that makes decisions willing to take responsibility for letting this be your way of being in the world? -186-

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9) MIND-BACKTRACKING PATTERN Mind-BackTracking as a technique involves backtracking to the neuro-linguistic constructions out of which an idea or feeling arose. What does this enable us to accomplish? We typically use the Drop-Down Through and the Mind Backtracking patterns to release negative emotions, especially those in which we may feel stuck and unable to move on in life. 1. Explore the first event. What was the initial event that initiated this to become a problem for you? What was the first event, which when you disconnect or deframe it, will cause the problem to completely disappear or become irrelevant? When was the first time you felt this emotion? 2. Go back to the first event on your time-line. I'd like to invite you to float up ... above your time-line and then to go back, all the way back, into the past where you first learned to map things in this way ... and as you do you can go back to the event itself, and then drop down into it. 3. Preserve the valuable lessons that you learned. As you re-visit that event from this higher perspective of just noticing and observing it, describe the circumstances of that event and the emotions you feel. What lessons did you learn in that event or from it that are useful to you and which enhance your life, learnings that you would like to preserve? Are there any other lessons that you have made from that event? 4. Drop-down through. Do you know what it feels like to drop down through something? As you recall or imagine that feeling, now as quickly as you will allow yourself, just drop down through these emotions and do a kind of kinesthetic 'free-fall' through it ... That’s right. Do this as quickly as you can ... and say aloud the name of the emotion that you find underneath this first experience ... 5. Repeat the drop-down through. And as quickly as you can, just drop through that emotion, the emotion you found underneath the original one. And what do you find underneath that one? Continue this process until you float down all the way through and come to the "void," or "nothing," to that unspeakable stage of experience ... and notice, as you do, how you come out the other side to an experience that has positive kinesthetics to it. Then free-fall another time to a second positive emotion. 6. Float back up above your time-line. As you return to the experience that began this experience, float up to your meta-position to your time-line and go back in history to well before the beginning of the event, or any of the chain of events that led to that -187-

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event, and turn and look towards now. 7. Test the disappearance of the negative emotions. Where have the old emotions gone? ... As you notice that they have disappeared, float down into the event and notice how fully the emotion has completely disappeared in how you experience the event. Have the emotions completely vanished? 8. Zoom up to the now. Now come back to now, above your time-line only as quickly as you can let go of all the emotion on the events all the way back to now, above your time-line with each subsequent event, preserve the learnings, and let go of the emotion all the way back to now. 9. Break state and test. As you recall some event, any event, in the past where you used to feel that old emotion, go back there and try to see if you can feel it, or you may find that you cannot. 10. Future pace. I want you to go out into the future to an unspecified time in the future which if it had happened in the past, you would have felt the emotion, and notice if you can find that old emotion, or you may find that you cannot. OK? Good come back to now.

10) FINISHING UNFINISHED BUSINESS The following pattern offers a process for assisting a person to catch up in their psychic development after he or she has cleaned up old traumatic memories, limiting beliefs, and/or dis-empowering beliefs. Eric Erickson's Developmental of the Model Psycho-Social Stages: 1) Trust / Mistrust of others who respond to and care for our needs 2) Autonomy / Shame and Doubt: Functioning as self-sufficient and exploring 3) Initiative / Guilt: Exploring and negotiating boundaries 4) Industry / Inferiority: Learning to become competent, productive in mastering skills 5) Identity / Role confusion: Establishing a sense of self 6) Intimacy / Isolation: Dealing with companionship, love, friendships 7) Generativity / Stagnation: a meaningful contribution 8) Integrity/Despair: Making sense of life. 1) Adopt a commitment to reality. Having cleared up the hurts of the past, and having used your new understandings and ego strength to face those past hurts from your strengths, you have begun to "make yourself a friend to reality" rather than an enemy. Those days of feeling and thinking in an antagonistic way to reality have ended. Your skill of "going meta" to the experiences that -188-

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that younger you had in time by floating above on your time-line has given you the skill to look at and accept the disliked, obnoxious, dysfunction, etc. without taking it personal, has it not? What a skill! And you can congratulate yourself for learning to accept without confusing it with approving, validating, or endorsing what existed. You can accept what exists—what existed—and dislike it and realize fully it only existed as an event, an experience, a set of behaviors—and that you exist as so much more than those experiences. This skill signifies the adult recognition of reality as a dispassionate fact. How different from the way we thought-and-felt as children! Then we took events personal, we thought in ego-centric ways, we introjected the hurtful behaviors of others, and we built disempowering beliefs about ourselves and we have now learned to do that no more. 3) Access a state of adult acceptance. Think about a time or situation where you accepted something that you did not like. Pick something simple to practice identifying these representations: cleaning the bathroom and toilet, doing dishes, preparing your tax return, etc. How do you, representationally, construct this acceptance of disliked activity? What beliefs and values support this state. When you have it fully and resourcefully, anchor it. 3) Access a friendship to reality state. Maturing, developing, and becoming fully human necessitates a commitment to what actually exists, in the place of wishful thinking, magical thinking, and regretful thinking ("oh, if only...!"). Access a time when you positively felt that kind of orientation getting all of your representations of your inner movie and their cinematic features, and supporting beliefs and anchor it. 4) Access the state of "finishing business" state. Identify the state of "finishing something." What project, task, relationship, etc. have you engaged in, invested yourself in, and then brought to a completion and released so that you let it come completely and thoroughly in a positive way so that you simply took the resources of that experienced and moved on to the next step? Think about a grade in school that you finished, or a particular subject or skill that you learned. How did you complete that business with your instructor, coach, or friends? In accessing this resource state of "having positively brought something to closure" notice all of your representations and supporting beliefs that made this an enhancing life experience for you. You "came to terms" with the time-limited nature of the subject. You began something, and then you completed it. Anchor this. 5) Finish the "unfinished business" in your mind-emotions. As you now float above your current time-line, where you live and act and -189-

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feel and think today... looking down upon it and noticing how it moves back into the past, allow yourself to notice what developmental tasks (of the Erickson list, p. 78) that you did not complete—trust, autonomy, identity, etc. From above your time-line move forward into the future to a time when you can imagine seeing yourself as having finished that task. Now go there. What does finishing that task look like, sound like, feel like? What supporting beliefs, values, and actions go along with it? Fire the "finishing business" and "a friend to reality" anchors as you float down into that time and fully experience it with completeness. And you can enjoy the full development... 6) Use as a swish. When you have fully captured the feeling and meaning of finishing that old business return to now and look into your future at that future you ... noticing the steps and stages that you will take day by day as you move more and more into your future... because you can.

11) META-STATING PRIME CONCERNS Do you have any meta-level “prime concerns” that you’d like to outframe in order to gain new resources and choices? This pattern and Meta-Stating Concepts gives you something that you can now do. Tad and Ardie James (1989/1994) described “concepts” as prime concerns and developed a process for addressing these “concerns.” This meta-stating process involves identifying a problem and then moving to a meta-level to outframe it with some “thoughts” that realign things. What is a prime concern? “A prime concern is what is missing at a deep linguistic level. It generally indicates an unresolvedness in a central area. Usually it is at a deeper level and is not congruent with the surface meaning.” (p. 33) This probably doesn’t sound like a meta-level process. That’s because of the terms “deep” and “deeper” implies the depth metaphor. Yet the James’ actually mean meta and higher. How do I know that? Because to get to these deep levels, they describe Meta-Model and Milton Model and says that a person has to turn these upsidedown in order to get to the “deep” stuff (pp. 16-17). “Do you remember the hierarchy of ideas? For purposes of this discussion, let’s reverse the diagram.” (p. 16, italic added) This means that all of the “depth” metaphor actually refers to meta-levels and to the semantic or meta-states. How do prime concerns arise in the first place? What creates them? James says that they arise from traumatic experiences that either happen too quickly, too intensely, or over too long a period of time. When that happens, they then overwhelm our coping mechanisms. We “run out of cope,” feel overwhelmed, then we develop “a problem” with a concept of one sort or another. A prime concern describes a “concern” or concept that has become -190-

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“prime” or primary in the person’s life: “manipulation,” “materialism,” “right—wrong,” “insult,” “self-esteem,” “justice,” “unfairness,” “relationship,” “the past,” etc. 1) Identify some presenting problem. What idea or concept functions as a prime concern for you? 2) Gather information about it. What are some examples of this for you? How does this cause you problems? Where did you learn this? What conclusions or generalizations did you create? What do you believe about that? [To detect such, look and listen for “significant, analogically marked words.” “Using language, what I do is probe, probe, probe—then, bingo, I’m in there. So, you look and listen for significant words...” Detect the meta-representational system of language since language is a “royal road” to meta-level phenomena.] 3) Pace the prime concern. [Calibrate to the analogically marked words, those that have enough juice to run the person’s programs. “Use the same words as you feed them back to see if the neural networks are activated.” (p. 51). Create rapport with the phenomenon.] So X really pushes your buttons? So Y feels very wrong and unacceptable to you? 4) Outframe it at a meta-level. Are you ready to move up one level to the prime concern and set a new frame? What happens when you run your prime concern (or conceptual map of reality) through the Cartesian language questions below? What effect are we looking for in running an ill-formed idea, concept, or generalization through these four questions? We want to challenge the concern, shake it up, and deframe it. In terms of meta-level processes, it de-energizes the meta-frame that had been governing and controlling the person’s life by outframing it with questions of doubt. When we outframe anything with doubt and questions, we embed it in a framework of “not sure.” This disturbs the old system, the old boundaries, the old frames-of-reference. “What is the higher level generalization, which if you discover it, will affect all the lower level problems?” (p. 46) 5) Identify a new frame of meaning and install. What would rather believe? As you now describe that in full, what are you feeling? Is it ecological? Do you want it? -191-

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The Cartesian Questions: What would happen if you did? (Theorem) What would happen if you didn’t? (Inverse) What wouldn’t happen if you did? (Converse) What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t? (Converse-Inverse)

12) GESTALTING THERAPEUTIC DOUBLE BINDS This patterns is designed to work on unresourceful states caused by double-binds and language patterns such as Connirae's reverse presuppositioning. We can also use them as the basis to create therapeutic double-binds. We can engineer them or construct them for creating greater resourcefulness. Taking the negative state and then pre-framing the therapeutic double-bind with a context reframe paves the way for the reverse presupposition. It seems to act as a possibility frame for the usefulness of the once negative state. 1. Identify a negative state. What state of thought or emotion do you feel stuck in? What state feels constricting, limiting, self-sabotaging? 2. Engineer acceptance. Where and when would this state be appropriate? [Context reframing.] Are there any clues about the structure of the double-bind in the person’s language/ How and what is the person using presuppositions, Cause-effect statements, or Complex Equivalents that is gluing together the toxic frames? In what area would this anger/fear be appropriate? Could you say that stress has helped you get here today? How or where might someone find this state useful? 3. Reverse the presupposition. In what ways does the negative state X actually produce positive or desirable states/results Y? Be exploratory and find the exact presuppositions to effectively set up a pathway to invite the client to experience the opposite or reverse. In what ways has X really helped you get Y? How has that anger really helped you develop your happiness? What is it about that memory that makes you even more committed to confident reactions to other people? -192-

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How can doubt really make you more certain about you own responses? 4. Form a binding statement. So when you “Have X you feel Y” and when you “Don’t have X you can still feel Y.” Is that right? Set the final product as a double-bind leading to an identity statement. “Now that anxiety makes you freer to choose responses and you can be free without it what does that say about you?” “I guess anxious or not I am free to respond how I choose!” 5. Ecology check. Is this new positive “gain” enough for you? What else do those state triggers now empower you with? 6. Future pace for installation. Sensory acuity and timing are critical here. To offer a reverse presupposition, it really helps to find out beforehand the Complex Equivalents, Cause-Effect links, and toxic frames of meaning. This will help in the reversal, “so now that you think about it in what ways has or actually brought about meaning for you?” This is a most interesting phenomena, as the transderivational search begins the frames of meaning then start to swim. This new linking and new framing of much higher frames has engineered a totally new response to the once negative state; it sends the brain in the meta-direction. The client usually reaches a self-reflexiveness and the old toxic frame being preset reverts or defaults to the pre-divulged or chosen empowering meta-state. To solidify the double-bind I have found it useful in creating an identity statement. Identity frames just help to raise the bar a little, (e.g., whether you think you can or you can’t you are right). Here “You are right” changes the value of possibility, potential, and sets a meta-frame about thinking can or can’t. When the time came to design this binding statement with clients, I found that eliciting the structure of a double-binding statement helped them form their own, (i.e., whether X or Y I’m still V). Checking for ecology here focuses on whether the reversal is empowering enough. I have done some fine tuning of the statement here, getting them to say it like it really fits for them. Once it does, you have one empowered client all bound up in goodness. Then future pace and provoke for installation and you are done.

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PATTERNS FOR META-STATING SELF Do you like yourself? Would you like to like yourself? Who are you? How do you define yourself? Do you value yourself as having an innate sense of worth and dignity? Is your worth conditional or unconditional? Do you have a self-map and a Matrix of Self that empowers you as a person?

A

s we are born and grow up, we inevitably create maps about our sense of self and our concepts of “self.” Poorly constructed maps about self create some of the most limiting and self-sabotaging influences. Most of us do not automatically create the most well-balanced and empowering maps of self. These maps are so close to us that we so easily are tempted to use them as part of our self-definition. We then easily confuse ourselves with them. But they are just maps. The territory of Self is a mystery that we cannot fully map. So whatever you say about yourself, you are more than that! Whatever others say about you, you are still more than that. You are more than your thoughts, your feelings, your words, your actions and behaviors, your relationships, your job, career, degrees, money, and so on. In the Matrix Model we have the Self matrix as the first content matrix, and the one closest to us. We never leave home without our self. We take our Self matrix everywhere we go. And everywhere we go, there are those maps about self which critically determine our success or failure, our ability to connect or our frustration in feeling alone and isolated.

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The following patterns enable us to work with the multiple concepts of self— from our sense of worth and value (being loveable, precious, valuable, etc.) as a human being to our sense of self-confidence and self-efficacy (have confidence in our skills and capabilities).

1) META-STATING "SELF" Distinguishing Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence Introducing the concept of "Self,” “I,” “Ego.” Gregory Bateson (1972) described this multi-ordinal word. as "the biggest nominalization of them all." What does “self” refer to? It all depends upon the level of abstraction to which you refer. We are selves at many levels, at the primary level of ourselves as living organisms, at each level meta to that, it takes on different significances: observer, director, theorizing, etc. Self and Selves: Though we exist as one self, and do not have "parts" in any elementalistic way, we do experience facets of our self, namely, various functions, powers, expressions, etc. Though we experience many states, the idea of "self" (as an idea or concept) does not occur on the primary level, there we exist as experiencing selves. Our conceptual self comes into being at the meta-levels. This involves awarenesses (thinking-and-feeling) about many facets that we designate as our "self." These facets of "self" include our competence, worth and value, dignity and respect, effectiveness and efficacy, social relationships, body, morality (sense of conscience), mortality, etc. Ah yes, we have many conceptual selves! Then, above and beyond all these individual facets of "self," comes our overall evaluation of self— our "sense" of self as a person.

Overall "Sense"/ evaluation of Self Competence Skill

Worth/value Dignity/

Effectiveness Social Efficacy Relationships.

Body Physical

Primary state involving any configuration of thoughts-emotions about experiences, events, behaviors —

Mortality Respect

in regard to Event

LEVELS OF “SELF” At the primary level, some "self" words simply refers to a primary state, "selfhypnosis" refers to hypnosis, "self-aware" refers to awareness. When we use -195-

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"self-aware" reflexively, it refers to awareness about our "self." Many other "self" words refer to a meta-state: self-concept, self-acceptance, self-esteem, selfconfidence, self-image, self-actualization, self-defensiveness, self-contempt, etc. The "concept" (abstraction, generalization, "thought") of self. My bodily self My spiritual self My social self My moral self My intellectual self My work, career self My relational self My sexual self My musical self My male/female self My mechanical self My financial self My recreational self My health self We all have many thoughts, understandings, abstractions, etc. about all of these facets of our self. When I think about my existential, ontological beingness—the thoughts-feelings that come to mind include... Self-Esteeming-ing Esteeming our sense of self as a human being who has value, potential, importance, and lovability relates to do with our ideas about human beings in general— our beliefs about human kind. Write out a set of thoughts that would enable you to mentally esteem people of value, dignity, respect, etc. "Esteem" refers to the process of making a mental “appraisal” about the value of something. How high do you esteem or appraise yourself as a human being? Confidenc-ing is different from esteeming. It refers to our confidence in our self to do things, to achieve, accomplish, perform, etc. This is our faith (fideo) in our abilities and relates to you as a human doing in contrast to you as a human being. What confidences do you now have in your self? What do you trust or believe that you can effective achieve?

Self-esteem-ing

Self-confidence concept or image

Self-

Act of the mind/thought Feeling of body with thoughts Overall self-definition Based on ideas of self Based on skills, abilities Self-talk and self-images used Person, humanity, powers, experiences to represent self to self Ontology learnings What one "is"—one's What one "does — one's What one portrays to self being doings Human being Human doing Human representing Declared/ asserted Earned/ developed Created/ represented Permanent/ lasting Temporary/ transitory As lasting as representation Mental primarily Emotional— experiential Sense of essential self Sense of effectiveness Sense of identity -196-

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Our layers of self in a self-reflexive system "Who does the observing of that self who performs on the stage at the primary state level?" If we self-reflexively ask this question it typically generates multiordinality confusion! “My own self?” What self? Which exists as my real self, the actor or the observer? And who now observes my observer self? As a multi-ordinal word, expect the term self to mean something different at each level. 1) At the primary level, Self1 operates as the actor, doer, experiencer. 2) Self2 functions as the observer of the lower level self. 3) Self3 operates as the director of Self2 and Self1. 4) Self4 functions as the theorizer about the other lower-level selves. Or, we could re-phrase things in this way: 1) At the primary state level, I have thoughts-and-feelings about various objects, events, people, and ideas in the world. From that primary experience I speak and behave. This is myself as actor, self1). 2) And as I do, I develop thoughts-and-feelings about myself in that experience which represents meta-level consciousness. It generates another facet of self—self as an observer of self. I (as self2) now have consciousness of self1. I now experience “self-consciousness.” 3) Who then thinks-and-feels and observes the observer self? This infinite regress arises because we can always entertain thoughts-andfeeling about previous thoughts-and-feeling states about states. Self Creating Self Doing this allows us to create and experience a new self (“self” at various level) every time we step back to talk about our previous conception. Self3 directs self2, and so on as selfn theorizes about the director self about the observer self about the experiencer self. John Grinder and Judith DeLozier (1987, Turtles All the Way Down) says that this self-reflexivity in consciousness identifies one of the central features that separate our species from all of the animal species. Self1, Self2, Self3, etc. simply operates as a shorthand version for "I operating at level one," "I operating at level two," etc. These selves, functioning as our "personality" in all of its holistic and layered complexity, simply explains how we experience multi-levels and dimensions of abstractions simultaneously. When “Self” frames gestalt into what we call “Personality” At the higher levels, we code and store attitudes, habits, manners, tastes, preferences that we have accumulated over the years and from which we have created various abstractions, learnings, beliefs, etc. Self2 functions as our primary experience of self (self as observer, director, producer, script-writer, etc.). Born of awareness, self 2 represents our basic "sense -197-

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of self." It includes our judgments, assessments, evaluations, etc. about our self in its many facets. So this generates those basic meta-states of self-esteem, selfconfidence, self-integrity, etc. and it creates what we call “personality.” Via Self2 we think, perceive, feel, judge and operate on the world. This self governs and directs Self1. Via this observing-directing Self, we move through life looking for, scanning, attracting, and becoming what we expect in our Self2. This self semantically welcomes what we have already decided in advance represents our values and meanings and rejects what we in advance have decided as threatening, toxic, etc. Self2 functions in such a way as to make neurolinguistically "real" our self-fulfilling prophecies about our self 1.

Meta-stating an empowering and centering self-esteem 1) Check for internal permission and then give yourself permission Do you have permission to esteem yourself highly, unconditionally, with potential, loveability, etc.? Write out a permission that fits your values and that you find exciting and compelling. Do you have that? Why would unconditional esteeming of yourself be valuable to you? How would it improve the quality of your life, experiences, and relationships? 2) Access and amplify your power zones. As you acknowledge and feel your four basic and inescapable "powers"—your two private powers of thinking-emoting and your two public powers of speaking-behaving, how solid and centered do you feel in these powers? Think of some event and notice your thinking-and-feeling and your speaking and behaving in response to it. Are you willing to use your response-powers to esteem yourself? How willing are you to do that? Do you need to increase your willingness or your skill in doing this? 3) Build up some powerful state-inducing thoughts. What would be the most powerful self-esteeming thoughts and feelings that you can experience? How would that awareness raise your sense of value? Your sense of dignity? Do you honor a newborn baby who can do nothing as unconditionally valuable? What happens when you feel that and apply to yourself? What happens when you make this into a dignity bubble? 4) Step in and fully experience this. As you step into your dignity bubble and feel the energy and joy of selfesteeming, let it now engulf you as a canopy of awareness and vividly -198-

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imagine yourself moving out into the world so that you use this as your way of "being in the world." What is that like? How much do you like it? 5) Future pace and anchor.

2) META-STATING SELF Acceptance, Appreciation, and Esteem For Self This is the most basic meta-state process for working with and inducing three basic self states, self-acceptance, self-appreciation, and self-esteem. Use it to establish a solid core for centering yourself, for setting a frame of high value and worth for oneself, and for operating with high self-esteem even in the face of dignity-denying or threatening experiences. Think about a continuum of liking and welcoming something into your world. Rejection

Acceptance

Appreciation

Dislike Judgment Rejection

Welcoming —Inviting in Gentle openness Non-Judgment Welcome warmly W/o endorsement with attraction / love Acknowledge but no condoning or endorsing

Esteem Highly valuing as important Significant, worthwhile Welcome with Awe, Honor

The Pattern 1) Access the three resource states of Acceptance, Appreciation, and Awe. Access each states by using a small and simple referent to access the feeling of the state fully and discreetly. A) Acceptance: Have you ever accepted something? Think of something small and simple that you can easily accept without particularly liking or wanting, but you put with it. B) Appreciation. Is there anything that you really appreciate? That you melt in appreciation? C) Awe. What is so big, so wonderful, so marvelous, so incredible that you stand in awe of it, speechless, in utter wonder? 2) Amplify each state and apply to self. Amplify each state until you have a robust enough state. Set up a sliding anchor on the arm of this continuum of welcoming responses. Apply acceptance to the things about yourself that you know you should accept but you find challenging to accept, your shadow side, experiences that have happened to you, the cards that life dealt you. Accept your overall sense of self and life. Apply appreciation to your sense of self as doer and achiever. Appreciate -199-

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your over-all self, and every gift, talent, and strength. Apply awe and esteem to your self as a human being unconditionally. 3) Separate self-confidence and self-esteem and use self-esteem to enrich selfappreciation and self-acceptance. Feeling this self-esteem fully and completely, letting it grow and expand ... that’s right, now notice what else you can appreciate (fire anchor) and what else you can just accept (fire anchor) more gracefully and easily. That’s right. 4) Apply self-esteeming, appreciating, and accepting in needed contexts Is there any context, situation, or event wherein you feel tempted to selfcontempt, self-question, self-doubt, and/or self-dislike yourself? In what context would you prefer a more resourceful response? As you think about that, I want you to feel this esteem [fire anchor] for yourself knowing that your worth and value is a given and feel this appreciation for what you can do so that you focus there, and feel this acceptance of the things that just are that you have to deal with. 5) Apply self-esteeming to the old self-contempting context Now especially notice how feeling this esteem and self-awe at the mystery of you and your potentials it transforms this old context, doesn’t it? Do you like that? Would that make a difference? Are you ready to self-respect yourself no matter what? 6) 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? Are you un-stopable? Debriefing: If at any time, the person has engaged in thinking-and-feeling of contempt, rejection, hatred, blame, disgust, etc., toward self, invite the person to accept that thought or feeling in the knowledge that he or she can now learn from that and can apply a new evaluation to their self. “And you can now look at your fully human and fallible self in a kind and gentle way so that you do not turn your psychic energies against yourself...” As you run this pattern, be sure to refuse to be afraid of the person’s selfcontempt. If you treat it as real, you will only reinforce it. Treat your client with respect, dignity, and worth. Esteem the person’s self even when he or she does not or cannot. Recognize in yourself that the person is choosing to contempt and despise him or herself, and openly explore it. So you are contempting yourself for what reasons? Really? And I suppose this makes life a real party! When I do this, I do it to tease and be playful about the person’s mapping which -200-

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essentially says in attitude, “Hey, it’s just a map, and if it works; have at it. It’s your choice; it’s your brain.” The worst thing to do is to treat them with kid-gloves, that is, as if they are fragile. Don’t mistreat them in that way. Assume that they have enough ego-strength to take a look at the way they have mapped the attitude of respect or contempt toward their self. That’s all you’ve got as a basis for contempt? I’m going to have to introduce some valid reasons if you want to despise yourself. How are you at handling the tears, sadness, and grief of people? This pattern often touches the very core of a person’s self-definition. If tears flow, validate those tears. That’s right. Let those tears flow knowing that they cleanse you of this old non-sense. You made the best map you could... but it was just that, an old map ... one you don’t need anymore.

3) META-STATING A RESOURCEFUL SELF Using the Swish Pattern Because brains go places, the Swish Pattern offers a way to set up a new direction for the brain. Use it to tell your brain “where to go.” Use it to give explicit instructions for directionalizing the brain. When your brain goes to problematic and limiting places, use this pattern to identify the current triggers that already swish your brain. Then change the pathway. This re-directionalizes attention. This goes beyond merely creating a new behavior since you design "the Me for whom this would no longer operate be a problem." This gives consciousness to a more powerful, positive, and confident self-definition or identity. I have included this NLP pattern here — and formulated the diagram below to show how its meta-level structure makes it a meta-state pattern. The Pattern 1) Develop a full representation of the triggering picture (or sound, sensation, word). What triggering representation sets off the unresourceful feeling, stuckness, or problematic behavior? What do you see, hear, feel just before you engage in unwanted behaviors? Are you representing the triggering picture as if in it associatedly? [This is the primary state that we are meta-stating with a new and better image.] 2) Develop a compelling desired self image. Who would you have to be to handle this? What resources would you need? Are you ready to imagine the you for whom that stimulus or trigger would no longer offer any problem. Good. Relax and allow yourself to design -201-

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engineer that picture of yourself. What qualities and attributes would you need to handle the trigger with ease, comfort, skill, elegance, and power? Are you now seeing the you for whom the triggering event is no problem? Are you seeing this picture of the desired self as out there—attractive and pulling on you? [This step takes you meta to a higher level representation that you set up as your new default frame of reference. This sends your brain upstairs and sets up a higher frame. It also vividly and dramatically encodes a new compulsion that replaces the old. You now feel a propulsion to move to and become that higher level self. Fully represent the you that you will be when you no longer have that old habit. Invent the ever-becoming more resourceful you.] Meta-Level Primary Level

The “Me” that Could Completely and Powerfully Handle that Event — with no problem! Mental Movie — Representational Screen Representing the Triggering Event — — —> Triggering Event

3) Check for objections. As you quiet yourself, go inside, and simply ask, “Does any part of me object to this new imagine of myself?” “Would this fit and operate in an ecological way in my life?” 4) Link the two representations. Are you ready to create a linkage between the representations so that the trigger will always lead to the resourceful picture? Good. [In building this mechanism, use the driving modalities and representational distinctions. Typically when we see a big and bright trigger picture, that will drive it. Others will want to use close and 3-dimensional as the driving variables.] As you start with the trigger picture big and bright (or close, or whatever), see it immediately in front of you. Do you have that? Then put the compelling and resourceful self image as a dot in the middle of the trigger picture or in the lower right corner of the picture. Got it? In just a minute the trigger image will fade out very quickly and you will swish in the attractive image of the resourceful you. [Keep editing your representational screen in your primary state so that you hide, the higher level map inside. It lurks inside ready to explode out. It throbs inside ... rhythmically ... awaiting your cue to rush forward. You can feel that, now, can you not?] -202-

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5) And now ... Swish! Are you ready to play with something a little strange? We will do this very, very quickly. Do you know how to do things quickly? Good. Brains learn quickly, so we will do this in just a second or two. Zoom. We will do it as fast as it takes to say, “Swwiissshhhhh.” After you do this, shake your head and clear that internal representational screen. As the trigger image quickly gets smaller and disappears, the future self image simultaneously grows gigantic, it explores into the screen of your mind and fills the whole screen. 6) Swish repeatedly 5 times. How was that? I ant you to do this five more times because your brain learns by speed and repetition. Ready? Go. [Repeat this swishing process several times. Make sure you clear the screen each time. We want the brain to learn to go in one direction, from the Triggering representation to the resourceful you image.] 7) Test and future pace. Now think about the triggering image. What happens? What do you think about? What do you feel? Now, if possible, behaviorally test by exposing yourself to the external trigger!

4) META-STATING DIS-IDENTIFICATION When we distinguish self from our powers and experiences, we are able to get more in touch with our pure consciousness self (as our core self) which can then direct, guide, and control our other expressions. I developed this pattern from the work of Roberto Assagioli (1963) as an "exercise in dis-identification" which began by becoming "aware of the fact: 'I have a body, but I am not my body." Korzybski (1933) warned against any and all identifications. The problem is that when we over-identify with any temporal facet of our self, or our situation, we limit and reduce ourselves to that experience, idea, person, role, job, etc. This leads first to unsanity as it causes us to become "possessed" by the identification. When that happens we typically become our roles, our masks, our emotions, our ideas, our beliefs, etc. And, this, in turn, "tends to make us static and crystallized ... prisoners." (p. 121). This is an excellent pattern for using when a person has become too identified with some facet of personality, in order to construct a map of a higher transcendental self. (First published in NLP World, Hall, 1997) 1) Start with the supporting belief. -203-

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Do you know that you are more than your powers and expressions of personality as well as your circumstances? As you stay with that thought, what happens inside when you make the distinction between self and the expressions of your self? Feel the shift from confusing and identify self and these facets of mindbody to make this more empowering distinction. 2) Dis-identify linguistically. How does it feel when you use the linguistic phrase, "I have... but I am not..." ? How easily can you frame any and all of your powers and functions and circumstances as not you. "I have a will, I am not a will," conscience, emotion, thought, choice, etc. 3) Dis-identify in trance. Access a relaxed and comfortable state and induce yourself into this transcendental state about your psychological and physiological powers to further the distinction of these levels of experience. "If I lost any of these powers, my core self would remain." “Every time we identify ourselves with a physical sensation we enslave ourselves to the body ... I have an emotional life, but I am not my emotions or my feelings. I have an intellect, but I am not that intellect. I am I, a center of pure consciousness." (Assagioli, p. 117). I put my body into a comfortable and relaxed position with closed eyes. This done, I affirm, 'I have a body but I am not my body. My body may find itself in different conditions of health or sickness; it may be rested or tired, but that has noting to do with my self, my real 'I.' My body is my precious instrument of experience and of action in the outer world, but it is only an instrument. I treat it well; I seek to keep it in good health, but it is not myself. I have a body, but I am not my body. 'I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. These emotions are countless, contradictory, changing, and yet I know that I always remain I, my-self, in times of hope or of despair, in joy or in pain, in a state of irritation or of calm. Since I can observe, understand and judge my emotions, and then increasingly dominate, direct and utilize them, it is evidence that they are not myself. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. 'I have desires, but I am not my desires, aroused by drives, physical and emotional, and by outer influences. Desires too are changeable and contradictory, with alternations of attraction and repulsion. I have desires, but they are not myself. 'I have an intellect, but I am not my intellect. It is more or less developed and active; it is undisciplined but teachable; it is an organ of knowledge in regard to the outer world as well as the inner; but it is not myself, I have an intellect, but I am not my intellect. 'After this dis-identification of the 'I' from its contents of consciousness -204-

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(sensations, emotions, desires, and thoughts), I recognize and affirm that I am a Center of pure self-consciousness. I am a Center of Will, capable of mastering, directing and using all my psychological processes and my physical body.'" (Assagioli, pp. 118-119). "'What am I then? What remains after discarding from my self-identity the physical, emotional and mental contents of my personality, of my ego? It is the essence of myself—center of pure self-consciousness and self-realization. It is the permanent factor in the ever varying flow of my personal life. It is that which gives me the sense of being, of permanence, of inner security. I recognize and I affirm myself as a center of pure selfconsciousness. I realize that this center not only has a static selfawareness but also a dynamic power; it is capable of observing, mastering, directing and using all the psychological processes and the physical body. I am a center of awareness and of power.'" (Assagioli, p. 119). 4) Solidify the self and function distinction. As you recognize more fully how that each power, function, facet, circumstance, etc. differs from your core self, how does that feel? What happens for you? Have you functions rather than identity now in navigating the world and expressing yourself without over-identifying with these expressions? 5) Swish your brain to a transcendental identity. Specify the you who exists above and beyond these powers—the user of the powers, the state of "pure consciousness." What symbol or word will you use to anchor this? 6) Image this higher self as a stable center out of which you can live and express yourself.

5) META-STATING “IDENTITY” The Identification Pattern Since our identity is a map that we construct and since we built it out of belief frames, we have the ability to create higher and better formats in our selfdefinitions. This means that we are completely free and able to invent constructions about our identity that will serve us better. The Pattern 1) Access a resourceful state. What is some highly resourceful thought, belief, value, emotion, etc. that you like? How easily can you access it now so that you can relate it to your sense of self? 2) Amplify the resourceful state until it becomes a very strong emotional state. How much do you have this state right now? [Gauge it from 0 to 10 ]. -205-

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How much more would you like to? What do you need to do so that it grows, even doubles, and becomes richer and fuller? How does that feel? What would it be like if you had it even more? 3) Apply it to your concept (ideas, beliefs) of your self as a person. Suppose now you declared in yourself talk that this resource is yours? What is it be like to fully and complete own it as your own? How does this affect your self-definition or identity? What is that like? 4) Refine and temper it with additional resources. Are you willing to experiment with is for the next month or week? Are you willing to consider this as one facet of your experience? How else would you like to temper and texture your sense of self? 5) Install to “Swish.” Are you willing to vividly represent this sense of self so that it looks attractive and compelling? What times, places, and events do you want to “cue” you to go to this new identity? Swish from the old triggers that undermine your sense of self to the you for whom that’s no problem. Do that 5 to 10 times. 6) Check the ecology of this construction and future pace it. Does this serve you well? How would it enrich your life? Does it give you a greater sense of control and mastery in life?

6) META-STATING “BEING-NESS” It is wise to distinguish between Being and Doing. Being is about yourself as a human being, to your human nature and your worth and dignity with which you were born. Doing relates to activities, tasks, roles, jobs, and the more external things. It arises from self-confidence and self-competence. It is therefore relative and conditional. It comes and goes with development over the life-span. If we nurture ourselves as human beings we are able to be more effective as human doings. Then we do not confuse the two and make self-value conditioned upon what we can do. The Pattern 1) Access the thinking-and-feeling that corresponds to the idea of “being.” Have you ever experienced yourself as a human being in contradistinction to what you “do?” Recall that fully, a time and place where you accepted and valued yourself for what you are rather than what you do or could do. Or, imagine what it would be like to “be” above and beyond “doing.” When, where, under what circumstances, etc. would being and being only represent a powerfully rich and resourceful experience? -206-

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—As a baby —On vacation —When making love 2) Amply and anchor the sense of fully and completely and only “being.” What does that feel like? Give me the eyes of experiencing your value as a human being. Is that all you can do? Double it! 3) Apply to your self and your concept of your self. Bring all of the thoughts-and-feeling of Beingness to bear on both your primary experience of a living human being. Bring this beingness state on your higher concepts of self (on all of the meta-state levels). 4) Enrich this beingness with other supporting resources. Nurturing Celebration Spirituality Etc. Access each one and texture into the state. 5) Experience fully and appropriate out into your future and into various life contexts. Will this make a difference as you imagine taking this into your tomorrows? Is this ecological for you? Does it empower you as a person? When you imagine letting it operate as a self-organizing frame, will it enrich and enhance everything that you do? And you like that?

7) SUPER-CHARGE YOUR EGO-STRENGTH “Ego” simply means self. It is the Greek word for “I” or “self.” In psychology, ego refers to our ability as a sentient thinking-and-feeling self to face reality as it is. A young child is born without a sense of self, without an ego and only slowly differentiates self from mother, then family, and becomes a self. Ego-strength refers to our ability to use our mind in a reality-orientation to accept what is and to deal with it on its own terms without caving in or having a stress response. How do we strengthen our ego so that it is strong and robust? The paradox is that strengthening our ego allows us to get it “out of the way.” It is the weak and fragile ego that can’t face reality that easily caves in, is driven by fears, and that’s “in the way” interpreting so much of what happens “in terms of self.” It takes a lot of ego-strength to be self-giving, selfless, and self-forgetful. How do we strength our ego? What patterns and processes enable us to do this? What frames, beliefs, values, expectations, etc. will support this? 1) Acceptance. Will you strengthen your ego-strength by meta-stating yourself with acceptance? -207-

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Access the state of acceptance and apply that feeling to your “self.” What is that like when you are accepting something? Feel that and reflexively turn that feeling back onto yourself—your sense of self, life, the cards that life has dealt you, when and where you were born, your aptitudes and lack of aptitudes, etc. 2) Adjust your expectations. What are your self-expectancies and expectancies of others, the world, work, etc.? Do they work for you? Do you have a fairly accurate map about what exists and how things work? What have you mapped about yourself, people, relationships, fairness, life, etc.? Remove every unrealistic expectation for it sets you up for a semantic jar and disappointment. 3) Step into your power zone. How strong do you feel in your personal sense of power? Increase your ego-strength by accepting your personal powers of thinking, emoting, speaking, and behaving? Meta-state them with a frame of ownership; then practicing using your powers to increases your self-efficacy, activity, proactivity, etc. 4) Meta-state flexibility. Are you willing to replace rigidity and closedness of mind with flexibility, willingness to accept change, and an openness to the flux and flow of life? Meta-state yourself with openness to change and adapting. Openness to change and flexibility enables us to face the world and our future with an optimistic attitude. Put your security in yourself to figure things out. 5) Develop an optimistic explanatory style. Are you willing to face reality with an attitude of interpreting things to put a positive spin on things? Meta-state the attitude of optimism. Refuse the 3 Ps (personal, pervasive, and permanent) of learned helpless (Seligman). Refuse to take a “bad” thing, an unpleasant or unfortunate event and make it about yourself (personal), about everything in your life (pervasive) and about forever (permanent) and that’s a formula for pessimism and clinical depression. Index the specifics of an event to contain the “evil” and to keep it out from your inner Matrix. Make it about the event (non-personal), here in this situation and context (non-pervasive), and today (non-permanent). Frame the negative event so that it doesn’t contaminate you. Develop sufficient ego-strength to face reality and to not be overwhelmed by frustration, disappointment, hurt, etc. -208-

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6) Consciously raising your frustration and stress tolerance level. Frustration is an attitude, it is in the eye of the beholder. Frame things to endow it with empowering meanings. Framing can enhance ego-strength to face, cope with, and even master the challenges of life.

