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Disclaimer: We have designed this Training Manual for training and education and not as a substitute for psychotherapy or psychiatry. Even though this material was designed and written by a psychologist and a Professional Licensed Counselor in the State of Colorado, we do not recommend that this should be used in the place of professional psychological and psychiatric assistance.
ACCELERATED LEARNING USING NLP & NEURO-SEMANTICS
The Vision Part I: The Structure of Learning Learning as Running Your Brain The State of Learning Where Education Goes Wrong Learning Principles Foundations of Accelerated Learning Saboteurs to Learning Excellence Relaxed & De-stressed Learning Committed to Learning Excellence Frames for Learning Excellence The Learning Frame Game Learning Factors Learning Stages: Competency Levels Learning Levels (Bateson) Meta-Learning: Learning About Learning States Learning Filters or Styles (Meta-programs) Gardner's Learning Styles Part II: LEARNING STRATEGIES Spelling Strategy Vocabulary Words Video-Tracking Reading Strategy Advanced Reading Articulating Learnings Reducing Test & Performance Anxiety Testing Power Note Taking Strategy Asking Stupid Questions for Acc. Learning The Sleeping on it Strategy Part III: Meta-Stating Your Learning States Meta-States: States-about-States Meta-Stating: The Process & Model Outframing Learning with new Resources & Frames Learning Attractors to Self-Organize Your System Part IV: Meta-Stating Patterns for Accelerating & Empowering Learning 1) Stopping the World: Sensory Awareness 2) Meta-Detailing Learning 3) Perceptual Positions for Wisdom 4) Getting a Big Enough "Why?" 5) Meta-Stating Your Learning Genius Excellence 6) Mind-to-Muscle Meta-Stating
7) Meta-Stating Executive States 8) Meta-Stating Feedback 9) Becoming a Ferocious Learner: Swishing to a New Self 10) Meta-YES-ing As a Belief Change Pattern 11) Einstein's Creative Problem-Solving 12) Meta-Stating Implementation 13) Meta-Stating Alignment V. Coaching Others in Learning Skills VI. GOOD STUFF AT THE END Models used How to Get Your Money's Worth Glossary Bibliography Author Trainings
MODELS USED IN THIS TRAINING
NLPA Model of Communication about human processing that empowers us to "run our own brain." Using the "languages" of mind (our internal cinema of sights, sounds, and sensations) along with language, we "think" and frame things using these see, hear, and feel dimensions. As we represent data to ourselves on the inner screen of consciousness, that internal movie signals our bodies to go into a state—a mind-body or neuro-linguistic state and that governs the quality of our life and experiences. Developed by a linguistic and computer student about human excellence and genius, NLP provides insights and specific step-by-step techniques for running your own brain, managing your own states, communicating more effectively and elegantly with yourself and others, and replicating human expertise.
META-STATES®A Model of Reflexive Consciousness that extends the NLP Model, taking it to the next level. It details precisely how we reflect back on our thoughts and feelings to create higher levels of thoughts-and-feelings and layers of consciousness. In so using our thoughts-and-feelings thoughts-about-our-thoughts, feelings-about-feelings, we create mind-body states-about-states or Meta-States. Primary States involve primary emotions like fear, anger, joy, relaxed, tense, pleasure, pain, etc. and these thoughts directed outward. Meta-States involve a layering of higher level concepts to involve structures like fear of fear, anger at fear, shame about being embarrassed, joy of learning, esteem of self, etc. Meta-States describe the higher frames-of references that we set and use that create more stable structures (beliefs, values, understandings, etc.)
NEURO-SEMANTICS® — While it sounds like a big word, it refers to a simple fact. Namely that we create meanings in our minds (semantics) and we get these meanings incorporated into our bodies (neurology). That's why, when things mean something to us—we feel it in our bodies. The meanings show up in what we call "emotions." The meanings take the form of values, ideas, beliefs, understandings, paradigms, mental models, frames, etc. Neuro-semantics provides a model of how we humans make meaning as we evaluate experiences, events, words, etc. It's a model of how we then live in the world of Meaning that we construct or inherit. Neuro-semantics describes the frames of reference we use as we move through life and the frames of meaning that we construct. It creates the Matrix of Frames in which we live and from which we operate. Neuro-semantics arose from the Meta-States model which provides a way to think about the levels of states or mind that we experience all the time. That's because we never just think. As soon as we think or feel—we then experience thoughts and feelings about that first thought, then other thoughts-and-feelings about that thought, and so on. Technically this is called selfreflective consciousness. Practically, it's the Frames for the Games that we play in life.
"META" (above, about, beyond)
The Power to Rise Above
THE VISION OF LEARNING EXCELLENCE Any fool can learn from experience; and, in fact, many do. It takes an intelligent person to learn from a book and from the experiences of others. And that's Meta-Learning! Do you know how to grab a book and suck all of the learnings and vital information out of it? Would you like to learn the Art of Absorbing Ideas from Books and Trainings? Does "Book Learning" or "High Level Concepts" turn you Off or On? How Ferocious or Effective are you as a Learner? How does this effect your earnings, sales, career, relationship, understandings, etc.? Would you like to learn like the Experts learn and Develop your own Learning Excellence?
