Hall / Bodenhamer The User's Manual for the Brain Volume II

Mastering Systemic NLP
1. Auflage 2002
ISBN: 978-1-84590-383-1
Verlag: Crown House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 480 Seiten

This much anticipated volume continues the tradition of Volume I, the Practitioner course manual. The authors now invite you to reach beyond Practitioner to Master level to develop the very spirit of NLP. '... the quintessential self-study course on advanced NLP.' Judith E. Pearson PhD

L. Michael Hall is a Cognitive Psychologist who through research into NLP and Self-Actualization Psychology is now a modeler of human excellence; he has completed 15 modeling projects from Resilience, Women in Leadership, Self-Actualization, Coaching, Self-Actualizing Leaders, Managers, and Companies, Selling, Defusing, Wealth Creation, etc. He has authored 50 NLP books and a series on Meta-Coaching. Michael co-founded the ISNS (International Society of Neuro-Semantics) and the MCF (Meta-Coaching Foundation) and is an internationally renowned trainer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hall, L Michael

Bodenhamer, Bob G

Leseproben

Chapter One

Thinking Systemically About NLP

NLP is Itself a Systemic Model About the System of Our Neuro-Linguistics

To master using and working effectively with NLP, we have to think systemically about the model. This is because NLP itself is a systemic model. It is not only about systems (for instance, the human mind-body system, the mind-language system, the sensory and meta-representational systems, the person within a culture system), and not only did it come from modeling several systems (e.g., Satir’s family systems, Alfred Korzybski’s non-Aristotelian system), but NLP itself operates systemically and is structured systemically.

This is one reason why many people have found the early NLP books so difficult. The early developers, caught up in systemic thinking, did not (perhaps could not at the time) present the materials in a nonlinear way. The materials did not follow a strictly linear process. A person has to think more systemically to fully appreciate some of those early works (e.g., Frogs into Princes, Reframing, Trance-formations). If that’s true of NLP generally, it is especially true with regard to the master practitioner level, when we begin working with the four meta-domains of NLP and using the Meta-Model, the meta-modalities (“sub-modalities”), the Meta-Programs, and Meta-States to describe, model, and interact with subjective experiences.

Systemic thinking

To a great extent, systemic thinking defines the difference between the practitioner level of NLP—for instance, knowing the parts and pieces of the model, using the technology, following the patterns—and the master practitioner level. Beyond the parts and pieces is the mastery level of knowing how to put it altogether as a system. This means thinking systemically. Thinking systemically is essential for truly mastering this mind-body, non-Aristotelian model. It is one of the primary objectives we have in this book.

Getting there, however, is another matter. So how do we learn to think systemically? How do we integrate systemic thinking into our NLP skills and processes?

It begins with looking freshly at NLP as a system: the parts and pieces that go together into the model, how these elements fit together, and how they operate as a system. It also means zooming in and out of the materials. Zooming in to the details of this or that pattern or understanding, then zooming out to get a sense of the larger gestalt, the emerging pattern that arises from the sum of the parts and that is yet more than the sum of those parts. Yet it involves something different as well as more.

To think systemically, we have to move beyond “parts thinking”. Parts thinking stands in opposition to systems thinking. You can know all of the parts, the elements, even the mechanisms and processes that tie the parts together, and still not be able to see or sense the system.

Systems are not see-hear-feel things. They involve the invisible relationships, patterns, and processes that occur between the parts. So, as we shift to systemic thinking, we will be moving above and beyond detail thinking. We will be accessing the meta-program of global thinking, and then on to gestalt thinking. The more your awareness stays glued to the details, to the content, the more difficult you will find the challenge of mastering NLP. Yet, if you are committed to mastery, then this learning will change this facet of your thinking; you will become much more global in your awareness.

Actually, you’ll become more skilled at what we call meta-detailing. It’s not that you will become more global rather than detailed. That description itself is linear thinking, either/or thinking, and thinking along a continuum. Either global or specific. Instead, you will become more flexible in shifting your awareness from details to global and from global to details. Merely being more global in processing information does not make you a better systems thinker, either. Global thinking alone (as a driving meta-program) is not the same as systems thinking. It typically makes it a bit easier, yet it is not the same. We’ve met many people who are highly global in their thinking but who do not think systemically, and so are not masters of NLP.