8) META-STATING SELF-EFFICACY Self-Efficacy refers to the sense that we are able to be effective and to cope. It differs from self-confidence in that we feel confidence in ourselves with regard to specific skills and tasks, whereas self-efficacy refers to our sense of trust and ability to depend on ourselves to face the future, face reality, to cope and master things. It describes a sense of security in oneself. What can we feel secure about as we face the world and our future? Mostly our four central powers of thinkingemoting, speaking and behaving; the four powers that make up our power zone. Practically, this means that we come to trust our mind-emotion-body system to map the world and to be able to find or create ever-improved maps. The Pattern: 1) Access a sense of the four powers of your power zone. Notice and intensify your sense of your powers of mind, emotion, speech, and behavior. Amplify and anchor as a Circle / Sphere of Excellence. 2) Rise up in your mind to validate these powers (responses) as the source of your self-efficacy. Rise up in your mind ... ever so gently and just notice that it is through these responses that you can map the world and then act upon the world. It is through using your senses and your mind that you can create mental maps or models of the world that gives you information about how to do things ... and it is through your powers of language use, the use of symbols, that allows you to receive quality maps from others so that you don’t have to re-invent the computer, and it is through your powers of action, relating, and behaving that allows you to take effective action in the world. Notice ... appreciate ... validate with a “Yes! I can always do something. I can also use my mind, emotions, speech and behavior to effect things.” 3) Access a sense of trust and apply to self. What do you implicitly trust without question ... your lungs to breathe in air and oxygenate your cells? Do you trust your eyes that when you open them you can “see” the world? Anchor the feeling of trust and apply trust to using your fallible powers for coping with the world. 4) Release any need for perfect self-efficacy. Do you know that everything about us, our thinking, emoting, speaking, -209-

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and behaving is fallible? Liable to error? And do you know that you can always use error signals as feedback information for more effective coping? And will you take this attitude of acceptable fallibility regarding your powers? “It’s not an infallible mind, but under normal circumstances, it does pretty well. My emotions are by no means infallible, I have irritable and crabby days, but I can pretty much trust that they will give me a good gauge between my Map of the world and my Experience of the world. I can trust them to do that. So with my linguistic and behavioral powers. Fallible, but good enough to succeed and enjoy the process of life.” 5) Future pace and confirm. Noticing how that feels, what would it be like to take that into your future? Would you like that? Really? And will you?

9) GLORIOUSLY FALLIBLE Frames: The best trainers are present and disclose themselves as human beings—that they are fallible, open, transparent and a real live human being! There’s nothing fake about them. The Power of Authentic Fallibility. The NLP premise is that people are not broken or defective, they work perfectly, they are perfectly fallible human beings. Nothing more; nothing less. So learning to be what we are (fallible) enables us to be real as trainers. This calls for transparency and openness. Distinctive Points: • Excellence comes through fallibility. Do you want to become a masterful trainer? An excellent trainer? Great! Forget about “perfection!” Forget “flawless” performance. It is not possible nor is it even desirable. How many people want to see you acting as if you were God? How many will think that anything you can do, they also can do when you come across that way? • The paradox of fallibility. Welcoming and embracing fallibility is paradoxical, you become less flawed and mistake-dominated when you accept your fallibility. Elicitation Question: When are you not okay with being a fallible human being— a person “liable to error?” The Pattern: 1) Identify and ground an experience of fallibility. -210-

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When and where have you recently experienced your fallibility? What happened? How did you respond to that experience of being liable to making an error? When are you not okay with being a fallible human being— a person “liable to error?” 2) Identify and check your automatic frames. What do you automatically think and feel about being liable to error? What comes to mind? [Beliefs, values, identities, understandings, etc.] 3) Access awareness of your fallible powers. As you access your basic human powers, how much are you aware that these powers are fallible? How aware are you that your two private powers of thinking-emoting are fallible? That two public powers of speaking-behaving are fallible? Do you fully accept yourself and these powers as functions of your powers and personality? To what extent? 4) Meta-state permission to be fallible. Do you have permission to esteem yourself highly, unconditionally, with potential, loveability, and to be a fallible human being, etc.? If not, go inside and give yourself permission. How is that? Any objections? What? 5) Meta-state your fallibility with a menu of resources. 1) Unconditional Self-Esteem. What would it be like to accept your fallibility fully and completely while hold your unconditional esteem and value for self? 2) Acceptance of self. Bring acceptance of your fallibility so you accept your right to be fully fallible person, dependent on others for many things, ignorant about thousands of things. Notice how acceptance and self-worth transforms your fallibility. 3) Other resources: Curiosity: openness to learning about your fallibility. Anticipation: What good could come out of this? Calmness: calm and relaxed fallibility. 6) Install by stepping in and fully experiencing. When you accept, esteem self, and meta-state yourself with the other resources, then step in and let them be a canopy of awareness for you. How is that? Do you like it? Are you willing to vividly imagine yourself moving out into the -211-

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world using this new frame? 7) Future pace. Is this ecological for you? Good for your relationships, business, etc.? As you imagine taking this into your future, are you fully aligned with this?

10) BECOMING GLORIOUSLY CENTERED What: Being centered means being grounded in your body and your senses, fully present, calm and at peace with yourself, and able to then respond accordingly with a wide range of responses. You are in a neutral state. You know what you’re about, where you are going, your values, your vision, etc. Elicitation Question: How centered are you when you present? Are you centered enough? Would you like to be more centered? Distinctions Points: The four core responses of the Power Zone. Responsibility for self and to others (accountability / relationship). Coaching the body to embody an understanding or belief. The Pattern: 1) Access your Trainer State. Step into your trainer state and notice how you are currently doing that state. Notice your position, focus, physiology, emotions, etc. 2) Fully own your core responses. Access an awareness of your powers of mind-and-emotion and on your powers of speech and behavior. As you reflect on these, do so to ground yourself fully in these response-powers. How much have you taken ownership of them? How much does the word “Mine!” enable you to do that? What is it like now when you turn up the appreciation so that you see them with the eyes of appreciation? 3) Qualify your state: Meta-State with calmness and peace. Take a deep breath and relax into this state. Take as many as you need to. Relax your muscles, shake out tensions. How thoroughly integrated is this in you now? Add additional resources to make this just right for you. What other resources would you like in this state that will center you even -212-

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more? Importance Fun Curiosity Focus Playful Respect 5) Give yourself permission to own this and operate from this state when training. What is it like when you let your body fully feel this? What kind of a stance will you take be able to take when you feel this? How do you want to visually, auditorially, or kinesthetically anchor this state? 6) Future pace. Imagine using this centered state in your next presentation. How is that? When will you next need this state?

11) PROACTIVE IDENTITY FOR BECOMING ACTION ORIENTED Wanting to take action and to be actively proactive as a person are two very different experiences. One talks about a person’s desires, the other about a person’s readiness and ability to act ahead of time. Proactivity refers to taking action ahead of time in anticipation of things. Proactivity is not simply being active. Instead it refers to being active prior to when the action is called for or needed by the external events. That’s why it is internally driven— driven by our values and visions. Do you have a proactive sense of self? Would you like to think of yourself in that way? The Pattern: 1) Access a proactive identity. Imagine the you who thinks and acts and responds to the things of importance to you proactively. Is this already part of your self-definition and self-identity? Would you like it to be? How would that be valuable to you? Would there be any other benefits? 2) Create a vivid and compelling movie in your mind of the proactive you. What does the proactive you look like? Sound like? How does he or she move and interact? As you step into that movie and try it on, what is that like? Are there any changes that you’d like to make in editing this new sense of self? 3) Edit your movie to make it incredibly compelling. How else could you enrich this movie? -213-

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Is it compelling enough so that it’s unforgetable? What would endow it with that quality? 4) Commission it as part of your identity. Rise up in your mind to your executive level where you make decisions. Are you ready to commission this as part of your way of being in the world? Would you like to do that now? Are you fully aligned with this?

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GENIUS STATES OF FOCUS POWER Do you know the characteristics of “genius” that you will need to develop? Do you know how to go about the process of accessing and developing the prerequisites of personal genius? Would you like to access and develop your own personal genius?

T

oday the introduction training to Meta-States as a model is the 3-day workshop that we call Accessing Personal Genius (APG). I designed this training originally simply to teach the model and to provide an immediate application. As the trainings grew, I applied meta-states for all kinds of things, from accelerating learning, healing traumas, controlling focus, improving concentration, slaying dragons, dealing with conceptual states. Eventually, the numerous Meta-State patterns began to take on a certain slant—getting into a flow state of mastery. That led to a re-designing of the training and calling the 3-Day program, Accessing Personal Genius. At that point I took more than a dozen foundational prerequisites of what we call genius or mastery and put them together so that they would lead participants to customize their own desired excellence. Today you can find that content in the book, The Secrets of Personal Mastery (2000) and in the APG Training Manual. Whether you want to apply personal mastery to your business and career, to your health and fitness, to your relationships and personal skills, to your -215-

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personal development, or to any other area wherein it is possible for us to develop a high level of expertise, the prerequisites of genius lies at the heart of such mastery. Within such mastery is the ability to focus. What separates someone operates “in the zone” and at their best is their ability to be of one mind and to maintain a laser beam focus. This is the power of focus. As you access the critical variables for personal genius, you will discover the supreme practicality of Meta-States. In the process, you will learn to think in non-linear ways about yourself, your mind and your self-reflexive consciousness. You will learn to take your mind up-and-up and away into the higher reaches of consciousness. You will learn how to move up “the levels of mind” where you can access your higher executive powers for personal mastery. What results from this? An expanded understanding of yourself and others, much more control over your own states, mind, emotions, greater emotional intelligence, greater self-esteem, confidence, and sense of empowerment. You can expect to experience more pleasure, intentionality, decisiveness, clarity, positive emotions, creativity, and fun in life. You can expect to become more efficient in business, career, making money, and financial independence, more effectiveness in relationships, problem solving, and staying motivated, and more able to move to mastery in your choose fields of endeavor. The Days of Accessing Personal Genius Day one of the training is an introduction to the Matrix of your mind. You are first introduced to Meta-States as a model of reflexivity and to working with your meta-cognitive abilities. You learn how to recognize and monitor our own self-reflexive awareness and, most important, the Step Back. This teaches you how to step out of the muddles and closed-ended loops. We focus also on meta-stating the learning so as to add the very qualities and frames to our learning so that we can accelerated and super-charge our learning. This means learning about our learning: learning to feel joy, delight, appreciation, wonder, curiosity, etc. about learning. The next prerequisite is owning our foundational powers for personal empowerment. Since we have four basic ways of responding to things (as noted in the Power Zone pattern, our thinking and feeling, our speaking and behaving). As we become aware of these powers and own them, we -216-

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generate a foundational sense of our own abilities to take effect action in the world—the foundation of personal genius, self-efficacy. We move to meta-stating our self and all of our self-concepts with acceptance, appreciation and awe. As the Neuro-Semantic approach to selfesteeming, we simply access the resources states of acceptance, appreciation, and esteem and apply them to these higher level concepts. This provides a very quick route to cut out self-contempting, selfdepreciating, etc. It distinguishes between self-esteem as a human being and self-confidence as a human doing. Meta-stating thought itself and the representations that play out on the theater of our mind with a higher level from of confirmation next gives us th e ability to generate beliefs. We use the Meta-Yes-ing pattern for this. This reflects the Neuro-Semantics distinction between a mere “thought” and a “belief” in terms of “logical levels.” We can “think,” and even fully “understand” lots of things that we don’t believe. When we believe, we move up a level and confirm or validated the thoughts in some way. By so validating a thought, we say “Yes” to it. When we say “No” to it, we disvalidate it and reduce it from a belief to a mere thought. Since limiting beliefs get in the way and define therapeutic dysfunction, the ability to quickly and even conversationally transform beliefs gives a therapist a very powerful therapeutic intervention. Since mastery and genius involves a child-like pleasure, we then meta-state pleasure itself and move up the levels of meta-pleasuring. This enables us to feel the higher level motivation of meta-joys as a propulsion system. It enables us to stop “working” and have fun in whatever we’re doing. After all, fun and pleasure are in the eye (and mind-body-emotion system) of the beholder. Similarly, when we take the “As If” frame and meta-state the concept of an over-night miracle, it enables us to utilize “The Miracle Question” of Brief Psychotherapy. This allows us to more effectively use possibility thinking for stepping aside from the kind of thinking that create a problem. We are then able to think outside of the box and outside of the states that bind us in a limiting frame. We use the Mind-to-Muscle pattern as a way of translating great ideas, wonderful concepts and high level principles into actual feelings and -217-

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behaviors. We translated those brilliant understandings that we know “intellectually” so that they become muscle memory similar to how our fingers can “know” a keyboard and the function keys on a computer keyboard or how our body can know how to drive. This coaching pattern allows us to coach our body, neurology, and physiology how to feel those great ideas. Then everything becomes easy. Then we just naturally and intuitively know how to function at our best. On the last day we spend time qualifying and texturing our genius states with other things. We do that with intentionality: This allows us to take an intentional stance with our highest objectives. If we have both attentions and intentions on and in our minds, then as we strengthen our highest intentional meanings, we are empowered to live more purposefully as we access and use the higher levels of our mind to direct our everyday attentions. The Aim Game. Then comes the genius pattern itself, a process for accessing, strengthening, and containing a focus state of “flow.” Accessing the personal genius of impeccable state shifting, focus, self-trust, commitment, and ability to get lost in the moment. When we meta-state excuses so that we suck out any validate and reasonable explanations from the mere excuse, then we can run the Excuse Blow-Out pattern and be done with excusing ourselves from excellence. Wouldn’t you like that? Excuses masquerade as legitimate reasons, understandings, and explanations, but stop us from succeeding and seduce us to sell out our values and visions to stupid and silly excuses. This is not the way of mastery. Masters blow out excuses. They are also congruent and inwardly aligned. So we meta-state congruence by using the Meta-Alignment and Integration patterns. These patterns put an end to incongruence and internal conflict that would otherwise undermine our personal efficacy and power. These pattern clear up such incongruence by aligning everyday activities and behaviors with one’s highest values, purposes, and beliefs. Great for anyone who wants more mastery and congruence in the way he or she works, plays, or moves through the world. One pattern is a conscious pattern, the second one, meta-stating by using Spinning Icons is non-propositional and less conscious. The layering effect of meta-stating Because meta-stating itself involves the self-reflexive layering one thought -218-

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and feeling upon another, the training in personal genius does the same. Pattern after pattern, day after day, we layer the numerous characteristics of genius so that they cumulatively build upon each other. If there is structure to experience, then identifying that structure and replicating it gives us a pathway to excellence. That’s what we do with the layering of meta-states. In the end, a larger gestalt emerges, a gestalt that’s more than the sum of the parts, a gestalt that we call “genius.” Using both description and then experiential exercises or games, the training walks a person through the process for creating the resourceful states and frames that support personal development. What are the distinctions of genius? These are the features or components that enter into the mix that makes for operating with a laser beam focus and concentration, with passion and commitment, without internal conflicts and stress, with being able to fully step into a state of being of one mind about something. A healthy genius has a unique balance of being able to notice specific detailing awareness in his or her field. Such a person can see, hear, or feel salient differences that others miss. Genius involves the ability to make distinctions, to see, hear and feel what others do not, to sort and separate what others confuse. This particular focus also requires higher frames that governs what and how we do this. At higher (or meta) levels, our governing frame looks for similarities. Genius sees, hears, and feels patterns—the patterns that connect, the patterns that formulate schemas that give structure to the details, the patterns that discover leverage points within systems. In this, genius involves a balance and integration of numerous things. It involves the wisdom of multiple perceptual positions, and supporting meta-states which support this kind of internal structure. Mastering your Matrix Grinder and DeLozier identified a few the prerequisites of genius in Turtles All the Way Down (1987). This provided the first description for genius: Intense focus or concentration (a state of “flow”) Single tracking or first-level attention focus Multiple perspectives that gives one “wisdom” of the whole Development of commitment states -219-

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Clean state accessing and shifting in and out of the commitment states, “impeccable state shifting” Crystal clarity of purpose and direction In Turtles, they quoted Bateson extensively and described the shift in consciousness from double-tracking to single-attention tracking. They also said that such a state of mind could only be controlled by the use of “logical levels.” To do that, they developed a process for commissioning a “Controller” state at a higher “logical level” to guide and guard the genius state. Unknowingly, they used a meta-stating process and structure. If they had known that, the training would not have taken seven days, but half a day as we commonly do in our trainings. It has only be with the development of the Meta-States model that now allows us to work more explicitly and effectively with the levels of mind. Now, with Meta-States, we can access our higher executive states of mind to establish the kind of frames of reference that bring out our personal genius. “Genius” as the enhanced ability to make highly refined distinctions within and about the qualities, features, and properties of the sensory representation systems of “thought” while simultaneously making appropriate and empowering frames-of-references and meta-frames now becomes more possible for us. This description, in fact, suggests a two-fold focus for a “genius.” Namely, a distinguishing detailed awareness which knows how to specify the key differences. This now allows us to add several additional distinctions or prerequisites of genius. Namely: Congruency and personal alignment with our values and beliefs. Empowering decisions for focus and clarity. High level state management skills for stepping in and out of states of “flow.” Modeling meta-states like resilience, un-insultability using metaframes to protect our “genius.” Resilience: letting nothing get you down. Using negative results as positive feedback about how to proceed in a smart way. Synergizing with others who will become a friend to your genius Meta-Stating the Characteristics 1) Passionate Focus. We begin with passion, a clearly focused passion, something that we -220-

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really care about. We do so by accessing a state of passion about something by thinking about something that we really love or care about, something that we find compelling and inescapable. This makes it easy to become of one mind about that thing, to enter into “the demon” state. This induces us into a commitment state wherein we feel passionate and can move into a first level attention focus. This creates a powerfully positive “flow” state where a sense of time, world, self, etc. goes away. We become incredibly focused, so much so that we become un-self-conscious. We get lost in the experience itself. 2) Control of Focus. Next we meta-state the focus with control, control of the focus. This precisely fits the NLP objective of “running our own brain” and the Neuro-Semantic objective of managing the higher levels of mind. This enables us to turn the focus state on and off at will. If we can’t do this, then the demon has the genius. This generates the gestalt that we call self-management, self-discipline, etc. We are then able to take responsibility for self and to others, to establish collaborations with others and develop a good relationship to social, neurological, and psychological constraints. 3) Flexibility of consciousness. We texture the flow state of genius with the ability to take numerous perceptual positions (first, second, third, third-reverse, etc.). This creates a mental and emotional flexibility, a flexibility that allows us to adapt, change, and adjust to circumstances and it is this that keeps our genius or demon fluid and under our control rather than rigid and locked in. This endows our mind-emotion system with a richness of awareness. 4) Creative. This refers to our ability to mix and merge different things, to sort and integrate differences. The mind of a genius does not sort for similarity as much as for differences. And it lies in differences, in the unusual, strange, unthought of connections that invites the new ideas, processes, inventions, etc. This bi-lateral thinking makes for lots of false starts in the creativity. 5) Playfully passionate learning. A learning that first of all informs us about the state of art in a field, its language, symbols, principles, models, etc. Yet it keeps us curious, playful, open, always learning, always exploring. It thrills in possibility thinking that explores new “what ifs...” -221-

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6) Firmness of a clear vision. The larger passion serves the genius as the meta-frame from which to operate and the self-organizing attractor. This is the believing in something, the mental strength to see the passionate vision to completion, through dedication, perseverance, discipline, efficiency, etc. This is the intentional stance of the genius that governs the meta-detailing. It provides us a clarity of outcome all the way up the levels to give shape to our sense of mission and purpose. 7) Proactively active. We texture our genius focus state with the ability to take action, to develop effective and efficient work habits, to be self-initiating, self-referencing, to be able to inspire oneself with one’s vision. Implied within this is a good relationship to failure, mistakes, errors, problems, and challenges. The genius truly feels that such is just exploring, experimenting, finding out what doesn’t work, information gathering, feedback. And this leads to the personal power of implementing and following-through. 8) Congruently aligned in the focus. Finally there is a texturing of the focus state with an alignment at all of the higher logical levels which generates a congruency. 9) Socially connected. Geniuses work in a field and so with others as collaborators, colleagues, etc. They would succeed much less if they did not work with and through others, if they had to do it all alone. It is indeed the community that they work in that recognizes their contributions. 10) Meta-Detailing. A clear vision of purpose and objective and the proactive power to follow-through, we access the genius characteristic of being able to detail out the our meta-frame of mind. This leads to a powerful efficiency so that we carry out the critical and vital details essential to our vision without getting “caught up in details.” All of this saves us from the opposite states of mind and emotion that sabotage and undermine personal genius. Namely: Apathetic, uncaring, unmotivated Unfocused, Distracted Negative and pessimistic in thinking and feeling Fear of failure, hesitant Inertia, procrastinating, passive Alone, unsupported Overly individualistic -222-

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“A Personal genius! Who me?” Yes, definitely! Your passions and visions in life, plus your unique aptitudes and interests, as well as your unique combination of intelligences combine together to provide you the basis for excellence and expertise in your life. If that sounds too complex, then you’ll love to know that using the state-of-the-art models, patterns, and technologies in NLP and NeuroSemantics, you’ll be able to access your personal genius one piece at a time and layer one component upon another until the larger configuration emerges from your systemic consciousness. We have already presented many of the patterns for accessing personal genius in the section on Meta-Stating the Primes. The rest of them occur in this section.

1) META-STATING “STRENGTH” To use the meta-stating process to bring more of a sense of strength and vitality to our everyday experiences. The Pattern 1) Access a strength state—a full 3-D Movie of a time when you felt very strong. Fully recall or imagine being in a place where you feel absolutely strong and capable. As you do, see what you saw, hear what you heard and totally feel what you felt. As you access this resourceful state, amplify it until you reach a peak with it— then make sure that you have it fully stabilized and anchored kinesthetically so that you can step into— the body of strength the arms and hands and body posture of strength the eyes and facial expression of strength the breathing and voice of strength 2) Set this state as your frame-of-reference for the next few minutes. Continue to see and hear what you see and hear that elicits your strength state and as you do I’m going to ask you a series of confirmation questions about this wonderful state. Do you like this experience? (Yes!) Would you like to have lots of access to this state? (Yes!) Would it serve you well to be able to “fly into this state” at will? (Yes!) So you do like it and want it? (Yes!) Really? (Yes!) No, no way you don’t! (Yes I do!) Continue to confirm and validation and get a Yes! — a Meta-Yes, to this state. Check for total permission: Do you have permission to feel strong and capable like this? If there are any objections, answer them and keep reframing the -223-

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permission request until you get a strong and definitive Yes! This establishes the frame. 3) Embed as you hold your strength state. Now, holding on fully to the intensity of this state in a constant way, and only to the extent that you can feel this fully, where in life or to what trigger would you really like to feel this? Is there anything that can evoke in you a feeling of weakness, fear, wimping out, hesitation? Think of that thing as a tiny, tiny little picture— the size of a dot in the middle of what you see and hear while you’re in your strength state. As you think about where and toward what wherein you want to have more strength, open up the picture of that trigger only at the rate and speed that you can continue to hold the feeling of strength constant ... or as you notice it increasing... as you open up that picture. As you continue to see those times, places, events, people, words, tones, and whatever it was that used to rob you of this resource of strength, open up that movie as a sub-movie to your much larger and bigger movie of strength ... and notice what happens to the old movie as you embed it in this resource ... notice how it transforms and begins to yield to the higher governing influence of your state of strength and capability. And stay with those good feelings until you have programmed your brain to go here ever time that old trigger occurs and to feel all of the power and resourcefulness of this higher and bigger movie. 4) Confirm the embedding of the difficulty in a higher frame. Do you like this? (Yes!) Does every part of you like this way of responding to those events? (Yes!) So you’d like to keep this resource with you for the rest of your life? (Yes!) Okay, so as you imagine yourself taking this frame of your Strength State into tomorrow at work and in other contexts... see it, hear it, feel it ... and do you still like this? (Yes!) And do you fully know that you can embed all kinds of problematic feelings and states inside of higher resources? (Yes!)

2) META-STATING BEING FEROCIOUS In NLP, Richard Bandler is known for being wild and “ferocious.” I wrote about this in The Spirit of NLP to describe and highlight the attitude of “Going for it!” Now while Bandler’s personal version of being ferocious is pretty much out of control, that’s only because he apparently doesn’t have sufficient higher frames for appropriateness (at least that my mind-reading about it). Yet being ferocious is part of NLP and it describes a passion that’s big enough to get us out in the -224-

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world doing things—making a difference. Here is Bandler’s Puma Induction from Persuasion Engineering: “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?’ ... (pp. 88-89). Ferocity begins as you learn how to get up in the morning feeling absolutely ferocious about being alive. Imagine that. Imagine moving out into the world and effectively using the strategies of resourcefulness, compassion, persuasion, etc. This necessitates operating out of resourcefulness. It necessitates that we know how to get started right. We have to begin by installing something very powerful internally for ourselves — something powerful enough to feel excited about life itself. 1) Access awareness of your passion about something (i.e., training, coaching, selling, etc.) 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! 2) Put this passionate ferocity into your circle of excellence. Now imagine turning this loose... and letting it rip .. how does that feel? Turn the circle into a sphere of excellence. Crank it up. 3) Step in and fully experience it 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. Remembering that NLP is at attitude, that arises from relationships and that leads to relationships, supported by a methodology, and that leaves behind it a trail of techniques. And now you have the attitude, do you not? 4) Meta-State it with resources to temper it just right for you. What resources would you like to bring to bear upon this passion or -225-

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ferocity to make it balanced, ecological, controlled, fun, playful, etc.? Access and apply state of mind-emotion and texture it.

3) META-STATING INTENTIONS AND META-INTENTIONS Every thought has two levels or dimensions. We have a thought about something, some content, something on our mind ... before us. Then we have another thought, “the thought in the back of our mind” about the first thought. Thinking always involves thoughts in the front of the mind (our attentions) and thoughts in the back of the mind (our higher level intentions). We have thoughts layered behind or above our thoughts. Every thought has an agenda, motivation, or intention and so we can discern this two-layered nature of thought in terms of intention and attention (Rollo May, 1969, Love and Will). 1) Thought’s attentional content gives us our primary level focus. Identify a particular area of focus: work, career, health, relationships, fitness, etc. With that focus, now explore the following: What’s on your mind? What are you thinking about? What are you representing? In what way? How are you representing that? 2) Thought’s intentional drive gives us our teleological outcome or intentionality and moves us up into the meta-levels of awareness Why are you thinking that?” What’s your motivation, agenda, or intention behind that thought? What thought lurks back there in the shadows of your mind about that? Why is that important to you? When you get that fully and complete, what do you get? Our thinking-and-feeling states move forward by two dynamics or psychic powers: intention and attention. Attention directs us to the primary content; intention directs us to the meta-level frame and desired outcome—or positive intention behind it. We experience the attention as overt and the intention as covert. When the attended concept, construction, set of representations of your mental map does not work in terms of inducing you into a resourceful state so that it allows you to move on in life, etc., then you truly need to strengthen your Intentions and then align with your attentions with those highest intentions. How? By making a meta-move to your higher intentions or outcomes. Doing that allows you to take an intention stance in life, a stance that will serve you well to enhance you with more choices. Do this by giving yourself permission to create and live in the new attention, to get out of your comfort zone, and to let the new intention become a higher level attractor. As you do, you give it opportunity to -226-

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become a self-organizing attractor in your mind-body system. Intend your new attention, because, after all,

4) INTENTIONAL STANCE PATTERN “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Nietzsche

For this pattern, begin with any everyday activity. It can be an activity that you enjoy and love, feel turned on about, or it can be a highly dreaded activity—yet one that you know is important. Distinctions: The attentional life is the life of an animal or small child. To live humanly and at our best, we must live intentionally—from our highest intentions. When attentions are aligned to our highest intentions, we develop a laser-beam focus. Elicitation Questions: What do you need to do, because it’s important to your long-term success, yet you don’t feel much motivation, energy, or passion about? What do you need to do that’s important but you hard to maintain focus? What’s important but when you start it, you experience a bout of ADD? The Pattern: 1) Identify an activity that’s important but that doesn’t feel important. 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 that you know is important but it does not feel important to you? What activity do you have good intentions to do, but suffer from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) when it comes time to actually do it? 2) Explore the importance of the activity. Why is that activity important to you? Is this activity important and significant? How is it significant? Why is it valuable? Why is it meaningful? In what way? What else is important about that? How many other answers can you identify about this activity? 3) Continue the exploration up the meta-levels. This activity is important because of these things, and why is this -227-

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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 highest intentional state. 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? Close your eyes and be with your highest intention and let it fill every fiber of your being. 5) Link to the highest state to the primary context. Now in just a moment, when you are ready, I want you to open your eyes and look at that event that you started with, the event that you know is important but didn’t feel important and look at it with all of these higher intentions in mind. As you now take this highest intention — look at that event and notice how it aligns your attentions so your attentions can now do serve for your intention. With this in mind, will you now be able to focus and concentrate? Imagine taking this intentional stance and moving out into tomorrow with them. 6) Commission your executive mind to take ownership. There’s a part of your mind that makes decisions, will that highest executive part of your mind take full responsibility to access this intention of your big Why whenever you are engaged in this activity so you can 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? Would that make a difference? Would you be able to focus on this activity and complete it? [Optional] Invite other resources. Would you like to bring any other resource to this intentional stance? -228-

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Would playfulness enrich it? Persistent? Passion? Etc. 7) Future Pace. Will you take this into your future? Will it enhance your life and align your attentions to your highest intentions? Will you keep this?

Energy flows where attention goes as directed by intention!

5) PERSONAL GENIUS PATTERN The “genius” or mastery state is a state of being totally committed and engaged so that the world goes away, your sense of self goes away, time vanishes, and your focus becomes highly intentional with a laser beam focus. Source: 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 firstlevel 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. Using a template of accessing a genius state: We will first 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. A “genius” state involves 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. And because such states are very focused, we have to protect them so that we don’t contaminate, dilute, or reduce -229-

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them. Finding your own template for how you get lost in a state enables you to recognize that personal genius is fully possible for you. Stepping in and out of the genius state allows you to find the differences that make a difference and to use those distinctions for creating ecological boundaries. These distinctions inform your neurology for when and where to cue the state. By stepping cleanly out of the state, and shifting the focus of your mind and body system, you learn to separate from this intense flow state so that you can leave it cleanly behind. Do this repeatedly until you can do so impeccably . . . with no residue left over. Practicing interrupting enables you to learn to trust yourself, to trust that you will not lose the state, to trust that you can always get it back. This then changes your relationship to the experience and to the experience of being ”interrupted.” This 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. Begin by practicing responding to an interruption and then take charge of it by interrupting yourself so that you 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 you carry 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 are making an impeccable state shift. Distinctions: The genius pattern structures the levels of our mind so we can focus attention on one engagement and be all there. When we double or multi-track, we are not all there. Elicitation Questions: Where are you completely present so that time goes away, the world goes away, and you get lost in some engagement? Where would you like to experience that kind of presence and focus? The Pattern: 1) Access a state of innocent witnessing and/or observing. 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. -230-

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Have you ever stepped back from something and just observed things? Are all of your muscles relaxed so that you are just observing? 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 stepping 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 genius state? Then just inside your mind, answer the following questions: -231-

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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 focus state of engagement would you like to build? What do -232-

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you call that state? 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. Do you need to amplify this state? 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. • World: Place: Where should you have this state? Where not? Contexts: In what context or contexts? In what contexts should you not? Time: When should you have this state? When should you not? Intention: Criteria: According to what other criteria and qualities? Value: Why should you have this state? How would it be valuable to you? Emergencies: For what will you be interrupted? What emergencies will bring you out? Power: Style: How should you? In what way, with what style? How should you not? Resources: What other resources would you like to 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.? Others: Relationship: With whom? With whom not? Meaning: Meanings: For what significance or meaning? What meanings to not give it? Reasons: Why should you? Your reasons, agendas, motivations? Why should you not? 4) 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 -233-

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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?

6) META-STATING CORE QUESTIONS “Core” questions are those central, essential, ultimate, highest framing questions that drive our states, focus, attention, energy, and responses. What are your core questions as a person—as a trainer, a coach, a parent, a lover, or some other role? Here, for the sake of this pattern I have oriented it to someone in the training role. Are they learning? Having fun? Developing new resources? Getting it? Am I presenting well? How am I doing? Do they like me? Accept me? Think I know what I’m talking about? What can I enjoy learning from these people? How can I make this even more practical, useful, memorable, etc. for them? 1) Recall a training situation or context that you have been in. Notice your representations. What questions were quietly guiding your attention, behavior, and activities? What were you noticing? Checking for? Focusing on? Trying to do? What are the questions in the back of your mind? Float above that memory and ask the question from a meta-perspective. 2) Repeat with a training that you will one day experience-- as you imagine a future training. When do you expect to be involve in a training that you’ll be presenting? What are the questions that you will be asking? 3) Contrast. What question would be the opposite of your original question? Imagine being there and asking the opposite question of yourself? 4) Exploration. What question/s could you be asking that would enable you to use your training principles? 5) Quality control your core questions. What is presupposed in my questions? What modal operators am I using? What verb tense (past, present, future)? -234-

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What emphasis in terms of self- or other-reference? Is the orientation positive or negative? Are there comparisons? Are the questions opened-end or closed-ended questions? Do I have any “how much...” “How well...” type of open-ended questions? What direction do the questions suggest? How ecological are the questions? 6) Adjust your essential questions and design engineer new and better questions. Change any of the features so that they enhance your trainer state. Operating verbs: “control”—> understand, relate to, influence, contribute to. Put feedback loops in the way you ask questions and represent things. Put in a dual focus of self and other. What would be a good balancing question to have in the back of my mind? What am I missing in my presentation style? How could I make this even richer experience for them? How can I add more fun, order, humor, charm, etc.? How can I bring out the natural intelligence of the people here? How can I empower these people for more state management? How can I influence with my own integrity? What am I missing that could surprise even me?

7) META-ALIGNMENT This pattern provides a way to align and use meta-level structures to create an overall sense (gestalt) of integration, congruency, wholeness, and wellbeing. Run this pattern by standing and talking about each level or spatially anchor each level by back up from the primary state behavior. If you spatially anchored each meta-state, go back to the highest level of metaphor and step from there to the next one and the next gathering up the resources and bring it down to the behavior. Repeat three times until it flows as a walk of integration. Source: I adapted this from Dilts’ Neuro-logical levels in which the first three distinctions are primary state variables (behavior, environment, and capability) and the next four are actually meta-levels (beliefs, values, mission, and spirit). Distinctions: Around any behavior we have multiple layers of frames of mind and meaning and they may not be aligned with the new or improved behavior. -235-

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We can access layers of frames that support greater resourcefulness. Elicitation Questions: What activity do you engage in that’s very important to you, but which sometimes lacks the full range of congruency, power, and focus that you would like to have? Is there any behavior that you would like to perform with more personal alignment, congruency, and integrity? Are you aligned in all of your higher levels of thinking and emoting regarding a given task? The Pattern: 1) Identify a primary state sensory-based experience wherein you want more alignment What behavior would you like to perform with more personal alignment, congruency, and integrity? What activity do you engage in that’s very important to you but which sometimes lacks the full range of congruency, power, and focus that you would like to have? Describe this behavior, activity, experience in sensory-based terms. Describe from a video-camera perspective. (Behavior) Where do you do this? (Environment) Where not? When? When not? 2) Identify the primary state mental-emotional skills and abilities which enable you to do this (Capability) How do you know how to do this? Can you pull this off? How do you do that? Describe it for me briefly. What strategy or strategies do you deploy in doing this? 3) Identify the meta-levels of beliefs that support and empower this (Beliefs) What do you believe about that? What belief supports you doing that? What are some empowering beliefs that support this behavior? 4) Identify the Values that support this (Values) Why do you engage in this? Why do you believe this is important? What are some empowering values that support this behavior? 5) Identify the meta-state of identity which emerges for you (Identity) When you do this, does it affect your identity? Who are you when you engage in this? What does engaging in this behavior say about your identity? 6) Identify the meta-state of purpose and destiny that then arises (Vision, -236-

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Mission, Spirit) Does this fit into your overall sense of destiny and purpose? How does it? What’s your highest intentions in doing this? 7) Identify the decision that supports this. Have you decided to do this? You will? You have said “Yes!” to this? What decision supports this behavior? 8) Describe these meta-levels of meaning with a metaphor or story. What is this like? Let a metaphor or story encapsulate this matrix of your mind. As it emerges ...notice its sounds, colors, shapes, music, light, etc. 9) Bring the higher levels down to the primary state behavior to let it all integrate Now ... let’s walk through the steps to confirm them and let you feel them fully. [Walk from the Metaphor up to the Behavior; hold anchor on person’s arm.] Again, let’s back up through the steps. [Walk backwards from Behavior to Beliefs, Values, etc. back to Metaphor.] Now follow my lead as I do this . . . . [Quickly walk up through the spatial anchors to the belief . ...] And with all of that in mind — just enjoy thinking about this behavior and feeling it with all of the awarenesses that you created . . . and imagine bringing all of that into this experience and letting all of your meta-levels enrich it. And how’s that? Do you like that? Do you now feel fully aligned in this activity? Let them even more fully coalesce into this behavior to give it the quality and richness that you want. And how do you now experience this behavior? You want to keep this? Will you?