HOW TO REALLY TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE THROUGH DEVELOPING "LEARNING EXCELLENCE" With Learning Excellence you can Cut your learning curve for new knowledge in 54 or even 1/4 the time. Experience the joy & delight of learning itself Build and activate your own personal skills of Accelerated Learning Learn more thoroughly and Permanently Increase your effectiveness, intelligence, creativity, and problem solving skills Become a ferocious or passionate learner that doesn't back off from following your dreams and making your visions come true Eliminate blocks and limitations that have sabotaged your natural brilliance. So what? Keep up with the pace of change & stay on the cutting-edge in today's world. Make more money and increasing your Wealth Make smarter business and personal decisions with higher quality information Use your God-Given Intelligence more Insightfully and wisely Experience richer and fuller relationships Solve problems in half the time and effort Accessing wisdom and discernment If you don't know how your mind works— how do you expect to develop the high level skills of a Learning Expert... the Accelerated Learning Skills of your own natural brilliance? The fact is, if you don't know how your mind works, you can't. People with the so-called "Learning Disabilities" simply do not know how the mind works. Consequently they have trouble running it effectively. When you learn to run your own brain, Learning Excellence becomes a piece of cake. As the speed of change continues to accelerate in our society, knowing how to learn (meta-learning) is going to become the most crucial skill for success, leadership, and expertise.
PART I THE STRUCTURE OF LEARNING Learning Skills Using NLP & Meta-States For Accelerated Learning "Many of the most creative persons in human history have had significant learning problems: Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein. Far from being crippled by these difficulties, these were able to build on their strengths to make remarkable distinctive contributions." Howard Gardner (1993, p. 205)
THE V I S I O N LEARNING
EXCELLENCE
Let's begin with the vision of accelerated learning itself. This means accelerating the speed, quality, comprehension, creativity, and power of the mind. This means enhancing one of the most distinguishing features of human beings—learning. It means learning to use our brain with more precision, focus, and control. And this will increasingly become the key skill that successful people will have to have in the 2 1 century. st
How much confidence do you have in your current skills, competency, and expertise in learning? Has anyone (including yourself) ever insulted or downgraded your learning skills? Attached some "learning disability" label to it? How quickly can you (or do you) go into a state of judgment, harshness, or insult when you don't pick something up immediately, thoroughly, or quickly?
LEARNING What do we mean by "learning" anyway? In Learning we "inform" and order consciousness. Why? Because the natural state of "mind" —apart from our structuring and ordering it is chaos, disorder, entrophy. Mind naturally tends toward disorder. Whenever we order it —give it form and structure, we are forming it on the inside, hence, "in-form-ation." When you learn, you perform a programming task. You form yourself— your mind, emotions, habits, patterns, etc. You construct your sense of "reality." All of your learnings and your very habit of learning are just "constructions." That means you have learned to learn the way you now learn—and if your currently learning style doesn't serve you well, you can unlearn that and learn a much more empowering style. Mind, as an information processing mechanism— needs and seeks for data by which it can become ordered, structured, and formed. This means we all have a natural "information hunger." We want to know... to understand... to comprehend ... to make meaning. Naturally, our brain and nervous system moves us to "learn" —to take in data and order our internal world. Naturally, we are "mean green learning machines." It takes Trouble and Trauma to mess up our natural brilliance!
Negative experiences with teachers, books, and schools can invite us to create a negative relationship to the Concept of "learning." This can put a person at odds with the idea of learning or some facet of the concept. Learning therefore describes the organizing of mind (actually, the mind-body system) in order to empower you to handle a knowledge governed domain—so that you can effectively master your style of relating to the world. Webster says that learning involves gaining knowledge, understanding and skill in a study or experience. Learning involves everything from simple detection of stimuli, calibration to the world of our senses, to the most advanced pattern recognition and creation of the mind.
"Education," from the Latin root, educere, means "to draw out." The drawing out process highlights the experience of learning as an accessing, developing, and application of resources as we bring mind-and-emotion to bear upon various events, contexts, and ideas. We naturally learn and learn best through experiences that draw us out, that draw out our mind, our heart, our emotions. In the learning and discovery process, we delightfully engage and encounter "reality." The adventure of this encounter is what we call "learning." It affects us. It affects our thinking, emoting, speaking and behaving. It stretches our self-definitions, our mental maps about the world, and our skills in responding to it.
The best learning is playfulness and losing oneself in the play. As children, we begin with this innate ability to lose ourselves in play. Later, it's beat out of us, and if we learn to recover it, we call it "the strategy of genius."
OPENING FRAMES Are you in the right state? Your state of Mind-Body plays a crucial role in learning. To engage in accelerated learning we need to be in the right state. We begin here. We begin by accessing the right state for this training. This is step one. From state management, you will learn the NLP and Meta-State Models for understanding "mind" and how we — process information encode information set frames of understanding (beliefs, values, decisions, etc.) reflect on our understandings Are you feeling a bit critical about yourself and your level of skill or confidence about Accelerated Learning? Do you sometimes "feel stupid?" If so, remember that's just a meta-state and a not very useful one at that, unless, of course you enjoy it, appreciate it as a signal to "Learn More!" and know how to use of your ignorance and stupidity to fuel your intelligence. For the sake of this training—set aside any and every fear, negative emotion, apprehension, etc. about "learning." If you need any of those, you can pick them back up later, but for now... Begin with the realization that those are just old experiences and references about "learning" and that they do not enhance things. Judgment will interfere and sabotage your learning. Judgment de-accelerates learning. As you will shortly learn about your learning, we all too often connect and link up some negative experience (due to the frustration of a teacher or parent) to learning and that creates the limiting mental boxes that we then live in. Throughout this training always remember that You are so more than your skills and strategies for learning So any learning problem is just that, a learning problem. It's not a problem about you. It's always about your states, frames, and strategies.
