Modeling Excellence Series #8

In the last post (#7), I wrote this:  So just how do you model using Meta-States?  The answer lies in detecting and identifying the meta-levels that a person has reflexively brought to themselves that now qualifies their experience and operates as a frame to their experience.  What this means is that as you and I access another thought-and-feeling about our first state, that second state operates dynamically to do several things-

• It brings another mind-body state to it and so adds qualities or qualifies the first.
• It sets the cognitive ideas within that state as the frame for the first.
• It puts the first as a member of a class, the “class” being the classification that the second one creates.

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

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

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

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

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

Well, if you create categories that box you in, limit your choices, and/or that creates pain and distress for yourself- and you have lots of members in those categories, you could really make your life a living hell.

• Failure: Do you have a category in your mind of “failure?”  If so, what are the things that for you are members of that class?  Making a mistake?  Saying something wrong?  Sending out a report with typographical errors? Not being flawless?
• Embarrassment:  Do you have a category for “embarrassment?” What’s are the members of that class?  I know people who are so skilled at embarrassment, they experience it dozens of times a day.  How do they do that?  They have so many experiences that are members of that class.
• Moments of ecstasy: Do you have this category?  How many everyday things “count” for this?  Smelling a rose, seeing a sunset, warming shaking someone’s hand, saying something that validates someone … what?
• Commitment to your development of excellence: Do you have this category?  What are your “members” of this class?

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

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

Another category I discovered in people with highly effective resilience was: “I’ll be back!” a lot of them anchored that with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice from the Terminator and other movies.  This created the meta-state of commitment, persistence, and/or determination.  The set-back was a member of the class of “Living my Vision and Values.” And just because something interrupted me now doesn’t it that’s my future.  My future is Living my Vision and Values.

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

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Modeling Excellence Series #10

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

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

After the discovery of the Meta-States Model in 1994, I spend most of years from 1998 onward conducing workshops on Frame Games and then I wrote the book by that title in 1999.   (It now has a new title, Winning the Inner Game, 2007).  As I was modeling selling, writing, learning, business, relationships, etc. I titled those trainings and training manuals accordingly.

• Games Prolific Writers Play,
• Games Great Lovers Play (2004),
• Games Great Sales People Play,
• Games Business Experts Play (2002).

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

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

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

Now in using the Matrix Model to model you have to shift from linear thinking to systems thinking.  The first thing that means is to forget one-thing-happening-at-a-time and anticipate that while one thing is happening, other things are simultaneously happening.  Bob and I started with the trigger.  What triggers the experience of stuttering (or blocking)? Ultimately we discovered two key things: authority figures and girls (90% of stutterers are boys!).  So what’s the frame?

1. The meaning frame is first that there is linguistically such a thing as “stuttering.”
2. And the meaning of that for oneself (self) is that you are flawed and inadequate.  You first have to define “stuttering” as repeating a particular letter.
3. And the meaning of that is that others will see one as flawed and inadequate.
4. And that means, “not liked, not valued, not wanted, laughed at, mocked, rejected, criticized, etc.”

Of course, with meaning frames like those, no wonder dysfluency (mis-speaking a letter or repeating a letter) is semantically loaded with lots and lots of negative emotion!  And if that’s the “game” played, then of course a person will try very, very hard to not mis-speak.  Now we have the Matrix doing something else.

In the person’s power matrix, as the person tries to stop a natural process (speaking and being dysfluent at times, which is true of everyone), one then discovers that one cannot (like “trying hard to sleep” which we are also powerless to do, that only creates insomnia!).   The person then discovers that he is powerless and helpless.  And that means – I will always be inadequate and rejected (time) in every domain of life (world).

And all of that goes on simultaneously and in a way that sends a person in a spin, round and round, so that as the negative meanings layer on top of each other, the person’s state gets worse and worse.  All of this gives us a structural understanding of how to create a good case of stuttering.  It enables us to model the how of how.   That is, how does a person right now in this or that context induce a stressful/ fearful state so that one elicits dys-fluency?  What meanings does a person have to be operating from? And, of course, if we know the process, the how that a person does something, we are in an ideal position to know how to interfere with that process or to preframe it so that it becomes irrelevant.  For more about this, you can find some articles on Stuttering on www.neurosemantics.com and for the full modeling of the structure of stuttering and what to do to master the stuttering, see Bob Bodenhamer’s book, I Have a Voice (2011) (originally titled, Mastering Blocking and Stuttering with NLP and Neuro-Semantics, 2004).

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Modeling Excellence Series #11

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

Why is that?  How does that work?  The explanation goes to the fact that the Matrix Model is based on three axes- Meaning, Performance, and Self.

Meaning because all of human experience and therefore “reality” is a function of the meanings that we construct about things.  To understand any person or any experience that humans have we have to find out what meanings have been created.  What does the person think in representing something (see, hear, sense), how does the person frame those representations (classifies, categories, invents concepts), what metaphors and understandings used to put all of that together, etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neuro-Semantic News

• May in Rio — The Self-Actualization Psychology Training and Diploma.
• June in Kuala Lumpur – the Second International Neuro-Semantic Conference — on Coaching,  Coaching Excellence.
• July in Johannesburg – the Self-Actualization Psychology Training and Diploma.
• April in Oslo Norway — Coaching Mastery for ACMC Credentials.
• May in Hong Kong — Coaching Mastery for ACMC Credentials.

For Contact details go to www.neurosemantics.com click  Training — Dr. Hall’s Schedule.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.