8) META-STATING “CORE TRANSFORMATION” For Aligning With Your Highest Intentional States This meta transformation pattern will take you up to your highest meta-states (or core states) which define and express your highest transcendental frames, values, and understandings. By doing this, you can then use these highest executive states to outframe your everyday life and our future in order to get more -237-

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congruency, power, and focus. This differs primarily from the Core Transformation process in that we will here use the metaphor of going “up” rather than “down.” Use this highly generative pattern to get in touch with your outcome states and to use them as resources for everyday living. (NLP World, March 1996, Lessons in NS Magic, 2001). Roye Fraser developed an earlier format of this that he calls Generative Emprint. 1) Identify a response you don't like: behavior, emotion, habit, response. What response do you make that you don’t like? Describe in sensory-based terms that allows you to create a see-hear-feel movie of the experience at the primary level that you want to become more skilled and resourceful in. 2) Meta-state it regard its positive intent. What do you seek to accomplish of value for yourself by this response? [As in Six-Step Reframing pattern, we ask the positive intention question of the behavior. This part or behavior has become organized to accomplish something significant and important for you— but what?] 3) Meta-state about positive intent of that positive intent and repeat. What will that response do for you that you deem of value and importance? What will that do for you that’s even more important?” [Continue to ask the positive intention question of the next higher state. Keep repeating this question until it loops or you have no answer. Do this until you experience yourself (or another person) looping. When you can generate no higher meta-purpose or outcome, you have probably reached “the ceiling.” By this point, you have generated your highest meta-states of value and importance, those that you seek to achieve and experience: i.e. love, beingness, inner peace, okayness, oneness, rightness with God, understanding, etc.] When you get that fully and completely, what do you seek to achieve for yourself of value by doing that? 4) Access the highest meta-state fully and completely. Keep affirming and confirming the highest meta-states and keep stepping into them to describe and experience them. Use the As If frame in order to more fully step into it if you need to. And what is it like when you are there fully and completely? Just notice and feel... and describe if you can... 5) From the highest meta-states future pace back down through other states to the primary state and beginning “problem.” If you had this resourceful fully and completely, how would that transform things for you? Answer quietly within taking all the time you need. -238-

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9) META-STATING TO WISDOM (The Inverse Mind to Muscle Pattern) Jimmy Kyriacou This pattern operates as the inverse of the Mind-to-Muscle pattern. So, rather than starting with a principle and bringing that concept down to an everyday behavior, this pattern starts with a specific everyday behaviors that are really wonderful. With that piece of excellence that really works well, you will take it all the way up “the levels of your mind” until you create a piece of high level wisdom with it. Meta-stating a wonderful behavior up to the heights of wisdom reverses the Mind to Muscle pattern that begins with a wonderful and ecological principle and linguistically coaches a person to take it down into neurology. In the Mind-toMuscle pattern we use the following cues to facilitate the process: “ I understand…” —> “I realize…” —> “I believe…” —> “I choose…” —> “I will…” —> “I feel…”—> “I experience…”—> “One thing I can do today as an expression of this wisdom principle is…” —> Test, Ecology Check, Future Pace. In this pattern, we move upward to create great generalizations (wisdom) that will serve us as wonderful frames of mind. 1) Access elegant and effective behaviors Bring to mind a number of similar experiences in which you behaved elegantly and effectively, in a way that you were pleased with. As you dwell on those experiences now, becoming aware of how you’re thinking and feeling, speaking and behaving. What’s it like to appreciate your behaving elegantly in those situations? 2) Surface choices and decisions from behaviors. With this attitude of appreciation, re-experience your behaving now, at a rate and speed that is most comfortable for you, and as you do becoming more and more aware of how your choices and decisions can emerge easily out of them. What’s it like to appreciate your choices and decisions about those behaviours? 3) Surface beliefs from choices and decisions. With this attitude of appreciation, re-experience your choosing and deciding now, and as you do becoming aware of how your beliefs about those decisions can emerge easily out of them. What’s it like to appreciate your beliefs while you recognize how they have shaped your choices and decisions to behave elegantly in those situations? 4) Surface understandings and realizations from beliefs. With this attitude of appreciation, re-experience your believing now, and as you do learning more of how your understandings and realizations about your believing can emerge easily out of them. -239-

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What’s it like to appreciate your understandings and realizations while you recognize how they shaped your beliefs about choosing to behave elegantly in those situations? 5) Affirm the principle, acknowledge the wisdom. And now you can allow these understandings and realizations to crystallize into an idea that you can state to yourself as a principle…(pause) And when you have formulated this guiding principle, acknowledge your wisdom, this wisdom that is always within you.

10) META-STATING CREATIVITY Would you like to enrich, deepen, and expand your ability for being creative? Would you like to build a meta-state of creativity so that it becomes a canopy of consciousness over all of your thinking, problem solving, learning, relating, communicating, etc.? 1) Recall an experience wherein you felt creative. Think about a time when you created something new or different (whether the experience and product was useful doesn't really matter). Just focus, for now, on the fact that you generated new and different responses. Perhaps you invented something, re-arranged something, came up with a new way to decorate the living room, a new way to respond to your boss, a new procedure for taking care of your animals, etc. Reaccess this experience fully in all representational systems so that it puts you back in state. As you do this notice the sensory systems and language involved in the movie that you’ve entered into. 2) Identify the resource states in this experience. What resources facilitate this experience of creativity for you? The following checklist may help you sort and separate the resources that you utilize when you experience creativity. It also suggests resources that you can use: Curiosity Openness of mind-emotions Appreciation Imaginative Comfortable Flexibility Tension / pressure Humor / joyful Playful Silly, ludicrous, ridiculous Non-competitiveness Cooperativeness Awareness of options Looking for options Sense of awe Wonderment/ amazement Sense of reverence Sense of expansiveness Free time Reverie Outrageousness Healthful Not knowing... Fresh perspective -240-

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Tolerance for ambiguity In different contexts of creativity, we will need to access different resources so that we can feel creative and invest innovative ways of expressing ourselves. Model people in your life who you see operate from a creative state of mind-andemotion. Inquire about the resources they use. 3) Identify the syntax of your resource states. For instance, if you felt curious about an article you thought about writing, did you have any particular thoughts-feelings about your curiosity? Were you joyful about it? Playful about it? Appreciative about it? Fearful about it? If you started with a sense of "need to do something different" about dealing with a customer, did you experience any thoughts-feelings about that state of need? Hate to feel this need? Joy that this necessity may lead to some new inventive way of coping? Angry at your need? Accepting of your need? [Recognizing a jump to a higher level, as these suggest, enables you to track your creativity "up" the meta-levels.] 4) Identify the structure of your states. Depending upon how complex and/or layered your "creative" experience, you may have four resources all in a line: first curious, playful, generative of lots of options, and then decisive. Or you may have those four and one meta-state, joyful about lots of options. Whatever the overall structure, sort and separate these parts and layers to identify the process. Joyful Curious +

Playful

+

Generating + Decision Options

5) Explore the particular structural syntax that you typically use for the threestages of creativity. We mentioned these earlier, and now devote more attention to these stages of creativity. Stage 1: Generation/Discovery. The stage of dreaming, envisioning, going wild, being playful, delighting self with possibilities, and generating ideas. Start with a beginning question, problem, or concern. Sometimes we just have an exciting idea that begins to dance around playfully in our consciousness. Then we start questioning and playing around with that question or problem or idea. In -241-

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doing this we let our "mind" and the components of mind (internal senses or representation systems, meta-programs or thinking/sorting patterns, etc.) alter and shift and play around. Stage 1:

Flexibility @ Playful Questioning @ R.S. VAKOG

Meta-Programs Match/Mismatch

Internal/External

Global/Detail 1st. 2nd. 3rd Position Toward/Away Options/Procedures

Flexibility @ Flexibility Shifting representations

As we think in new and different ways about the question or idea, we generate or create other ideas. In this way we brainstorm or mindstorm. We plant questions in our consciousness about our thinking. We may take different points of view, different perceptual positions about our ideas or about our questions. With this general flexibility of consciousness then we bring that same kind of flexibility to our flexibility. This generates hyper-flexibility, "crazy" thinking, fluid, non-sensical thoughts, wild ideas, flights of fantasy, "thought balls" bouncing around the corridors of the mind, etc. The overall gestalt of this configuration shows up as pretending, fantasizing, running "as if" and "what if" programs. We feel like a child again—playful, silly, having fun, enjoying our "thought balls" as they bounce around in unexpected ways. As you do this, you can become very focused, entranced in a deep concentration, entranced by the excitement, thrill, rush of ideas, driven—hence the "mad" scientist look! This random interfacing of ideas, elements of ideas, altering the structure and sequencing of ideas often creates a "floating" kind of feeling—not "being in reality," not having one's feet on the ground, but "being up in the air." Stage 2: Reality testing and implementing. Having generated some "wild and crazy" idea, now you can move to stage two and begin to get your feet back on the ground. Here you will move into reality testing, concrete experimentation about the idea, critical thinking, etc. At this stage you will want to begin to ask such questions as: How can I achieve this? How can I make it real? -242-

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What conditions will support it? Can it work? What would I need to make it work? What constraints do I have to take into consideration in terms of time, money, energy, environment, technology, etc.? Stage Two: move from creativity (the internal state) to inventing as an external set of actions. Here you move from your dreaming of some vision to taking action in order to create it in the world. Two phases occur within this stage. The conceptual phase where you will explore the feasibility and the validity of your concepts. Then the operational phase where you create a proto-type or experiment in some way. The Implementing Stage: Accepting/ Welcoming Feedback @ Pragmatic State: How? Use? Question Value? @

Persevering (not giving up... continuing) @

ProblemSolving How to deal with this? @

@

Gestation Metaphor Sleeping on it—Distracting @

@

State--Use of Analogies for Abduction @

CONTENT OF THOUGHT, IDEA

Stage 3— The testing and refining stage. At this stage you evaluate the idea and the package that you have invented for actual-izing it in the world. You then evaluate that evaluation. You gather all the feedback in order to evaluate that feedback. You will begin to explore: How shall I market this? How can I protect my creative products? In doing so, you begin to contextualize the product, refine it, and bring it to market. 6) Anchor the feel and language of creativity. We anchor states in order to develop a "handle," or mechanism, by which we can re-access the state and move the experience around. Neurologically, when we establish a good anchor on a primary state—any sense modality that we have connected to that state can serve as an anchor to re-trigger it. But this differs when it comes to meta-states. Now we have to use meta-mechanisms or a meta-modality to anchor it—usually -243-

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language, but also symbols, icons, etc. In NLP, we like to "anchor" responses and states. e do so in order to create a way to bring the experience or state back at our beckoning. So how do we get a good solid anchor on such a complex and layered experience as creativity? Testing and/or Refining Stage. Quality Control Evaluation Evaluation Multi-sensory check Multi-perspectives check @

Marketing @

CREATIVE PRODUCT . . .

Dilts (1991) asked, "What can you do to insure that you are going to be creative when you need it?" To develop the creativity meta-state to such an extent that we can have "on the spot creativity" (283), we need to develop some meta-level mechanisms that will enable us to re-access that state. This inevitably involves some kind of languaging —putting together words, statements, symbols, etc. that allow us to quickly reaccess the strategy/syntax of the experience. I already noted that we may experience a wide range of emotions and kinesthetic sensations in creativity. Sometimes creativity arises, not when we feel good, comfortable, at ease, with plenty of time and resources, but when we have a context of stress, pressure, and demands. The old proverb speaks about creativity that arises in such times. "Necessity is the mother of invention." Sometimes we create best, in fact, when under time pressure, money pressure, relational pressure, etc. The emotional feel of creativity differs, not only for different people, but also for us at different times concerning different kinds of creativity. Some people, for example, experience creativity as a "flow" experience (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Glasser (1976) talked about it as a "positive addiction." In such times, we experience a time-distortion, a loss of self-consciousness, an ease and flow of new ideas, emotions, expressions that just seem to come—almost as if from on high and not from us. Others, by contrast, experience creativity as a struggle, as the birth-pangs of a woman creating a new life in the giving birth process. They experience it as -244-

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emotionally draining, stressful, even painful. To anchor your creativity, when you have accessed the state and experienced it fully, "snapshot" the feelings with whatever visual and auditory components you may have in your mental movie. Also, notice the language you use that supports this state. Now allow these to unite and form a symbolic icon, term, or sound—a meta-level symbol of the creative experience. Store this inside you in a special place as a meta-anchor. Warning: Don't fail to recognize your creativity due to the presence of negative emotions. Some people don't recognize their own creativity or the creativity of others because they negatively label the creativity. They label it "weird, embarrassing, crazy, ridiculous, strange, confusing," etc. Certainly most creative people, especially inventors, geniuses, writers, thinkers, leaders, etc. have had their creative state and products so criticized. Dilts (1991) noted this when he wrote: "One of the most important aspects of the creative process is how we respond when our evidence procedure comes up with negative results. Things don't always work the way we have planned. Even a well-tested operation that has been most successful in the past can fail to produce results. ... Creativity requires the ability to change and to try new things." (44)

Think about mistakes as learnings—as feedback regarding what did not get the results we desired. Then you can stop repeating the ineffective actions that do not work and can begin to experiment with learning what will. This will enable you to become highly tolerant toward mistakes, even accepting and appreciative of mistakes. Adopt beliefs that support creativity. Lurking within mistakes are opportunities for creativity, wealth, new ideas, surprising discoveries. Part of the strategy for creativity for most people is maintaining a curious and optimistic attitude regardless of how an experiment turns out. Therefore if we adopt an experimental attitude about life, and an engagement in things, we adopt a non-self-critical attitude that will enable us to persist. Dilts, Dilts, and Epstein (1991) describe creativity as also involving an outcome frame that orients us to some future goal, a feedback rather than failure frame, and a flexibility frame (p. 50). Check your creativity strategy. Have you brought these resources to bear on your primary state? Creativity as a gestalt state In creativity, we not only think-emote and act in ways that generate new things, but experience both multiple states and states-about-states. Creativity involves curiosity about our activity, appreciation for it, wisdom from seeing the object in multiple perspectives, humor, playfulness, etc. Further, at a meta-level, creativity -245-

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frequently involves appreciation of our creativity, playfulness about playfulness, excitement about our curiosity, etc.

11) THE MASTERY WALK We often complete our Master Practitioner trainings (Meta Masters) by recapitulating many of the learnings and resource states by moving through the decision point of saying “No” to the old dragons, sabotaging programs, and limiting beliefs so that we can say “Yes” to the very spirit of NLP and NeuroSemantics with its presuppositions, and empowering beliefs. This is a walk into your future. We do this by setting up the training room so that the participants are outside the room—outside in the “hall of dragons.” Set up the room so that as they enter and move through the room they will move from place to place where they will access the various states along the way—with a eye on the goal —a golden future. At these places in the room you will have Assist Team members and co-trainers. They will say the following things as they induce in the participants the right state as they move toward their future. Enter the Hall of “No!” ... This is the place of limiting, toxic, and disempowering ideas, beliefs, decisions. Here things that hinder, interfere, and sabotage mastery arise... and here you can use the power of disconfirmation to refuse, stubbornly refuse, to let dragons and problems stop you. So as you hear a chorus of “Nos!!” use your own “NO!” to bring against old limiting beliefs and problems ... hear the “Nos!” until you also say “No!” and feel that the old map has no place in your world. ... so that you can step into the space of “YES.” As you Enter the Circle of “YES!” You can now take any and every empowering thought, belief, and decision to walk into the Magic of Confirmation. Hear a chorus of “Yeses!” ... the language, voices, and faces of validating, confirming, filling up your world with values... and Yes to appreciating and esteeming yourself... and you can enjoy being there fully and receiving the validation of the Inspiring new idea ... The possibility of mastery ... of personal genius arising and emerging. JOY ... the Joy of Pleasures Now take a step into joy... into fun, playfulness, excitement, delight, pleasure... and you can dance your way along the path of mastery as you receive and delight yourself in your ability to say “No” to what doesn’t work and “Yes” to what does, and to moving toward the future that the inspiring map creates... enjoy ... and when you feel the joy... step up into intentionality. INTENTIONALITY ... Your Vision of Mastery Say “YES “also to your vision of becoming a master practitioner... of -246-

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becoming more competent and skilled with each year ... developing a clearer Vision along your pathway ... able to make mastery happen ... So look up... and forward to your future becoming brighter and clearer ... and when take your intentional stance... step up to wonder. WONDER ... as if it is the day after the magic... Wondering ... curiously what your future of mastery .. The new resources that will enable you to do, experience, feel, and be.... and joyfully wonder and when you feel the wonder ... you can step up to confidence. CONFIDENCE ... Feeling more and more confident, strong, and powerful about moving forward with your empowering beliefs, You can do it. You will make it happen. You can Mind to Muscle any great idea and make it yours! Feel that confidence... and step up into focus. FOCUS ... the genius state Now step up into focus and feel that laser beam of focus on the values and visions that pull you into your mastery ... Because you can do one thing at a time... and trust the process... and step up into appreciation APPRECIATION ... Now step finally into appreciation and imagine with the eyes of appreciation, highly esteeming the you becoming the master and ever more competent in the magic of NLP ... And as you stand in awe of the wonder and joy of it all ... you can hear a voice rising up in you ... a voice claiming ownership of all of this... and when you are reading, step froward and say ... “MINE!”

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I

n Neuro-Semantics we distinguish three kinds of states: primary states, meta-states, and gestalt 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. The General Pattern for layering state upon state to create a Gestalt state 1) Identify a list of elements and components to go into the mix. What will you need to create a rich and vibrant state of X (the gestalt)? If X is optimism, seeing opportunities, courage, etc., what are the essential components? How do you want to customize the mind-body-emotional state of X so that it seems compelling enough for yourself? What do you need to think, feel, know, value, believe so that X emerges for you? 2) Access and amplify each resource. Use small and simple examples until you access the state, then keep layering it with more of the resources. 3) Apply to your primary level situation Future pace this enriching resource to how you think, perceive, feel, talk, and act at work, home, in relationships, or wherever. 4) Install by making an empowering decision for it, then meta-Yes it. Are you willing to make this your program? How will it affect your self-definition? -248-

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1) META-STATING COURAGE To design engineer the gestalt meta-state of courage we will need to specific and access the components of "courage" may vary depending upon how you order a particular strategy or format of courage. We can construct the gestalt state of "courage” in many ways. You have many ways by which you can build this meta-level experience. It all depends on the specific state-on-state arrangement that you put together. Play around with this meta-level construct of courage to bring other states to bear on it. Risky Danger Joyous excitement of fear (or in spite of fear) Boldness to take risks in reaching objective Overwhelming sense of one's desired outcome or value Not-caring a fig for what others say or think while moving forward Rejecting concern about embarrassment as irrelevant The Pattern 1) Access the primary state of fear. What is primary state of fear begins the process? What are you afraid of that robs you of courage? What object, situation, or event sets off the fear? What do you “know” is not a legitimate or reasonable fear that gets in your way? Menu list: an audience, the elevator, getting a no, making fool of self, your boss, etc. 2) Identify a referent experience. Have you ever had a former unrealistic fear that once made you timid? When? What? Etc. How did you develop the courage to face it? What empowered you with sufficient boldness or some other resource to face that fear? How did you eventually walk into the fear without letting it paralyzing you? Did you have a bigger and more compelling desired outcome? Is that what put the fear in its place? [Examples: facing the fear of public speaking, riding an elevator, asking someone out for a date, volunteering for something new that you really want to do, asking for a raise, etc.] 3) Flush out your current frames and meta-states. How do you think and/or feel about that fear of that object? How well does this serve you? Have you had enough of this old fear dominating your life? 4) Design engineer a higher level state, resource, belief, etc. that allows courage to emerge. Identify suspected critical resources such as boldness, passion, -249-

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compelling outcome, etc. When you access each of these states and apply them to the situation, what happens? 5) Keep recycling through this meta-stating and design engineering process until the gestalt emerges.

2) META-STATING “OPTIMISM” What is “optimism” and when do we meed it? Optimism refers to the attitude (state, frame) that seeks to put the best possible or favorable construction on people, events, happenings, and actions. When things are going great—this is easy and natural. When things are not going well, when negative, hurtful, unpleasant, painful, and traumatic things occur, that’s when the attitude of optimism is thoroughly challenged. What you do mentally regarding your internal explanations determine the states you create for yourself. Adverse events (adversity) alone do not "make" us feel bad, depressed, angry, fearful, or make us victims or victors. It is our explanation of adversity, or our explanatory style, that does that. It is our Explanatory Style (optimistic, pessimistic, neutral, etc.) that critically determines our states, emotions, and responses. How do you explain things when "bad" things happen to you? It is to our glory that we always seek to understand things, search for causes, the nature of things, their significance, etc. “Problems” typically arise with this when we jump to unenhancing conclusions. Problems arise when we rashly create irrational, unrealistic, distorted, or just plain stupid explanations. When these explanations become our style of processing things— they become our perceptual grid for seeing the world. Undesirable events is the context within which we need an optimistic explanatory style: Why did this happen? Purpose/design good/bad Why did this happen to me? Bad-inadequate/ test What is the source of this? Personal/ External Interactional; Other contributing factors How long will this last? Permanent/temporary How significant is this? Pervasive/contextual How judge this? Horrible/ Curable The pessimistic explanatory style interprets 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). Then we see ourselves as inadequate, deficient, lacking, selfish, mean, criminal, -250-

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etc., which, in turn, creates disempowerment and non-resilience leading us to feel depressed, passive, and suicidal. The optimistic explanatory style we attach positive and bright meanings when "bad" things happen. We interpret events as Temporary in time, about this particular person, situation in this moment; Specific in space, and External in source. Then we see “the problem” as in the environment, the behavior, etc., not as about us. “Not me!” This explanation prevents us from over-generalizing and coloring dark the future, life, or another person. We perceive what happened as occurring at a specific time, in a specific situation, involving specific people, etc. This contains the "evil," thereby preventing it from spilling over onto everything else. 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.) The Pattern: 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.” Fill up your space of Me 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. Or if in the past, “That there then.” 3) Access the frames by implication in this. 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 empower you as a person? Does it enhance your life? Will you opt to think this way and use this as your frame? -251-

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5) Cycle through until the gestalt of optimism emerges. Check and see, has a sense of optimism yet emerged for you when you think about this? 6) What else do you need: For an optimistic attitude to emerge, what else do you need to add to the mix? 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.

3) META-STATING “SEEING OPPORTUNITIES” We never see “opportunities” with our eyes. The great nominalization “opportunity” does not occur in the sensory based world. We can only see “opportunities” with our mind. This means that we need to be able to look at the events of everyday life that we typically experience as boring, problematic, stressful, stupid, etc., and reformat our thinking so that we see within such happens “opportunities” for fun, profit, development, adventure, etc. To do this we have to meta-state ourselves with various ideas, feelings, understandings, etc. so that a new gestalt state emerges from the process. Begin by hallucinating (or thinking about) “possibilities,” “a great future,” etc. The design engineering question that personalizes it 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) Identify a list of elements and components to go into the mix. What will you need to create a rich and vibrant state of seeing opportunities? What are essential components seeing opportunities? How do you want to customize the mind-body-emotional state of X so that it seems compelling enough for yourself? What do you need to think, feel, know, value, believe so that X emerges for you? 2) Access and amplify each resource. For the gestalt of seeing opportunities begin with — Possibility thinking/ Potential -252-

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Excited about problems Problem solving skills Knowledge seeker Adventure/ fun Detective skills Use small and simple examples until you access the state, then keep layering it with more of the resources. For the gestalt of seizing opportunities begin with sense of timing, appropriateness to your values, ability to engage in intelligent risk taking, ecology, etc. 3) Apply to your primary level situation Future pace this enriching resource to how you think, perceive, feel, talk, and act at work, home, in relationships, or wherever. 4) Install by making an empowering decision for it, then meta-Yes it. Are you willing to make this your program? How will it affect your self-definition?

4) GESTALTING UN-INSUITABILITY Distinctions: There is a state of taking insult and another for being Un-insult-able. The un-insult-able 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 you to take communications to use them constructively. Now you can 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? Are you ready for moving through the world Un-Insultable? To move into a meta-state about a criticism seeing it as just information? 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: Insultability 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? -253-

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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 “dragon” states emerge in you 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: Representations: How encoded in the movie that you play? How fast does the information come in? 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-Insultability: 1) State Boundaries: How strong, present, how much energy and strength in your boundaries? Do you need to slow down the speed of the process? Give time and space for reflection? 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 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?” How do you represent Others? Pattern for installing un-insultability 1) Identify a referent event. What do you want to have more choices, flexibility, and power in -254-

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handling? Identify in your mind a trigger event of insult. What is that like? 2) Power Up: Access and apply each resource. Step aside from the content Refusal to take personal Ownership of your powers Appreciation

Keep presence of mind about the criticism Choice: what to accept, what to reject Integrity to live by your values Ability to listen with a quiet and receptive mind Curiosity: “tell me more...” Discern responsibility To / For Defusing Skills Staying emotionally centered Humanize the critic Self-esteeming Optimistic Explanatory Style Distinguish Behavior from Person Distinguish Language and Meaning Recognize feedback as just words Say “No!” to criticism that doesn’t fit Self-referent about values.

3) Sequence the states that you want to set as frames in terms of being UnInsultable. 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? 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

5) META-STATING 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. -255-

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The Pattern 1) Access a primary state context in which you want more Resilience Explore and slay/ tame any dragons you have that torments that PS. 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? The pessimistic explanatory style attaches pessimistic meanings to the occurrence of "bad" things. This frame interprets 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). 2) What meta-level resources do you need to access and apply to the set-back? Check-list of possible resourceful states, beliefs, values, understandings, etc. Self-esteeming. Non-personalizing Self-appreciation Centered in values/ visions Compelling outcome Forgiveness Meaning-making power Flexibility Sensory awareness Response-able Non-victim Ownership of Power Larger perspective Perceptive Long-Term thinking Acceptance of what is Feedback thinking about failures Conflict Resolution skills Nurturing relationships Kind toughness Ego strength to face reality Living in the present Self-disciplined Ability to follow through An optimistic explanatory style The optimistic explanatory style: attach more enhancing meanings when "bad" things happen: Temporary in time, about this particular person, situation in this moment; Specific in space, and External in source. 3) Sequence the states 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 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.

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6) META-STATING BALANCE Managing Polarities Experience involving each pole of a continuum represents real and useful choices that cannot be solved. They can only be managed. Even more importantly, they can only be managed effectively from a higher level. We have to go meta to the continuum itself and meta-state the entire continuum including both ends with acceptance and appreciation. Only then can we bring the other necessary resources together so that the gestalt of “balance” emerges from the system. Roberto Assagioli (1965)developed a process that he called Psycho-Synthesis which addresses this need for going meta and creating a greater integration from a higher level. The process enables us to bring together two dichotomized experiences so we can unite them into a larger frame of reference. This creates a synthesis that allows for personal integration and integrity. Use this pattern to obtain a higher level agreement frame about two or more frames that seem to conflict with each other. The Pattern: 1) Identify a state of pain, distress, suffering (negative emotional state). Name the problem: impatience, greed, anger, etc. 2) Describe the essence of the state as a “value.” This means to put it on a "value" continuum. If you viewed the problem as too-little and too-much of something, of some value, what value does the problem represent that the person has under-done and over-done? Are you ready to operate from the assumption that every “vice” represents some virtue over-used or under-used. For example, “laziness” as too much relaxation. “Anger” as too much care about something. 3) Identify the person’s current meta-states or frames about the value. What do you think-and-feel about this experience (or state)? What do you think-and-feel about its extremes? What frames of reference have you put around the “problem.” How has the frame contributed to the problem? 4) What gestalt of think-and-feel arise from the total configuration of this old meta-state? What new thoughts-and-feelings arise from this frame about that particular experience. 5) Identify a new resource and meta-state the old meta-state. How would you like to meta-state this? What resource, frame-of-reference would you like to put around this? Accept the “problem” as a virtue— over-done or under-done. Welcome and appreciate it. Contextualize when, where, with whom it is useful and valuable. Balance it from the meta-level. -257-

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7) META-STATING “CONCEPTS” Conceptual / Semantic States This pattern moves you more fully into the domain of Neuro-Semantics. You live tour life, not only at primary levels, but mostly at meta-levels. You live in, suffer from, and glory in, conceptual and semantic states. Why? Because we humans are a class of life that can develop a bad relationship with an idea, with a conceptual category. Immanuel Kant identified conceptual categories that he thought were a priori within us, that is, prior to our experiences. Following Lakoff and Johnson, there are thousands of others that we create. We live inside of these human conceptualizations and they make up and create so much of our "reality." Time The Past Men (masculinity) Cause (causation) Self Self or Selfishness Human nature Relationship Motivation The meaning of life Human destiny/purpose

Justice/ Fairness Materialism Women (femininity) Emotionality Culture Intellectuality Control Values Morality Consequences Responsibility

Money Saving Race Power Manipulation Victim Failure Sexuality Rejection Criticism Aging

In primary states, you think about external events that may be related to a meta-level concept like time, causation, masculinity, femininity, etc. When you develop thoughts-feelings about those linguistic "realities" or abstractions, you develop higher structured states of beliefs and understandings about other beliefs and concepts. Some meta-states will have weak kinesthetic components because you code your layers of thoughts-and-feeling about other thoughts-and-feelings in language. This shifts you from primary sensations or feelings to secondary sensations (emotions), then triary sensations (abstract emotions or mental judgments) about the emotions. You are still in a state, but it will be a more abstract state and sometimes one in which we experience less of your kinesthetics. Distinctions: You think and draw conclusions to invent concepts and as you do, you can create a bad relationship to concepts so that they push your buttons and undermine your resourcefulness. Concepts are comprised of layers of meanings and understandings -258-

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and are often ill-formed, ill-framed, and ill-conceived. You can revisit your concepts to renew, reframe, and develop useful concepts for navigating life’s journey. This is a threshold pattern— you will make things worse before they get better. Elicitation Questions: What ideas, concepts, understandings, etc. pushes your buttons and rattles you? What concepts can you not stand, do not like, and find irritating or annoying? The Pattern: 1) Identify a concept that gives you problems. What concept do you want to develop a better relationship with? What concept, understanding, or idea pushes your buttons? Finish this sentence stem, “I have a problem with . . .” Menu List: authority, dependency, women, intimacy, entitlement, freedom, morality, vulnerability, criticism, fairness, failure, etc. Finish the sentence stem, “I can’t stand . . .” 2) Ground the concept to some real world trigger. What sets off this idea or concept? What triggers it? When does it happen? In what context? What event or events elicit this response in you? What are the sensory-components of the trigger, the see-hear-feel variables? 3) Enter and explore the matrix of frames about the concept. What do you believe about X? [Use the basic meta-questions to explore the frames and frames-withinframe. Remember to always enter the person’s matrix with respect and exploration, without judgment or advice.]

What does X mean to you? When you think about X, what thoughts-and-feelings come to mind? What do you expect? What do you believe about that? [Track the layers] 4) Quality control the construct of the concept. Do you need this concept as part of your matrix of frames? Does it enhance your life or empower you? Is the framing of this concept useful or limiting? Healing or toxic? 5) Design a new more enhancing set of frames. Just for the fun of it, playfully imagine yourself getting to choose another frame or meaning, how would you like to classify it, label -259-

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it, evaluate it, or frame it? If you could magically use new frames of meanings that would enhance your life, what would you use? How would you like to think about or feel about these actions? [Build a new matrix with the meta-questions. Embrace the new concept as a more useful concept and begin to texture it with other ideas that make it more useful, productive, and empowering.]

8) META-STATING 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 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 -260-

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like a victim? 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? Do you know that it is never about you as a person? 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. Selfreflexive consciousness expands our choices, sense of freedom, internal "locus of control" which then leads to a sense of self-efficacy rather than "learned helplessness." Stimulus The Gap of Consciousness Response Self-Management Skills: What are some of little things that you can always do as an act of choice that cultivates your sense of selfmanagement? What may you have discounted up until now as just a -261-

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"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?

9) META-STATING MAGNANIMITY Designing a Matrix that gives us a Big Transcending Heart What is the quality of your heart? Big hearted or little-minded? 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! Heart Quality: To meta-state ourselves into the gestalt of big-heartedness as our frame of mind as we move through life and handle the small-mindedness of others. Definition: A loftiness of spirit that enables one to bear trouble calmly, a disdain of meanness and revenge. (Latin: Magnus: "great" and Animus: "spirit"). 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. 1) Target the triggers, times, and experiences when you need more magnanimity. When and where would you need to be more magnanimous? When do things not go the way you want them to go? -262-

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What stimuli do you find unpleasant, undesirable, irritating, etc.? What blocks and hinders you? What circumstances gall you to anger, frustration, and intolerance? How do you feel about feeling frustrated? If you feel angry at your frustration, you will only crank up the frustration. This will lower your frustration-tolerance level, making you more fragile, on edge, grumpy, etc. 2) Identify a time of magnanimity. Have you ever been big-hearted? Has there ever been a time when you could have reacted with an irritable, fussy, resentful, and bitter attitude toward some frustration in your life but you did not? Instead you responded with a sweet reasonableness, a big-hearted consideration and gentleness which, in turn, enabled you to effectively handle the frustration. What enabled you to do that? What resources did you access? What thoughts/ beliefs? Images? Words and self-talk? 3) Power up with the Resources. What allows you to expand your awareness so it becomes higher, more lofty, bigger? Do you have permission to be magnanimous? Who evokes this in you? 4) Layer, solidify, and install. Do you like this? How will it transform things for you? Are you fully aligned with this? Any part object to it? Is it fully ecological? Would you like to take this into all of your tomorrows? Menu List for Magnanimity: State: Just Witnessing: What is it like when you represent the irritation and frustration as if you have stepped aside from it? What happens when you take a spectator's view of it? State: Becoming Intolerance about your Intolerance Would you like to become intolerant about your intolerance? Suppose you decide to not put up with the intolerance any longer? What happens then? State: Abundance Power: Acceptance: What is it like when you just accept the triggering event for itself? What happens to the irritation when you fully access acceptance and apply it to the irritation? Power: Proactive Responsiveness: Have you claimed your response-powers? Meaning: Realistic Expectations: What can you expect in this or that situation, with this or that person? Explore your Expectations... "I can expect X to..." Meaning: Should-Reduction: Do you have a heavy load of “shoulds” driving and demanding things in your -263-

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mind? Do you know that "should-ing" on self, others, and life cranks up intolerance, non-acceptance, frustration, irritability, etc.? Are you ready to find your "shoulds" and reduce them? Why should life be fair? Why should you get your way? Why should s/he see things your way? Meaning: Index Reality: What happens when you avoid over-generalizing and catastrophizing, and instead obtain specific information that’s precise, and clear? Have you used the indexing questions: Who, when, what, where, how, why, etc. to contain the situation? Others: Love— Valuing: What happens when you access love? "Love is slow to lose patience, it looks for a way of being constructive..." (I Cor. 13:4-8). As "benevolent good will" it respects others rather than demonizes them.

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INTERPERSONAL META-STATING PATTERNS What states do you bring to the people in your life, especially your loved ones? What are the natural meta-stating that you do? What new and more empowering meta-stating would enrich your relationships? What states do you typically bring to bear on those at work, associates, and colleagues?

J

ust as we can and do bring and put one state in a meta-relationship to another state to create the frames of our mind—those inner mental contexts in which we then live, we can and do this with each other as well. Self meta-stating occurs by thinking, by classifying, categorizing, metaphor-ing, evaluating, etc. We cannot not meta-state. To think is to meta-state. To feel reflexively is to meta-state. We also meta-state with each other as we bring mental and emotional states to each other. We meta-state each other as we apply our mind-bodyemotional states to another person. We call this inter-personal meta-stating and the patterns in this section tap into this power. Any time and every time I experience a mind-body-state in your presence I am offering you states that you can put at a meta-relationship to your own thinking-andemoting states. If I feel angry, upset, frustrated, or if I’m judging, criticizing, laughing, loving, being playful, and so on—these invite the person in my presence to set these as the frames and classifications of his -265-

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or her own experience. In this we never know what other people are doing with our states. Are they taking our states as reflections on their own experiences? Are they thinking-and-feeling in such a way that is meta to our states? This explains why we cannot not influence or communicate. Even a state of silence communicates. This explains why we can be shocked at the “messages” that people can pick up from us. Yet if we are consciously mindful of these processes, we can begin to take charge of them and more thoughtfully interact and relate with others. We can more consciously meta-state others with love, understanding, acceptance, appreciation, respect, etc. These patterns relate to the Others or Relationship Matrix and concern our frames and feelings about people, human nature, the social emotions and interactions, our social panorama, and much more. Every time I encounter another person, our states engage. If I bring playfulness to your seriousness or you bring love to my grumpiness—there is a clashing of states. States clash like this everyday. “I’m just not in the mood,” one may say. “Why are you always so X?” Yet states do not only clash, they also frame. If you take my anger as a threat to or about your humor, or mistakes, or fear, then you meta-state yourself with anger as your frame. Then you might feel me as dangerous to your experience. If I bring understanding, patience, concern, acceptance, curiosity, love for you, etc., then you might take these as the frame for your state.

1) META-STATING OTHERS If we create meta-states by bringing a state-upon-a-state, we create interpersonal meta-states by the states (thoughts, emotions, frames) that we bring to bear upon other people’s states. This pattern of relational metastating enables us to transform relational patterns. (See Anchor Point, June 1996). And it raises some really significant questions: What states do you typically bring to bear upon other people? What states do they typically bring to bear upon you? 1) Detect and recognize the state that you bring to bear upon the state of another person. Consider an important relationship that you want to enrich. What -266-

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states are you bringing to or applying to the other person? What are the states of the other person? What is the other’s primary state experience? What meta-states result, what gestalt states? What over-all configuration in terms of the interface of the two? What are the typical states do I adopt when I relate to others? What do I communicate (as a gestalt) when I interface these two states? For example, as we generate fearfulness when we fear-our-fear, so also when we send the interpersonal message, I-fear-your-fear. This communicates spirit of dread, "you are fragile," etc. 2) Quality control (run an ecology check) on the resulting interpersonal meta-states. Do you like the results that follow from the interface of state upon state? Are you bringing out the other’s best or worst? Are your meta-stating enhancing your life or the other’s life? Are the interfacing of states empowering each person to be at his or her best? 3) Design engineer a productive and enhancing state-upon-state. As you conceptually think through the implications of the stateupon-state interface of the meta-stating choices before you, what do you want to generate? What structure will promote a win/win arrangement with the other? What states do you want to set as frames for the relating that will enhance the relationship? What new frames of meaning and emotion would enable you and the other to feel safe, valued, and appreciated? 4) Explore various productive resources to use in meta-stating the other. As you experiment with meta-stating by appreciating the other’s fear, or accepting the other’s rejection of me about a particular behavior that shows a higher level honesty to face whatever is, notice the states or frames that you then set about that.

2) META-STATING FEEDBACK Giving and Receiving Quality Feedback for Interpersonal Coaching “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)

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Principles: “There is no failure, there is only What is feedback? feedback; and all feedback can be used positively for refinement of With rapport skills.” We need feedback. We Precise sensory-based behaviors need good, accurate, useful, and Outcome oriented and relevant reflective feedback that truly assists Action-able: next steps us in tuning up our skills and getting Time: as immediate as possible new patterns down. Giving timely feedback depends upon the exercise. Typically do it after you have practiced a pattern. Review the process—what was superb? What needs some tuning up. Problematic feedback occurs when feedback meets the needs of the sender rather than the receiver! When the feedback isn’t given back to the person to whom it relates. Typically, we get feedback unintentionally rather than intentionally. RECEIVING FEEDBACK: 1) Meaning: Identify your current frame (meta-state/s) 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) Meaning: Deframe the old Frames of Meaning to Dragon Slay or Tame the old States. 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) State: Separate feedback from the person and even the style. Most people really do not know how to given sensory-based feed back. They give judgment, evaluation, mind-reading statements, hallucinations. Refuse to let their incompetence or sloppiness to deprive you of useful feedback. How? By coaching them to translate their judgments into sensory-based referents so that you can receive it and experience it as “just information.” Meta-model them with indexing questions. -268-

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4) Meaning: Frame and reframe feedback. What do you now want to think about feedback so you find it acceptable and even valued? Intention: Why do you want to receive feedback? How will it help you? For what purpose? 5) Texture your state with the qualities and resources for a Robust Feedback State. What do you need to texture your feedback state with? Do you need more patience, acceptance, appreciation, recognition of positive intention, commitment to yourself, to your learning, to your budding genius, etc.? Have you the frames set to texture your state for receiving feedback with the most robust Matrix? Have you decided to refuse to let another’s incompetence or sloppiness in giving feedback deprive you of the feedback? How hungry are you for feedback? Enough? Are you able to invite another to specific the feedback in precise sensory-based behavioral terms? Will you make the sensory-based/evaluative distinction when someone communicates in judgments? Will you help the speaker translate from judgment into feedback? Will you also stubbornly refuse to buy into feedback that doesn’t fit for you? 6) Update your Matrix for feedback. Do you have a robust feedback Matrix? What resources or states do you need to create such? What frames about Others, the World, your Powers, your Self, or Time? 7) Future Pace Imagine moving forward with this way of operating with your feedback Matrix fully robust and ;powerful in this way — do you like this? How well will it enhance your interactions and relationships?