LEARNING PRINCIPLES Every field of excellence, where experts excel and demonstrate a level of genius, is governed by principles, laws, and concepts. The Domains of Knowledge have operating principles that we need to learn and adapt. The same holds true for the domain of Learning Excellence. There are numerous learning principles that provide dynamic and profound processes for accelerated learning. #1. Learn happens. It's the natural state of your mind-body interacting with your environment. We're bom as ferocious learners. Sometimes when the wonder, curiosity and play is knocked out of us, we have to take charge of our own brains and recover it. #2. We cannot not learn. Since it's our nature to learn, the only a question before us concerns what we learn and how we learn it. We can even learn to refuse new learnings. #3. Learning needs nurturing. Although we have a learning brain and nervous system, it still needs to be treated kindly and gently to bring out it's natural powers. It is designed for learning, abstracting, map-making. Relax and let it do what it does best. Refuse to tolerate any and all harsh self-judgments. Nurture the health and optimal functioning of your brain and nervous system. #4. Learning how to learn accelerates learning excellence. Meta-learning is the key to accessing our own learning genius. As we learn "learning know how" we increase our natural intelligence. #5. First learnings set the frame but aren't fatal. Our first learnings about learning set the stage for our subsequent experiences. They set the first frames about learning and often to our detriment. If we learn that learning is heard, difficult, that we are stupid, etc., that undermines our orientation toward learning. But such frames aren't the last word. We can deframe them and set new frames. #6. Learning richness arises when we "make sense" vividly. The quality (depth, stability, permanency) of your learning is a function of your representational richness. The representational richness of our information informs and commands our entire mindbody to have an "experience" of the information. #7. Learning occurs in levels. This makes frame setting essential for expert learning skills. Otherwise we end up with holes in our comprehension . Learning excellence necessitates moving up and down the levels of mind, distinguishing the levels (sensory based versus evaluative, etc.) We learn best by starting out slow and then speeding up as we develop a model and hold that in mind. #8. Specific information topics necessitates specialized strategies. We can expect therefore different strategies for reading, spelling, history, concepts, mathematics, etc. #9. Balancing Uptime and Downtime States accelerates high quality learning. While learning excellence begins with sensory awareness, it doesn't stay there. We come "up" to get more feedback data and go "in" (down) to construct a map. The quality of our learning flows from the quality of our registering of sensory based information and checking it out as we create everhigher abstractions. #10. Learning excellence involves a focused state of mind that can zoom in on a subject and grab it and not let it go.
This describes the laser beam focus that can screen things out. Accelerated learning is nothing more than getting lost in playing with ideas, actions, skills, etc. #11. Learning needs Frames to control focus, orientation and purpose. We learn best when relaxed, motivated, intentional, focused, playful, happy, etc. Relaxation and learning: A great many learning problems are problems of stress, tension, worry, negative reflexivity, etc. Intentional and learning: put your object in the back or front of your mind and let it operate as an attractor. Why are you reading? To understand, to criticize? #12. The Fuel that accelerates Learning is Passion. Excellence comes from having a high motivation to learn. Motivation and learning: if your motivated enough, you can learn just about anything. Most learning problems are actually motivation problems. Passion, desire, vision —these provide the fuel for passionate learning. #13. Learning means Personalizing learnings. The art of personalizing representations and learnings is to step into the Video-Recording. To personalize ideas, we can also set identification frames and self-definition frames. We further personalize by making the learnings "ours," via marking and indexing books, papers, etc. as we read and study. #14. Mind-Muscle your learnings to make them last. The genius of learning involves getting the ideas into our muscles so that we have muscle memory for the concepts and principles. To do that we will use the Mind-to-Muscle Meta-Stating Pattern. Practically, this means talk about your learnings, acting on them, etc. #15. The skills of Un-Learning govern learning excellence also. Effective un-learning plays an important part in accelerated learning. Know how to suspend old thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Know how for "trying on" a new thought. In this way, we can give a new idea a chance. Recognize and identify your own biases. #16. We can accelerate our Learning via Modeling Learning Excellence. As a symbolic class of life we humans do not have to re-invent the wheel or computer or anything that other humans have already learned and developed. We can model what they've done. Time binding refers to the idea of theoretically "beginning where the previous generation ended." I can accelerate my learning by vicariously gaining skill, frames, understandings from others. Modeling itself is a learning mode. Modeling provides an excellent method for assimilating specific attributes. We can even model the unknown by using the "As if" frame. #17. Imagination can greatly propel learning. By using the "As if Frame and playing with "what if ideas, we can greatly accelerate our learning by taking on the attributes and skills of desired possibilities. #18. Learning can be coached. Get a mentor if you really want to accelerate your learning in a specific area of expertise. Who have you invited into your world as a coach?
#19. Learning can become habitual. Habits provide the wonder of freeing us from consciousness and simultaneously allows us to move up to even higher-order thinking. As we consciously develop health mental and emotional habits that support intelligence, our attention is freed to attend to more advanced and higher thoughts. Habituate basic learning skills one at a time through patient practice.
#20. We learn best by asking lots of wild and stupid questions. Learning as exploration, curiosity, wonder, etc. means asking lots of questions. In the spirit of true learning, there are no "stupid" questions, just questions. The great inventors and explorers of the mind were those who were bold enough to ask the questions many others thought too stupid to entertain. "What if we could put a man on the moon, how would we do that?" "What if we could create a flying vehicle." This facets of learning also highlights the importance of relationship and open assertive communication between mentor and student. The less free and assertive one feels to ask, explore, inquire, etc., the less quality the learning will be. This will put the brakes on the very spirit of learning. #21. Learning is greatly affected by the higher levels of mind. What do you believe about learning? What do you think of yourself as a learner? Do you have confidence and faith in yourself to run your own brain? Do you value the subject that you're studying? Do you have a sufficiently big Why (reasons) for studying?