In systemic thinking we are able to step back, go meta, and get a sense of the whole. That’s an essential part. Yet it is not the whole story. Systemic thinking involves the reflexivity that we speak about in Meta-States that allows us to effectively go round in circles.

The key word here is “effectively”. We can all go in circles. That’s simply a description of how consciousness works, yet a lot of people don’t like it. In fact, they hate it. They try to stop themselves from doing it. Yet in failing to embrace ambiguity, not knowing, and complexity, they make a big mistake. To think systemically, we have to learn how to enter the looping, even the spiraling, and to enjoy the process. Only then can we learn how to effectively manage it. This is a torture to those who prefer and are driven by “procedure” as a meta-program.

Processing and sorting by procedures is a great last step of systemic thinking. After we have entered, explored, experienced, danced around in the loops of consciousness, and modeled the system, then we need to sort out the steps that put it all together. Then we can create a linear step-by-step process that allows others to replicate the experience. We need to bring all of the rich awareness of our modeling together in the final step to create new patterns and processes. That’s certainly a crucial part of mastering NLP as it enables us to create new things and extend human knowledge.

But too much of that too early in the process will kill systemic thinking. First we have to live with ambiguity, we have to live with feeling overwhelmed by the wonder and magic of the experience we wish to understand and model. First we need to access and use the sorting style of options and free-floating. Bateson (1972), in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, called it “loose thinking”.

When Bateson would begin researching a new area of concern, such as a new anthropological survey, or of the subject of culture itself, he would invent some words that would give him a sense of the “stuff” of culture and the “feel” of culture. He would intentionally use such vague terms as “stuff” and “feel” to cue himself that he was engaged at the loose level of thinking and that he would later revisit the terminology to make it more precise after he had more thoroughly surveyed the new territory. The looseness of the terms, metaphors, and ideas enabled him to survey an area of exploration without knowing all of the details and without demanding it be right. He used it to get started. He used it to begin the research process, and he used it so he did not become attached to his own ideas or terminology.

Loose thinking and terminology allows us to enter a realm without the demand or pressure of needing to know it all or needing to get it right first time. This promotes the kind of creativity where we can truly use feedback to refine, hone, and sharpen the ideas and model over time. It is systemic in that it traces a broad outline and then reflectively feeds back new data into the model.

We begin with loose thinking that allows us to enter into a new realm of study or another person’s neuro-semantic reality and then we follow the loops. From a Meta-State point of view, this necessitates tolerating ambivalence. It means living with not-knowingness. We set supporting frames: “It’s okay; we’re just exploring, we’ll tie it all together later.” To do otherwise is to impose structure too soon and to delete the processes of the system before we become fully acquainted with it.

Thinking systemically about the NLP systems

In this book, we have introduced the four meta-domains of NLP:

• The Meta-Model
• The Meta-Programs
• The Meta-States
• The Meta-Modalities (“sub-modalities”)

These four models, which govern the meta-domains of consciousness and subjective experience, give us four windows to human reality. The first three follow the historical discovery of these models; the fourth was there from the beginning but not recognized as a meta-domain. The first model involves the domain of language and how we language our internal worlds and encode our experiences, neurology, and skills in language. NLP began here. When Bandler and Grinder first wanted to model the therapeutic magic of Perls, Satir, and Erickson they began with how they talked. From that came the Meta-Model and its inverse, the Milton or Hypnotic model.

This led to the basic NLP communication model and model of human functioning as well as many of the techniques for altering, transforming, and renewing the models of the world that people live by. All of the early NLP patterns focused on challenging and updating people’s impoverished models of the world to evoke a richer and more resourceful model.

Eventually, however, they began finding weaknesses in the model. As they put their Meta-Model to the test, their patterns for meta-modeling, hypnotizing, and so forth, they began to find that sometimes the classic NLP patterns just didn’t work. As Leslie Cameron-Bandler [AA1] kept discovering these problematic points, she and Richard Bandler began identifying meta-programs that were getting in the way. This introduced the second meta-domain of NLP.

They discovered that...