GIVING QUALITY FEEDBACK 7We 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 -269-

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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) Rapport-based: 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, undersatndings, values, etc.? 2) Outcome Relevant: 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) Tentative: 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 defocused, 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) Timely: 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) Person/Style Distinction: 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) Helpful and Supportive: 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? -270-

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7) Sensory Specific: 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.”

3) META-STATING FORGIVENESS Little slights and hurts irritate and add stress to a relationship and usually being big hearted is sufficient to handle things. We excuse it because we know people have bad days, get stressed, and displace negative feelings. But then there are times when someone hurts us in a severe way, when the very fabric of the relationship feels endangered and threaten. This is where and when forgiveness becomes a very powerful resource for the inter-personal context. When we feel a sense of violation, insult, betrayal, or something that has harms the fabric of our relationship with someone, when it goes beyond 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 for us— not so much for the person we are forgiving. It is to release our anger and frustration and stress. Forgiveness does not mean letting someone off the hook, it does not mean condoning what was done, it does not mean not being firm, or that you have to re-enter relationship. Forgiveness empowers us to release anger and to become free from our pasts. The Pattern 1) Access the primary state of a significant hurt. Is there anything in a given relationship that has hurt or wounded you significantly? What? With whom? How does it damage the relating? To what degree? Is there any relationship where you are carrying around old hurts that need to be released and forgiven? Are there any grievances or angers that you carry around and continue to resent that’s make you resentful, bitter, and not in the best of states? 2) Access a memory of effective forgiving. -271-

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Have you ever forgiven someone? Do you have any references for forgiving? Think about a time when you received what you considered a major hurt or wound from someone, but that over a period of time you have come to release them from that hurtful behavior, no longer hold it against them, and have truly forgiven them. What enable you to pull that off? What resources? Beliefs and values? Self-languaging? 3) Identify your menu list of resources that empowered you to forgive. Self-Esteeming: fully esteem your self with value, worth, and dignity, so that you don't make the mistake of thinking the hurt robs your dignity. Distinguish person and behavior: People are much more than just some of their psychological functions (thinking, emoting, speaking, and behaving). Avoid over-identifying a person with these expressions. Strongly represent these awarenesses until they become a state. This mental surgery gives you the power to forgive both yourself or others. Rage: Get as mad as hell at the wounding behavior! Describe your hurt, anger, upsetness, and total repulsion at the behavior: Esteem/Appreciate the person: See the person realistically—a fallible, insecure, limited, ignorant about many things, etc. person. Someone who needs your sympathy, empathy, pity, support. Put this in a languaging form that works for you: Express compassion/grace to the Person. Deciding to Release: Intentionally make the empowering decision that you will quit holding the hurt against the person and in your consciousness. Promise to release. Letting go: The sense of releasing. Reality Test: Hurts very seldom occur in a vacuum. They arise in the context of inter-actions which means we almost always played a contributing part in the hurtful experience. What part did I play that I need to recognize and change? If appropriate, offer a new beginning (forgiveness does not necessarily lead to this.) 4) Separate in your mind and emotions the person and the behavior. Do you know and believe that people are different from and more than their behavior? Are you more than what you do? Do you know that what you do is an expression of you but not the last word of your identity? Do you know this of others? How do you represent this? What do you need to do in your mind so that you fully feel the distinction? As you amplify that, apply it to the person who hurt you so that you coach your body to feel the difference between who they are as a human being and what they did. [Trouble shooting: if there’s any difficulty or challenge here, -272-

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inquire, Are you willing to stop demonizing the other person and identifying him or her with his or her behavior?] 5) Applying the releasing power of forgiveness to the person. With the feeling of forgiveness and release someone from your anger, anchor this and now feel this about Y. How many more time do you need to repeat this until you fully and completely let go of the old memories and the hurt Movie in your mind? 6) Check and future pace. Are you fully aligned with this? Is there any facet of your mind or emotions that isn’t okay with releasing the other person? Imagine taking the releasing feeling into your future ... staying current, sweet, and focused on being at your best. Building up a Matrix for a Sweet Releasing Spirit A situation of hurt, where a person feels a sense of violation, insult, betrayal, or something that has harmed the fabric of a relationship. This 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. 1) State: Access the primary state of a significant hurt. What hurts or violates you in a significant way? How do you know that it is a big hurt? 2) Meaning: What does Forgiveness mean to you? Forgiveness is not reconciliation or relationship, but makes it possible. Forgiveness is for oneself and then can be for the other. 2) Resource: Access a memory of forgiving. Have you ever forgiven someone? Think about a time when you received what you considered a major hurt or wound from someone, but that over a period of time you have come to release them from that hurtful behavior, no longer hold it against them, and have truly forgiven them. What enable you to pull that off? What resources? Beliefs and values? Selflanguaging? 3) Resources: 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: 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?

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Are you able to esteem and appreciate the person as a human being? 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? State: Rage: Have you gotten as mad as hell at the wounding behavior? Deciding to Release: Have you intentionally make the empowering decision that you will quit holding the hurt against the person and in your consciousness? Letting go: Are you willing to let th hurt go? Self, Power and Meaning Matrices: 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?

4) RECOVERING FROM BETRAYAL One of the worst hurts or wounds in relationship with another is that of the betrayal of a trust. It could be relating with a lover, a business partner stealing money, it could be a friend betraying a confidence, etc. The Pattern 1) Step back in your mind to simply observe what happened. Recall the event that you have experienced as a betrayal. Just notice it with a sense of acceptance of what is. As you do, just observe and witness the actions, contexts, and feelings ... like an interested and curious observer. No need to go into state. What was the betrayal? What’s the criteria and values that leads you to call it betrayal? To what degree do you evaluate the betrayal intentional or unintentional? How sure are you about that? What were the positive intentions of the other person? To what degree was their behavior a function of their unresourceful states? What were some of the contextual factors involved in the experience? 2) Welcome the feelings that surface as just emotions. Since emotions are just emotions, and not edicts about what’s true or not instructions about what to do, access a basic accept them as emotions and explore them in terms of what maps have been violated. What are your primary emotions? What have you learned that will help and enhance your life? How can you detect trustworthiness better? What skills do you need to add to your repertoire for being more masterful in this area? 3) Take responsibility for your role in the process. -274-

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How were you indiscriminate in your openness and trusting? What boundaries do you need to establish? How did you blindly and naively trusted and didn’t ask for more credible evidence? 4) Forgive yourself and others. What bitter and angry thoughts do you need to release and free yourself from? What is your best reference for letting go, releasing, and forgiving? 5) Let go and move on. How will you act differently from this day forward? Ho will you keep your ability to trust without being blind or undiscerning? How can you lighten up so you don’t take yourself too seriously? 6) Access resources for more wisdom and effectiveness in your future. We usually cannot bring closure to something like this until we have a better map for handling situations that may be similar to this in the future. What resources do you now have for protecting yourself in the future? What resources do you have that gives you more self-confidence?

5) ACCESSING YOUR SOCIAL PANORAMA Our minds are full of people—we have an inner world full of people, an inner social panorama. As we are able to hold representations constant in our mind, we are able to hold images and movies of people— the people of our lives, the people we have encountered, loved and hated, struggled with, felt supported by, been hurt by. This social panorama is made up of all of our maps about people in general, human nature, and our belief maps and frames about other people. The following has been adapted from Lucas Derks’ work on accessing the construct of our Social Panorama by which we people our internal world. [See his book by the same title] 1) Think about all of the other people in the world. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the middle of things ... and just allow yourself to slowly to become aware of the people of your life ... those who are closest to you, parents, loved ones, special lovers, children, siblings ... just allow yourself to think about all people in the world as they exist around you. Think about members of your family, town, country, nation, race, etc. Who’s there? Where are they? To you front or back? To your right side or left? Where’s your mother? Your favorite teacher? A hero or heroine? 2) Step back from these thoughts to notice where you put your classifications and categories of people. Where do you put the people that you like? The people that you don’t like? Where are the people in positions of authority? The people with no social -275-

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power? Those with power and those with no power? Where are those who are good people and where are bad people? Where is Hitler and other dictators who hurt people? Where are criminals and people who do others wrong? Where do you put warm and friendly people? How about cold and dangerous people? Where are those of your own racial group and where are those of other races? Where are people of your social status, economic status, intellectual status, and those of other social classes, etc.? Where are those in various social contexts: family, work, profession, etc.? 3) Notice how you sort and separate your categories in terms of the following: Place: front/ back; right side/ left side. Height: up/ down; degree of height/ depth. Distance: close/ far; degree of proximity to you. Size: large/ small. Color: black-and-white/ color Clarity: clear/ fuzzy Position: first, second, third? 4) Notice specific social groups, concepts, etc. Where do you locate nasty people? Kind people? Strong people? Weak ones? Where do you put cartoon characters? People that you have known and loved in the movies? Saints, angels, authors, leaders from history?

6) META-STATING YOUR SOCIAL PANORAMA Our social panorama is made up of images—actually it is all images. And since all of our thoughts are internal images and representations of others, everything inside our social panorama are made up of our ideas and concepts, our mental maps of others. The social images that govern our mind-neurology enables us to get along or conflict with others. “Representation dominates interaction” says Durks. In Frame Games, we say that the frame controls the game. Behind every game is a frame. That, of course, gives us a leverage for moving our world —our internal social world of images and ideas. Most of our mappings about people, society, levels, races, etc. are the mappings that we created as children, the mappings we did without a lot of awareness. Now we can begin to transform our inner world of people. The Pattern 1) Access your social panorama. Do you recall your social panorama? As you do —explore it more fully and be with it for a few minutes in an attitude of curiosity and wonder. -276-

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2) Identify images that are not useful, limiting, or create painful social attitudes. Where does your internalized world create limitations? Are there any distorted images? Any missing resources within any of your images? What is missing in making this image fully human, warm, resourceful? 3) Alter the panorama location until it elicits a new meaning, feeling. What resource would enrich your infernal world of images? Meta-state that panorama by accessing, amplifying, and applying resources to it. Do you have this resource? Have you ever experienced it in a powerful way? When, Where? Go there. Juice up. Make a lively as possible. Encode the resource into a resource ball, balloon, cloud, etc. and transfer to the lacking image. Toss the ball of resource to the image .. see it receive and absorb. See the cloud float to the image, engulf it and penetrate it. Imagine a beam of colored light sending the resource to the image. Access the finest party you’ve ever enjoyed, return there fully and completely and amplify your feelings and apply to your internal world. 4) Solidify by articulating a supporting belief, value, understanding for this change. What would you have to believe about people that would enrich your alternations? What would you need to believe about their value? About yourself? Are you willing to do that? Install with a Meta-Yes. 5) Align with higher mind and intentions and future pace. 6) Test for ecology.

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I

n the Matrix model, Time plays a key role, it is one of the content Matrices. Why? For many reasons. As you undoubtedly know, and know well, “time” doesn’t exist externally. Time is a concept, not an empirical fact. Linguistically, the term “time” is a nominalization. That’s because we cannot put it on a table or in a wheelbarrow. Time is not that kind of thing. It’s a mental process wherein we measure the duration of one event by another event. It begins with the event of the earth rotating to create day and night and the earth spiraling around the sun to create 365 days. Using these events, we measure other things in terms of what happens, in what sequence, when, etc. In NLP, we have many Time-Line patterns as developed by Bandler and then given expression first by Andreas, Woodsmall, and then James. Bob Bodenhamer and I expanded the Time-Line model using other constructions about many other kinds of times in the book Time-Lining (1997). Some of the patterns here come from that work. As a meta-state, Time is one of the higher “logical levels” of our mind. We take time with us everywhere we go, never leaving home without it. When we do, when we get lost in time, we consider that an altered state. We live in time with a constant background awareness of having started sometime in the past, alive in this moment, and moving into some unknown future. It’s uniquely at the heart of the human adventure. Because of it’s importance and pervasiveness, we have made it one of the content matrices of the mind in the Matrix model. Our relationship to time is a conceptual relationship and therefore one made up of belief frames, understanding frames, representational frames, etc. And because of that, Time can then become an enhancing resource for the way we move through life. -278-

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1) FAST AND SLOW TIMES TIME DISTORTION "There are two hypnotic phenomenon that are my all time favorites, fast and slow time distortion." (Richard Bandler)

Our brains create two very special kinds of psychological "time"—the sense of "time" moving very fast and the sense of "time" moving very slowly. The fact that chronological and cosmic "time" does not do this, nor do the events of life, at the macro-level, move any quicker or slower, only we feel that they do informs us that all of this occurs inside. It operates as a psycho-logical function of representation. How does our brain pull this off? What makes up the internal structure of 'fast' and 'slow' time? The Pattern 1) Identify your time-line. Specify your organization of "time.” How do you differentiate between the past and the future? 2) Access states of fast and slow times. To get a high quality elicitation, identify examples of "times" when "time" seemed to move quickly and slowly. Use your voice and tone to speak in a congruent way. Since we need to get people really into the state so that they can access the critical information, use your tone, tempo and voice effectively as you mention times when you know from your own experience that "time" seemed to crawl (speak in a veerryyy slloooow tonality). To get a person fully back into the state to get the best elicitation, use quotes, metaphors, stories, etc. to layer a person's internal sense of contexts and context-of-contexts. After all, "time" operates from a metalevel, so fast and slow "time" operate by means of the comparisons we use. 3) Identify the qualities and cinematic features of fast and slow time. How do you uniquely represent these different experiences? What cinematic features define the difference? Contrast "time" that seems "fast" to when it seems "slow." Find pleasant instances of slow "time." Typical reference experiences where "time" moved along very slowly and pleasurably include: a "just wonderful day" that seemed to last forever. Perhaps the first day of a long awaited vacation when you work all year and then went off on a vacation and during that first day it seemed that "time" just stood still. In such memories or imaginations, what coding enables you to feel that you have lots of "time" to do things, when "time" moves very slowly when you move very quickly. Next find a time when "time" zoomed by. The moment came for something and then before you turned around, the event had ended. It passed as if in no time. You have the feeling, "Where did the time go?" -279-

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"Two hours have passed? No, it can't be!" 4) Juxtapose the "times" to identify specific differences. Take the two kinds of "time" and compare them. What differences exist between when "time" moves quickly and when it moves slowly? Does the difference lie in the position you use in your mind for the two? Do you have one "time" coded with associated images and the other with dissociated images? Sometimes very unusual aspects will occur in these representations. "With time distortion you may also have a difference between parts of the images. Sometimes the center of the images will be moving quickly, while other parts will be moving slowly, or the side of the images will be moving fast. It's a funny phenomenon. When you're blowing down the freeway going really fast and you pull off into a forty-mile an hour zone, you feel like you're crawling. Do you know what I'm talking about? Whereas if you go from a twenty mile zone into a forty-five you feel like you're going fast." 5) Anchor both fast and slow "time." As you do, especially pay attention because this can become tricky. When the person does slow "time" and you discover a difference in one cinematic feature, accentuate it and anchor it. Get an anchor on one knee for fast "time" and another on the other knee for slow "time." This will provide you two very powerful anchors. 6) Identify two experiences for applying fast/ slow “time.” First identify an experience that you would like to endow with a greater sense of more "time." Think of something that goes by too quickly, something that you would like to last a lot longer. Can you think of something like that? Then identify something that you would like to get over a lot quicker. 8) Install in a trance state: "Allow yourself to close your eyes and go away to another time and place so that you can begin to make preparations to feel yourself let go deeper into a trance than you have before ... now, so that you can begin to float back on the wings of time and change. And go way, way back. Because what I want to do, speaking to you as a child, involves beginning to get a little bit younger with each breath, a year at a time ... becoming younger and younger. Seeing perhaps a birthday or a pleasant event from each year as you step back in your mind, getting a little bit younger, and a little bit younger with each breath. And as you get younger, you can recapture that childlike ability to learn, really learn, and to experience things. Because when you were very young, a month seemed like forever. And as you get older, months seem to just zip by. And when a child, a month seemed like a long time, and -280-

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an hour took forever. In fact, five minutes seemed to last an eternity .... Now let your unconscious remember how to feel time as slow and fast and to feel it fully [fire anchors]. Because your unconscious remembers how you experimented to find out those distinctions, and it can remember fully ... now. And in a moment when I reach over and touch your knee like this [fire anchor for fast time] you will zip back to an event that went really fast ... but because you want it to last a lot longer, when I touch this knee [fire anchor for slow time], you can experience time as moving verryyy sloooowlly. It will almost stand still. And as it does you can relive that event in real time of two minutes, but it will seem like an hour.

2) SPIRALING RESOURCES INTO THE NOW Adapted and developed from one described in Accessing Your Ferocious Self (Hall, 1996). It involves imagining a configuration of a spiral or a set of circles. The Pattern 1) Be here and now in this moment. Imagine yourself in a wide-open space in this moment in time fully associated and fully present to your thoughts-and-feelings. 2) Recall a wonderful resource state. Think back to a number of delightfully resourceful experiences of your past—beginning by thinking of such an experience that occurred last year ... And once you see and hear and feel that experience, step back into this moment in time and imagine that experience circling around you as the planets move around the sun. Watch it circle around you as if you stood in the middle of a spiral. 3) Let it settle into an orbit spinning around you. Eventually let it settle back to where you first found it— a year ago, and do the same thing with a resourceful memory from two years ago, and again, one from 3 to 5 years ago. As you find, and re-experience each resource let it become another orbiting event as if a planet of resourcefulness moving around you as in a spiral. 4) Imagine fully and completely a delightful resource. Imagine a resource that you want to experience in the coming year, in the year after that, and then in the time between 3 and 5 years from now. Again, let each experience becoming move around you in a circle as a another rotating planet of resourcefulness moving around. 5) Step into the spiraling resources. Stepping into the middle of these spiraling, circling resources, just allow yourself to notice them moving around you at different distances, perhaps moving at different speeds, moving into your past, moving into your -281-

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future. And as you allow them to rotate as a spiral you know that you can breath deeply and fully in the center of all of these colorful, bright, and exciting resources that surround you and you can wonder, really wonder, what will happen, in just a moment when they collapse into you ... fully and completely so that you can again experience them fully from within

3) DEVELOPING TIME FOR PATIENCE —> NOW! Patience and impatience are two “time” related emotions. They arise from the thoughts-and-feelings we have about “time” whether schedule time, psychological time, sacred time, or some other meta-level awareness of "time." In the state of patience we think, represent, believe and feel that we have plenty of time, or enough time whereas in impatience we do the opposite. We think-feel that we don't have enough time, that we have a scarcity of "time," that we need to hurry, rush, go quicker, etc. These emotions, like all emotions, operates primarily as internal representations drive it. When we track back an emotion to the "thought" (the internal coding) out of which it comes— we find representations that encourage impatience, frustration, anger, upsetness, demandingness, etc. To undo this unpleasant and, generally, unuseful emotional state, we need to recode our sense of "time." The Pattern 1) Access your representation of "time" Where do you put the past, the present, the future? What is your representation like? What does it look like? 2) Discover the impatience. How do you know you think-feel “impatient” about this? What lets you know that you feel “impatience?” Elicit your strategy for adopting this attitude (this position) toward it. Do so using the meaning search. What does it mean to me if I don't get all of these things accomplished? What does it mean if I have this and that project demanding a deadline? What does it mean that this activity seems boring? The structure of impatience necessarily involves a bringing of a state of necessity or demandingness (from yourself or others) upon some primary state of activity or inactivity. This makes it essential to discover the source of that demandingness. 3) Challenge the demandingness. Expose the demandingness. Why must I accomplish this by Tuesday? I agree that I would -282-

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prefer to do so, but why 'must' I? What would happen if I don't get everything done today that I want to get done? Identify the driving thinking pattern: Have you simply been operating from an old impatient program of disliking delay gratification? Have you simply conditioned yourself for low frustration tolerance? Do you actually have no logical reason for the impatience? 4) Move to a meta-position to accept the feelings of impatience. Go to a meta-level position and fully accepting our thoughts-and-feelings of impatience. Do you now feel you can relax comfortably in this higher knowledge and perspective? Bring acceptance, appreciation, calmness, etc. to bear on the impatience, we have meta-stated ourselves into a more resourceful place. Access each state and apply to the experience. 5) Give yourself more "time." From the position of acceptance-of-impatience, let your representations of future "time" change ... alter ... transform ... perhaps you would like to see more space, more room, more distance. As you do that then re-language yourself, I have plenty of time and refuse to threaten myself in an erroneous way by thinking of time in terms of scarcity. I will take effective action to do what I can and leave it at that. 6) Quality control and future pace. Do you like this? As you imagine moving into tomorrow, would this enhance the way you do life? Do you want to keep this? Will you make it yours?

4 ) LINGUISTIC TIME-LINING "Narrative is the Guardian of time." (Ricoeur) We all tell Stories. The narrative we tell about “the events of our lives” can transform and heal or traumatize and destroy. The narratives we tell summarize the “days” of our lives. We use various scripts, plots, and themes to frame things. The narrative, as a linguistic form is not without importance. It anchors a metalevel belief system which can keep us in distress, limit our choices, or create an empowering meta-state or meta-frame that makes life more dynamic, vital, and magical. If you were to put the story of your life in one word, what would it be? Menu: failure, victim, hero, etc. -283-

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When we use a single word or a short phrase to generalize the meaning of “time" we can either create a very limited map or a single word induction to a genius state. In Narrative Therapy, White and Epston (1990) describe our lives as stories. We live stories and often we need to "de-story" and re-story our lives. We stop telling ourselves the old story and tell ourselves new stories. Do you need to re-story your narrative? Linear Framing of our Stories: Linear time results in stories. In this way narratives function as "the guardian of our time" (Riceour). Narrative time creates what we can call linguistic time-lining. The episodic dimension of a narrative draws narrative time in the direction of a linear representation of "time" by using the linguistic structure of "then, and then..." This describes the simplest form of narrating. What results from this is a story, a narrative. In this way that we narrate our lives as we sequence and punctuate events. Yet in doing so we selectively pick and choose events, delete other events, and punctuate them in various ways so that we create a syntax, a strategy, and a meta-structure of meaning via our narrating. Narrative framing of the stories of our lives: The power of a story lies in how it encodes events in a large level format which then makes it more difficult to change. When we create a narrative or story, we impose a structure or frame on a set of events that enables us to group them together in various ways. It provides rules for eliminating other stories as having any relevance in our mind. Externalizing as a framing power: Externalizing is a narrative technique for putting an emotion, experience, or idea “out there” external to ourselves so that we can deal with it as something outside the story. When an eight year old boy was brought to a counselor for wetting his bed, his mother introduced him as her "little bed wetter" (internalized story of identity). Yet he did not do that intentionally, it rather seemed to sneak up on him when he wasn’t suspecting it. A counselor once asked a little boy who had the habit of peeing his bed. "So have you ever stood up to Sneaky Pee and refused to let him get you in trouble?" Yes, once I did. Once I stood up to Sneaky Pee. The counselor then did some cheer-leading to celebrate that as a victory. This encouraged the little boy to began taking some pride of his resistance. From there they began developing a strategy: “Let's figure out some sneaky ways we can do it to this Sneaky Pee!" Externalizing empowers us to tell a whole new story about the events we have come through in "time." It creates a new narrative. The Pattern 1) Discover your story. What story have you lived in up until now? -284-

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Who storied you with that story? Is it part of your cultural story, racial story, religious story, family story, etc.? How much of the story did you personally buy or create? Tell about the theme of your life and listen to your narrative story. What kind of narrating do you do? Do you tell a story of victimhood or survival, of failing or winning, of connecting or disconnecting, of being loved or rejected, etc.? Since personality arises from our use of "time," and since narrative tends to operate as a large-level linguistic structure that guards "time" and structures "time" (the events we've experienced), we invite you to explore your "time" narratives. Use one of the following sentence stems and generate 5 to 10 sentence completions. This invites you to generate some of your current and operational linguistic time-lining "programs." A) Up until now the story of my life has comprised a story of ..." (Prompters include: a victim, a failure, bad luck, stress, rejection, ease, success, liked by lots of people, etc.) B) If I described the plot that the narrative of my life has enacted.... (A tragedy, a drama, a soap-operate, the lone ranger, etc.). 3) Say aloud, Up until now... I have thought, believed, felt, acted.... Then fully describe and express what has characterized some facet of how you have responded mentally, conceptually, emotionally, verbally, behaviorally, etc. 2) Quality Control Your Story. Step aside from the story for an expansive meta-awareness that allows you to check the ecology, then evaluate the usefulness, productivity, value, emotional enjoyment, etc. of your story. Would you recommend living in that story to anyone else? How well has this narrative served you? What doesn't work very well or feel very well about that story? Do you need a new narrative? Do you feel stuck simply because you do not know of anything else that you could possibly say about your experiences than what you have already said? Go above time so that you can think about the days of your life from there and recode the happenings that occurred in time, sometimes prior to "the time" and from "within" the time. 3) Make up a new story that would be more empowering. Once you have identified the "past" linguistically in this way, then complete the statement, "But from this day on... I will increasingly develop into more of a person who... Just for fun, make up a wild and woolly story. Use your pretender to its fullest capacity! What positive and bright "sparkling moments" have you -285-

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experienced that has not fit into your dominant story? What unique outcomes that seem at odds with your problem-saturated story would you have liked to have grown into your dominant story? How would that have played out? What story would you have wished to have lived? Who do you know that you admire and appreciate? What story do they tell themselves about their self, others, the world, etc.? 4) Externalize the old story to de-frame it. Narrative Therapy’s social constructionism highlights that our stories are constructions that we have built and internalized. We have internalized the messages offered by our culture, family, and friends. We have taken experiences, problems, emotions, etc. and told a story that went, "I am X..." In NLP, internalizing shows up linguistically as nominalizations and identifications. Now it’s time to externalize what we have internalized. We can now tell externalizing stories to de-construct the old narrative. This separate person and behavior. "The Mads have had a long history in sneaking up and tempting me to give way to them." "Yes, Misunderstanding has lured us into treating each other as enemies, but now that we have turned the light on Misunderstanding, we have caught many of its tricks." Think of a "problem" that you have experienced frequently (an emotion, behavior, circumstance, linguistic label) and externalize it. 6) Counter-example the unstoried to create a new narrative. Finding the un-storied narrative in your life (i.e., counter-examples). Find exceptions. Find unique outcomes that identify "sparkling events" to seed a new narrative. Ask how questions. "How did you do that?" How did you not fall into self-pity, but just kept at it? How did you resist losing your cool, and listened to your boss anyway? How did you not discount yourself in that instance? How did you prevent things from getting even worse with all of that happening? 7) Step into the new story to thicken its plot Via your imagination, fully and completely step into the re-story and experience it fully in all of the sensory systems. Anchor it. Enrich it with details and find audiences to perform it before. Telling a new story isn’t enough. We have to thicken the plot. To do that use questions about sequences of behaviors to link the past, present, and future together and to thereby create a narrative of drama and action. Ask questions that presuppose enhancing responses enables us to assist people in re-narrating their life. -286-

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"How long have you cared about improving yourself and making a significant contribution? Have you had any times when you felt that way? Why did you choose to prefer to live your life that way?" The first question identifies the resource, the second question invites the person to access historical events, the third encourages them to justify, explanation, and build up semantic reasons for it. Such questioning encourages people to "thicken the plot" of their preferred life's plot (Freedman and Combs, 1996). Future pace: imagine moving out into tomorrow living out that story...

5) FINDING THE INNER RHYTHM OF “BOREDOM” Movement and rhythm of events lies at the very heart of the life processes. So neurologically, as well as mentally-emotionally, and in terms of the concept of "time," rhythm, beats, intervals, and frequencies play a crucial role in our experiences. So does repetition. Yet when we consider the attitude of mind-andemotion that most of us take toward repetition, we can see the cause of a basic "time" maladjustment. Namely, we hate waiting. We despise the "same old thing again and again.” We value (and even over-value) the new, the different, and variety, do we not? Yet because rhythm is made out of repetition (the repeating of a sameness), many have a basic discontent with rhythm. We demand variety so much, we will shun last year's products and fads. Inevitably this creates superficiality and lack of depth in our experiences. That, in turn, leads to a dissatisfaction with the old and with the simple things in life. We prefer the new, improved, updated, neverbefore seen or heard, the sensational, the greatest, the best, etc. Yet in dis-valuing repetition just because it has occurred before inevitably undermines our ability to find and enjoy the various inherent rhythms in life that allows us to synchronize with reality and experience a quality of depth and satisfaction. The solution is to reframe "boredom," the old, and repetition. The Pattern 1) Identify a repetitive pattern or rhythm toward that you find boring and uninteresting. What occurs over and over that you tend to hate, dislike, disapprove of, complain about, etc.? Menu List: Going to work, rising, returning home, doing school work, doing chores, exercising, studying, etc. What do you find boring? Is there a repetitiveness in it? What? 2) Step back to a meta-position First, just acknowledge the rhythmic patterns. What is the rhythm within this experience? -287-

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What are the patterns and qualities in the repetition? Second, view it through the eyes of interest And as you do you can take a new and profound interest in the value of such rhythmic patterns— noticing how the repetition installs activities into your neurology at an unconscious level, thus enabling you to experience "unconscious competence." And you can notice how repetition establishes depth and quality—and stability. How surprised can you allow yourself to feel about these values? 3) Texture in some appreciation and other resources. Appreciation: As you realize the value of such repetitive processes, you can appreciate, really appreciate, this ... Joy: ... and enjoy it so that you begin to take more interest in such repetitions. Reframing: This doesn't mean "boredom" or "stagnation," it means power, competence, stability, freedom to move on to other competencies, depth, etc.

6) META-STATING BOREDOM We human beings can get bored with anything, can we not? Yet we have an amazing ability to take fascinating interest in anything! Think of anything—and there are people who are bored with that thing or experience. They have had enough. When we imagine being rich and famous, it’s hard to imagine getting bored with that kind of life. There would be so much to do, so many opportunities, so many experiences, people to meet, etc. Yet when we take a moment to think about some of “the rich and famous,” the jet-set in Hollywood, they are the ones who suffer as much “boredom” as any group. “It’s such a bore, darling.” If everything can become boring or interesting, then it’s all in the eye of the beholder. What bores one person can absolutely excite another. What one person sleeps through, yawns about, restlessly shifts body and feet through—another person experiences as riveting, fascinating, and wonder-filled. Accordingly, he or she can absolutely get “lost in time” with regard to the experience. The Pattern 1) Access the state of “engagement” What do you call it when you are fully engaged in an activity, lose awareness of everything but that activity, only have one thing on your mind? Focus, concentration, lost in a thought, “flow,” “in the zone,” engaged, interested, captivated, entranced, hypnosis, etc. 2) Learn to take Interest in things. “Interest” tells the story. In Middle English it was spelled, “interesse” -288-

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(from French and Latin, in and esse “to be”). Interest means “to be between, to make a difference, concern.” When we are interested or have an interest, something means something to us. We become interested when we feel connected to something, when we’re concerned about something, when we feel something gives us an advantage, and works to our benefit, welfare, and self-interest. As a verb, interest occurs when we put ourselves in between things, when we put ourselves in the middle of things. Take interest ... looking at something with interest for how it might serve us, could be used, what it is, how it works, what values I may be able to derive from it, etc. Develop the scientific and spiritual mind of curiosity and wonder. Thousands upon tens of thousands of things have been discovered and invented precisely because what looked ordinary and mundane to others was viewed from the frame of mind of interest from another. The scientist or philosopher looked at something in a new and fresh way. He or she put themselves into the middle of something and stayed with it until they mined the riches. At the heart of interest is getting inside something. 3) Lost track of time through engagement. Since boredom involves a time consciousness, it indicates that we are not fully engaged in whatever is at hand. When we are actively engaged, time pass quickly. We lose track of time. This happens because our focus is captivated by an object. Taking an active and interested orientation in an activity engages us so we don’t mark the passing of time. Time creeps upon us so that we keep feeling that we have "run out of time” or don’t have enough of it in order to complete the engaging project. Boredom differs from this. It arises when we suffer actions passively and feel ourselves a captive of a situation. When bored, we seem to mark the movement of every minute, every second. Time moves excruciatingly slow. Time's duration lasts forever. 4) Adopt a fascination as a frame of mind. Inwardly, boredom arise when we lack interesting stimuli. In “a boring situation,” when we feel it offers us little. In boredom, the world seems empty and scarce, not enough for us. As we feel a dissatisfaction, our mind begins to roam looking for something more interesting. To a boring stimulus, we say “it lacks interest.” We evaluate it as "boring” as if the interest or boredom was in the subject rather than us. “What a boring book!” “She’s such a bore.” “What a boring class!” “The most boring subject I can think of is ....” Yet this tells on us. Actually we are projecting our feelings on events and mapping “boredom” as out there. It is not. Boredom refers to a mindbody state, it belongs to the speaker. It arises from a way of interacting -289-

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with an event, from a way of thinking, feeling, and relating. Boredom describes a frame of mind. As an evaluation of events, books, people, situations, etc., it speaks about our frame of reference and our judgment. In doing this, we have moved to a meta-level of awareness. Since boredom is a state or frame of mind, what we call "boring" another person may take with great interest. "Lack of interest," applied to information, speakers, events, activities speak more about the person making that evaluation than the event. The feeling of any event depends on how we evaluate it, the frames we set around it, and what meanings we bring to it. Take interest to accelerate time. We speed up “time” by taking interest just as we slow time down with dis-interest. We experience the flow of time only when the idea of “time” enters our mind. Richard Feynman says, "Time is what happens when nothing else happens." Only when "nothing else happens," does “time” itself enter consciousness. We could reverse the formulation: whenever “time” enters consciousness, we experience things under the evaluative label as “boring.” 5) Refuse to be discontented Since boredom is in the eye of the beholder, decide to refuse it. Seek to find things fascinating, interesting, captivating, entrancing, etc. The empower state of interest and engagement comes from investing our values, expectations, and desires in things. Decide to care mightily about things. In boredom we would rather not have our current experience as it is. In this boredom reveals our preference for something else. So it involves our judging and rejecting of situations. Conversely, acceptance and appreciation work as a boredom antidote. When we negatively evaluate things, we rob activities of meaning. The sense of duration of time is a function of our engagement. If we’re processing nothing, our attention shifts to thinking about “time.” Then we become self-conscious of the lack of valued movement in events. Then we feel discontented, dis-engaged and bored. Our tolerance of discontentment feeds boredom. Our intolerance of it puts us back into the fray of life. 6) Access a focused state of commitment. If boredom involves feeling that we would rather be doing something else, then it’s a signal to get involved. If you don’t know what that something is, then do anything ... and commit yourself to sucking all the value out of it. The very process of wondering, probing, and searching at least gets us involved. (See Accessing Personal Genius pattern.) 7) Create new enriched meaning. Boredom signals us that we need more meaning in our lives, more vision, goals, ideals, passions at meta-levels to live more fully. It signals us to -290-

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rediscover our sense of purpose and destiny, that we need to stop taking life and experiences so passively and that we need to take a more proactive interest in things. Boredom signals us to develop more skill in “running our own brains” as we access states of curiosity and fascination in any and every environment. Mihaly Csikszenthihalyi describes the delightful state of getting lost in the moment, caught up in some activity, and experience a sense of effortless action that “stands out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as ‘being in the zone,’ religious mystics as being in ‘ecstasy,’ artists and musicians as ‘aesthetic rapture.’” (Finding Flow, p. 46). He writes, “Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements are present, so it is possible to improve the quality of life by making sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday life.” This means becoming— “... fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges.” “Work is much more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback.. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally, its difficulties match the worker’s skills.” So what about a dull job? “Turning a dull job into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working more—and probably be more successful.” (p. 48).

7) TIME MANAGEMENT How many times do you put off doing something and implementing something because of time constraints? We complain, “I just don’t have the time...” Inefficient time management interferes with implementing the great ideas and principles that we know. And efficient time management allows us to make the most of our time and energy. Our attitude toward time critically affects our productivity and ability to become well organized. -291-

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The Pattern: 1) Explore your relationship to the idea of “time” Do you have a good relationship to the idea of time? What do you feel about time? What do you think/ feel about managing, controlling, disciplining your time? 2) Increase your appreciation and value for effective time management Given that poor time management is a major reason for poor productivity and under-achievement. How does or has poor time-management affected your productivity? How has it undermined or sabotaged your effectiveness? Suppose you woke up tomorrow with superb time management skills ... imagine that fully ... would that enhance your life, increase your productivity? How would that help? What benefits would arise from that? 3) Slay and/or tame any “time” dragons you may have. Are there any negative ideas, memories, concepts, or feelings that you need to tame and transform in order to develop a better relationship to time, scheduling, following through, etc.? What seduces you to “waste” time? How much of the time when you are at work, do you “work?” Studies show that sales people only work about 20% of the time, and managers only work about 50% of the time. 4) What ideas, beliefs, values, understandings, would support better time management skills for you? Have you mapped out some supporting beliefs that would empower you in time management? What would you need to believe? What could you believe? Would you like to? Menu list: “There’s always enough time to do the most important things!” 5) Extend your time perspective Research has shown that the higher a person rises in a society, the longer that person’s time perspective. Those with longer time perspectives are willing to pay the price of success for a long, long time before they achieve it. Do you need to recode your time-line for a “through time” perspective or for a larger today, future, etc.? 6) Leverage your productivity by prioritizing What are the most important things you need to do every day, that if you did, would give you more leverage over your productivity? What are the activities that you do that are of highest priority? What activities contribute most to your success? -292-

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What activities or skills make (or could make) the most difference? Where in your life would timeliness enrich your productivity? 7) Leverage your time management via focus concentration Access a concentrated single-minded state to use to do that one thing at a time and to finish it. Are you willing to discipline yourself to concentrate single-mindedly on the most important thing you have to do? Would task completion give you a surge of energy, enthusiasm, and/or self-confidence?