WHERE EDUCATION GOES WRONG "What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed, and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature, they have lost their innate capabilities,"
Buckminster Fuller Growing up in the current educational systems has caused most of us to have been mis-educated about learning. Formal schooling has even traumatized some people with regard to "learning." How has "education" as most of us have experienced it gone wrong? How has it created various blocks to learning?
It Assumes Too Much. Educators and teachers began from the assumption that we all just naturally know how to learn and so did not teach us the most basic Learning Skills. They assumed we didn't need to learn about learning. "Most students do what they think will work. If it doesn't work well, the diligent students will try harder... until they are frustrated and fall behind... resulting in emotional problems, behavior problems, and loss of self-esteem." (Blackerby, p. 12) It is too Passive. Education has been primarily passive. The teacher "teaches" us— as students we are just to receive. This has undermined a sense of personal responsibility, proactivity and the passion for life-long learning.
It is too quick to Judge. Education has traditionally been very quick to label: "slow," "dumb," "learning deficiency," "under-achiever," "attention deficient disorder." Once the labels are attached and accepted, both teacher and learner adopt a determinist attitude. Judgment, in fact, blocks learning. The more judgments we have in our head and the quicker we are to judge ourselves or others, the more we sabotage our learning capabilities. It discourages exploration, questions, and playfulness. "School learning" has tended to become far too serious as students are constantly judged and evaluated. This has relegated exploration, curiosity, creativity and questions in service of conformity and the mass production of students.
It accepts I.Q. testing and labeling too readily. Teachers who buy the IQ mythology then begin to operate from, and project, negative expectations. Successful learners have to defy and resist these with a vengeance. "The whole concept of relating IQ to life achievement is misguided, because IQ is a pretty miserable predictor of life achievement." (Sternberg, p. 24) "What's frightening is that people make important decisions on the basis of pseudoquantitative precision—information that is numerically precise, but conceptually inaccurate." (p. 34) "Intelligence tests clearly measure achievement—what else is vocabulary. No one ...would argue that we are born with vocabulary words conveniently stored in our brain." (p. 59) "I have found that many students are misdiagnosed with the label of ADD. The behavioral symptoms fit many persons (child and adult) who are highly stressed, suffer from trauma, are bored in school or work or who are acting out other behavioral problems. Many times teaching students how to learn in school, how to focus, how to organize, how to set priorities and/or how to have a better attitude in school causes the symptoms to go away." (1996, p. 163) Don Blackerby, Ph.D. author of Rediscover the Joy of Learning
THE STRUCTURE OF ACCELERATED LEARNING The following provides an overview of the following pages, to accelerate our mind and nervous system to learn in a powerful, precise, and profound way, we will use the following strategies as our basic orientation.
1) Access the Right State Are you in the right state for learning? All learning, at every level, and within every stage involves "state dependency." Accelerated learning results from being able to effectively manage your states & meta-states and to step into "the right state" when you need it. 2) Refuse the Learning Sabotages Some beliefs and states of mind-and-emotion undermine, interfere with, and sabotage the ability to learn. These must be rejected and refused. 3) Commit Your Whole Mind and Body to Accelerated Learning An empowering decision to learn, to become a ferocious learner, to use our mind for learning—accelerates our ability and skills in learning. 4) Set the Right Frames for Learning. To play the Accelerated Learning Game we need some very special and powerful frames. 5) Tap the Key Learning Factors. There are certain factors involved in learning that we have to recognize, adjust ourselves to and learn to use in order to experience expert level learning. 6) Incorporate the Highest Quality Principles of Learning into your Muscles. As in any other field, there are certain principles that govern the learning process. This makes learning them and installing them into our muscles crucial. 7) Gracefully Accept and Move through the Learning Stages. There are stages in the process and have to be negotiated— which means acceptance of our incompetence when we begin! 8) Develop a Strategic Learning Approach to the Levels of Learning. All learning does not occur on the same level. After primary level learnings, we advance to the learning of frames. We have to use a different strategy on each Learning Level. There are levels to learning, so adapting a strategic attitude assists in developing accelerated learning. This also leads to Meta-Learning Skills—when we learn about our learning. The Levels of Learning involve how we layer level upon level and so move from associative meanings and framing to representational encoding of information and then on to higher level framing that involves abstract concepts. 9) Develop & Adjust to the Right Filters There are numerous thinking filters or Meta-Programs that govern the flexibility of our consciousness in handling information. 10) Model Learning Excellence in others. Modeling is the fast track to mastery in every feel. We can greatly accelerate our learning time by modeling others (their skills, attitudes, beliefs).
THE STATE OF LEARNING States of mind and emotion effect learning. Therefore the art of effective and accelerated learning necessarily involves accessing an intense and effective learning state. What state are you in right now. Check and see. Is it useful for learning about learning? State accessing and managing refers to effectively handling our neuro-linguistic mind-body states so that they can do our bidding. What are the optimal learning states? Consider the "natural" state of the small child. What makes a young child so ferocious a learner involves the mental atmosphere of trust, joy, spontaneity, exhilaration, fun, playfulness, and no-judgment. The child doesn't know that it's bad to fall down, get food all over the face, or make mistakes. The child enjoys what we later punctuate as "mistakes."
Figure
A Neuro-Linguistic "State" of Consciousness A Dynamic Energy Field That's Never Static
ENGINEERING THE RIGHT STATE FOR LEARNING Access a learning state. Think of a time when you learned something quickly, thoroughly, easily, and effectively... Re-experience that awareness completely. Or think about what it would be like if you fully experienced a very intense learning state ... pretend that you have ... and imagine it fully. In the accelerated learning state, you will be in visual, auditory, and kinesthetic external. You will have all of your senses wide open and receptive to the world. We call this an "Uptime" state.
