Modeling Excellence Series #1

What is NLP?  How can we define it?

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

Do you want to know what it is?

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

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

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

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

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

After all, with the NLP models, you can begin to answer these how questions by using –

• The Meta-Model of Language and examining how the person talks and languages his or her reality that generates that reality.
• The Strategy Model whereby you can follow and make explicit the representational steps that comprise the person’s “strategy” for how he or she “thinks” and uses all of their physiology, neurology, to “make sense” and to create their reality.
• The Meta-Programs Model whereby you can begin to catch the meta-levels of frames and thinking patterns or styles that add to how the person operates.
• The Sub-Modality Model for how the person edits his or her representational movie which accesses various meta-levels of meaning and beliefs (because sub-modality distinctions work semantically, see Sub-Modalities Going Meta).

Then with the Neuro-Semantic models, you can complete the model of the how by using-

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

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

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.