8) BALANCED TIME PATTERN By Stephen Campbell 1) Explore your relationship to time. What is your current relationship to time? Do you feel anxious and pressured by time? Does time seem to get away from you? Are you stressed by the concept of time? 2) Practice being an observer. Find a spot which we will call your observer place. Recall yourself just observing. Seeing, hearing and feeling what you do when you are just observing. 3) Find and anchor time stress. (Position 1) Access a time of time pressure and step to a spot as you recall a time when time seemed out of control. Experience that event or incident when time was not your friend. A time where, perhaps you said to yourself, "Too much to do and too little time to do it." Notice what you see as you said that, notice your breathing, and feel the anxiety building up. Scan your whole body and take a multidimensional snap shot of what see, hear, and feel and anchor it. Break state by stepping away from that spot. Step back in, fire your anchor, break state. 4) Observe that time stress state. (Position 2) Observe the you in that time stress state, feeling pressed for time, in that hectic, frenetic state. Is that something you want to have? Does it serve you? If so, how? Check the ecology—if it provides or is part of a motivation strategy ascertain whether the objecting part would be willing to consider another motivation strategy that was better for your body and your general well being. 5) Find and anchor abundance of time. (Position 3) Access a time when and where time stood still, where you have an abundance of time. You are totally free of concerns about or for time. Bring peace and calm to bear on this abundant time, add your own -293-

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ingredients to the mix of abundant time. See what you see, hear what you hear when time is your abundant friend. Body Check: Notice your breathing ... its more relaxed pace. Notice how your knees feel, notice how those usual spots that have tightened in the past when you were pressed for time just have melted away. Become aware of how relaxed and fluid you feel. Snapshot these sights, sounds and feelings of knowing there is an abundance of time. Anchor a sound, picture or a movement which will hold this state of abundant time. Break State: When you have this state well anchored, step out of your cocoon of abundant time. Step out and shake it off. Re-access: Step back in firing off your anchor and get that state right back. Step back out and walk over to the observer spot. 6) Observe abundant time. Step back into the observers spot. See and hear yourself over their in the place of abundant time moving through. Describe what you observe. Is this something you would like to have on a more frequent basis? 7) The balanced time place. (Position 4) Step to a new space which we will call balanced time. As you step into this space, fire your anchor for time stress as you feeling it taking over, and fire your abundant time anchor so that you feel all the qualities of abundant time and let it come to bear on the time stress feelings. Integrate: Feel that sense of balance emerging. Know that there is always time to do those things, those activities that are truly important and valuable to you. Slow time: See a mental clock in your mind (moving from second to second— notice the space between the seconds, notice how long 10 seconds really is. Hear the slow rhythm of the seconds and minutes ticking away. Appreciate the gaps of silence ... between each second, magnify it to a minute. Your body is moving easily and, comfortably in and through time. Take a moment to fully integrate this new healthy, empowering relationship with time. Knowing once again that you have all the time you need to participate in and do those activities which contribute to your wholeness and well being. Take a snapshot of this peak experience and create for yourself, a sound, an image or a movement which will anchor this balanced time state. 8) Apply balanced time state to life (Position 5) As you stand, right where you are... in this epicenter of balanced time, imagine all the important areas of your life surround you as discreet spaces that you can comfortably stand in. Take a step out of the epicenter of balanced time bringing with you all the qualities of balanced time to a space for/with your family. -294-

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Experience what it is like to relate to them with your new sense of balanced time. Notice how it is different from the old you; Is this something you want? Return: Step back into the epicenter of balanced time. Step into the circle space of balanced time and notice how your sense of time is enriched by your new relationship with your family. 9) Apply Balanced Time to Work (Position 6) Step into a different space fro you work brining into this space the sense and qualities of balanced time to your work. What it is like? How much do you get accomplished and how do you feel about it? Deadlines and targets are still met with ease and grace. Notice how you relate to your coworkers now that you fully appreciate how balanced time impacts your work. Return: Step back into the epicenter of balanced time and integrate your knowings from work into your learnings from interacting with your family in the Balanced Time manner. 10) Apply to other areas of life. Each segment of your life is discrete and occupies a different space. Stand in different spaces for each area. Recycling through 7 +8 +9 for each area. Each time you step back into the epicenter to learn how the experience of that particular part of your life augments the new relationship with Balanced Time. Exercise (position 7) Leisure (8) Eating (9) Growth and Development (10) Friends (11) Spiritual (12) 11) Integrate to complete. Complete the process of experiencing yourself in the various areas of your life with a frame of balanced time. Knowing that as you step into each area of your life you are bringing the unique qualities of balanced time. Step back in to the balanced time space and sense the gestalting of the states from each of the areas of your life. Knowing now that you have the time to spend in each area in accordance with your highest intention(s). Commission: Will the executive part of your brain activate your anchor for balanced time as and when you want it? [Yes]

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W

hile NLP began with the field of therapy, it didn’t stay there. Therapeutic understandings about how people work and communicate immediately lead to the field of education about how we learn, develop, and master areas of expertise. And that naturally lead to business. If there’s a structure to experience— then the experiences involved in working effectively, producing, achieving, inventing, providing quality products and services, working with and through others, leading, managing, handling conflicts, influencing, etc. are all within the realm of NLP and Neuro-Semantics. The patterns in this section focus on what we do—our achievements and performance at work. It’s about the products and services that we create that adds value. In recent years, NLP has been turning more and more to business for many reasons. Obviously, that’s where the money is. It is also obvious that with things changing so quickly, with information changing the very nature of work, stress, handling change, resilience, learning, learning organizations, constant improvement, quality control, flexible leadership, influence, etc. these are more important than ever before. Today, as never before, the “soft skills” of communication and interpersonal relating and the skills of EQ have become critically important. In terms of Meta-States, we need certain frames of mind in order to play effectively and win at the games of business. These patterns offer many ways to manage the inner game of our frames and thereby to win at the -296-

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outer games. Many of these are the patterns are the Game Business Experts Play (2002).

1) SUPER-CHARGING ATTITUDES Attitude— now there’ something business people know about. “Attitude is everything!” “He’s really got an 7attitude problem!” “You can’t tell her anything, not when she cops that attitude.” But what is an “attitude?” And how do you effective adjust an attitude? An attitude, as a holistic term, refers to a our full mind-body-emotion stance toward something., includes our mental and emotional stance. It includes our physiology. In Meta-States, we recognize that an attitude is a gestalt state that arises from the layering of thoughts and feelings. There is a structure to an “attitude.” This allows us to de-frame limiting attitudes and to build up and install empowering frames of mind. Can attitudes be taught? You bet. 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? The Pattern: 1) Intention: Identify the attitudes that you want to juice up. Is there any attitude that you’d like to have that would make your life better? 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? -297-

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Are you fully aligned with it? Does any part of you object to it?

2) GOING AROUND PROBLEMS PATTERN Even when you have a good and valid map as you’re traveling to a new and exciting place, sometimes it happens that a road is blocked and you can’t go through. Sometimes things happen and road crews shut down a road to make repairs. Typically, they put up signs that tell us to go around. Detour signs show us the way around the blocked street. But then there are times when we drive right up to the construction and hear it right from the boss. “You can’t go this way, go around by following the detour signs.” A similar pattern can occur with mental maps. Yes, we have a good and valid map. Yes, normally it would take us straight to our desired experience. But right now we have to go around another way. (See article on website about this pattern.) The Pattern 1) Identify a re-occurring problem. What behavior do you find yourself engaged in from time to time that is not effective? What problematic states or feelings do you experience that you don’t need and when you get into them it takes a lot of time and trouble to get out of them? What frame of mind or thought can you go round and round with that only digs you deeper into unresourceful feelings? 2) Back up to the previous state. What state were you in prior to this unresourceful state? What trigger or anchor elicited that response in you? 3) Keep backing up until you back up into a pleasant and cheerful state. And what state occurred prior to that? And what were you thinking and feeling prior to that? And what provoked that state? And when you were in that pleasant and fairly cheerful state, what was that like? How much did you like that state? Step into it again and enjoy it even more fully. 4) From the cheerful state, go around the problem. As you amplify and strengthen the cheerful state ... what would be a fantastic response that you could make at this point that would allow you to step aside from the path into the negative state? And how else could you go around the problem? 5) Confirm, future pace, and solidify. Would this enhance your life and empower you as a person? Would you like to use this step-aside maneuver and just avoid the -298-

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problematic states? What would you need to set up in your mind and life to remind you to step aside? How much better would this make life in the days and weeks to come? Are you willing to let this be your path?

3) CONFLICT RESOLUTION PATTERN Conflict inevitably arises when people interact. Conflict is not a “bad” thing, but it simply reflects that we operate from different maps, different perspectives, have different needs and wants, and are unique. In this we can celebrate and honor differences. But conflict also arises from misunderstandings, failed promises, misbehaviors, disappointments, violation of trust, frustrations, stress, and general unresourcefulness. The Pattern 1) Access a robust state of being in charge of your own state management. Are you in charge of your states? (See Power Zone pattern) To what degree? As you gauge from 0 to 10, how much are you in charge? Are you willing to take complete ownership for your thoughts and emotions and not project them onto another and not talk with “You...” Statements, “You make me angry!”? How well do you now use I statements in expressing your thoughts and feelings? “I feel angry about X, I am thinking Y, and I want Z.” Will you manage your own states and elicit the best states for working through a conflict or misunderstanding: respect, calmness, honor, care, etc.? 2) Commit yourself to high quality information gathering. Will you use what you know about the language (the Meta-Model) to ask good information gathering questions as you seek first to understand with accuracy and precision? How well are you able to calm yourself when in a heated conversation? What resources do you need for committing yourself to understanding fully before reacting? 3) Access a desire for rapport and cooperation. How skilled are you in pacing (matching the other’s outputs) to get rapport? How skilled would you gauge yourself as an attentive listener? To what degree do you ask questions and make sure the other is also ready to hear? How skilled are you in inviting dialogue when you disagree with another? 4) Direct and open communication. Will you speak first to the person you’re in conflict with and not with -299-

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others about it? If you speak to others, will you ask them to be a mediator in the process? Will you not repeat negative or hurtful things about any one else? If you do, will you stop and apologize as you catch yourself speaking down about another? When you communicate your emotions, especially anger, frustration, stress, etc., will you make sure that both know that emotions are “just emotions” and that you can express them so that the other doesn’t take them as an attack? 5) Invite Mediation. Sometimes when in conflict, we need to invite one or two others to serve as mediators in the conflict. This assists all of the sides in a conflict to get a fair hearing and create a dialogue for understanding. How skilled are you in doing that? 6) Begin with acknowledgment of your own fallibility. Do you know that you are fallible? How well do you accept and know that? Do you often get defensive or rigid or closed when in conflict, needing to prove yourself right? If you imagine starting from the position of your own fallibility and being fallible in an open and respectful way, how does that feel? What resources do yo need so that can be powerful and robust? Can you know and speak about other’s being fallible and making mistakes while holding and honoring their dignity? Can you hold your own dignity intact and be straightforward in acknowledging errors? Do yo need inner permission to apologize at such times and make amends? 7) Access a state of un-insultability. Do you know that you as a human being are more than your actions, thoughts, emotions, etc.? How well can you distinguish person from behavior? Will you refuse to personalize slights and insults and focus on the issues? How skilled are you at operating from a state of un-insultability? To what degree do you treat threats as an attack on your “ego?” 8) Seek for resolutions. Will you seek to create alliances, teams, be a good team player, and if we find that we cannot do that, will you agree to disagree in good spirits knowing that we do not have to be a part of everything?

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4) META-STATING RESOLUTION Here is a road map for resolving conflict. I have taken this from Levine’s book, Getting To Resolution: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration by Stewart Levine (1998). See Meta-States magic for a chapter on this pattern. The Pattern 1): Access a state of resolution. This is the attitude step. Think and represent things in a way that supports an attitude of resolution. Can you do that? This means developing the structures for believing, valuing, and deciding that resolution is important and possible. Do you believe that? Good. How much do you have that attitude? How much passion do you have for agreement, win/win arrangements, abundance and personal responsibility? To what degree does that drive your intentions in a conflict? Amplify these thoughts, beliefs, cognitive frames until you vibrate with excitement and power. Wonder curiously about just how the resolution will specifically emerge in you. With this magical attitude, it will drive everything hereafter: “Resolution is just around the corner—it will emerge in the next round of communication.” (p. 99) Abundance thinking drives us to sit down together to talk. Access your vigorous resolution state by eliciting lightness, fun, humor, and curiosity. “Laugh at yourself as you disarm people committed to a fight. Watch their faces drop and their bodies relax when you listen and speak from a mood of resolution.” (p. 101) Do you know that “the truth” of situations involve multiple perspectives? 1 2: Dialogue and advocate. This is the vulnerability step which enables us to openly disclose our stories and to attentively hear the stories of others. How skilled are you at that? What resources do you need to tell your story and allow the others to tell his or her story? In disclosing, reveal facts, emotions, intentions, desires, dreams, etc. Co-author a well-formed conversation with the other. Pace the other’s point of view and attend his or her understandings, and disclose your own. Do you have permission to tell your story to disclose your intentions? Are you willing to allow for catharsis and “downloading?” Are you willing to listen to the other’s full story? Validating the other’s viewpoint doesn’t mean agreeing with it, but confirming the person. This takes patience and compassionate. -301-

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Getting the full story gives us adequate information to work toward resolution. Otherwise people defer to secrecy, maneuvering, posturing, stalling, etc.—things that undermine resolution. 3: Co-author a meta-agreement frame. This is the meta step and the framing step. Move to the third and fourth perceptual positions to gain wisdom of the larger system. Wonder what each person wants that’s in common and could mutually benefit all. What do you want? What does the other want? What does each want from those wants? What are the highest positive intentions of each? Do you have a well-formed preferred outcome that you want from the other? What is it? Begin to collaborate until you find a higher level agreement frame of reference. “What do we both want that we can agree upon?” What is your first preliminary vision for resolution? What’s your intuition? Can you patiently work through the process of filling in the details? After you get the agreement frame, the rest comes fairly easy. This is the irresistibility principle. “Frame the desired outcome in a way that people in the situation will find irresistible; they have to say ‘Yes.’” (p. 139). Reframe the essential part of the resolution from being the perceived problem to being something irresistibly attractive. “We have been through too much, our friendship means too much to accept anything other than an honorable separation. Otherwise it would demean the previous years. Surely it’s better to preserve our dignity, than rub each other in the mud in order to get some fleeting pleasure of revenge, don’t you think?” “Breakdowns are not a cause for alarm;” we expect them. They are “an opportunity for creativity.” (145) 4: Continue to loop between inquiry and reflection. This is the perseverance step: simply keep at it. Keep at it until you get a complete description of each person’s story. Continue gathering and testing information until all feel fully heard and validated. Refuse to settle for inadequate and spotty information. That leads to jumping to conclusions and inadequate arrangements. Use your resolution state as your passion to do this. Develop a vigorous relationship to feedback as information. Do you both know and feel that there is no failure? This calls for patience, willingness to keep adjusting the co-created vision, updating of one’s mental maps, tentativeness, etc. -302-

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5: Bring closure to past concerns. This is the closure step. In negotiating we first bring closure to various old hurts and frustrations that get in the way. Fail to do this, and old resentments will sabotage the resolution. The vulnerable disclosures of our stories helps us download hurtful fears, apprehensions, disappointments, frustrations, and angers. “That must have been hard.” “That sounds like it must have taken a lot out of you.” To facilitate the stage of emotional completion, Levine suggests the following questions: What worked about the relationship, partnership, or venture? What didn’t work? Who do you need to forgive, and for what? Who do you need to thank, and for what? What else do you need to say so that you feel complete enough to say, ‘Today is a good day to die’? Do you have any requests? Declare that the conflict is current in the moment and complete. What’s the new era? The new era is... In the psycho-logical step that seeks to bring closure to old hurts, grievances, “bitter roots,” resentments, etc., we do not need to solve anything, fix anything, deny, explain, or defend. Let the accusation be. Let the other express it. Let the person express it fully and completely, saying nothing, but expressions of validation. It simply needs ventilating. 6: Committing to the resolution. This is the commitment and action step as we begin to act on the resolution. With an agreement frame that formulates a resolution, one that honors everybody and creates a mutual win/win arrangement, we are ready to ask for a specific decision of commitment to it. Will you do this? Will we agree to move forward from this agreement? This allows us to real-ize the resolution. It empowers us to make the agreed upon vision to become our road map for maximizing our potentials. End Note: Truth, by the way, is a nominalization that turns a process into a noun. “Truth” is not a thing, but a mental evaluation. “I hold this as true and accurate given my understandings, criteria, values, standards, etc.” “Truth” depends on one’s standard and style of evaluating. “True to whom?’ “True according to what values?” Disembodied “truth” doesn’t exist. “Truth” is based on an understanding. It emerges as an evaluative or meta-frame of someone’s model of the world. “Truth” is a human construct.

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5) 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 or expression 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 mindheart 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. 6) Time: Future pace. 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? -304-

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6) THE CONFLICT RESOLUTION GAME What games do you play with regard to conflict? When you butt heads with someone, want something that they other doesn’t want, what games do you default to at that point? There’s hardly a subject more semantically loaded than “conflict.” The very term triggers anticipatory fears and dreads. Why? Because most people have such very poor conflict resolution skills. The Pattern: Part I: Pre-Frame the Conflict 1) Set a collaborative frame between the parties. “I would like to talk to you about how we can both score a win in this project. Would you be interested in exploring that?” Would you like to find a win/win arrangement for this conflict of differences? 2) Invite each person to assert and cooperate. These are the two powers and skills that make up the gestalt of collaboration. Collaboration involves both high assertion and high cooperation. Are you willing to simply assert what you do think and feel and to listen to the other’s assertions? 3) Agree on a non-blame frame. Where there is blaming, accusation, judgment, name calling, mindreading, assumptions, etc., collaboration cannot occur. Are you willing to suspend blame while we search for a solution? Are you willing to be signaled if you begin blaming language (“you...” etc.)? 4) Agree to fully listen to the point of understanding. Avoid setting agreement with each other’s points and positions, only agree to dialogue, reflect, listen, etc. until there is understanding. Would you like to be fully understood in your position, feelings, and opinions? Are you willing to listen fully to the other so that we can begin with understanding? Part II: Frames to set in the midst of conflict: 1) Pace to satisfaction of understanding frame. Are you willing to mirror back and reflect what you think you hear and to keep checking for accuracy until the other feels heard? Do you know how to do that? 2) Playfully brainstorm alternatives. Are you willing to initiate and to enter into an idea generation time of openness where lots of wild and crazy ideas can be entertained? What do you need to do inside so that you can brainstorm without judgment? -305-

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3) Continually check each other’s stress levels. Is this a good time? Are you feeling resourceful to engage in this? Where are you from 0 to 10 on the stress scale? 4) Search for and invent an agreement frame. Is there a way to satisfy both of these concerns? Are you willing to aim for firm flexibility, firm about satisfying all concerns and flexible about the solutions? 5) Present highest frames of value, concern, and importance. What is the most important thing to you? What are the criteria that you want to have met in order to feel the resolution is satisfying and a win? 6) Establish a solution frame. Are you aiming to find and/or develop solutions? Are you willing to avoid focusing on the problem and to shift to the solution? Part III: Post thinking-and-feeling about the Conflict 1) Acknowledge what you’ve heard, learned, agreed upon. What can you acknowledge that supports both of you in finding and inventing a solution? What can you acknowledge about the other person’s position? What have you agreed upon that feels like a win for both of you? 2) Confirm it. Are you willing to turn this agreement into the resolution between you? Is it the beginning of an agreement? 3) Celebrate it. How would you like to celebrate this resolution?

7) THE META-DETAILING GAME When we take great ideas and detail them down to the specifics so that we have specific things that we can do about our great concepts which makes them real in everyday life, we meta-detail. This process gives us the ability to combine and synthesize both inductive and deductive thinking, perceiving the whole and the specific details. Meta-detailing arises from the fact that we think both globally and specifically. We can zoom in on a picture to flesh out the details, and we can zoom out to get the big picture. We can foreground a sound or sensation while backgrounding 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 precision language model (the Meta-Model) and pull apart a linguistic model of the world. We can also use hypnotic language to construct new enhancing realities. When we combine these facets, we facilitate a new synthesis and distinction. Synergistically a new gestalt emerges, meta-detailing. -306-

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Meta-Detailing is the heart and essence of genius: 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. -307-

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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 It is said that “The devil 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. 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 and 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 -308-

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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)

THE DETAILING BUSINESS SUCCESS The pattern 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) Fully express one of these principles. Write it out in full until you have a clear expression of it. Have you made it precise enough so that it is crystal clear? Rewrite it until you can describe the principle with both clarity and succinctness. Does it now have clarity and succinctness? Rewrite again until the clear and succinct statement feels compelling to you. Does it feel compelling just to read it or hear it expressed? What do you need to add to it so that it feels compelling? 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. What one specific behavior that corresponds to this principle would enable you to express the principle through that behavior? What behavior would fit and be congruent with the principle? Repeat this process until you have 5 to 10 see-hear-feel 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. What is that like? How does that feel? Repeat several times. 5) Future pace. When you imagine taking that with you into your future, are you fully aligned with that? -309-

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Does any facet of your mind-body-emotion system object? Are you going to make this a reality in your life?

8) 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 ½% better per year? The Pattern 1) Begin with your intentional stance. What do you want? What are your Holoarchy of outcomes? How are these important to you? Why are they 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 was that like? What are the qualities of a positive and pleasurable waiting for the best like? What beliefs and other frames supported that state of mind? 3) Access a state of kaizen. If kaizen means continuous improvement, then what skills and processes that are critical variables in your success will you commit yourself to continually improving? How will you do this? What could get incrementally better? 4) Texture your continuous improvement What properties, qualities do you want to texture your continuous improvement with? Menu: curiosity, playfulness, committed, 5) Test your resolve and commitment. Can anything stop you?

9) META-STATING PROBLEM SOLVING Einstein’s Creative Problem-Solving Pattern Einstein’s strategy for creativity and problem solving shows that we need to move to a higher and/or different space from the problem space Robert Dilts (1994). “Our thinking creates problems that the same type of thinking will not solve.” (p. 29) -310-

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This pattern enables a person to step out of the “problem thinking” mind-set and state and into a new and creative place. Use whenever you or another person needs to try on a whole new way of thinking about a difficulty. The Pattern 1) Identify problem or difficulty. What is some unresolved or problematic situation that you would like to think more creatively about? 2) Fully acknowledge/ experience all perceptual positions about this difficulty. Would you like to obtain a rich double and triple descriptions of your situation? Then take 1st, 2nd, 3rd perceptual positions and identify different awareness at the various meta-levels about the situation that creates the incongruence or difficulty. What do you see or understand that expands your awareness? 3) Search for and identify limiting beliefs in those frames. What limiting beliefs support the antagonism between the different states? Due to the influence of state-dependent learning, memory, perception, etc. we need a different way of thinking than involved in this frame. 4) Move to yet a higher meta-level and examine the limiting presuppositions. Access a state of clear-minded evaluation of evaluations. What does the person assume or presuppose that holds the “problem” in place? What has to be true in order for this problem or perception to exist? 5) Find positive intent behind each state. What is the positive intention or value behind or above the state? What are you trying to accomplish that’s of positive value to you? 6) Find positive intention behind and above the positive intent. And when you get that, what does that give to you that’s even more valuable? [Continue this process of finding positive intentions behind positive intentions until you get to a frame that allows synthesis and integration —an agreement frame.] 7) Outframe, check ecology, and future pace. Synthesize the parts or states from a higher meta-position have the two combine and become one. As you move to a higher meta-state, outframe the conflicting parts to create a psychosynthesis — a perspective of complementarity. How does that feel?

10) META-STATING FOR MANAGING A basic interpersonal, transactional meta-stating analysis and process that can similarly be used for coaching, parenting, coupling, presenting, training, etc. In -311-

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each instance, contextual and specify the empowering resources. For example, when applied to presenting to groups, establish every idea that enhances the process: Never make people wrong, stupid, or incompetent. Install accelerated learning processes as you are presenting and use all sensory systems to fully activate the Movie in the minds of your hearers. The Pattern 1) List, identify, and specify the “states of excellence.” What mental-and-emotional states would enrich and enhance your own work and skills as a manager? Menu list: attending, compassion, love, patience, validation, respect, etc. 2) Access each one and apply to your managing state. As you access each resource, anchor and amplify so that you can then easily apply it. What results when you do this? How much does this empower you as a manager to work with and through others? 3) Future pace to your work place and check the ecology. As you imagine taking this back into your work place, how does it fit? Do you need any other resources so that it will fit even better? 4) Inquire and identify all of the states that those being managed would like to experience from you. What frames, ideas, beliefs, values, etc. govern the way they want to be managed? What resources do you have easy access to? Which resources will you need to cultivate and develop? 5) Access each one and apply to your managing state. As you access each resource, anchor and amplify so that you can then easily apply it. What results when you do this? How much does this empower you as a manager to work with and through others? 6) Recycle future pacing and checking the ecology until it feels just right.

11) THE EU-STRESS GAME What games do you default to under stress? When pressure increases, when you’re under the gun, what patterns of response do you then default to? Do you have the skill to access a state of calm relaxation while under fire? Would you like to? If we put stress on a continuum, we could put distress (harmful and toxic stress) on the far left and we could put eustress on the far right hand. Hans Seyle, the stress expert who invented the term eustress (good stress or excitement) describes it as the health and appropriate energy that enables us to take on the challenges of life. -312-

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The Pattern !) Access a state of relaxation. If you use your body first— take a deep breath, move to release the tension of your muscles. If you want to use your mind first— think about something that elicits calmness in you. What are some of the most calming thoughts that you can think? 2) Mind-to-Muscle the relaxation so that it thoroughly permeates you. Amplify and anchor the calmness and your highest understandings and principles of relaxation so that you can turn this frame of mind and state on at a moment’s notice. Do you need to strengthen the experience further? Is it now a robust state that you can apply to other experiences? 3) Identify stress triggers and contexts. When and where do you feel stress? What frames of mind turn up the stress? What triggers occur? Run an ecology check on these triggers in terms of cognitive distortions. Do you have any cognitive distortions creating unnecessary stress and strain? What shift do you need to make in your thinking pattern? 4) Texture your active states with calmness. What states would you like to qualify with calmness? Anger, frustration, feeling pressured? Calm alertness; calm focus, calm intensity, etc. Access each resource state and apply to the primary state of activity. 5) Stick the new resource into your future. Vividly imagine experiencing the state in an activity that you know will soon be occurring to future pace the new resources and notice what happens. Are you fully aligned with this? Are there any other concerns that need to be addressed? 6) Translate the stressor into excitement and passion. What are you excited about? What happens when you begin breathing in the excitement taking very deep breathes and welcoming in the excitement?

12) ACCESSING RELAXED ALERTNESS To become truly masterful in coping and handling the demands, challenges, threats, fears, etc. of everyday life at work and at home 1) Recognize the presence of stress. Because we cannot effectively manage what’s outside our awareness, we have to first make “stress” conscious. Do you have permission to notice -313-

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the presence of stress in your life? To notice the symptoms of stress? Begin with your body. Notice if at the primary level there’s any tightness, muscle tension, inflexibility, fatigue (feeling drained), aches and pains, ulcers, shallow breathing, tired dry eyes, etc. How are you doing? Enter into the tension or fatigue and let it teach you. Quiet yourself and establish communication with that part of you. You might ask your stiff neck or sore back or racing heart, “What message do you have for me?” “If you were to speak to me, what would you say?” “Is the tiredness physical or mental?” Use breathing, stretching, and/or moving to “come to your body senses.” 2) Specify your stress strategy. What is the order and structure by which you stress yourself? How do you do it? What is the first stimulus to which you respond by going into the state of stress? What induces a stress experience in you? (Schedules, people, activities, places, etc.) What things do you hate, can’t stand, rattle your cage? When do you typically feel stress? What do you say to yourself that increases the stress? How do you express these thoughts in your mind? What tonality, volume, voice, etc. do you use? What are the quality of your pictures when you stress? The subjective experience of “stress” does have a structure. This magic doesn’t just occur without some “spell” that you cast. So how do you do it? What stress language do you use— “I have to get this job done!” “Nobody ever helps me.” “Why can’t anything ever go right for me?” “I hate it when she uses that tone of voice.” What thinking patterns do you use to crank up your stress: Personalizing Awfulizing and catastrophizing Emotionalizing Minimizing / discounting Maximizing / exaggerating All/Nothing thinking Perfectionism What physical elements add to your stress or prevent you from operating from a calm alertness? Shallow breathing Hunched shoulders Poor posture Contracted abdomen Lack of focus: constant eye shifting Tightening and holding neck or jaw muscle -314-

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What are some of the higher frames that qualify and texture your particular type and kind of stress state? The following are some of the kinds of higher frames that outframe our stress with various pressures and needs: needs for achievement, approval, control, competition, perfection, impatience, anger. What qualities characterize my stress? What would others say about the properties of my stress? Which of the following kinds of thinking/believing describes me? —I must perform, achieve, produce! —I have to be liked and approved of. —I must be in control at all times. —Who’s ahead? How do I compare with X? —Things must be done right. —You can’t trust others to do it right; you’ve got to just jump in and make it happen. —What would happen to this place without me? —I want things to happen now! —I should not be frustrated or disappointed. It’s not fair. __How can I alter my physiology so that it serves me better? —How can I breathe in a calmer way? —What tone of voice do I use in my self-talk? —How do I use my posture? Does your stress have a feel of anger in it? Or perhaps impatience? Or perhaps you have competitive, must-be-better than stress? Do you experience stress as a make-or-break feeling? How much do you have your identity and self-definition wrapped up in achievement, approval, control, etc.? 3) Develop resources for accessing relaxation states. If you can “fly into a rage” then you have all the neurological equipment you need for learning how to “fly into a calm.” Doing this means accessing your personalized state of Instant Relaxation. Remember a time when you used your “telephone voice.” You felt upset, frustrated or angry and you were yelling at someone or fighting with a loved one and saying things that you’d never say to a stranger. Then the phone rings. Remember how you took a deep breath, and then politely answered it. “Hello...?” That’s your “telephone voice.” See, you can fly into a calm! Let’s now cultivate this skill and orchestrate it so you have ready access to it when you want it. First, make it stronger and more powerful. Amplify it. Think about a time when you really demonstrated the power of your telephone voice. Be there again, seeing what you saw, hearing -315-

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what you heard, and totally feeling what you felt. What enabled you to step out of the angry and yelling state to the calm and cool state where you said, “Hello!”? What ideas, beliefs, values, decisions, etc. empowered that response? Why didn’t you answer the phone with your angry voice? Why didn’t you yell at the person calling in? Your answers will help you to flush out your natural “flying into a calm” frames of references. As you make these clear, amplify them, give yourself even more reasons for doing this and then set up a trigger or anchor so that you can step back into this place of mind and emotion whenever you so choose. What would be a good symbol of this? What sound, sight, and sensation could remind you of this state? Let that be your anchor. Now practice stepping into it, setting that anchor, breaking state, and then firing the anchor to step back into that place of self-management. 4) Meta-state your relaxation state. Access your best representation of a relaxed state by thinking of a time when you were really relaxed in a calm and centered way. Recall it fully so that you can access this state and anchor it as well. After you have fully accessed, amplified, and anchored that primary resource state— step back from it and examine it: —What is the nature and quality of your relaxed state? —What qualities and factors make up this state? —What other qualities would you like to edit into this state? Frequently, the relaxed state that we access is appropriate for a sunny beach, but not for the work place. So we assume that we cannot use it there. We now need to temper and texture the relaxed state so that it becomes a highly resourceful state of mind-and-emotion at work. How would you like to qualify it with the kind of qualities, resources, and distinctions that would give you the kind of mastery you need at work? If in a primary state of relaxation, you feel relaxed, so that you muscles are limp, your breathing is slow and easy, you feel calm and comfort, and while it may be a great state, it is hardly the state you need at work when producing products, delighting customers, or performing at your best. Instead we need a special kind of relaxed state: Relaxed alertness Calm confidence in one’s skills Relaxed attentiveness in listening fully to a client The relaxed energy of readiness Accepting the frustrations of everyday life Resourcefully competent while mindfully aware of the situation -316-

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Etc. What kind of relaxation do you need or want? What kind of a relaxed mind and emotions do you want or need in a given situation? Access your Relaxed Core Self, that sense of self wherein you feel relaxed with yourself, confident, assured, and centered. That meta-state structure will enable you to operate from a sense of safety and security and so prevent Danger! and Overload! messages from triggering you into reactiveness. When you have this kind of centered sense of self, then you have a platform of comfort and security from which you can sally out to the adventures of life. This gives life balance. You shuttle out to a challenge, and then you retreat to your relaxation zone to recuperate and rejuvenate our strength. You move out to perform and do as achievers, then you move back in to just be and enjoy yourself as person. 5) Access your relaxed core state. Imagine what it would look like, sound like, and feel like to completely and thoroughly access your own relaxed core state. Float back in your imagination to capture bits and pieces of anything that will enrich your construction and editing of such a self-image and begin to allow these pieces to come together to create a powerful sense of a core self, relaxed, confident, assured ... comfortable in your own skin, breathing fully and completely, taking charge of your thinking, emoting, speaking, and behaving ... Just imagine what that would feel like and how that would transform your life ... ... and when you have edited it to your liking, and it feels compelling, step into it and be there. And enjoy it ... so that you experience it as a joyful relaxed core state. And now as you translate it from mind to muscle, imagine breathing with this and seeing out of the eyes of your core relaxed state. And hear the voice of this state—speaking with a calm confidence that radiates a sense of your inner power. And is there any part of you that would object to living this way? And would you like this as your way of being in the world? 6) Keep refining and texturing your relaxed core state. This is just the first design engineering of this resourceful state. You now have the tools whereby you can design other resources into your relaxed core state. What about adding a big dose of healthy humor? The ability to lighten up, to not take yourself so seriously, to enjoy people and experiences tremendously enriches relaxation. We explode most fears by using the humor power of exaggeration. Exaggerate the fear until it begins to become ridiculous. Then exaggerate it some more. Eventually it becomes funny and then your -317-

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humorous perspective enables you to operate in a more human and delightful way. What about appreciation? What if you moved through the world with an appreciation of things, people, experiences? How would that texture the quality of your stress? Magnanimity would be another resource. It would enable you to operate from a sense of a having a big-heart and thereby prevent you from becoming mentally ruffled. How would that enhance your life? Then there is openness to reality, flexibility, forgiveness, playfulness, balance, and the list goes on and on.

13) CUSTOMER SERVICE Business experts know that above and beyond the specific products or services offered, how we treat people and the kind and quality of experience we give them makes the difference in the marketplace. As technology creates more of an equality between different companies and industries, the difference that makes a difference will be how people are treated. The cutting-edge and leading businesses will be those who are able to treat people with respect, compassion, and fun. The Pattern 1) Access all of your reasons and highest benefits for going out of your way to please your customers. Why would you do that? How would that improve your life? Step into your intentional stance about why you would do this and view it from that frame of mind. How fully aware and intentional are you of the importance of this? If you were even more committed to this, what would that be like? 2) Access a state of intense attention, and alertness. With that highest intention, what will you attend as you want to work with your clients and customers? Use this state to think about your customers. What frames of mind do you need in order to fully step into this state and to be fully congruent with it? Have you ever fully attended someone or been fully present with that person? 3) Play out your intention with your customer in mind. Quality control your states and your responses. How well do you communicate your highest intentions to your customers? What do customers sense and feel in you when you’re interacting, communicating, negotiating, etc. with them? As you texture in the qualities that you need to be even more effective, how does that feel? -318-

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Does that affect your sense of yourself? 4) Texture that state with other qualities that are appropriate Playful — Charming Consideration — Outrageousness 5) Add supportive frames for your matrix of frames. What beliefs, values, and understandings would support your best customer-service states? What expectations? What decisions? 6) Future pace, and confirm. As you imagine this out into your future, do you like this? How much more effective and successful will this make you? Will you keep this?

14) DEFUSING UPSET PEOPLE What games (patterns) do you go to when you encounter someone who is hot and stressed and angry? Do those patterns work? How well do those games serve you? Would you like to play a new game that will allow you to defuse someone who is in a hot and angry state? In business encounters, as in life, we frequently find people in stressed-out states, who don’t feel resourceful at all, they are crabby, irritable, and fussy. Keep refresh your purpose to get the person into a place where they can think more reasonably and work through the problem. The Pattern 1) Access a resourceful state of being fully centered, focused, and nonpersonalizing. Since it takes a lot of resourcefulness to handle the challenges of defusing, what frames, emotions, awarenesses do you need in order to be fully resourceful? When have you been centered, focused, and able to defuse someone who’s upset? As you recall that time and place, step back into all of the resources that supported that experience. 2) Set frames for yourself and the other so that you can begin to defuse. Do you fully and completely know that the problem isn’t the person, but his or her states and frames? What do you need to think, represent, imagine to make this more present for you? Do you know that there’s a positive intention behind the most obnoxious behavior? Are you willing to explore this in the other? Do you use any of the following frames to support you? The words, gestures, expressions, etc. are functions of a person’s state. There is no need to be reactive; that doesn’t help anyone. I can expect people to be reactive when they feel threatened. -319-

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People are sacred beings, but fallible and often get into cranky states. 3) Access a fresh awareness that the person is a human being. Since seeing another person as having innate value and dignity, we can more easily accept, appreciate, and esteem them apart from their actions. How well can you do this? As you do this, what is that like for you? 4) Invite the hot, stressed-out person to download his or her stress verbally. As you accept the person’s state, embrace it fully without judgment. Just let it be. Validate it and invite the person to even more fully express the stress and sense of threat. And how else have I hurt your feelings? What else has upset you? 5) Validate and confirm the person’s upsetness. Do you have a few lines at ready access that you can use for defusing? “So let me see if I have this right, you feel that I disrespected you when I didn’t show up for the office party last week...” Is that accurate? Have I left something out? What other ways can you give the person “understanding” and “compassion” in spite of their stressed out state? 5) Invite an exploration of solutions. What would you like to see that would make this right for you?