Write down some referent experiences for a pleasant, enhancing, and resourceful learning state.
Write down your see-hear-feel (VAK) representations of the learning experience that triggers or anchors you to go back into that state of mind-and-body.
What verbal instructions do you have to give to yourself to put yourself into a vital learning state? Write out the actual language inductions that you use. ("Ah!" "Interesting." "Curious!" "What can I get from this?" "How might this prove useful?")
What qualities and special features or distinctions (submodalities) do you find in your thoughts that help you to access your most enhancing learning state? Maybe a quiet inner voice, bright pictures, deep breathing, etc.
What do you have to do to amplify (juice up) this state for yourself?
Gauge the intensity (emotional energy) that you have in this state at this point from 0 to 10. (0 —no chance in hell I could learn anything; 10 —Watch out Einstein!)
META-LEARNING: LEARNING ABOUT OUR LEARNING STATES State Gauging or Scaling: States are Energy Fields that involve mental and emotional intensity. Gauge your state's intensity from 0 meaning "none" and 10 meaning "total" to scale it's intensity. How much do you think and feel this?
State Dependency: Once in a strong and intense "state," we experience our learning, memory, behavior, perception, and communication (LMBPC) as state dependent. The state itself powerfully and pervasively influences the nature and quality of these functions. State Object or Focus: What is the object of your learning? Learning what? What is the state about?
State Assessing/ Inducing: Memory: Remembering a state ("recall a time when...") Imagination: Creating a state ("what would it look, sound, and feel like if...")
State Amplification: All states do not have the same level of intensity, so gauge for intensity levels. Do you need more "juice?" What processes do you rely on for amplifying your states? How do you crank them up? Make it more so.
State Qualities: What are the qualities and properties of your learning state?
State Purity/ Contamination: How pure, discreet and focused? Or how mixed?
SABOTEURS TO LEARNING EXCELLENCE "The greatest of all faults — to be conscious of none." (Carlyle) Everything does not support "Learning Excellence." There are Dragons abroad that can undermine our natural brilliance. Prior to Dragon Slaying and Taming comes the recognition of a dragon states when you see, hear, or feel it. Dragon States refer to states of self-judgment, harshness with self, insult about your learning style or speed, etc. These states will absolutely ruin and undermine everything we're going to do in this training. We have to de-construct (de-frame) the stupid/irrational ideas that get into our heads (and nervous systems) that sabotage this innate Learning Orientation that we're born with. We call this "Dragon Slaying/Taming" —a process by which we destroy or tame the forces (conceptual, semantic, neurological) that have become organized against us. You have to cut that kind of stuff out—totally and absolutely, you have to cut out that non-sense. Are you ready? Will you make a commitment right here & right now to totally commit yourself to catch and renounce putting yourself down for being a human being with a fallible mind?
Principle:
A bad conceptual relationship to the very idea of "learning" will totally undermine and prevent you from discovering, accessing, and enhancing your Learning Genius.
Saboteurs: Numerous influences, ideas, and processes can sabotage learning excellence. What stops you from learning in a powerful, ferocious, and effective way? If your mind is not zooming in on the data, information, or experience with intense focus, then, where is your mind? What are you doing mentally and conceptually?
Checklist of Possible Saboteurs to your own Learning Excellence: Pre-judgments about things, what they are, what they mean, their use, value, etc. This essentially closes the mind to new data. How open or closed do you feel yourself to new information? How easily can you step back from you thoughts, and recognizing them as just "thoughts," just "mental maps," enjoy letting them expand, grow, extend, and develop? Rigidity and inflexibility in trying on new ideas, thoughts, processes, etc. Not even giving learning a chance due to rigid beliefs, disagreements, mismatching, How flexible or inflexible an approach do you take to thinking, representing, etc.? What would you need to think, believe, or understand in order to become more flexible? Negative thinking patterns that involve frames of judgment against self. What negative thoughts do you recognize that get in your way from stepping into the state of Learning Excellence? Fear of failure, fear of being different, fear of looking stupid, etc. Stress, anxiety, negative emotional preoccupation, etc. How stressful and/or anxious do you feel when it comes to learning? How relaxed, calm, and centered do you feel?
Distraction: Thought Balls bouncing all over the place. To what extend do you currently love or hate the thought-balling nature of your mind? To what extend to you now realize that your thought-balling describes the intelligence of your mind to be creative? Boredom: dis-interest How quickly do you reject things as "boring?" How skillful do you feel in taking interest, finding interest, and creating interest in things? Anger: Open and Covert Anger at self (Self-Contempting), at others, at the "unfairness" of the world, over mistreatment, traumatic events, etc. can sabotage our learning. It can put us into a chronic Fight mode— striving always to "survive." Dislike or refusal to accept frustration and confusion in the process of learning. How impatient are you about "getting" something? How do you treat yourself when you have to "stay with something" for awhile in order to learn it?
The Synergistic Learning State
Calmly Alert & Full of Wonder When we combine playful delight with curious wonder and confident trust in ourselves with a relaxed state... and all of the other components necessary for a powerful learning state, we get a holistic experience that generates accelerated learning abilities.
1) Recognizing the Sabotage of Stress on Mental Functioning: Brain functioning under "stress" undermines "learning." Due to the body's neurological ability to go into the Fight/Flight or General Arousal Syndrome, both physical and psychological "stress" prevents higher-ordered consciousness, and hence "learning." Why? Neurologically, we have an extremely fast and effective reflex system that's designed to deal with perceived threat. As soon as our higher brain (the cortex) gets a "threat" or danger message, it cues the autonomic nervous system and in a split second, our whole organism mobilizes for fight or flight (including freeze). Neuro-chemicals and neuro-transmitters are released that activates our entire physiology. Glucose foods into the system, heart rate accelerates, blood is diverted from the brain, digestive system, and periphery of the body to the larger muscle groups. Breathing accelerates and oxygen consumption increases, blood pressures rises, etc. The adrenaline rash that we feel works as a survival mechanism as it mobilizes us for a survival mode of thinking: black-and-white, flee or fight, me or him, etc. Simultaneously, higher order consciousness becomes much less predominate. Our ability to reason, use higher logic, consider a fuller range of options, focus, etc. weakens. All of this is operative also with psychological stress—the non-physical threats that make up so much of our everyday life. Fear of what others will think of us, the apprehension of looking stupid, anxieties about money, work, family, loved ones, health, etc. And all too often today, most people tend to live in a continual state of low-grade arousal that undermines their optimal brain functioning. 2) Relaxing the Stressed Brain. Access "the Relaxation Response" (Herbert Benson) to mobilize relaxation as a way to enhance your mental powers. We accelerate our learning skills and abilities as we learn "Instant Relaxation " skills. This, in turn, leads to— A calm and quiet focus A mind that can concentrate with one-pointed focus The ability to let "thought balls" come and go without them interfering. The patience to stay with a subject until we get it. The ability to become fully present in a sensory-aware state (Uptime) "Stress" is not a thing or entity, but a way of perceiving and interpreting events. This makes "stress a highly subjective and personal response to stimuli. The experience of "stress" is therefore not inevitable. Check in with your body from time to time: posture, breathing, tension, etc. Progressively relax your muscles and mind Trance out into a calm, refreshing memory Mind Calming techniques to move from Beta brain waves (normal waking consciousness) to Alpha (deep physical relaxation, emotional tranquility, calm quiet mind. Theta refers to the deep meditative reverie, a dreamlike and contemplative state. Delta refers to the brain waves of sleeping and dreaming.
COMMITTED TO LEARNING EXCELLENCE Are you committed to your own Learning Excellence? Are you willing to take the first step toward being committed to your Learning Genius? Are you willing to experiment and play with the process for becoming totally committed to accessing and developing your own Learning Genius? Are you willing to re-order and reframe any and every negative experience that you have had with Learning? Are you willing to begin to construct a brand new self-image wherein you begin to see and experience yourself as a Learner, as a Ferocious Learner, as a Master at organizing your consciousness? In a little bit you are going to learn how to pronounce a Big and Ferocious "YES!" to thoughts in order to turn them into beliefs... Yet there's nothing that prevents you from beginning that process right now. How about a fabulous "YES!" to these questions??
FRAMES FOR LEARNING EXCELLENCE DRAGON SLAYING/ TAMING REFRAMES FOR LEARNING EXCELLENCE
"Frames:" Frames-of-reference: what we specifically reference in our thinking, emoting, meaning making, etc. Without knowing our frames (or another's), we really have no idea about their meanings and states. Conceptual Frames refer to those higher reference structures: history, memory, imagination, concepts, etc. that we carry with us everywhere we go, and since they put us into various states, they describe our Meta-State Structures. Reframing: Exchanging one frame-of-reference (term, label, perceptive, etc.) for another. Deframing: Pulling apart the frames by examining the linguistic structures.
1) Whatever experiences you have had with Learning were simply "experiences" that you have been through. They do not mean anything other than that (unless you overload them with meaning). 2) If you have taken the experience of "not getting it" (it meaning any idea, skill, understanding) and used it to map yourself as "dumb" — you have simply misused your natural intelligence. 3) If you have taken the experience of "having too much information and no structure by which to sort and separate it" and translated that state of "fusion" (i.e. "Confusion") to mean you are "stupid," you also have simply misused your intelligence in a powerful way! Confusion means you have plenty of information. Confusion means it's time to use a higher level of mind, one that can give structure and order to the information. This makes Confusion "the gateway to all kinds of new learnings." 4) If you have taken the experience of "having all kinds of thoughts firing off at the same time " (what we will hereafter call "Thought Balls" and "thought balling") and used that sense of feeling "distracted" to insult yourself with labels like, "Attention Deficit," then you have probably created both an incorrect map and one that will severely limit you. 5) If you have taken the experience of "recognizing that a phenomenon has many parts that interact" (a system of parts and processes) and labeled it as "complex" and then anchored that to feeling bad, then you have undoubtedly created an effective program for keeping yourself from representing with clarity, understanding, and comprehending.
THE LEARNING FRAME GAME FRAMES FOR LEARNING EXCELLENCE
Men are failures not because they're stupid, but because they are not sufficiently impassioned. In the process of training to access the accelerated state of Learning Excellence, we need to set some really wonderful, powerful, and magical frames. 1) RUNNING YOUR OWN BRAIN— FRAME GAME. Learning is simply Running My Own Brain with Power, Finesse, Grace, Elegance, and Mastery, that's all "Learning" speaks about consciously using your brain to handle its fits and jumps appropriately. Brains engage in "Thought Balls." It's only natural. As you know this, respect this, honor this, appreciate this... now take a moment to adopt a Kinder/Gentler Approach to Yourself when your brain has its jumps and fits. Give yourself a break: Refuse to demand that it happen instantaneously, immediately, or quickly. Refuse to demand that it happen perfectly, flawlessly, errorlessly. Refuse to expect perfect concentration and focus. Refuse to expect conformity with the ways others learn. Be Kinder/Gentler With yourself: Accept & Patiently Enjoy that "learning" takes time... it occurs over a period of time. Whether fast or slow— you will learn if you don't interfere your learning with negative emotions of judgment.