15) META-STATING UNDERSTANDING “Understanding” refers to a domain of knowledge that we have acquired or need to acquire in order to operate within a given field. What domains of knowledge do you have access to? What knowledge domains have you received training, education, and experience in? Mechanics Retail Selling Cooking Computers Insurance Wines Teaching Real estate History Law Geography Health & fitness Medicine Baseball Government Bicycling Disney World Star Trek Dogs Cats Gardening NLP Psychology Systems All of us have numerous knowledge bases wherein we have some expertise. Just consider some of the things you’ve studied or experienced, and you’ll begin to realize that you may have scores and scores of such domains of knowledge that you can speak intelligently about. One domain of knowledge that you uniquely have, and about which you, and you only, can speak authoritatively—your personal history! How do you know that you know a given area of knowledge? How do you code and store this body of knowledge? -320-

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Where do you store these domains? Lostere and Malatesta (1989) have written this: “Collapsing anchors is an excellent tool for integrating two or more bodies of information or systems of knowledge. When utilizing collapsing anchors for this purpose, the therapist elicits from the client experiences which are representative of each content distinction, establishes an anchor for each and integrates the anchors. ... It is important to address the issue of integrating knowledge versus translating knowledge. We believe that the integration of knowledge vastly improves effectiveness and choices ...” (p. 146)

By way of illustration, these authors use two therapy models, TA (Transactional Analysis) and NLP (p. 147). In a demonstration, they asked a person to make an internal representation of each of these fields. For a moment, that threw me. How do I representation the entire domain of NLP? How could I so represent such? In having these two bodies of information we have two meta-level domains of knowledge, yet we have nothing above them to unite or integrate them. From the meta-level of these knowledge domains, move to a higher meta-level to establish that larger frame of reference. 1) Pick out some domains of knowledge. What domain or domains that you have as part of your learning history and “library of references” that you use as resource information? 2) Identify your way of representing this information. How do you represent this domain? Begin with looking for pictures, listening for sounds, sensing for somatic body feelings, then shift to words, conceptual categories, diagrams, etc. What modalities do you primarily use? What plays on the screen of your mind as you think about the ideas, practices, principles, and processes of this domain? 3) Specifically identify the meta-levels in your knowledge base. If you picked baseball, for example, you probably begin (at a primary level) with a diamond, the four bases, perhaps a movie of a game in action, players, etc. What about the rules of the game? How do you represent that conceptual realm? What about specific teams, players, dates, etc.? If you picked something more conceptual, like NLP, what do you start with at the primary level? Do you think about neurology by imagining a human body and nervous system? Do you think about linguistics by hearing words? If you picked computer, do you begin with seeing a computer or feeling a keyboard? Or do you see the internal mother board? How to you represent hardware, software, programming, applications, etc.? How do you represent the meta-levels of frameworks of understanding? How do you use metaphors, diagrams, flow charts, formulas, and other -321-

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visual digital representations? 4) Specify the pattern or model that connects. What is the pattern that connects, which allows you to know, and to know that you know you know? What meta-level distinctions allow you to effectively use your knowledge? Momentarily give yourself permission to let pattern that connects fade out and notice what happens to your knowledge domain. Now reclaim that pattern. Isn’t it obvious that representing and anchoring a domain of knowledge represents a meta-level experience? This radically differs from representing and anchoring a fear object, a pleasure, or any other primary level experience. Lostere and Malatesta (1989) wrote, “Language is not experience [well, not primary experience], but instead, is about experience. Language in and of itself is a metaphor, a representation of experience.” (p. 221). “... it is a powerful organizational tool which has a strong effect on the client’s model of the world” (p. 65) “As you go through that experience realize that you have new resources to go with you.” (p. 173 emphasis added to sort out three different levels) If you didn’t know, the Transformational Grammar model of Chomsky (1956, 1965) upon which Bandler and Grinder initiated the NLP model suffered its death blows just prior to The Structure of Magic, Vol. I in 1975. Thereafter, other linguistic models arose (Generative Semantics by Lakoff and others, Chomsky’s Standard Model). Today Cognitive Linguistics by Langacter, Lakoff, and others seems to have moved to front-stage. One thing that I really like about Cognitive Linguistics involves its use of representational space (“mental space,” Fauconnier) onto which we project our understandings, especially our domains of knowledge. These categories and classes of information then provide us our knowledge base for constructing our internal pictures, sounds, sensations, etc. Lakoff and Johnson (1980), and Lakoff (1987) have highlighted the central value of prototypical categories from Rosch as the natural way we “make sense” of things. Think of a prototypical dog. Think of a prototypical chair. Think of a prototypical house. As you do, you do an internal search inside to your domain of knowledge, do you not? You go in—and then up to that meta-level where you store your categories, classes, and knowledge base which, in turn, governs and organizes (as any well respected meta-level does) your experience.

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N

LP and Neuro-Semantics are ideally fitted for coaching precisely because we focus, not on fixing what’s broken, but on eliciting the resources that are already within. Coaching, as a process, involves facilitating and activating another person to access, elicit, evoke, reclaim, amplify, and use resources. In this, coaching differs from training, consulting, mentoring, counseling, and other forms of helping. Unlike training, mentoring, and counseling, in coaching we are not seeking to “fix” anything or supply what the person does not have. Instead, coaching focuses on activating, highlighting, and bringing forth what the person already has and unleashing yet greater resources and potentials. Coaching also is highly interactive personally and very intimate. It depends upon dialogue, questioning, evoking, cheerleading, and provoking. It is about co-creating with the client what the client wants, desires, and seeks to achieve that fits with the client’s values and visions. Because of this, the patterns and processes of NLP and Neuro-Semantics ideally fit with coaching. For this reason also, managers and supervisors in business have found coaching an excellent way to create self-organizing teams, self-directed workers, people who “buy into” the company’s visions for their own reasons and who help to formulate that vision. Business leaders also have discovered the power of coaching as a way to lead, to set frames, and to work more effectively with people.

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1) THE EXECUTIVE COACHING GAME When you are coaching someone in playing a new game suppose you want to coach or assist someone to refuse an old game and move on to something much more enhancing. How do you do that? Remember that the key to human experience lies in the frames that we set and live. Frames establish the fabric of our neuro-semantic reality or matrix. Make sure that you come to this process with frames that empower and facilitate this work. Imagine what would happen if you use the frame, “Difficult Case” with someone. de Shazer (1988) says that “If a therapist frames a case as a ‘difficult’ one, he or she is on the way to behaving toward the client in ways deemed appropriate for dealing with difficult cases. ... The frame ‘difficult case’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. ... when the therapist frames things differently and responds different from what the client expects, the client will then come to see himself differently. Thus the client’s frame may be placed in doubt and more useful behavior might follow.” (p. 103) 1) Search for the person’s frame and envelop it with lots of validation. This may feel like the very last thing you want to do, especially if the person is playing a toxic frame game with you. It may seem and feel paradoxical, but consider. If you dis-validate it, you will get into a front-on, head-to-head frame war. The person will then begin defending his or her frame. Eliminate that possibility by validating and confirming it with pacing words—words that articulate and match the frame while seeking validation. Often this alone will completely disrupt and change the frame. Pacing can powerfully alter reality. Pacing also operates from an attitude of seeking to understand a person fully. Set the frame for yourself, “The problem is not the person, it’s the frame.” “I’m impressed...” If you get any resistance, frame yourself, “Ah, the frame is fighting for its existence.” “Ah, it’s breathing its last breaths.” Expect frame argumentation. Then separate person and frame, access compassion, empathy, and esteem. Keep reminding yourself, “It’s the frame, stupid.” Stay within the frame as you explore it. Examine its logic in order to obtain a rich description of the frame game. Use the precision frame to gain a clear understanding and specificity of the situation. “Since you can’t start everywhere at once, where would you like to -324-

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see the first change?” Access and operate from the know-nothing frame: “Since I’m new on the scene and I’m at the point of ignorance, how do you know...?” Then, confirm and check out understanding: summarize, reflect, review. 2) Establish an aim frame right upfront. Target a point of change or a preferred future. “What do you want? What do you want different from what you have? “What part of this would you most like to see changed? What part are you most concerned about?” Precisely specify the desired outcome so that you can use it as a reference point and relevancy frame later. Keep checking out their current and desired frame of mind by summarizing, reflecting, reviewing. Explore their attempted solutions. “What have you tried so far?” This implies several frames: learning from previous attempts, a commitment to not do what doesn’t work, a desire to truly understand. 3) Use the frame on the person. Take the frame, exaggerate it, be more consistent with it then the person. Apply it back to the person. Add a heavy dose of universal to it: always, forever, everyone, etc. Run with the “logic” and explore it thoroughly... “I have to do this because I’m smarter...” “You’re more intelligent than most people?” “Yes.” “Then you should be able to do this quicker and more efficiently than others since that’s just a part of intelligence.” Play to the opposite: Provoke in order to test the reality and strength of the person’s frames. Explore how committed the person is to the attempted solutions that haven’t worked. 4) Invite the person to quality control his or her own frames. Does this really serve you well ... overall ... over the long run? Move repeatedly from problem frame to solution frame. “So this doesn’t really work to improve things, what would?” “What would you rather be doing or experiencing?” Slowly develop an aim frame with the person that taps into his or -325-

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her hopes, dreams, passions, visions, values, etc. 5) Explore frame interfaces. Which frame interface would create the most leverage, shift, or change? What state results when I bring this or that frame to bear upon this person? What new configuration or gestalt results? If I bring fear, then I set up the interpersonal message, I-fear-yourfear. This communicates spirit of dread, "you are fragile," etc. What states do I bring to bear (apply) that brings out their worst? What states do I access that brings out their best? What structure would promote a win/win arrangement? 6) Set a frame so that you and the other can play a fun and supportive feedback frame game We all need feedback, but not just any kind of feedback. We need feedback that supports our Values and Visions, that supports and understands us, that’s tied to our outcomes, that’s encoded in terms of see-hear-feel actions and behaviors, that’s presented tentatively so that we can check it out, and that’s timely. Do you have sufficient rapport to give the feedback? Have you encoded it in behavioral terms? Have you tied it to the person’s outcomes? (“Given you goal of ...”) Do you phrase it tentatively and available to the person’s validation or dis-confirmation? (“I got the impression that X, did I read that accurately?”) Is the feedback timely? At the time of the behavior? 7) Develop some absolutely awesome pre-frames. The frames you set prior to working with someone play an incredibly powerful and transformative role in what we’re allowed or not allowed to do. Therefore via the experiences of interacting with people and with coaching excellence in others, we can learn the frame to pre-set and to embedded in our ongoing conversations. These can make all the difference in the world with regard to our “social skills.” Some awesome frames from John Weakland as associate of Gregory Bateson: Not really a question frame: “I know this isn’t a question that I can really ask you to answer in front of your mother, but is getting bad grades a -326-

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problem for you? Why?” Know-nothing frame: “Since we’ve never met before and I don’t know anything about you, would you just tell me what the difficulty is that brings you here? Exploring attempted solutions frame: “Well, I guess I ought to have mentioned before that I’m not just asking you what works, but also what you’ve tried that doesn’t work, that’s just as important since we don’t want to try more of what doesn’t work, do we?” “Well, here again it’s a question I shouldn’t bring up in his presence, but do you think there is any possibility he might be aware that he can get to you by saying he hates you and that he might be using that as a power tactic?” Creating response potential frame with a bit of a tease: “Sometimes there is more impact if something just disappears for a while, mysteriously. But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.” “I’ll tell you something that—I don’t know if you can do it, but if you can do it— it would start to make a difference in the situation. It might be a step in getting him to turn around—I don’t know if you can do it; it will probably make you think it’s a wild idea and so you couldn’t do it. It might be, I know you’re sincere, but it might be too much to ask you to even think of this, or wonder if it could be useful to him. ... I wouldn’t be asking you to believe it, but only to say that to him.” 8) Respond to, speak to, the person’s highest frames. What is the highest operational frame of mind that has the power and influence over all of the person’s games?

2) PROVOCATION “IN YOUR FACE” Sometimes the problem that a person has is that the old way, which they know doesn’t work and is limiting, still feels familiar, known, and comfortable. It may not work, but at least it’s a comfortable and familiar problem. The provocation pattern or game is therefore designed to make any problem, excuse, or limiting pattern unfamiliar, weird, and strange. It is to so reframe the pattern that holds a person back as painful, unpleasant, -327-

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and totally undesirable. In this pattern, you provoke a person to amplify his desires, then provoke the person to not obtain the desire, but have to go back to the old pattern. The Pattern 1) Elicit, amplify, and anchor an old limiting state that prevents one from moving on in life. What holds you back? How does that work? When? Where? How does that feel? (Anchor it) And if it got worse, worse and worse— how would that feel? 2) Elicit, amplify, and anchor a new desire for a more empowering outcome. What do you want? Describe it. How would that be for you? When, where, how? You really want this? Really? How much do you want it? Can you imagine it doubling now? Why do you want it? What would that do for you? You want it? 3) Provoke the person to fight for it the more empowering outcome. You can’t have this! I won’t give it to you! You cannot handle this! You don’t deserve this! You need to continue with this problem because it is so familiar after all, isn’t it? 4) Continue to threaten that you will make them the way they were again. I’ll send you back to the way you were! All I have to do is re-anchor it here on your arm! You can’t have this, you’d be too dangerous with this! Well, you won’t remember it anyway; nothing you can do could bring this to your awareness when you need it. You’ll forget it when the critical moment comes! Well it’s not what you really want, you’re just saying that. Well, you may want it but you can’t confirm it inside with a Yes that installs it in your mind or emotions. You can’t rise up to your executive part and solidify this as your way of operating in the world. Not you!

3) BUILD AND COMMISSION NEW FRAMES 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 or -328-

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pattern 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. The Pattern 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?

4) META-STATING CHANGE LEVERAGE Robert Dilts’ Hierarchy of Criteria Technique, in his book, Sleight of Mouth Patterns (1999), contains this meta-stating processes. It is an excellent technique for leveraging your own neuro-semantic frames-ofmeaning so that you can access your own highest resources. In the -329-

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following pattern, spatially anchor each step in a different location on the floor. 1) Identify a target behavior. Identify some behavior that you want to do (a desired behavior), but which you stop yourself from doing. For example, “exercising regularly and consistently.” Stand up, access this desired behavior so that you spatially anchor this state to a particular spot. 2) Identify your motivating criteria. Identify the criteria that motivates you to want the new behavior. Why do you want to engage in this activity or behavior? How will that serve you, benefit you, improve your life? Example: “I want to exercise in order to be healthy and look good.” When you elicits this, you flush out the meta-frames of valuing and giving reasons for that valuing. It enables you to specify the frames and higher frames that provides the drive and motivation for the behavior. Set up a spatial anchor and relate it to the desired behavior (step 1). 3) Identify the conflicting and stopping criteria. What criteria stops you from actually doing the desired behavior? For example, “I do not exercise consistently because there is no time and it hurts.” Continue to repeat this until you flush out all of the meta-frames that might conflict with the meta-frames identified in step two that motivate you toward it. Inasmuch as these frames relate to the activity also, they exist on the same meta-levels as those you flushed out in step two. Yet they set a different frame. And because they do, they give aversive meanings to the behavior. This pattern conflicts with the previous motivating frames. 4) Outframe with even more powerful criteria. Go meta to the sabotaging or limiting meta-states about the behavior and elicit a higher level criterion that over-rides the limiting criteria. “What is something that is important enough that I can always make time for it and would do it even if it hurts?” [e.g., "Responsibility to my family"] “What value does that satisfy that makes it more important?” The key in this elicitation are the meta-state terms. By asking for a criterion that over-rides, you set a higher frame by presupposition. This represents a very powerful neuro-semantic tool. -330-

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‘Is this criterion important enough to speak to and fully answer the limiting criterion?” 5) Now leverage your neuro-linguistic reality with the higher meta-state. “Keeping in mind your highest level criterion, go to the spatial location of the first state (step 1) and apply the highest level criterion to the desired behavior in order to override the limiting objections.” For example, "Since my behavior is a model for my family, would I not be showing more responsibility by finding the time to keep healthy and look my best?” Notice the power of these meta-stating terms and phrases in bold print (keeping in mind, apply the highest level criterion, in order to override). This illustrates the power of conversational meta-stating once you know how language can structure the processing of the information. And I know that you will keep all of this in mind as you develop your language elegance in becoming more persuasive.

Meta-Level Frames Reasons Important enough to Over-Ride the lower states Reasons for the Motivated State/ Behavior Motivated State Desire to Do Behavior

PS

Stopping State Reasons Preventing It

The Desired Behavior

5) PERSONAL EFFICIENCY PATTERN “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)

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Productivity involves efficiency. “Do what you can, with what you have, When you increase your efficiency, right where you are.” you accelerate your learning and Theodore Roosevelt your productivity. How willing are you to become better at the most Knowing what’s right isn’t the hard thing; important things that you do? In Doing the right things—That’s the hard thing. Warren Bennis what are or with what activity do you need to be more efficient? Identify an important goal that you have right now? If you were to accomplish one of these goals, which one would have the greatest positive impact on my life? What do you have to do to achieve that goal? This is what you want to be effective about. Are you willing also to be efficient in doing those actions? Think of something that you have learned do very effectively, but which you did not always do efficiently. Think about when you did it inefficiently and then when you do it efficiently. What’s the difference? Inefficiently Efficiently

Wasted time and energy Didn’t plan ... scattered, unfocused Disoriented, disorganized, clutter Inactive, procrastinating Back & forth indecisively Slow: unskilled, laborious Failure to delegate; Doing what’s unimportant Excessive socializing; don’t say No. Standards too high, perfectionistic

Use time and energy wisely Plan, focus, take notes Thinking strategically, purposefully Identify important things and prioritize Decision via thorough analysis Effective in organizing, in best state Balance between activities Good boundaries Optimizing—doing your best with what you have

Elicitation Question: What do you need to be efficient? What do you do, repetitively, regularly, in a systematic way that’s an important part of what you do, but that you either find boring or irritating so that you get distracted from it or forget it, and so do not function as efficiently as you could? Distinctions: Efficiency follows effectiveness. The first is doing the right things, efficiency is doing the right things in the very best way so that you waste little time and energy. The Pattern: 1) Identify an example of efficiency. Think of something that you have done with efficiency. Use a small and simple example (e.g., cooking, dressing, getting ready in the morning, etc.). When you did not waste time, effort, energy, or -332-

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resources doing it. What did you do? Ground it with specific questions: What did it look, sound, and feel like? [Keep asking about how the person represents efficiency. Do this until you get a full description.] 2) Check the frames about personal efficiency What key skills (core competencies) do you need to continually practice to increase your output and productivity? Does it improve the quality of your life? [Ask quality control questions.] What do you think/ feel about this concept of personal efficiency? Any negative meanings? What does personal efficiency mean to you? [Being bossed, organized, ordered, discipline, OCD, stress, “should” etc.]

3) Specify your Efficiency Strategy. How did you do that efficiently? What actions made you efficient? Menu list: prepared, thought ahead, reflected, took appropriate actions, knew what to do, used a list of what to avoid, practiced. 4) Apply the state of being efficiency to your current situation. Recall the efficiency state and step into it fully. Feel it. Do you need to amplify your sense of personal efficiency? Let your feelings grow and increase. What else do you need to step even more fully into this state? When you now apply this now to the activities you need to do, what happens? 5) Check permission for efficiency. Do you have permission to be efficient here? Does it settle well? 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?” What happens when you give yourself instructions and follow those instructions? Give yourself permission if you need to: “I give myself permission to be efficient.” Apply this state to your training state and tasks. Holding this state... notice how it begins to transform the tasks and core competencies of training. Induction for reframing. Neutralize and integrate the neuro-semantics of “work,” selfdiscipline, fear of losing alternatives, etc. As you feel this fully... and let it grow... You can recall how that -333-

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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 self-discipline, 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! 6) Apply to Identity (Optional). If appropriate, apply to your identity. you moved out into your future with this ... day after day, week after week, etc. would this affect your identity? Would you like that? Would you like to become an efficient person as you move out into the world? 7) Future pace. Imagine doing this into your future... as you do, what is this like? How does that fit for you? Is there any objection to this? How will you remember this? What symbol or metaphor (... a color, song, etc.) could you use an anchor in order to remember this?

6) META-STATING SUCCESS Mike Davis How do you know when you have succeeded? How do you know when you have failed? How do you know when you are a success? How do you know when you are a failure? What is success? What is failure? People can actually achieve great results externally and yet feel like a failure. Other people can not get the results they are looking for, and yet not consider themselves a failure, such as Edison. Why is this? How does this work? The problem is the feeling trap. We often believe we are a success or failure based on how we feel about our external results. And how we feel is determined by the criteria we use to evaluate our external results and/or success. The formula is this: We internally sense failure or success based on our evaluation of our external results (past or present). This makes our personal experience of success/failure more subjective rather than objective. The nominalization trap is also involved. Success and failure are nominalizations, not things. They are descriptions of dynamic processes at -334-

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work. They are a description of our internal mapping and evaluation of external events and results. Thus the internal states of success/failure are the result and expression of embodied meanings. What would happen if we looked at all our external events/results from a state of internal success? What would life be like if we acted from a state internal of success rather than for a state of success? How would life be different if we lived from success rather than just for success? The Pattern: 1) Access a state of internal success. Think of a time when you succeeded at something and felt like a success within yourself. Think of something small and simple at first and amplify the state and the feelings when you feel internal success. 2) Identify a “failure” referent. As you are feeling that state of internal success, think of a an external event or situation that you have thought of as a “failure”—where things did not work out as you planned or desired. You may need to give yourself permission to think-feel that event as a success. Frame it as you are just “trying it on.” 3) Apply success to failure referent. Bring your state of internal success to bear upon that event. Thinkfeel successful about it and as you do, notice how this changes and transforms how you think and perceive the event now. If you are feeling strange sensations that this isn’t real or fake or whatever, just let those feeling come and go, rise and fall ... and focus mainly on whether feeling “successful” would put you in a better state. It’s just a feeling, the question is, does it help you to be more resourceful, effective, focused, etc.? 4) Allow higher reasons to emerge that support this. As you think–feel success about that event begin to notice and allow to arise in your mind all of the positive and useful reasons why you can think of that event as a success. What are the useful learnings and reasons that arise out of that event now as you think-feel it as a success? Do you like these learnings and reasons? Are they helpful? How they help and empower you to experience more success now and in the future? -335-

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Reasons are the explanations and “whys” that enable us to do what we do and inviting powerfully positive reasons give us supporting “whys.” Do you have enough whys? Do you have powerful enough whys? Stay with it until you do. 5) Bring this state of success to bear upon your future. Think and feel about future projects from this state of success ... imagine a line or path into your future weeks, months, and years ... and let that path be filled with these good feelings. Imagine moving out today, tomorrow, and taking action from this place of internal success, because of this internal success. 6) Check the ecology. How do you like acting from this place of internal success? Does it serve you? Now some things will work out and some may not; from this state of internal success imagine some things possibly not working out 7) Re-test. How do you perceive this event now? What do you learn from it? How do you respond to it from your state of internal success How does this state of internal success empower you to deal with the external event of things not working out as you planned or desired? Are you more effective or less effective? Do you like this response? Does it serve you? Will you choose to keep this as your frame?

7) META-STATING SELF-APPLICATION Rick Ashby Do you always apply what you know? Are there things that you know (principles, patterns) that you would like to apply to yourself? If so, use this pattern. The Pattern: 1) Write out your game designs. What is the game and frame that you want to play? Name it? As you use your imagination to creatively play with different points of view, what outcomes will you get when you apply this game or frame to yourself? -336-

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2) Name your current game. What current game prevents “apply to self?” Name that game. Make it short, memorable, and amusing. Examples: "Genie in a bottle game" game: you wait for three wishes to come true before you take any actions. "No Pain, No Gain" game: you have to pay your dues before you can be successful. "Drunken Fireman” game: you run around putting out fires instead of moving efficiently toward your goals. What is the name of the game you will replacing? (i.e., Monopoly? Let's Make a Deal? McGuiver Maina? Indiana Jones vs. the Cold Call. How could you achieve your desired outcome in a way that is adventurous, exciting, playful? 3) After naming the game, look at it from the following five positions. Design the new game by freely imagining how you would like each position to experience this game. 1) The Player: How will the player play the game? What will he see, hear, and feel? What will his attitude be? Playful? Competitive? Skillful? What is the players goal? 2) The Coach: How will the coach actually coach the player? What types of feedback will he be giving? How will he motivate the player. What is his coaching style? What is the coaches goal? What is his plan or strategy? Does he simply want to score the point or is he also trying to help the player develop skill, confidence, consistency? 3) The Referee: (He has three responsibilities. controlling the game clock, the rule book, and the score board.) How will he know that it's appropriate to start and stop the game? How will he know when to call a time out? When a player is hurt, at half time? When it starts to rain? How will you know when a player has broken a rule? What rules do you want this game to have? What constitutes a score? 4) The Commentator: (He watches everything going on in the stadium below him and evaluates the play of the player, the coaching of the coaching and the officiating of the referee.) -337-

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What is the style of this commentator? Bob Costas? Yoda? Howard Cosell? George Carlin? What new perspectives can he offer? What background information does he have to make what he is watching more meaningful? What connections and speculations does he draw? 5) The Spectator: What is his attitude toward the commentator? The coach? The ref.? The Player? Is this a game you'd like to continue watching? Do you want anybody to make changes in their style or approach? How will you celebrate victories? What emotions does the game stir up in him or her? 4) Precisely specify your rich multiple perspective description. Look back over your written description of each position, apply the Meta-Model to flesh out your new game. Once you've designed this new and exciting game for yourself, and explored it deeply from each of these positions, you may find that you now have a choice about how you will move toward your goals. Play this game to start living with more passion, precision and power.

8) DEVELOPING A MASTERY PATHWAY We do not start off with mastery, mastery develops. It occurs over time as we layer learning upon learning, development upon development. And inasmuch as we have moved from incompetence to competence in many, many areas of life, we have a way to code and structure this pathway. We know what it is like to move from the state of ignorance to knowledge, from unskilled to skilled. In this pattern, we identify that structure and then use it to more specifically cue our mind-body-emotion system in moving along the mastery pathway more intentionally. This cultivates more patience, persistence, resilience, and the other critical variables for mastery. 1) Elicit the unskilled to skilled structure. When you think of a skill that you have today and know that you have, how do you know and tell the difference when you think back to a time prior to when you knew anything about that subject? What are your unskilled and your skilled representations like? Describe them. -338-

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Be sensory specific in terms of the what you see in the theater of your mind, the sound track and the sensations. 2) Identify the representational distinctions that code the difference between unskilled and skilled. Where are your pictures and sounds located? How are the coded in the sensory systems? Are there any other differences? 3) Adjust your mastery line and pathway so that you find it fully empowering. What can you do to alter or change your mastery pathway so that it gives you an even clearer and more useful way to think about moving from incompetence to competence? Notice what happens for you when you – Make the unskilled movie a snapshot, small, dark, dissociated. Make the unskilled movie noisy with words, instructions, corrections, etc. Make the skilled movie a complete 3-dimensional movie, associated, large, close. Give the skilled movie an almost silent sound track or give it some delightful music. 4) Elicit and put a new subject on the mastery pathway. Imagine putting learning and mastering NLP and Neuro-Semantics on his pathway. Imagine putting learning and mastering Modeling on it. Imagine putting any specific domain of mastery on it. Part II: Meta-stating your mastery pathway: 1) Elicit your mastery line and pathway. 2) Identify the state or states that you experience on that pathway. What are the states or states that you experience on that pathway? Are there any others? 3) Identify higher states to temper and texture the states with. What properties, qualities, or features would you like to give to these states? What resources or other states would you like to use to meta-state your experience? 4) Meta-state the state or states with these. Access each resource, frame, or state and meta-state it by applying it to the primary state. Continue until all of the states in the mastery pathway are sufficiently outframed and meta-stated in this way. -339-

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5) Bring intentionality, value, identity, and metaphor to bring to bear upon the meta-states. What is your intention in this? What is your highest intention? How is this valuable to you? And how else? And how is that valuable to you? Does this affect who you are and how you identify yourself? If yes, then how does it influence your identity? What is this like? 6) Future pace.

9) META-STATING PROBLEMS WITH EXTERNALIZING, CHALLENGE AND HUMOR Typically in NLP, we denominalize problems and turn into sensory-based precise descriptions of the actual processes. Yet that’s not the only choice we have. We can also nominalize and externalizing a problem. I have taken Externalizing, in this sense, from Narrative Therapy. We can do this to separate person from behavior and then meta-state the problem into a concrete form so that we externalize it. The Pattern: 1) Identify a problem that you want to deal with and address. What feelings, habits, or thought patterns stop you from succeeding in the way you want to succeed? Menu list: Anxious or fearful of making mistakes, intruding thoughts that prevent concentration. What do you mean by X? What are the sensory based descriptions of this? If I were to peek into the theater of your mind, what would the movie look like? Formulate the problem so that you have a specific, precise, and sensory based problem. 2) Externalize as if a person, demon, or alien. So this feeling, habit, or thought is a X. And you have let X take advantage of you and defeat you, and now that you recognize this, how do you feel about that? So Mistakes really knows how to trip you up. Mistakes can sneak upon you and really knock you down. Now that you realize this, how does it make you feel to know that Mistakes is your boss? -340-

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3) Use the externalization to provoke a state of intense resistence. So are you going to just keep lying down and letting X (Mistakes) run over you again and again? Is that what you’re going to do? Would you like to stand up to X (Mistakes)? Are you ready to become angry enough at Y so that you’ll use all of your best stubbornness to show X who’s really the Boss? 4) Explore strategies for defeating the externalized problem. When does X usually lay the trap for you and catch you in his net? Where does this occur? With whom? Have you ever not let X get by with it? When did that happened? How did you do that? What was different when you pulled that victory off? Would you like to repeat that? What are some of the things that X just absolutely hates? What blows the whistle on the tricks of X? Continue to meta-model the externalized X until you loosen up the frames and gather sufficient information for reframing and developing an effective strategy. 5) Confirm a strategy and set it up as the game to play this week. So are you willing to use this strategy this week to see if you can score some points on X? How much of an effort do you think you’ll be able to do this week to give X a good run for his money? 6) Congratulate and future pace. Great. I think you’ve developed a good game plan to teach X a lesson for tricking and deceiving you.

10) MULTIPLE LAYERING 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 frame game upon frame game The Weight of Frames: When we layer one frame upon another frame and make sure that they are all aligned toward eliciting the same state or experience, the -341-

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conscious mind can only track so far and keep so much in awareness. With every layering, we just assume the lower layers and take them for granted. The layering causes the mind to start assuming and accepting the earlier frames as consciousness shifts to other things. With the “weight” of 5 or 6 frames, we accept the first frames without question. They slide right on in. Frame Layering 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. In the following chart, read from the bottom up. Eliciting Questions ... Cycle through a series of questions Begin at the bottom and come up

Design/ Pattern Purpose, Intent Structure

Frame Game The Name of the Game

Solidifying the new frames 16) And you’d like to have this belief? Seeking confirmation The Yes Frame 15) Okay, reverse the first belief that Formulation of a new belief we began with and restate it. Setting and confirming the new frames 14) Really, really? Confirming the confirmation 13) Really? Eliciting more “Yeses!” 12) Would you like to have this new Eliciting a “YES!” Decision Frame belief running your programs? confirmation Game Setting and installing new identity frames 11) Who would you have to be without Building new identity with New Identity the old belief the new belief Frame Game Belief questioning frames that deframe and loosen old frames 10) Do you recognize any non-painful Anything stopping you? reasons to keep this belief? What holds you back?

Confirmation FG

9) How would it serve you to drop or exchange or transform this belief?

Values, Benefits, for dropping 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? 7) Is this who you are? Is this who you

Highlighting not believing this. Eliciting reasons for dropping the old belief. Challenge Values/ Visions

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Life Mission, etc.

Mission

Pacing frames that enter into the person’s Matrix 5) What else do you get by holding this belief? Increase Pain threshold Threshold 4) What do you get by holding this belief? Elicit negative consequences Positive Intention 3) Do you really know this to be absolutely Questioning, planting doubt Questioning true without any question? Fragmenting using Allness 2) Is this true? Really? Primary State: Beginning Frame 1) What is the problem? Person — The Problem Statement/ Pace, Pace, Pace Situation

Information FG Problem FG

MASTERING THE LAYERING SKILL... Having that taste of the layering process, we can move forward to play this master framing game. You’d like to be, wouldn’t you? Of course, the easier and more playful you get with this, you can easily recognize how quickly you’ll get the hang of it, and become truly elegant in your persuasion skills. Eliciting Questions ...

Frame Games For Persuasion

Cycle through a series of questions

Layer frame upon frame to systematically loosen, deframe, construct, set, and solidify frames

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? Information FG 2) That sounds like that’s must be hard, is it? Pacing FG [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 Questioning think that it’s true? Absolutely? Always? With every one? In every situation? 4) Do you really know this to be absolutely true without any question? Allness Fragmenting Cycle back to affirmation/ validation to seek more information: 5) What do you get by holding this belief? Positive Intention, Aim 6) What else do you get by holding this belief? Flushing out FG 7) That’s sounds important to you, guess that’s really valuable, huh? 8) What else is valuable about that? Important? Significant? Meaningful? Apply values, beliefs, visions, missions, spirit, etc. to this: -343-

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9) Is this who you are? Is this who you want to be? Identity FG 10) Is this your highest pathway in life? Mission FG/ Aim FG Does this reflect Life as you really want it? 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, Safety/Possibility unless that feel absolutely convinced that it would enrich your life Solution/Search and increase your resourcefulness, I do wonder what you now see for Higher Reasons in terms of higher values in thinking with this new frame. 15) How would it serve you to drop or exchange this belief? Value FG Would this new belief do you well? Quality Control 16) Is there anything stopping you from choosing that kind of higher Detecting Barriers 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? New Identity FG 18) Would you like to have this new belief running your programs? Decision Frame 19) Really? Really? You’re pulling my leg! Confirmation Frame 20) And you’d like to have this belief? The Yes Frame Game 21) So will you? Now?

11) META-STATING A TRIANGLE OF EXCELLENCE Stephen Nicholas (1995) developed a new process that he called "Multi-Dimensional Interventions," or MDI. This pattern provides a 3-D model and taps into the wisdom of NLP as a systemic model and the brain as making representations in a holographic way. Nicholas utilized the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller who so appreciated triangles that he developed the geodesic dome from an omni-triangulated form. The result? Not just a circle of excellence (2-D), or a sphere of excellence (3-D, Hall, AP, Oct. 1990), but Triangles of Excellence. The Pattern 1) Access three resource states that you have, access each state and spatially anchor it. Menu: confidence, connection with people, learning, relaxation, fun and playfulness, etc. Then access three primary resourceful states. Experience the thoughts-feelings and physiology of each of these states that make you resourceful. With each state, fully access the state noticing the representational qualities of your sights, sounds, sensations, words, etc. Anchor it spatially to a spot. Use the psycho-geography of a triangle to position and anchor these states in different places. Step 2: Move to a meta-position. Use the psycho-geography of meta in a three-dimensional space to your twodimensional triangle of states on the ground above the first 3 states, probably about the level of your ceiling. As you go to the middle of your triangle, mentally -344-

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float up above the triangle you have created on the floor. You will do this in your mind [unless you have powers of levitation or a balcony.] From that meta-position fully access a state of curiosity, interest, and exploration. Then apply the curious state to each of your primary states, one at a time. If you accessed playfulness, then become curious about your playfulness. Stay with this state-about-a-state experience until you have a good sense of it. As you access this meta-state of curiosity, interest, and exploration, use it to process each of your primary states and you will create an integration and synthesis of your resources on the primary level. From this position you can explore the resources you picked in terms of how they affect the movie of your mind. Step 3: Move back down to Resource #1. Next, imagine a line that connects resource #1 to #2. Literally walk back and forth on the line accessing and re-accessing the resourceful states and how they merge into each other. Do this for the line between #2 to #3, and for the line from #3 to #1. From the meta-state position, these lines between the anchored resources forms a triangle on the ground. Walk this analogue line between the resource triangle starting at resource #1 and going to #2. Allow yourself to become aware of the two resources as they become increasingly integrated at this primary state level. By steps and stages, notice the gradient from one state to the other. As you do this, notice how the steps and stages between the two resources become kinesthetically registered and anchored. Once at resource #2, turn around and move back to resource #1, noticing the analogue changes that occur. Then move back and forth between these two resource states several times to consolidate their integration. This sets up a bidirectional movement. If you have "fun" at #1 and "relaxation" at #2, then you essentially practice moving from fun to relaxation and all the degrees in between and from relaxation to fun. Step 4: Repeat step 3 for the rest of the resource triangle. At the primary level take each of the three resources and walk the resource line between the resource states (2 to 3 and then 3 to 1). With each analogue walk that you take notice the progression of how the resources integrate as you move back and forth between them. By the time you have finished step four, you will have closed the 2-D triangle on the ground. Give yourself enough time to fully experience the way these primary states integrate. Step 5: Now meta-state your resource triangle. Again move to the meta-state of curious exploration and from this position fully notice the analogue progression between the resources (1 and 2, 2 and 1, 2 and 3, 3 and 2, 3 and 1, 1 and 3). Meta-stating from this meta-position of exploration will enable you to register greater and greater understanding and appreciation for the combining of resources. Step 6: Access a meta-meta-state of exploration (exploration about exploration). From this position you have a full view of a 3-D triangle. Imagine the meta-state position as above the triangle in the middle. Now you can integrate your resources even more. Operating from this fourth position (the meta-state of exploration about) the resources in positions 1, 2, and 3, you can (in your imagination) "walk the line" between 4 and 1, 4 and 2, and 4 and 3 and integrate the meta-state position with the other resources. This closes the 3-D triangle. -345-

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If you do this with yourself or someone else, feel free to use all the hypnotic language you know in order to create a synergistic and holographic meta-stating resource of a triangular resource. Step 7: From the meta-meta-state of exploration, now observe the triangular formation. As you do, allow it to fill up with the enhancing color/s, energy, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. that make this more empowering to yourself. You can now think of this as your Triangle of Excellence around these four resources. Let the process settle for a few minutes. When it does settle and becomes more and more real to you, identify a metaphor that you can use to symbolically encode this holistic experience. Step 8: Future pace when, where, and how you want to use your triangle of excellence in your life. In your mind fully imagine yourself dancing, skipping, walking or running between all of the 3-D triangle points fully associated.

12) DESIGNING NEW GAME RULES PATTERN “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 are structured by rules. The “rules” describe how we set up a game and how a game works interactively. How many times have we played various games, whether on a field or around a board game on a table and someone raises a protest: “Hey, you’re not playing by the rules!” “You can’t do that! That’s not legal, that’s against the Rules!” Making frame games winnable and gamescapes enjoyable rules transform actions into games: We play games within a structure of rules that 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 GameScape. 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 play a key role in our frame games. The rules we 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 games -346-

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operates, we may find ourselves disoriented, confused, overwhelmed, or unmotivated, etc. Without knowing the rules, the game plays on... leaving us feeling powerless, clueless, left out, helpless, etc. Rules recognition provides us a crucial step toward mastery. Frames for keeping score in the games How can you win at a game if you don’t know the rules? Obviously, you can’t. Exploring the “rules” shifts us to a higher level. We step back to consider the rules, their kind and quality, and the effect they have on our everyday experiences. How do you keep score as you play your own frame of mind 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? As a meta-rule about our rules then (inasmuch as all of this is invented and constructed) shouldn’t we make sure that all of our rules serve to enhance our overall functioning? This means that any rule of the game that dis-empowers or sabotages should be discarded. Rule Epistemology: To know when you are winning. How will you know when you win? The rules of the game identify the formatting details and constructions for a frame game. These higher level references inform us about how to set up a game, how to play a game, how to score and win at a game, etc. This explores the “How do you know?” question. How do you think about X? What lets’ you know that? How do you know what you know? The epistemology of the rules of the game direct our attention to how do we know that the game has started, who can play, when, where, in what way, etc. 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 Rules for the Games In design engineering better rules of the game, we want to make winning at the frame games productive, fun, easy, humane, etc. If our rules, standards, and game structures are all arbitrary and invented, does anything stop us from formulating them so that it’s easy to hit a home run or sink a basket? As you use the epistemology questions to flush out your requirements for knowing when something counts, evaluate them in terms of being enhancing or limiting. How well does -347-

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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? Flush out these higher frames governing your rules of the game. What new designer rules would enhance and enrich the way you play frame games? Remembering the invented nature of the rules that you now have, how would you like to recognize things that count as “points” so that you can experience more wins? Winning at Confidence: Consider the frame of mind or state of “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? What designing and/or re-designing of the rules of the game would you like to create? What rules for scoring and playing truly do not serve you very well? How could you re-formulate the way you play various frame games so that you can win more often, enjoy the process, and stack the deck much more in your favor? The Pattern: 1) Identify a healthy, fun and productive frame game that you want to play. What do you want to obtain or experience in playing this game? The Aim Frame game The Proactivity FG The Modeling Frame game “I Can Handle It!” FG The Deep and Rich Relationships game 2) Design engineer 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.