Accept the fact that your brain is so creative it will "Thought-Ball" on you when you least expect it. Celebrate this god-like power! Then learn how to handle the thought-balling so that you have it, rather than it having you. Learning involves entering into the domain of interest that we care about, that we want to associate ourselves with, and so we represent, encode, and set frames. Now, given our "nature" as a semantic class of life with a nervous system/brain that maps, we are ferocious Learning Machines. It's our nature. All we have to do is support and nurture this.
2) THE MAPPING ADVENTURE FRAME GAME Learning is simply the Adventure of Mapping—of creating ever more useful Maps for your Navigation through Life, that's all. We "learn" or becoming "informed" as we use our brain and nervous system to engage in the learning or mapping processes whereby we (1) associating and linking things together, (2) represent or encode information in a memorable and retrievable format, (3) and frame or order the structure of that information in every higher levels of understandings. Approach things as a student rather than an expert. The student frame keeps you mind open. 3) THE LEARNING FROM MISTAKES FRAME GAME Learning is simply Mapping and Re-Mapping and using "Mistakes" to Refine our Internal Maps, that's all No one can or does map things out "perfectly" or "flawlessly" the first time. It takes time and repetition and continuous improvements to develop High Quality Maps. Accept that we "learn" by making mistakes— we need "errors " to establish a program of selfcorrecting information. Pity the poor person who gets it right the first time and doesn't get the opportunity to use "neuro-linguistic feedback."
4) THE "I'VE GOT A UNIQUE BRAIN" FRAME GAME Learning involves finding your natural brain-ordering style, using it for all its worth and then building on that Strength to expand your learning skills, that's all None of us "learn" precisely the "same" way as anybody else. We all have unique facets of our mind-body system. Accept the uniqueness of your own learning style. While we all have similarity in the way our nervous system/ brain works— we all also have our own unique way that we learn best. Celebrate this in your search for your own best learning style.
5) THE "IT'S JUST SIMPLE LAYERS" FRAME GAME Learning simply involves one simple formatting upon another simple layer, that's all. What we call "complexity" can be broken down into the layers of thoughts and feelings about other thoughts and feelings. Accept the simplicity of how many interacting parts come together to create interactive systems. "Complexity" only means that you are standing in the presence of a system of simple parts which interact over time according to simple principles. By avoiding overwhelming oneself, and learning to comprehend first the parts, then the interactions, etc., what once may have seemed "complex" can seem simple. Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner).
6) THE LASER-BEAM FOCUS FRAME GAME Accelerated Learning simply involves a focused mind that's highly motivated to absorb new data, that's all To accelerate your learning skills, simply add massive motivation. The brightest person on the planet will hardly be able to learn anything that he or she is not interested in. Minds need reasons, motivations, visions. To learn best, we need a big WHY... for the adventure. We need a compelling desired outcome that pulls us into the "learning" experience. "Give me one good reason why I should...!" When you have a great Big Why— What we call "learning" cannot not happen.
LEARNING FACTORS There are numerous factors that are involved in the learning process
Factor
Questions to Set Learning Frames
Orientation
What is this material about? How should I begin to read this information? How has the author organized the materials?
Focus
What is this about? Can I focus on this? What would help me focus on this subject? What focus would best fit this subject?
Interest
How interesting do I naturally find this subject? What I can do to increase my interest in it? What's valuable about this information?
Intensity
How much intensity do I need to learn this? How much natural intensity do I feel?
Motivation
How is this important? How will I use this? In what part of my life will I use this?
Strategy
What strategy do I need in order to learn this? How should I approach this?
State
Meta-Detailing
What state do I need to be in to really learn this? What state is this material written to? What state am I in right now? How can I access the right states? What principle or concept (generalization) governs this subject? How can I best summarize this information?
Results
LEARNING STAGES Learning Happens in Stages: The Call for Patience. As we apprentice ourselves to become "disciples" to a discipline, we move through developmental stages of competence. Knowing these enables us to anticipate them with more grace. The Learning Stages inform us also about the need for patience as we move through the stages. The Dragon State of impatience undermines and interferes with Learning Excellence.
1) It begins with incompetence. We begin the process of learning a new skill from the blissful state of ignorance, from being Unconsciously Incompetent. We have no discipline, no learning, no skill development, no challenge. We live in an Eden, blissful and happy, and unskilled, unchallenged, a long way from mastery. 2) It then shifts to painful awareness of incompetence. Then we become conscious. Then light appears and we realize that a whole new world of excitement, skill, expertise, and knowledge exists. We bite into the forbidden fruit of the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Yet this creates a certain amount of anxiety, pressure, distress, unpleasantness. We become Consciously Incompetent. We face some of the reality constraints about what it would take to become competent, the work, the process, the struggle, the challenge. We feel confused, inadequate, incomplete, "dumb," and incapable of handling this domain. And so we are. Many people feel tempted to turn back to the Garden of Innocence when they hit the stage of Conscious Incompetence. It's not pleasant feeling incompetent. And if we run some head-programs of comparison, perfectionism, impatience, etc., we may go into a state of self-judgment. "I hate being put down like this." "What's wrong with me that I can't get this?" "Why does it have to be so hard?" "I'll never get this" Here it seems like the "discipline" of apprenticing ourselves to the new domain seems so "hard," overwhelming, uncomfortable, and rigorous. Here many people turn back. They refuse to go on. They don't have a good relationship with learning itself, with unsuccessful attempts, with using so-called "failure" as just feedback, etc. They don't seem to know how to give themselves a chance—an opportunity to grow, develop, get better. They judge and evaluate themselves so harshly. If only they would take a kinder and gentler approach, validating and celebrating every little step of progress. 3) Then we Get Good and Know it! If we work through the second stage, we find ourselves eventually in the marvelous and wonderful place of stage three. Then, in Conscious Competence we feel great! The discipline seems easy and delightful. Attaining a level of competence brings the joy of it feeling confident. We have become a practitioner in the science or art. We know our business, and do it well. Though we know that we have many more things that we can develop, we delight in the level of mastery that we have attained.