13) META-STATE DANCING Several questions about meta-states and the meta-stating process which regularly come up in trainings are the following: Can you meta-state without depending on language? Is the Meta-State model exclusively dependent upon language since language is the meta-representational system? How young of a child can you use Meta-State patterns on? -348-

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The next two patterns answer the first question in the affirmative, “Yes, we can meta-state without saying words.” We can use movement, breath, posture, and all kinds of physiologies. These patterns answer no to the second question, meta-stating is not dependent upon language. And they suggest that we can use many of the patterns with very young children. Gina Demos, a dance therapist in Chicago developed this pattern in her work with clients. It a really fun pattern, sure to evoke humor and laughter. Yet it also is a pattern that primarily uses kinesthetics and movement as a meta-stating process. In doing this, this pattern utilizes meta-states in a client for developing greater mindfulness (or “consciousness of abstracting”) which then leads to new choices and emotions. You can use this pattern to gain more options over a problem or difficulty and in order to create greater resourcefulness. This pattern is also especially valuable for getting the sense and feel of meta-states into one’s neurology. (see Meta-States Magic, 2002, Gine Demos originally published her article in Anchor Point, Jan. 1998, and in NLP World). The Pattern 1) Develop a well-formed outcome for some problem . What problem would you like to work on? What would you rather experience? [Form specifics of the problem and then construct a desired outcome that you want to achieve. Then as you work with a person, keep the following questions in mind from what they say and do throughout the experience: What meta-level thoughts-and-feelings will frame this experience? What supporting beliefs, values, knowledge, etc. will the person need to embed this experience in?] 2) Find the meta-level structures of the problem. “How do you think or feel about this experience?” Gather information about the meta-level conceptual understandings the person has brought to bear upon the experience that has turned it into a problem (a metaproblem). Be prepared to expect that the first steps in stepping away from a problem typically generate negative experiences, sometimes even more negative than the original problem. Here we boldly look the experience in the face without blinking—and move right toward it without fear or intimidation. 3) Step One: dance the problem. “Dance it!” “Let me see it. That’s the way, the ‘Depression’ dance.” [Frame by implication: This presupposes that the person is more than the problem and that the person is in charge of self and so can control the problem.] “Show me in your body and with your movements, what ‘Anger’ looks like, what it feels like, its rhythm and tempo... there you go!” “Okay, do the problem. Show me ‘Without Hope.’” “Come on, dance ‘Without Hope’ with some passion! There you go!” 4) Step Two: Observe from a meta-observer space. Good, now let’s step back ... Just to get a little distance from that problem. I want you to step over here and take the perceptual position of a meta-observer. Now, when you look at it from this point of view, what do you see? Now watch me, let me see if I got it right [dance the dance you just saw and calibrated to]. When you watch me dance that “Anger” dance, what do you think or feel about that? -349-

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When you step aside and look at this from the perceptive of usefulness, what do you see? When you dance or replicate the movement, this allows the person to observe it from second position. After you do that, invite various observations. What did you feel when you saw the dance? 5) Repeat the meta-stating dance. Repeat the Step One—Step Two with every new response that the person offers you. If they say, “That looked silly.” Then invite them to dance “Silliness about Anger.” Whatever the person’s new response is with regard to the previous response, repeat the process of identifying the thoughts-and-feelings about it and then kinesthetically anchoring it by dancing it in a different place. Fully pace as you acknowledge each level that the person feels about something else and that embeds the experience in. Continue until there’s a shift from negative to less negative to neural or positive and then repeat with two or three positive states. 6) Intentionally “message” the entire meta-state dance. What does all of that mean to you? What empowering beliefs does it invoke in you? What enhancing insights come to you? Once you have developed a thought-and-feeling response patterns or layers to the previous response and kinesthetically danced that response several times so that the person has moved into a much more positive frame about it all, then step back from the whole process. Step back and invite a larger perspective and coach the person to put his or her understandings, insights, awareness, beliefs, decisions, etc. into words. 7) Translate it poetry. What has all of this dancing been like? What does it remind you of? Is there a story, song, proverb that you’re thinking about right now? Instead of leaving these words as just words—I want you to make up or tell a story, a proverb, a song, or a poem about this state and meta-state dancing that you’ve just experienced. Don’t worry about make it right or even good. Just let your unconscious mind identify something.

14) SPINNING ICONS Meta-Stating Higher Generalizations Beyond Language Adapted from Munshaw and Zink This is another unconscious or outside of conscious pattern. It uses non-propositional language rather than language that states and proposes explicit mapping. This pattern is good for creating more personal integration and harmony between conflicting parts of ourselves. With this pattern you can transform internal generalizations (like beliefs, ideas, understandings, decisions, etc.) which conflict and torment you into a new resource for personal congruence. It can lead to creating a new integrated and synthesized generalization as a new and more resourceful map, and Unified Desired Outcome. (Adapted from Zink and Munshaw (NLP World, Nov. 1996), facets originally originated from Anne Linden (1982), see fuller description in Meta-States Magic, 2001). -350-

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Are you ready to let your larger mind, the mind that’s outside of awareness, resolve an inner conflict that you haven’t been able to resolve with your conscious mind? Are you ready to turn loose trying to figure it out and just experience a possible solution that you may or may not understand? Are you also ready to let yourself go into a spin and loosen up the old frames? The Pattern 1) Access two primary states or experiences that internally feel at odds. What two ideas, understandings, beliefs feel at odds within you and that creates conflict for you? What parts do you not have peace about? Examples: Perhaps the ideal that “it’s bad to be materialistic,” and “the desire to succeed in life and win lots of toys.” Perhaps, “I can’t stand criticism,” and “To stand out from the crowd and take risks involves exposing myself to criticism.” If we imagine this state or experience (X) in one of your hands, which hand would you want for this one? And the other (Y) in your other hand. 2) Turn the primary states into abstract symbols. Just in your mind, step back and go meta to this first state or experience (X) and let the creative part of your mind generate an iconic image, cartoon, or symbol of it... Let it emerge in this hand. That’s right. And what do you sense? What do you see? Now do the same with this second state or experience (Y), what do you see? Is there color? Sound? What size is the image? Is there movement? Etc. 3) At a meta level to the two iconic images, let the two images slowly exchange locations. I would now like you to imagine that this image in this hand ... slowly exchanges places with that image in the other hand... Just let that happen now so that you see X where Y was, and Y where X was. And let’s do that again. Mentally let the two icons or images exchange places one more time. For example, put “materialism” (X) in the location of “desire to succeed” (Y) and vise versa. Good, now lets them continue to exchange places and let the exchange move faster and faster ... that’s right... and do so until they become to blend together... until a synthesis emerge from them... Round and round they go ... 4) Stop and tell a story. Now, in your mind, rise up above this new emergent synthesis of the two images that have merged together and mixed and just, stop and begin to tell a story about this new mixture. You can make up a proverb if you like about it, or sing a song, or invent a poem, express a motto, koan, etc. What is this synthesis of the merging parts like? If you don’t know what to say, this is actually better because it allows you to just let your other-than-conscious mind to invent it on the spot... so just begin speaking, the quicker the better. Without hesitating, just begin now. 5) Future pace and integrate. I wonder now if you now have any new insights about the old difficulty given this new synthesis and/or story? If you do, what are you experiencing? If not, then just be with this and let the integration go with you. Would you like to take this with you into your future? Where would you like to store it ... inside yourself or outside in your personal -351-

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space? As you bring that in ... just enjoy it and without needing to explain it or put things into words, just wonder ... really wonder ... at how this will make a difference in the days and weeks to come.

15) THE OVER-VALUING PATTERN Douglas Cartwright Because maintaining “negative” beliefs draws on a lot of our energy, when we eliminate the negative beliefs that are limiting and/or self-sabotaging, we free up new energy. This is especially true for negative beliefs that we may not be conscious of, and those when we “sort of know” that we have and could do better without. These “negative” beliefs are limiting in that they draw off energy that we could better use to create desired attitudes and experiences. This pattern is designed to help reduce the value we invest in unwanted thought patterns that we over-value to the exclusion of other more positive information. 1) Identify a belief to transform. What belief do you not feel as positively charged? What “negative” belief do you have that feels like it drains you? What belief could you do without? 2) Rate the limiting belief. On a subjective scale, where would it rate? On the scale from -10 to -1 and then from 0 to 10, where is it? [If it is “negative,” rate it in the minus part of the continuum.] If you knew how much negative energy it takes, what rating would you give it? __________________________________________________________ -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 - +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +10

3) Ask questions to reduce the importance of the limiting belief. What would you have to stop valuing, or value less, for this to have less the importance? What would you have to value instead for it to not be a problem at all? What would you have to think that would cause it to loose its power over you? 4) Use the “Pretend” or “As if...” frame and imagine releasing the belief completely. Questions to ask if you want to completely de-value the belief. What would you have to stop valuing for that belief to be rated at 1? What would it be like if the negative belief was completely gone? How does it feel to drop that completely? [You may find that when you imagine completely dropping the issue, you want to keep some of the idea that you over-valued. After all, over-valuing is not in itself a bad thing.] What would it be like to not have this? 5) Identify the new empowering replacement belief and value. What would you like to value instead? What would you like to value instead? [Go inside and just allow the answers to come to you, go into a light musing state.] How much do you value that on a scale of 1 - 10? -352-

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How would you like to value this instead? What would it be like? Do you like this? Fully experience what it would be like to value this instead. [If no answers come to mind, then for the sake of stimulating your mind, imagine the opposite to what you previously valued.] 6) Evaluate the new belief and value. Will this change your responses? How will it change your attitude and behaviors? How much will it change things for you? 7) Amplify for greater impact. As you imagine having this value fully and completely, does it feel complete and compelling enough? What else would you like to texture it with? [Menu list: joy, happiness, selfappreciation, etc.} What will it be like to imagine experiencing this in your future? How do you enjoy that? How does it feel to realize that? Good? Good! That's right. Do it even some more ... now! 8. Confirm and future pace. Do you like that? [Yes.] How does it feel to realize that this is a much more empowering way to value?

16) SYMBOLIC META-STATING Douglas Cartwright To use meta-stating to bring new resources to a problem context and to step out of the problem box, to think and feel outside that box. 1) Preparation for symbolic outframing. What problem would you like to address? [Invite client to describe.] How much is this a problem for you? With this problem, and you undoubtedly are feeling this way because your attention and awareness is focused on the problem context. Yet that's only one context within a much larger context, is it not? What if there was a place where all the resources you needed to solve this, or make this right, already existed, would you like that? What if this context was your mind itself .... you like that?" Good, I want you to take this large paper and draw an oval in the center of the paper in pencil. 2) Associate into the oval state. Is this the state and context where you feel unresourceful? As you step into it, free flow in your speaking to describe how you feel in that space and we’ll write the key words that summarize this state. 3) Name the feelings. What are the main ways you feel as you draw this oval state and a stick figure in action in the oval? Is your stick man figure in the middle of the oval or somewhere else in the -353-

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process? Is your stick figure interacting with other stick figures? What are the relative sizes of the stick figures in your drawing? 4) Step back for context analysis. Now step back from that unresourceful state and as you look at that and see that all those feelings and thoughts and ways of relating etc [calibrate] take place within that context, when you feel that way ... what do you think and feel about all of that? 5) Outframe the higher levels. Now if the space outside the oval represents the rest of your mind, and that space contains all the resources you ever need to change and transform all those feelings within, imagine feeling free enough to access any of those resources whenever you want them ... Good. Now with that in mind, what resources would you choose? What would you want to have to make that better? How would you represent that as a symbol or drawing? 6) Draw a higher figure. Now draw a stick figure to represent the state you want to experience (e.g., a jumping stick figure representing jubilation). Is there anything else? Any other resources? Contexts? Just draw them as you think about them. 7) Quality control your drawing. How does it feel to have all those states there ...? [point to board] Now all these resources surrounding this first oval of the problem state, what happens for you when we let these higher resources influence and govern the lower? (Rub out the oval that’s drawn around the figures in the Center so there is nothing between the resources symbols and the problem symbols.) What transformation now occurs? What happens when these good states go to the problem states? Just let it happen and be aware of how these resources transform those states. (Allow time for integration.) What happens for you as you imagine this state transferring its resources to the problem state? And what happens when this next one transfers its resources? 8) Test. Turn over the sheet and now re-drawn a new one. What oval is your stick figure in now? How do the state stick figures now act and interact?

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M

eta-States is a systemic model so thinking systemically and working systemically is built into the model. The same holds true for NLP, but to a much lesser degree. With the reflexivity within Meta-States, the system dynamics and processes are always prevalent. At the heart of these dynamics are the feedback and feed-forward loops. Feeding back into the system are all of our responses, triggers, stimuli, thoughts, emotions, etc. We feed these back to ourselves. As a consequence, sometimes these amplify the state and send it into an out-ofcontrol, run-away system. Sometimes these dampen the mind-body system so that it weakens, dissipates energy, and even dies. Sometimes it balance the mind-body-emotion system so that it creates an equilibrium so that the system finds a homeostasis. In the feed back process, we feed back information (as thoughts, ideas, conclusions, generalizations, emotions, etc.) at various levels. As we layer thought upon thought upon emotion upon idea, etc., we create the misnomer of “logical levels.” Each meta-level is not only above the former, or higher but also inclusive. It operates as a psycho-logical frame that classifies and categorizes the former. In this way, we create the matrix of frames within frames that makes up the inner “logic” of our matrix. In this, our psychologics come to live to give us our mapping style for interpreting the world and making sense of things. -355-

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Feed forwarding is what we do when we take the information and energy of the system and use it to influence itself (as emotions, motor programs) or to influence the world (as behaviors, actions, etc.). The feed forwarding process translates the ideas in our heads that we have created as our generalizations and beliefs into muscle. In this way we metabolize our ideas and turn the information into energy. And it is that energy that we put forth into and through our bodies and then out into the world. These are the most fundamental system dynamics inside the mind-bodyemotion system of our neuro-semantic structures. Thinking systemically about these dynamics means thinking in spirals and circles, it means following the loops, recognizing emergent properties and qualities that arise from the interaction of the system, thinking non-linearly, taking the “time” element into play as some information (as ideas) and some energy (as emotions, motor program activation, actions) takes time to go around the loops before they emerge as responses. Thinking systemically means being able to see and recognize the mindbody-emotion system not as “parts,” but as an integrated whole. This means being able to use the four meta-domains of NLP as redundant descriptions of the same thing—subjective human experience. In this way we can see information as language (the Meta-Model), as perception (the Meta-Programs), as states or levels of states (Meta-States) and as different Cinematic features or qualities in the Movies that we play in our minds (“sub-modalities”). NLP grew out of several theories, models, and understandings of systems. It grew out of Korzybski’s General Semantics, his non-aristotelian system for re-languaging the mind-body system. It grew out of Bateson’s cybernetic explanations of learning and classifying, of using the meta-function to create layers of frames. It grew out of Satir’s Family Systems therapy of family constellations and interactions. It grew out of Miller, Gallanter, and Pribram’s work with the TOTE model that included embedded TOTEs and meta-responses to map a system of responses from beginning stimuli to ending response. While all of the patterns in this Source Book of Magic are systemic patterns, the following ones are more explicitly so.

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1) RIDE THE SYSTEM LOOPS Without feedback our learning efficiency is greatly impaired. Without feedback, we are working in the dark about the results we’re getting and whether what we are doing works or not, or what we can do to improve. As we learn to truly welcome feedback, we have to really know that it’s not about us as persons, but about the results that we are getting from our actions. It’s just feedback. In the human neuro-semantic system, there are several feedback and feed forward loops. These loops describe the flow of information through the system and gives us insight about what happens (mentally, emotionally, and personally) along the way. 1) The primary loop of stimulus — response. 2) The meta-stating loop system of meaning making. 3) The multiple meta-stating loops within the 7 essential Matrices. This means that the more open and playful our attitude about feedback, the more we can learn, can accelerate our learning, can use everything for improvement, for becoming smarter in our learnings, and install the ideas, knowledge, and skills that we want for ourselves. Are you game? Then let’s go for it. The Pattern 1) Identify the idea or belief you want to manifest. What do you want to install? What belief, value, understanding, expectation, frame, identity, etc.? How do you represent it and encode it on the screen of your mind as a movie? Where and when would you like to employ this frame? 2) Identify the feed forward loops. What will you feed forward into the world? How will you do this feed forwarding? Who will notice out in the world? How will you know that they notice? What results and effects are you expecting? 3) Identify the feedback loops. What form will the feedback take? [Describe in VAK terms.] How will you know that this frame and state is installed in your mindbody system? What other feedback can you anticipate? How open are you to that feedback? When you receive that feedback, what will you do with it? 4) Imagine activating the loops at the primary level first, then add the metalevels. As you imagine feed forwarding your belief, frame, etc. out into the world and then the responses return, notice how this affects your mental movie. How does that feel? Now notice how you then feed your new ideas and conclusion back to the higher levels of your mind to new and higher frames. -357-

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Then how that feeds forward down through the levels of mind ... and then out into the world.

2) LEVERAGING CHANGE AT THE BORDERS Because there are edges, borders, and boundaries to frames, we can play around with our constructed realities at those edges. This allows us to create leverage points. As we loosen things up, stretch and expand things, and sometimes bring a frame to a threshold. Remember that no Matrix frame world is perfect; every one suffers numerous glitches, imperfections, slippage. An experience of thought or feeling can slip out-of-frame. We lose frames best by exploring them and differentiating them for “differences.” de Shazer (1988): “The best way to design a failure is to establish a poor definition of the complaint.” (118) “Some rules for failure: have a poorly defined complaint, a poorly formed goal, have a goal (no matter how well formed) that when achieved does not make a difference.” (122) Example of socially constructed reality using frames. What are the frames regarding nudity? Goffman notes that in the medical treatment of the naked female body and the art class treatment of the same object, we use devices which seems likely to make matters regarding the perspective clear. In both cases the act of dressing and undressing is often given privacy and the naked body allowed to be suddenly produced and hidden by means of a robe, the taking off and putting on of which clearly marks the episoding of the exposure activity and presumably functions to stabilize the application of a natural framework under difficult circumstances. Metaphor about the insides and outsides of frames. The wood frame of a picture is presumably neither part of the content of activity proper nor part of the world outside the activity. Somehow it is both inside and outside at the same time. This paradoxical condition cannot be avoided just because we cannot easily think about it clearly. We may speak then of opening and closing temporal brackets and bounding spatial brackets. The standard example is the set of devices that has come to be employed in Western dramaturgy: at the beginning the lights dim, the bell rings, and the curtain rises; at the other end, the curtain falls and the lights go on. These are boundaries, but that does not mean they are barriers. What is a “difference” and where is it? The “boundary” itself is but a mental frame about the relationship between two events or two ideas using some criteria. Where is a “difference” located? Bateson defined it as that which is “inbetween.” If frames (and concepts) have both insides and outsides, where are the insides and outsides of this concept?

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The Pattern 1) Find the frames brackets, edges, boundaries— the “structure.” Where is the beginning and the ending of the frame? As you identify the borders and boundaries, where is there some natural looseness in the frames? Where can you create even more slippage in that frame, or in those frames? How do you know to call it that? What criteria, elements, components make it up? What does it mean? What are the rules? The script? How do you punctuate it? 2) Play around with the brackets. If we play around with frames and brackets of frames by wiggling them, stretching them, pushing and pulling on them, then what deframing questions can you ask as you explore the structure of when, where, how, etc.? If the aim is to eventually pry open various facets of the frames and create greater looseness to create greater leverage, then are you ready for this playing around with frames? Is this the edge, boundary, or bracket? How do you know? Who says? What is the criteria by which it is declared to be this? Are you clear that as you differentiate edges and boundaries that “boundaries” do not necessarily mean “barriers?” Are you committed to searching for exceptions and fanning those exception into differences that make a difference through complements and validations? Do you know how to put “differences” to work? Good. Is it always this way? Are there any exceptions? What does it mean if there are exceptions? 3) Change the bracketing — the punctuating of the frames. Give the game new and different beginnings and endings. Endow the game with new and different cues. What if we began the game at an early point in time? Or extended it? What does an “argument” start? How do you know who started it? How does things change if we consider the beginning before that stimulus? 4) Step back from the system and observe it as a system. Make the system explicit. Think about frames in terms of systems— embedded layers of nested frames within each other. Then we can operate from the frame that there will be leverage points in the system wherein a small change or alteration in one part of the system can have -359-

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massive repercussions throughout the system. Then it becomes a matter of a search for those leverage points. What is occurring at the primary level? What complaint, experience, state? What is occurring at various meta-levels? What thinking, perceiving, meta-programs, etc.? What frames hold the structure intact? What frames prevent it from being altered? 5) Follow the energy. Step back from the entire system and feel its energy, identify the game dramas that it initiates. What’s important? What’s valuable? What outcome is the system going after? How is it motivated? The driving agendas?

— Discounting Thinking — “You’re playing a game with me.” “Well, go ahead and imagine it just...” — Impossibility Thinking — “I can’t imagine that!” “What would it be like if it didn’t occur?” — Global Frame — “Yes, always.” “Always?” “It always happens.” Person —>

Complaint —

“When does this not occur?”

3) BINDING DOUBLE-BINDING GAMES We frequently talk about “double-binds.” Yet what are these things? What is just single bind (a bind before there are two of them)? A bind is just a “thought.” Thoughts can bind or create a bind of some sort. Thoughts can demand, establish a belief about reality, construct a world-view. Binds are ideas that imprison and trap. In this, binding thoughts and thinking patterns put us in a cage, box, or bind. How can we tell? Typically, we discover that we have a “bind” going when an attempted solution makes the situation worse. -360-

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We experience binds at every level. In primary binds, we don’t recognize the higher frame that holds it in place. The frames are implies. They are invisible. For example: The “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t” bind means that there is no solution to a problem, that we or another cannot take either corrective action, and that damnation will occur whatever we do. The belief, “I can’t stand being criticized” presents a prison from which the speaker has no solution. The speaker cannot act and receive criticism, that’s totally unacceptable and un-endurable. That leaves the speaker to not act and risk criticism and so keeps him or her in a box. So with the idea: “If I spoke up at work, people would reject (dislike) me.” Here assertive communication is prohibited by fear of being disliked, disapproved, or rejected. For primary levels: We can ask, “What stops you?” (Challenge the impossibility modal operator). We can challenge the dilemma itself. “How do you know you’ll be damned?” “Damned in what way, how, by whom, etc.?” Second level binds bind the first level. At the meta-level the higher bind prohibits a person from escaping from the primary bind. It conflicts with the first at a more abstract level (Bateson, 1972). Therefore perfectly good solutions for primary binds can’t be implemented; they are disallowed by the higher bind. They take permission away from us and so taboo us from going there. The Symbols: frames-by-implication hold the structure in PL: primary level place and typically prevents one from even ML: meta-level detecting these binding frames. Example: “It would kill my mother if I told her the truth.” PL: I can’t tell the tell the truth ML: Mother would die Mother would Die! (Too Dangerous) I Can’t Tell the Truth Example: “I can’t pursue wealth building, it would ‘show up’ my dad.” PL: Can’t act on wealth building principles ML: If succeeded, it would show up dad and that would be devastating. Success would show up dad (devastating consideration) I can’t act on these principles Example: “She’s a wonderful person and we seem to get along really well, but I feel really anxious about the relationships. It’s too good to be true and therefore can’t last.” -361-

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PL: Wanting and feeling anxious about the relationship. ML: Knowing it’s too good, therefore it can’t last. Gestalt: expecting it to fall apart at any time, smothering the person, holding tight and controlling, hoping it won’t fall apart, but knowing it will. Relationship too good to be true (won’t last, can’t last) I really want this Relationship But feel very anxious about it Higher level binds set a frame that allow no solutions, choices, and that prevent a person from escaping the first level bind. Fear of change, commitment to comfort, refusal to be controlled by someone else’s idea, etc. The Patter: How to play the “binding the meta-level bind” game 1) Bind the bind. Access a playfulness and then create a triple bind that will exaggerate the double-bind framing: “You have to do this... It’s the rule.” You have no choice. This provokes the system by making it explicit. 2) Expose the meta-level bind. This again makes the double-bind framing explicit. “Something terrible will happen if you reject damnation.” Unravel the “logic” (thinking, reasoning) that binds it together. The attempted solution makes it worse. “So you’re playing the ‘There’s No Solution’ game?” 3) Quality control the bind. Example: “You just think too much.” “People who try to think too deeply go crazy.” Structurally, we here have a fear of awareness. When “awareness” of the process itself, the system, makes the situation worse— then the thinking (or logic) itself is sick. If being aware of the behavior or the pattern increases the pattern (i.e. of anxiety), then the thinking is toxic. Does this way of thinking empower you as a person? Or make your life a party? 4) Tease and apply the thinking to itself. Explore the belief and belief systems which hold the meta-frame together. “You just think too much. People who try to think too deeply go crazy.” “Ah, now there’s a deep and profound thought. Let me think about that.” Example: ”I don’t deserve to be happy.” 5) Transform the “logic.” If you have Either/Or thinking shift it to Both/And thinking (E/O —> B/A). Resolve polarities by including the excluded middle. “Paradox at end points, resolution at midpoints.” (Bart Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking). Shift from duality to midpoint choices. In the statement, “I can’t decide because I’m stupid,” there’s an implied -362-

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totality of allness involved in the meta-frame. Question that: Are you totally stupid? Always stupid? Only stupid? Never had a sane thought? Mutually exclusive thinking and reasoning creates little to no room or space to maneuver. It creates restricted thinking. So invent new rules and “logic.” “There’s more than E/O polarities, isn’t there? There’s a lot more in-between both ends, don’t you think? And, there is also a higher logic. After how, what if both A and B is true?” 6) Manage the Bind. Polarities are not so much to be “solved,” as to be managed. To overfocus or over-emphasize one pole over the other creates problems. Managing the polarities involves moving to a higher frame of reference and from there governing the process. Team or individual Present or future Being or doing Participating or directive Rational or irrational Selfish or unselfish Individual or social

4) THE SPIRALING PATTERN The following pattern involves intentionally using the spiral shape to run our brains more resourcefully. At first it may feel a bit disorienting, and therefore unpleasant, but stay with it and use this to “ride the waves of the circles” with more ease and even fun. This pattern elicits some movements and establish them as semantic movements by inviting us to give them certain meanings, for instance, Going counter-clockwise meaning —> unwinding, undoing, taking apart Going clockwise meaning —> formulating, coming together, solidifying 1) Downward spiraling to release negative frames and states. First I want you to just move your eyes and head in this counter-clockwise movement... and so gently, just as comfortably as you can, follow my fingers and move only at the rate that feels good here at the beginning. As if un-winding... we turn things counter-clockwise to open things, loosen things, undo things. [Do until the movement and the feeling associates with and becomes linked with this meaning.]

Now, I’d like you to think of something that you experience as negative, limiting, or problematic. It could be a semantic reaction to a word or event or anything. It may be something that undermines your resourcefulness and induces you into an unresourceful state. It may be something that sabotages your best efforts. It may be an old memory, trauma, hurt, a judgment, condemnation, etc. It could be a stupid idea, a limiting belief, an old feeling. Got it? Good. Now, as you hold that referent in mind ... breathe it in fully, welcoming -363-

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the memory and emotions and then as you gently follow my hand, release it by breathing it out... expel it with your breath ... Breathe it in and then breathe it out... That’s right. And just continue to breathe in that old limiting and negative thoughts ... knowing that you can now finish it... and let it go. [Gesture with your hand or fingers in a counter-clockwise spiral for the person... so that the person turns his or her head in a counter-clockwise fashion and bring the hand up with the “breathe in” and then move the hand in a downward spiraling motion as the person “breathes out” and as you say breathe out.]

Because the experience of breathing in and out is an expression of the rhythm of life, we experience things, bring them in and when we have learned from them all that’s valuable and useful, we can let them out and let them expire.... 2) Upward spiraling to receive and incorporate a new positive frame and state. Let’s now stop. Interrupt that action and take a break. To now get use to a new and different movement, just follow my fingers as you move your eyes and head clockwise. We turn things clockwise to lock them in, turn them on, etc. Think of a resourceful thought, belief, memory, emotion, physiology, etc. and as you think about it fully, begin to breathe it in. As you get a good reference for it and access the state, breathe that resource in as you follow my hand (or finger) in this clockwise motion and just follow my hand thinking about the resource and imagining letting it come in and more and more fully infiltrate every neuron, every muscle, every cell assemblage in your brain ... so that the resource becomes increasingly yours. [Gesture with hand in a clockwise position for the person and coaching the breathing in.]

Because breathing in is our way of incorporating a breathe of fresh air, new learnings, a new way of being... so breathe this in fully ... just enjoying it. 3) Breathing in and out as a synchronized whole. When anything that emerges or any thought ball bounces in that’s limiting, negative, not useful and has no message of value for you, breathe it out... while immediately shifting to some resource to breathe in and make yours.

5) POSITIVE LOOPING PATTERN The design of this pattern is to take charge of our minds and to run our own brains by taking into consideration that brains not only go places and associate things together, but they also loop back around and go in circles and get into spins. When we know that and get used to following the dizzying spirals, we can develop true mental mastery over our lives. Then we can take charge of our minds at the -364-

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higher levels and begin to access personal genius. 1) Identify and anchor the sense of looping. To access, think about a time when you had the feeling that you were “going round and round,” that you were “repeating something over and over...” Perhaps you have checked the locks on a door or car one more time, just to be sure. You thought, “Are you sure that you locked all of the doors? I better check again!” Notice what thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. drove this experience. Look for and notice how it is driven by a sense of something feeling important or critical. Anchor: As you access this state, notice its qualities and anchor it. Set a sliding anchor so that you can create a sense of increasing and decreasing it. 2) Formulate the sense of looping as a structure. Delete the content from the looping so that you can anchor just the sense of the looping as a neurological process. As you find the VAK distinctions and anchor the state, you can then use this as a structure or from and install a new loop. 3) Install new content. What would you like to loop round and round in your mind? What empowering belief, value, idea, etc. would you like to be going round and round about? That would enhance your life? What if you looped around a desired image of “the Resourceful Me”? Then you could stay loving, compassionate, assertive, etc. — any value that you want to loop around and make it an automatic program. Fire the anchor to re-access the feeling of looping and then apply to the new content. 4) Access the executive level of your mind to commission the looping. There’s a part of your mind that makes decisions, access that part. Would you like to loop around this new content? Would you take responsibility to take charge of the loop? Future pace.

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LINGUISTICS FOR META-LEVELS Conversational Meta-Stating When we move into meta-levels, we move from the sensory-based language that we use to describe the movie playing in our mind, and from sensorybased words into more and more abstract and conceptual terms. To increase awareness regarding this realm of meta-states, we need to increase our awareness of the language of meta-states and meta-levels. The following offers linguistic cues which we can use to signal ourselves about metastates. 1) State-about-state syntax. Primary states describe our consciousness when we refer to something outside our nervous system: "I fear John." "I dislike that job." "I hate it when they talk that way." By way of contrast, a meta-state refers to a state-about-a-state: "I fear my fear." "I feel calm about my anger." To listen for and identify a meta-state, look for the juxtaposition of two states wherein one state references another so that it sets the frame for the first. 2) Meta words, terms, suggested phrases: Many words imply a meta position. Those that are common include: of, about, regarding, that, beyond, concerning, transcend, etc. "I feel upset about my stress..." -366-

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"Well, regarding my grief about my dad's death, I feel..." Bear in mind From a more X point of view Keep in mind With that realization In terms of As you remember those feelings In view of What are you holding in mind about X? As you realize Let’s apply this to Y Even more importantly ... Rise up in your mind... Overall Overview as an over-riding principle... With that in mind Get on top of your X (state) When you put this idea on top of that feeling, what happens? When you step aside from those thoughts/ feelings for just a moment, and consider Y... Aside from that objection, how do you value this model? And are there any other benefits that you see in it that you could really enjoy? 3) "Self"-words. Generally, the word "self" with a hyphen indicates a meta-state: selfconfidence, self-esteem, self-celebration, self-contempt, selfanalysis, self-conscious, etc. Exceptions do occur as in selfhypnosis. 4) Classifications. Whenever we hear classification kind of words (groups, levels, degrees, etc.) or statements that describe or presuppose levels of classifications—we probably have a rare and unprecedented opportunity to pull back the structural curtain on the reality before us and discover meta-states. 5) Quotations and narratives. A sneaky way that Bandler and Grinder often worked with metastates (w/o using that terminology) involved layering consciousness through the use of "quotes." They would tell a story, open up a narrative, and within that description put another quote of a quote. Such layering of various thoughts-representations-emotions (states) would create larger and larger levels of frames and contexts (each inducing or accessing various states). In Trainers Training we teach how to open up a training with a quote or narrative story and open up another and another, etc., get to the middle of the presentation where we would put the main point, and then start closing the loops one by one. That kind of eloquence of presentation meta-states the audience. 6) “Logical level” shifts. -367-

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Some words, terms, and phrases shift one from one level of consciousness to a higher level. Consider, "I know that she means well, but I feel really hurt by what she did." Here, the word "but" negates the previous words. It negates, "She means well." The speaker now shifts the focus to "she hurt me." It does not say, "She does not mean well," although we often hear it as meaning such. It simply shifts to a higher “logical level.” We experience the "but" as shifting us from the lower level of awareness and emotion to a higher state that then drives and permeates the lower state. By contrast, notice the effect of "and." "I know that she means well, and I feel really hurt by what she did." This keeps the thoughts-emotions on the same logical level which then has an additive effect (adding this state to that state) which in NLP usually has the effect of collapsing the two states together. 7) Adjectives that qualify states. Gladly embrace Bitterly criticize Tolerable anxiety Sharing hesitantly Unacceptable grief Stubbornly insistent Unconscious thinking Helpless defeatism Deliberate inhibition Ferocious resolve Forgetting to deliberately inhibit Ferocious attachment Proudly stubborn @ my resourcefulness 8) Pseudo-feeling terms. In English, we call many things "emotions" or "feelings" which do not exist as "emotions" or "feelings" at all. We do so by using a syntactic environment like "I feel..." and then add some judgment to it. This usually indicate a meta-level. If you ask "and how do you feel about that?" you can usually get a real feeling that has kinesthetic qualities. I feel like a king (royal) I feel like I need closure I feel like spectacular I feel helpless She felt horrified that she might learn something new! I feel alienated (unreal, weird) He felt like he was being born again. I feel dumb/ stupid I feel marvelous (fantastic, incredible, etc.) I feel like an object (at loose ends)

9) Multi-Ordinal Terms, Multi-ordinality Korzybski designated a word that means different things at different levels of abstraction as a multi-ordinal term. Such terms have ambiguous meanings and so can lead to arguments, confusions of -368-

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orders, and semantic disturbances. Multi-ordinal terms only have definite meanings on a given level and in a given context. Before we can argue about them, we need to fix their order, or identify the level. Multi-ordinal terms have different meanings on different levels of abstractions. Their general meanings vary depending upon the context or level. Korzybski (1933): "If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents, and languages exhibit also this peculiar selfreflexiveness... this self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multiordinality..." (58).

Multi-ordinal terms gives us the ability to talk with sense and sanity about logical levels. Because we can use multi-ordinal terms with reference to different logical levels, we have to specific the level to understand its meaning. Examples: reality, state, science, meaning, love, yes, no, true, false, function, relation, difference, problem, cause, effect, evaluation. The test for multi-ordinality is: Check to see if you can apply the term to itself. Is it reflexive? Do you love John? Do you love loving John? Do you love loving love? Do you have a prejudice? Suppose you had a prejudice against that prejudice? 10) Presupposing a state-on-a-state. "It must feel really hard to have to pretend that you can please her, knowing that you never have and probably never will." Paces: "I appreciate your overall difficulty." MS: (Pretend) to please. Gestalt: placate. "It sounds like you have already come to the realization that your anxiety about your masculinity takes you nowhere useful." "It seems that you'd like to say or do X, but to do so, you'd be selfish or mean.” "What would you feel if you could pretend to do X thinking it meant you knew how to protect your personal boundaries, and then forgot you were pretending?" "I can appreciate how fearful it would be to X on the one hand, and yet on the other hand, it would feel exciting..." 11) Meta-state questions. Ask questions that presuppose eliciting meta-states that enable the -369-

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person to become more resourceful. How important do you think it becomes to take this understanding into consideration as you engage in ...? (Importance of) (Understanding) a primary state experience. What does all of this lead to? (C-E awareness of) (future representations) @ PS. 12) Nominalization of nominalizations The ugly side of his personality comes out under pressure; his lack of moral fiber; the pace of modern life goes too fast for me; his ego is very fragile; his emotional health; the pressures of his responsibilities. Language exercises: Invent 3 to 5 questions to elicit some useful and powerfully positive meta-states in others. Conversational meta-stating: What 5 sentences that you can use in your work that conversationally meta-states. Meta-State blessings: Write 5 meta-state statements that pronounce a blessing or benediction. "May you thoroughly enjoy your discoveries as your curiosity explores afresh and activates your memory in new and delightful ways making you more creative and insightful than ever before, now!" "I trust that you will find yourself enraptured in an ecstatic kind of joy about your new learnings as you read and discover either afresh or anew more powerful and impactful ways to apply all of your NLP learnings, knowing that you will begin to surprise yourself in applying your more refined skills in ways that make life more enjoyable." "Now as you begin to learn with an excited anticipation of the curious and wonder-filled things you might find in this model, may you ferociously enjoy your learning and find yourself appreciating your skill for implementing just those things that would truly enhance and ennoble your life! And you can do this with a growing sense of appreciation for your creativity as you enjoy watching yourself with confidence and wondering excitedly how much this will improve your flexibility and resourcefulness."

Therapeutic Communication: Spoken to young man who had a "hot temper" and tended to respond in polarities and in a know-it-all way: "I have puzzled for several days... and I don't know the answer to a question, and don't know if you know the answer to the question or even if you could find the answer if you really tried... But I've been wondering if you had the absolute ability to be un-insultable -370-

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because your sense of your innate dignity felt so secure that it gave you the freedom to always turn down an invitation to take insult no matter how much insult someone tried in vain to offer you... I'm just wondering how that would effect your everyday experience in driving in traffic, at work, and at home." META-STATING IN STATEMENTS and QUESTIONS Take each statement and put parenthesis ( ... ) around words and phrases that modify the next word or words that indicate states. I have done this for the first sentence for a sample. 1. "I'm (wondering) (just how willing) (you feel) as we begin this process of learning about meta-states? Do you (feel) some anticipation for learning this or would you say that you, even now, have a (ferocious spirit) about (learning) this learning? 2. Oh yes, I know that "ferocious learning" may sound like a strange phrase, but don't let that put you off. I'm using it to assist you in becoming more calm and relaxed in your learning and not to jump too quickly into lustful learning. 3. Now this guy over here looks like he's anticipating a great weekend— wouldn't you say? I'd guess he already feels excited about anticipating improving his skills and personal effectiveness and already jumping into his future and deliberately planning... no, powerfully planning, how to apply this model more thoroughly and elegantly in his communications — or at least he is certainly doing that now, can he not? 4. Now what can you begin to anticipate in this training? Good question. I think you can comfortably give yourself the realization that you can enjoy learning a new and very different model about human experiences. I plan to have fun presenting this and trust you will find yourself also having more playful and humorous fun in your learning. 5. You can anticipate an increase in your confidence about communication skills, about negotiating, and about working with people. If you want to go ahead and appreciate yourself for having made this decisions to spend this weekend and invest your time and energy into this learning —please feel free to do that, but only to the extent that you can truly admire your own human ability to want to expand consciousness and skills. 6. Do you enjoy anticipating, improving personal skills? Good. Do you also enjoy enjoying anticipating improved personal skills? 7. I know a guy who loved a particular gal. He was the kind of guy though who also really loved loving the gal. But then years later when I met him, he loved (his loving) of his love— in other words, I think he had become infatuated with his infatuation with her. 8. So as you allow yourself to enter into this experience and training fully -371-

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so you can suck out of it all of the nourishment that will precisely enrich your life—you can like your lips about the delicious learnings that you will enjoy. 9. Knowing that if anything doesn't fit for yourself you can say, “No thanks, I'd rather have a moment-by-moment experience of increasing my effectiveness.” 10. Because you can realize that you always can become aware of your choices, and then choose the choice that you believe will most enrich your life. 11. Now with the particular processes that we will explore in this model— you may find yourself lost at times. When that happens, please allow yourself to not only enjoy the silliness of feeling conceptually lost because your brain has gotten on some other train of thought and taken you many miles away before you noticed—but I want to encourage you to play with this experience, especially by noticing it, observing it, riding along with it. Then when you so choose, you can allow your hand to rise— slowly and involuntarily, and hear yourself say, “Would you please repeat that one—one more time?” and then you can step aboard and ride along with the rest of us. 12. This workshop focuses about tracking down where brains go and in developing more skill with our own subjectivity (our subjective experiences) and those of others. Why? Because the human factor always and inevitably plays such a major factor in business and in communicating. 13. Managing and controlling our own subjectivity and more effectively assisting others with theirs—so that we can all feel in charge of our thoughts, feelings, speech, and behavior, and functioning at our best, this enables us to become more persuasive, creative, respectful, effective, etc. 14. In working with human subjectivity we find much complexity, so that few models of human thoughts, feelings, and behavior can handle most of the actual facets of humans—especially the levels of awareness and levels of emotion that we access. 15. As you allow yourself now to begin to experience this training—I think you might find it useful if you step aside from yourself—observationally to notice this fact—here you are at a workshop seeking to learn something of value—and you can develop this meta-part in such a way so as to both experience and to observe things. 16. As we begin, I think you might want to fully realize that as words function as vehicles of meaning—symbols that elicit referents, that you can think of big words as especially valuable and rich —as offering you a tightly packed package carrying much meaning. 17. Now, I'd like you to take a relaxed, confident attitude toward this learning. Because as you believe in your own creativity as you ever-372-

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increasing ability to learn you can release trying, and just playfully enjoy the process in a calm expectation of feeling surprised and delighted in how quickly you learn, because you can. 18. If at any time you begin to feel uncomfortable, troubled, distressed—then I want you to allow yourself to float along with those emotions—the states that induces and just notice, comfortably, the thinkand-feel that arise—and to do so in a joyful anticipation of some really valuable growth that will follow. Welcome your inner states, love your neurosis as they arise, while enjoying the process knowing that your states occur in time, only last temporarily, will pass, do not comprise the real you, are just made up of think-and-feel.

META-STATE QUALIFICATION QUESTIONS Sometimes we can use the meta-state structure in asking questions, especially in asking questions that install qualifications, that begin a process, that check on the ecology of a new choice, that activates unconscious processes, and that depotentates unuseful resistances. 1. Would you, for a moment or two, allow yourself to become willing to explore this knowing that you do not have to make any change in your thoughts or feelings until you feel resourceful and truly willing to do so? 2. Would you, for a few minutes, play around safely with some painful ideas—knowing that these ideas may not even be accurate or useful? 3. Would you allow yourself to become willing to look at some possible secondary gains that this symptom has provided you, knowing that we humans often develop unconscious secondary gains and that it really means nothing more than that we seek to do the best we can for ourselves. 4. How willing do you feel right now to go ahead and make this change if you gauged that willingness from 1 to 10? 5. (If a 7 to 10 response): So you feel that willing and excited as you anticipate making the change— probably because you also can anticipate the value that this will serve for you in some facet of life? 6. (If a 0 to 5 response): Would you allow yourself to become only a little willing to explore making this change as we start so that it feels completely safe? Now I have another question for you. Suppose you refused to continue refusing to make this change? Assignment: Write a list of Qualifying Questions that you can use in your business that will help to create better response potentials in others. 1. How curious would you like to feel as you begin to engage in this workshop? 2. How much confidence would you like to develop about the information in using it and working with it? -373-

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3. Would you enjoy having fun with this model first and foremost or would you want to first develop more exquisite skill in handing it? 4. How silly could you imagine yourself feeling about talking this way before you become hypnotically competent with it? 5. Would you like to resist any part of this information or just observe it first and then take your own sweet time in deciding which parts you want to incorporate? 6. Levels of alertness vary in trainings—how alert would you like to be throughout this process— and to what extent would you like to sink down into a relaxed meditative state and absorb it in at that level? 7. Knowing your meta-programs as you do—do you need to let yourself shift any of them in order to maximize your full usage of this training? 8. How comfortable and resourceful would you want to stay as a person with a great sense of innate value and dignity when receiving criticism? 9. Can you yet gracefully install the process of a learning while you learn the content? Would you want to allow yourself to do that today.

RE-STRUCTURING THE “NEURO-LOGICAL LEVELS” Robert Dilts wrote this as a basic definition of “logical levels” and how they operate: "In our brain structure, language, and perceptual systems there are natural hierarchies or levels of experiences. The effect of each level is to organize and control the information on the level below it. Changing something on an upper level would necessarily change things on the lower levels; changing something on a lower level could but would not necessarily affect the upper levels." (Dilts, Epstein, Dilts, 1991, p. 26, emphasis mine). “Neuro-Logical” Levels: 6. Why? (big) 5. Who? 4. why? (little) 3. How? 2. What? 1. Where? When?

Spiritual Mission Motivation/Meaning Process/Strategy/Plan Actions/Reactions Opportunities/Constraints

God/ Universe Identity Beliefs/Values Capabilities Behaviors Environment

Robert Dilts’ “Neuro-Logical Levels” model offers us a great list of beliefs that has many things to commend it. It is a very useful set of distinctions even though it is not a “logical level” system. It offers a list of belief levels and a checklist of distinctions highly valuable for modeling. It provides a memorable list as it uses the indexing questions (i.e., where, when, who, what, why, etc.). But it does not function as a holistic system of logical levels. When we consider these resources as some of the meta-levels to behaviors, it sends us to look at the -374-

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concepts of abilities, beliefs, identity, mission. This is how Robert encourages us to use it. "At this stage we find which resources are needed. And you might need resources at all levels" (Dilts, 1990, p. 122) These are meta-resources that govern our everyday activities, behaviors, etc. Yet the “Neuro-Logical Levels” is not a “logical level” system because it does not fulfill the criteria for “logical levels” as given by Robert. The levels are not "logical," each level is not "progressively more psychologically encompassing and impactful" (1990: 217). Because in these model some of th the higher levels do not drive the lower levels, it does not operate "logically." For example, behaviors do not drive environment. Environment is not a member of the class of behaviors. The Neurological Levels 6. Why? (big) 5. Who? 4. Why? (Small) 3. How? 2. What? 1. Where? When?

Spiritual Mission Motivation/ Meaning Process/Strategy Actions/Reactions Opportunities/ Constraints

God/Universe Identity Beliefs/Values Capabilities Behaviors Environment

Transmission Mission Permission/ Motivation Direction Actions External context

Woodsmall (1996) has suggested several problems with this list as "logical levels." 1) Environment describes a much larger phenomenon than does Behaviors. Even though behaviors may effect environment, behaviors do not drive or modulate Environment. If we eliminated Environment, we would come closer to having a logical and orderly list wherein each higher level would govern, drive, and modulate the level immediately below it. 2) There’s no single thread through the model that holds it together. In Bateson's logical levels, learning operates as the thread that holds the system together. Learning "drives" each level. But, what thread goes through this list? Neuro-Logical Levels 6. Spiritual 5. Identity 4. Beliefs 3. Capabilities 2. Behaviors 1. Environment

Holographic Nervous system as a whole Immune system Deep life-sustaining functions and Endocrine system Autonomic N.S. Unconscious responses (heart rate, pupil dilation, etc.) Cortical systems Semiconscious actions (eye movements, posture, etc.) Motor system Conscious actions (pyramidal and cerebellum) Peripheral Nervous System Sensations and reflex reactions

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of environment? Does our motor system of conscious activities drive and organize our peripheral nervous system of sensations and reflex reactions? Should we not reverse that order? Robert later turned this into "examples of statements at the different logical levels." 5. Identity "I am a cancer victim." 4. Belief "It is false hope not to accept the inevitable." 3. Capability "I am not capable of keeping well." 2. Behavior "I have a tumor." 1. Environment "The cancer is attacking me." On the bottom level, we have an evaluative statement loaded with a high level generalization (a nominalization, the cancer). "The cancer is attacking me." Yet above that statement we have a simple declarative statement in sensory-based language. "I have a tumor." Now which statement represents a higher “logical level?” Obviously the bottom statement, “The cancer is attacking me.” Again, I would suggest that we reverse these if we want the higher level to classify the lower. Behaviors occur within environments. In another example, Robert created the following chart. "The following statements indicate the different levels in someone who is working toward a health goal." (p. 211) 5. Identity "I am a healthy person." 4. Belief "If I am healthy I can help others." 3. Capability "I know how to influence my health." 2. Behavior "I can act healthy sometimes." 1. Environment "The medicine healed me." This set of statements comes closer to a set of “logical levels.” An almost specific detail ("the medicine") acts upon the person to bring healing. Yet the phrase, "the medicine" functions like a nominalization and the verb (taking a specific medicine into the body) has disappeared. Here “medicine” designates a class of items instead of specifying anything (e.g. taking aspirin). Below behavior should occur sub-behaviors or micro-behaviors that make up the class of behaviors. If we put environment we put a much larger phenomenon below a specific behavior. Again, behaviors always occur within the context of some environmental situation. In a chart in Changing Belief Systems with NLP, Robert demonstrates his genius (it seems to me) as he makes a correction in his Neuro-Logical Levels. Here he integrates a time-line of a person’s past, present, and future with the psycho-social developmental stages adapted from Timothy Leary (pp. 133-134) with his “logical levels.” Here he drops the environment level from the diagram (p. 135). -376-

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Imprints and Developmental Stages of Intelligence Logical Levels

Social Imprint

Meta Spiritual Imprint Aesthetic Identity Imprint Beliefs

Intellectual Imprint Emotional Imprint Biological Imprint

Capabilities

Behaviors

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Past Present Future Developmental Stages

This diagram brings us much closer to a true hierarchy of “logical levels.” The only problematic facets that I see as continuing include the following: 1) The vagueness of capabilities. Does this stress the potential to do something or the actual doing of something? If an ability, then this refers to a behavior—an actual doing (some speaking, thinking, emoting, behaving, relating). If it signifies potential, then it refers to an internal mental-emotional resource or strategy. Either way, it refers to a member of the same class, some component of a mind-body state. 2) The vagueness of beliefs. How does a belief differ from a representation? Can you represent something you don’t believe? Sure you can. Mere representation, even “juiced up” representation (close, 3-D, associated, in color, etc.), does not a belief make. To representations we have to add the language (a metalevel phenomena) of validation and affirmation. We have to say "Yes" to the representation. That creates a "belief." Both internal representations and beliefs involve "knowledge." But beliefs have a meta-level validation about the knowledge. To disbelieve something involves the primary level of representations and then a meta-level disconfirmation refusing it (The Structure of Excellence, 1999). Dilts has provided much insight into this nature of "beliefs" as metaframes (frames about our frames). He described beliefs as setting "a -377-

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frame that determines how everything afterwards gets interpreted" (1990: 133). Beliefs then function as thoughts-about-thoughts at a higher “logical level.” A belief, as he noted, "is not about reality" but about our ideas—ideas of meaning, cause, ability, self, mission, time, etc.—in other words, about various categories. If by capabilities we mean "potential," we could have a belief on our hands: a belief about what we "have the ability" in the future to accomplish. "Identity" also consists of a belief about our “self” concept. So with spiritual, inasmuch as what we believe about our identity and purpose generates the level we label spiritual. 3) The lack of a thread in the levels. This set of levels do not fit the definition of “logical levels” primarily because each higher level is not a category or classification of the lower level.

META-STATING THE “NEURO-LOGICAL” LEVELS When we look at the beliefs and distinctions within the “Neuro-Logical Levels” Model, we find that the first three distinctions are all primary state phenomena (behavior, capabilities or abilities, environment). Above that, all of the other distinctions are meta-states, they are beliefs about different things, decisions, identity, values, and so on. Meta Levels

Beliefs @ these beliefs —

Beliefs All the Way UP!

Beliefs @ Meanings of— —Purpose, Mission, —Destiny, Importance

@

Beliefs @ Concepts —Expectations —Ontology —Theology

@

Meta-Level

Primary

Beliefs @ Beliefs @! Abilities Identity as a Person of "Self" Possible Deserve Potentials (capability) Fallibility

@ Beliefs @ Environment When Where

Beliefs @ Beliefs @ the behavior the world experiences in the World

Environment — family, cultural, human ... Level Representation Screen Capability:

Speech Behavior

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—>

Event in the World

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NEURO-SEMANTICS MODELING Modeling Using Meta-Levels Mission Beliefs Identity Beliefs Decision Beliefs

Beliefs about Target Subject

_________________ Environment _______________________ Meta-States Understandings Rep. Screen

Mental Movie

Cinema

Cinema

State

State

States State

State

Multiple states over a period of time

____________________________________________ The structure of a particular expertise

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META-NLP Taking NLP to the Next Level What’s so meta about Meta-States? How does Meta-States generate a new and higher Meta-NLP? How specifically does the Meta-States model make for a Meta-NLP? What’s new in Meta-States that you need to know to keep up with NLP in the 21st century? If you’re new to NLP and to using NLP in training, then you know about the first and second generation NLP models and patterns. And now that you have explored, discovered, and practiced many domains of NLP, don’t you think you’re ready for the next step, the step that will put it all together, that will reconcile the various pieces, sweeten the entire model, and expand it into entirely new realms? If so, then you will soon discover that we’re up to something big. If you’re an old hand at NLP, and have been performing the magic of language elegance, running your own brain, patterning new resources day by day, then you will especially see the value of moving up to a domain that generates the third generation of NLP models, patterns, and technology—to Meta-NLP. Dr. Graham Dawes was the very first NLP Trainer who took NLP to the UK. He began the first NLP Training Center in London. He was also the first to catch a vision that many of us within Meta-States did not even see. Upon reading both Meta-States and Dragon Slaying he wrote in a review that “the Meta-States model would be the model that would eat up NLP” (Anchor Point review of Dragon Slaying, and NLP World book review). What did Dr. Graham mean by that? How does Meta-States enrich, enhance, sweeten, and outframe NLP? To trace our more specifically how Meta-States generates a higher form of NLP, “higher” in the sense that it creates a meta-level platform and hence, functionally, a unified theory for the field, we offer the following. The Meta-States Model provides a meta-frame for shifting to META-NLP When I describe the meta-frame that unites all of NLP, you’ll probably want to dismiss it as “too simple.” “It can’t be that simple!” Yet it is. And that’s the elegance and wonder of the model, which many others have noted and written about. The meta-frame boils down to the levels of thought which I modeled out from Korzybski’s levels of abstraction (or Structural Differential), Bateson’s levels of learning, and the feedback loops governing feedback loops in the cognitive models. The mechanism governing and driving all of this ultimately comes down to reflexivity– self-reflexive consciousness or self-referential thinking. What does all of that mean? It means that as “a symbolic class of life” we encode our “thoughts” in various modalities (the VAK along with higher symbols, words, diagrams, mathematics, etc.), then we refer the symbols to themselves, we think about our thinking. This sets up a system of self-referential, reflexive symbols.

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The “same stuff” that creates our neuro-linguistic states at the primary level– our internal use of symbols (whether words or images, sounds, sensations, etc.), we also use at meta-levels. We do so with this difference, at each higher level we build nested frames within frames and with each higher level, we create a different quality of experience. Korzybski called this multi-ordinality, second and third, etc. “order of abstractions,” etc. We call them meta-states and nested frames. Traditional NLP never gave it a name, never called it anything and so did not recognize it. In NLP we have lots of disconnected and disparate domains: “beliefs,” “values,” “identity,” etc. In Meta-NLP we have risen above that to create a meta-frame that embraces all of these meta-phenomena. Levels of thought enable us now to see how and why the Meta-Model of language, and its reverse, the hypnotic language of the Milton Model, Meta-Programs, MetaStates, and the Cinematic Features of our movies (“sub-modalities”) all refer to the same thing—subjective experience. This gives us four pathways or avenues to the same thing. It gives us a four-fold description of the structure of experience. We can talk about it in terms of linguistic encoding, perceptual filtering, mental-emotional states, and cinematic features. In this way, Meta-States has tracked out precisely how meta-programs arise as the solidified form of former meta-states, how the use of trance and hypnosis moves us up into higher meta-states that we co-create with the hypnotist, and how “sleight of mouth” patterns (as Mind-Lines) give us conversational reframing direction (seven of them). Meta-States gives us a way to pull in separate and disparate domains: values, beliefs, identity, “sub-modalities,” etc. We now have a more unified approach and perceptive of all of these meta-level phenomena. This enables us to see how they relate to each other, interface with each other, and how we can use them together in a coordinated way. Since it’s beliefs all the way up (or frames, or meta-states), we have a doubledescription of these higher level experiences. We now know that beliefs operate as confirmed thoughts of other thoughts, values exist as beliefs about the importance of something, cinematic features or “sub-modalities” exist as conceptual structures (distance, intensity, color, etc.) that we bring to bear upon some visual image, auditory sound or kinesthetic sensation. What is the value of such a meta-frame? It allows us to tie things together, see the relationships, and inter-relationships between domains, which in turn, enables us to create multi-layered techniques that utilize values, beliefs, “sub-modalities,” mind-lines, etc. at the same time. We repeatedly and constantly hear people say: “It pulls everything I learned in my NLP trainings together.” “Now I have a larger picture of it all.” “Now I have a sense of what to do when.” “Now it makes sense about how the patterns actually work.” “Meta-States gives me the ability about why sometimes some techniques don’t work and won’t work, and what to do when that happens.” Having a meta-frame gives you a sense of control and understanding about what’s you’re doing and the effect it will have. This gives us predictability. This moves us to a higher level beyond mere desired outcome, look for result. This puts into -381-

our hands a more informed awareness about patterning at higher levels. The Meta-States Model enriches our understanding of “logical levels” “Logical levels” are an integral part of NLP from the beginning. Robert Dilts then added several “logical level” models (see NLP: Going Meta). John Grinder actually picked up the scent of meta-states in Turtles All the Way Down (1987) when he revisited Bateson and recognized that the way to manage first and second level attentions was “by means of logical levels.” Accordingly, he developed an extensive and inelegant model for the prerequisite of personal genius as he sought to track out the way to build an internal “Controller.” (Of course, he has now renounced all of that.) Meta-States has streamlined that process and has generated a four-step process for accessing your inner executive level and commissioning it to take charge so that our personal genius can “get in there and kick.” Knowing about the levels of mind enables us to manage the multiple levels of consciousness and manage our metamind as well as texture our everyday states with much more power. In Meta-States we have discovered that the magic is in the mix, the mix of layer upon layer of thought and emotion and resource. This leads to texturing of states. We call this dynamic process of the systemic influence of state-upon-state “gestalting” in Meta-States and have many patterns for creating particular mixes for very rich and powerful states. This explains why the higher levels are not a static and unmoving hierarchy like a ladder or step of steps. It’s far too dynamic, holistic, moving, and plastic about that. This means that the highest form of NLP training, Meta-NLP, involves learning to think systemically, in loops, and using feedback and feed forward loops. Systemic thinking and modeling enables us to track out complex structures. Then our modeling is much more full and complete. Meta-States enables us to “do NLP” on ourselves Joe Peoples first expressed this in a training in New York City. He had found himself in a situation and at the same time, used some higher level of mind processes so that he could stay in the experience and access the needed resources for himself so that he could then have enough presence of mind to track with the other person and bring the best resources to bear for that person. NLP always have talked about “going meta,” but then contaminated the process by linking it to the idea of dissociation. I used to get this question a lot: “Isn’t meta-stating just creating dissociation?” The answer is a definitive, “No, it is not. The Emotions of Meta (see Anchor Point, 1999) give us access to higher levels of emotions. Andreas’ brought this up in Core Transformation (1991) although they used the “down” metaphor although using the “up” meta-question, “And when you get that fully and completely in just the way you want it, what will you have that’s even more important than that?” Going up into those highest “core” states puts one into some of the most profound emotional states, spiritual states, altered states of mind and emotion.

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To “do NLP on yourself” you have to step back or go meta, access your highest executive levels of mind. That’s Meta-NLP. In Meta-States, we have taken the perceptual positions and used them as higher “logical levels” which we create in our mind, via our self-reflexivity, as we move up the levels, developing greater perspective and wisdom as we take on other perspectives. Then, installing a higher executive part of your mind to run this higher awareness allows us to do NLP on ourselves even in the midst of challenging experiences. This reduces and even eliminates incongruency and internal conflict, thereby generating even more personal power. Meta-States simultaneously introduces meta-detailing One of the reasons and tools for “doing NLP on ourselves” arises from some of the most exciting new developments in Meta-States. We introduced this in The Structure of Excellence (1999, now Sub-Modalities Going Meta, 2005) as “metadetailing.” This gives us the ability to practically apply and implement higher levels of learning. It is, by the way, perhaps the heart of the structure of “genius” itself. The Mind-to-Muscle pattern arose during the modeling of wealth building in the fall of 1999. It has now become one of the central staples in all of our trainings. This allows us to bring the high ideas “down to the ground” as it puts conceptual knowledge into our muscles and bones. When you know how to install implementation strategies, then wealth building, fitness, etc. become a piece of cake. People who lack the ability to meta-detail fall into two traps. They either live in the ozone, creating great big bright ideas which they can’t specify into concrete action, or they live deep inside the zillions of details which cause them to lack vision or perspective. Synthesizing inductive and deductive thinking into a gestalt results in the higher level consciousness of meta-detailing. Meta-States activate higher levels of meaning Basic NLP is about anchoring—user friendly Stimulus–Response. That’s associative meaning by linkage, connection. When we take a reference and represent it and set it as a frame (as a meta-state) we have contextual meaning—the meaning of frames and frames-of-frames. This takes us into the higher levels of meanings, to Neuro-Semantics. Meta-States is Meta-NLP to the extent it flushes out, teases out, and provides the structure of how we build beliefs about various things and these become our higher frames-ofmind or meta-states. And because it’s systemic, this frequently occurs as an emergence. New emergent properties arise due to the gestalting of many of the parts. Then, out of the mix arises new and more profound higher states of mind. Summary Yes, there’s a new meta in town. NLP itself has gone meta. Meta-States enabled it to actually fulfill its own vision as a meta-domain modeling the structure of excellence. -383-

It was there all along. The best NLP patterns are meta-level and metastate patterns (the phobia pattern, time-lines, decision destroyer, etc.). We have now modeled that structure. It’s called Meta-States. Come join the meta-revolution.

PRIMARY STATES Anger Fear Joy/cheerful Delight/Amused/Playful Silly/ Zany/ Ludicrous Jolly, Jubilant/ Bubbly/ Congeniality Pleasure Hate Love Concerned Kind/ Gentle Tolerance/Acceptance Awake/Alert/Cognizant Attentive/ Observant Uptime Active Amazement, Wonder, Humorous Awesome Astounded Curiosity/Wonderment Coherent/Congruent Friendly/ Cordial Modest/ Humility Compliant/ Docile/ Pliant/ Easy Ambitious/Aspiring Composed Confident/ Decisive Certain Calm/ Relaxed/ Serene Tranquil/ Peaceful Focused/ Purposeful Decisive/ Dedicated Deliberate Faithful/ Loyal Committed/ Dedicated

Bold, Courage, daring Gutsy Hopeful/ Anticipating Motivated, Excited Enthusiasm/ Eager/ Diligent/ Animated Exuberant/ Vivacious Energetic Flexib ility/ Ve rsatile Adaptability Graceful Grateful/ Appreciation Flirtatious/ Charming Outrageous/ Bold/ Daring/ Audacity Foolish Satisfied/Contented Fabulous Stable, Secure/ Grounded Powerful Smart/ Intelligent/ Clever/ Brilliant/ Wisdom/ Prudent Sagacious/ Ingenuity Rational/ Sane Formal Radiant Pensive/ Thoughtful Moody/ Dreamy Absorbed Passionate/ Avid Genial/ Gentle/ Nurturing Patient/ Longsuffering Persevering/ abiding Judicious

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Irritation/ Peeved Upset, Frustration Anger, Rage, Fury Pleasant Lenient Indulgent Fragile Open/ Receptive Placid Ecstatic Steadfast Witty Sincere/ Congruent Authentic Zestful Assertive/ Candid Arrogance/ Pride Rebellious/ Defiance Inauthentic/ disingenuous Stress/tension Annoyed Rejection Contempt/ Dislike Procrastination/ Hesitancy Negativism/ pessimism Stubborn, rigid Sadness, grief Guilt Hyper-sensitivity

META-STATES and GESTALT STATES Self-esteeming (esteeming self) Dignity/ Respectful Balanced/Centered (playful w. opposites) Proactivity (choice of choice) (acceptance of responsibility) (decision for action) (thoughts about consequences) Responsibility Magnanimity/ Graceful (Awareness of choices) (Large perspective of self/life) (Decision for grace/kindness) (Gracious under pressure) (Excitement about frustration) Forgiveness Un-insultable (Dissociated from Insult) (Objective about words, events) (Non-personalizing stimuli) Enjoyment/ Happiness (Appreciation of values) Boredom (Awareness of Time, disinterest) Failure (Judgment of "self") Creativity/ Innovative Authenticity Peaceful/ Inner Serenity (Calm about anxiety, distress, fear) Mindful/ Thoughtful "Magical" Self-Control (Choice/control of self, actions) Paranoia (fear of fear) Assertiveness (Compassionate proactivity) (Thoughtful about Em. Distress) Dogmatism (Belief about conviction) (Conviction of conviction) Fanaticism (belief in belief) Foolish Pride (Arrogance of self qualities) Self-rejection (rejection of self) (Anger at self for fear, weakness,

doubts, disappointments, etc.) Self-condemnation (Guilt at anger at fear) Depression (sad about sadness) (Disappointed about defeat) (Defeated about anger) (Rejection of fear) (anger at Self) Self-pity Awareness of wants/wishes Disowned self (Rejection of some part of self) Phobic of ambivalence

Gestalt States Courageous (risk of Danger) (Joyous excitement of fear) (Boldness to risk) (Overwhelming sense of D.O./value) Influential Masterful/ Empowerment Psychic Healthful Spiritual (Conscientious of morals) (Believing in beliefs) Ethical (evaluation of evaluation) Analytical (analysis of experience) Hospitable Altruistic Self-Forgetfulness Sublimination (Consciousness of repression) (Temperance of repression) Suppression (Consciousness of neg. emotions) Self-Celebration (Appreciation and acceptance of Self) Self-Control (Running your own brain) (Choice about thoughts-emotions) (Disidentification from self and Thinkand-feel) -385-

Endurance (willingness to suffer) Science (reason of reason) (Exploration of exploration) (Knowing of knowledge) (Doubt of doubt) Freedom (choice of choice) (Power about proactivity) (Release from pain, distress) Cultured/ Thoughtful (Consideration of consideration) Certainty (Belief in belief) (Conviction of conviction) (Doubt of doubt) Motivation (Excitement of excitement) (Inhibition of inhibition) (Procrastination of procrastination) Laughter: (Jar or interruption of awareness) (Surprise of consciousness of...) (Ridiculous about shame about guilt) (Ridicul. about shame of anger or Ridicul. about fear of anger. Beauty: (Appreciation of pleasantness) (Appreciation of challenge, harmony)

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Jackson, D.D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication. New York: Norton. Watzlawick, Paul. (1976). How real is real? New York: Basic Books. Weeks, Gerald R. (Ed.) (1991). Promoting Change Through Paradoxical Therapy. NY: Brunner/Mazel. White, Michael and Epston, David. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton. Wilber, Ken. (1996). A brief history of everything. Boston MA: Shambhal.

Lefebvre, Vladimir A. (1977). The structure of awareness: Toward a symbolic language of human reflexion. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Maturana, Humberto R. (Unknown). Ontology of observing: The biological foundations of self consciousness and the physical domain of existence. Translated, Instituto de Terapia Cognitiva, Santiago de Chile. Parry, Alan, and Doan, Robert E. (1994). Story re-visions: Narrative therapy in the postmodern world. New York: Guilford Press. Pentony, Patrick (1981). Models of influence in psychotherapy. New York: The Free Press. Vaihinger, H. (1924). The philosophy of 'as if.' A system of the theoretical, practical, and religious fictions of mankind. (Translated by C.K. Ogden). New York: Harcourt, Brace. Watzlawick, Paul, Beavin, J.H., and -388-

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. L. Michael Hall is a visionary leader in the field of NLP and Neuro-Semantics, and a modeler of human excellence. Searching out areas of human excellence, he models the structure of that expertise and then turns that information into models, patterns, training manuals, and books. With his several businesses, Michael is also an entrepreneur and an international trainer. His doctorate is in the Cognitive-Behavioral sciences from Union Institute University. For two decades he worked as a psychotherapist in Colorado. When he found NLP in 1986, he studied and then worked with Richard Bandler. Later when studying and modeling resilience, he developed the Meta-States Model (1994) that launched the field of NeuroSemantics. He co-created the International Society of Neuro-Semantics (ISNS) with Dr. Bob Bodenhamer. Learning the structure of writing, he began writing and has written more than 40 books, many best sellers in the field of NLP. Applying NLP to coaching, he created the Meta-Coach System, this was co-developed with Michelle Duval (2003-2007), he co-founded the Meta-Coach Foundation (2003), created the Self-Actualization Quadrants (2004) and launched the new Human Potential Movement (2005) which is now one of the Professional Tracks of Neuro-Semantics. Contact Information: P.O. Box 8 Clifton, Colorado 81520 USA (1-970) 523-7877 Websites: www.neurosemantics.com www.meta-coaching.org www.self-actualizing.org www.meta-coachfoundation.org

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Books by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. NLP and Neuro-Semantics: 1) Meta-States: Mastering the Higher Levels of Mind (1995/ 2012). 2) Dragon Slaying: Dragons to Princes (1996 / 2000). 3) The Spirit of NLP: The Process, Meaning and Criteria for Mastering NLP (1996). 4) Languaging: The Linguistics of Psychotherapy (1996, spiral). 5) Becoming More Ferocious as a Presenter (1996, spiral book). 6) Patterns For Renewing the Mind (with Bodenhamer, 1997 /2006). 7) Time-Lining: Advance Time-Line Processes (with Bodenhamer, 1997). 8) NLP: Going Meta—Advance Modeling Using Meta-Levels (1997/ 2001). 9) Figuring Out People: Reading People Using Meta-Programs (with Bodenhamer, 1997, 2005). 10) SourceBook of Magic, Volume I (with Barbara Belnap, 1997). 11) Mind-Lines: Lines For Changing Minds (with Bodenhamer, 1997/ 2005). 12) Communication Magic (2001). Originally, The Secrets of Magic (1998). 13) Meta-State Magic: Meta-State Journal (1997-1999). 14) When Sub-Modalities Go Meta (with Bodenhamer, 1999, 2005). Originally, The Structure of Excellence. 15) Instant Relaxation (with Lederer, 1999). 16) User’s Manual of the Brain: Volume I (with Bodenhamer, 1999). 17) The Structure of Personality: Modeling Personality Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics (with Bodenhamer, Bolstad, and Harmblett, 2001). 18) The Secrets of Personal Mastery (2000). 19) Winning the Inner Game (2007), originally Frame Games (2000). 20) Games Fit and Slim People Play (2001). 21) Games for Mastering Fear (with Bodenhamer, 2001). 22) Games Business Experts Play (2001). 23) The Matrix Model: Neuro-Semantics and the Construction of Meaning (2003/2016). 24) User’s Manual of the Brain: Master Practitioner Course, Volume II (2002). 25) MovieMind: Directing Your Mental Cinemas (2002). 26) The Bateson Report (2002, spiral. 27) Make it So! Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap (2002). (Out of Print) 28) Source Book of Magic, Volume II, Neuro-Semantic Patterns (2003). 29) Propulsion Systems (2003, spiral). 30) Games Great Lovers Play (2004). 31) Coaching Conversation, Meta-Coaching, Volume II (with Michelle Duval & Robert Dilts 2004, 2010). 32) Coaching Change, Meta-Coaching, Volume I (with Duval, 2004/ 2015). 33) Unleashed: How to Unleash Potentials for Peak Performances (2007 Vol. III). 34) Self-Actualization Psychology (2008, Volume IV). 35) Achieving Peak Performance (2009, Volume V). 36) Unleashing Leadership: Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies (2009, Vol VI). 37) The Crucible and the Fires of Change (2010, Volume VII). 38) Inside-Out Wealth (2010). 39) Benchmarking: The Art of Measuring the Unquantifiable (2011, Volume VIII). -390-

40) Innovations in NLP: Volume I (Edited with Shelle Rose Charvet; 2011). 41) Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and Performance (2011) 42) Systemic Coaching: Coaching the Whole Person with Meta-Coaching (with Pascal Gambardella, Ph.D., 2012, Volume IX). 43) Group and Team Coaching (2013, Volume X). 44) Executive Coaching: Facilitating Excellence in the C-Suite (2014, Volume XI). 45) Political Coaching: Unleashing Self-Actualizing Politicians. (2015, Volume XII). 46) Collaborative Leadership, with Ian McDermott. (2016). 47) The Field of NLP with John Seymour and Richard Gray (unfinished). 48) The Meta-Coaching System (2015, Volume XIII) 49) Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity (2016, Volume XIV). 50) Inside-Out Persuasion (2017, Volume XV) Volume Books Books written in weekly installments to the Neuro-Semantic community (Neurons), to the Meta-Coaches egroup (Morpheus), to the Neuro-Semantic Trainers egroup. These are now PDF books on the Neuro-Semantic website. Neurons began as the Meta-Reflections in 2008 and each year consists of another book. 1) 2008. 2) 2009. 3) 2010. 4) 2011. 5) 2012. 6) 2013. 7) 2014. 8) 2015. 9) 2016. Morpheus began as the Meta-Coach Reflections in 2009. 2) 2010. 3) 2011. 4) 2012. 5) 2013. 6) 2014. 7) 2015. 8) 2016. Framers is the Trainers’ Reflections which began in 2010. 1) 2010. 2) 2011. 3) 2012. 4) 2013. 5) 2014. 6) 2015. 7) 2016. Other books: 1) Emotions: Sometimes I Have Them/ Sometimes They have Me (1985) 2) Motivation: How to be a Positive Influence in a Negative World (1987) 3) Speak Up, Speak Clear, Speak Kind (1987) 4) Millennial Madness (1992), now Apocalypse Then, Not Now (1996). 5) Over My Dead Body (1996). Order Books from:

NSP: Neuro-Semantic Publications P.O. Box 8 Clifton, CO. 81520—0008 USA (970) 523-7877

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Neuro-Semantics as an Association In 1996 Hall and Bodenhamer registered “Neuro-Semantics” and founded The International Society of Neuro-Semantics (ISNS) as a new approach to teaching, training, and using NLP. The objective was to take NLP, as a model and field, to a higher level in terms of professional ethics and quality. Today Neuro-Semantics is one of the leading disciplines and movements within NLP as it is pioneering many new developments and demonstrating a fresh creativity similar to what characterized NLP when it was new. Dr. Hall is known as a prolific writer, having authored 50 books in the field of NLP, many of them best sellers through Crown House Publishes (Wales, UK) and many of them translated into numerous languages: German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Norwegian, Portuguese, etc. www.neurosemantics.com www.self-actualizing.org www.meta-coaching.org www.metacoachingfoundation.org

The Meta-Coaching System As a complete and comprehensive coaching system, the Meta-Coaching System began in 2001 when L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. modeled four expert coaches. He then applied the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Neuro-Semantic models to the burgeoning field of Coaching. As a systemic model, the Meta-Coaching System enables a professional Coach to answer the question: How do you know what to do, when to do it, with whom to do it, how to do what you’re doing, and why? When you can think strategically as a Coach, you will be able to recognize where you are with a client and what to do. Having a theoretical model that answers the why are you doing that? question saves your coaching from being a grab-bag of tricks so you don’t have to coach-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. To met this rigorous criteria, the Meta-Coaching System is based on eight models—models which are based in Cognitive-Behavioral, Developmental, and Self-Actualization psychologies. The design is to give Meta-Coaching a credible scientific basis. Then as a coach you will not fall back on what you “feel like” on a certain day, your “intuitions” (which may be your own unresolved issues), or some trick that you have picked up on a weekend training. Today Meta-Coaching standards are the highest in the field of Coaching as it offers specific behavioral benchmarks for every one of the 50 coaching skills. It also has developed a Benchmarking Intangibles Model for how to generate rigorous benchmarks for any value or skill. The Meta-Coaching System also has an accountability structure to the ethics and standards which governs every licenced Meta-Coach. There are now 14 books detailing the curriculum of Meta-Coaching, and several more in the works. The Meta-Coaching System is inclusive of other systems as Meta-Coaches around the world in 60 countries are often on the board of ICF and many other Coach training programs. Trainings in MetaCoaching occur every year dozens of times in every continent.

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