4) Then we become mindless Masterful Eventually, it all habituates and we lose awareness of how we do things; even of what we know. We know it intuitively. As it drops outside of awareness, we have stepped into the next level of development, Unconscious Competence. The discipline seems like "a piece of cake." We experience it as "No problem." We can do it without our mind. The programs for the competencies have become installed in our very neurology. We literally have an "in-knowing" (in-tuition) about the skills. 5) Another Level of Awareness Experts and masters live at the level of Unconscious Competence. This means that the expert, typically, will not be able to explain his or her expertise. They just do it. They have lost awareness of how they do it. To move beyond that to the more complex level of Conscious Competence we have to bring back into awareness the structure, form, and process for the excellence in order to train others in it. This represents the fifth stage in the development of competency. 2
Ignorance/Bliss No Discipline No Skills No Mastery
Painful Awareness Inadequacy Self-Consciousness Unskilled/ No mastery "Hard" "difficult"
Easy Discipline Confidence Adequacy Growing mastery Skillful
"Piece of Cake" Higher knowledge of the Skills Mastery of Mastery Intuitive Skills Trainer of Habitual Excellence Programmed
In becoming excellent at what we do, we move through a series of developmental stages— the Competence Levels, By stepping up from stage to stage we move ever more into mastery levels of skill and expertise. This describes the learning process by which we develop. To succeed in any field necessitates a committed and playful discipline by which we apprentice ourselves to the necessary understandings and skills. This will not occur overnight. It will take time. It will take a clarity of vision that enables us to utter a strong and resounding "Yes!" to the things of value and a similar resounding "No!" to the things opposite of our objectives and to the things that get in our way.
STRATEGIC LEARNING Different strategies for different knowledge domains: reading, spelling, mathematics, concepts, etc. Sort for: The kind of information The level at which the information occurs: chunk up or down? The source of the information: person, book, experience, etc. The depth/height of the information: how abstract or conceptual?
Reading and Comprehending as Video-Thinking We experience "thoughts" and "thinking" by reproducing in our "minds" the content of what we see, hear, feel, smell, etc. This enables us to think about thinking as Video-Tracking the stuff on the outside and representing them to ourselves on the inside. This also puts into our hands the basic and primary "languages" of mind: The VAK of NLP: Visual — Auditory — Kinesthetic Or: Pictures —Sounds — Sensations Thinking, learning, reading, etc. then necessitate learning how to effectively use our Internal Studio for mapping the world. Let's think about it as effectively using our Mental Theater
Mind-Tracking: Take the words and ideas and track over directly from the words to the screen in your mind. The VAK nature of thinking gives us some "languages" of the mind to use in our tracking. The visual track: The Pictures and Images that we see. The auditory track: the sounds, noises, words that we hear. The kinesthetic track: the sensations that we sense in our body both that of touch (tactile) and that of gut (proprioceptive sensations inside the body) The olfactory track: the smells The gustatory track; the sense of taste The vestibular track: the sense of balance and orientation of the inner ear This gives us insight into how the mind actually processes information and thereby gives us a way to work with that process intelligently. The actual activity of "learning" involves simply tracking information over to our representational screen of consciousness.
"Reading " and comprehending our reading involves simply learning how to become increasingly effective at Video-Thinking. When we don't do this, we end up with "holes" in our comprehension. This leads to the creation of ill-formed maps about things.
Snapshotting the VAK and Overlapping for Map Richness: start with your strongest mindlanguage system and track over to the other systems. Practice making Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic Snapshots until you can hold the representation in your mind (Constancy of Representational). This will solve most complaints about being "unable to visualize."
Do this with — "A horse" "Washington DC"
Dr. Don Blackerby has a theory that say that most people who develop problems in school do so about the fifth grade when pictures in books decline and the content becomes more abstract. For some this creates the problem of being unable to visualize the ideas (1996, pp. 14-15).
Symbolizing Your Video-Recording of Information After you make your Internal Movies — we move to a higher level of mind, a meta-level, and there we use Symbols to "stand for" and "represent" the Video-Recording. A) Words, Language, Sentences B) Mathematics, Music, etc. C) Diagrams, schemas We abstract from one level to a higher level: — To summarize, generalize, create maps-of-maps, etc. — To induce up to a principle, concept, belief, understanding. In doing this, we establish an Internal World of Symbols and Symbolism: — Separate Domains of "Knowledge" — "Understandings" — Inter-related Categories or Classes of Information that enable us to sort & separate, relate and compare, etc. Express Immediately Use the Pattern of Impress Express. What you have impressed upon you, immediately seek to express it in some way. This allows us to personalize our learnings, install them into our muscles, and to "author" the learning.
THE CINEMATIC STRUCTURE OF "THOUGHT" Refined Video-Tracking We can discern features, qualities, and properties in every sensory based system for encoding information in our mental movie. We call these "submodalities." This inadequate term misrepresents things since these are not "sub" level things— but operate at a meta-level as conceptual understandings about the VAK. So? You have to go meta to recognize the features, qualities, and properties of the VAK. You have to use a meta-level distinction to think about these features: "location," "intensity," "distance," "volume," etc. Since you cannot put these nominalizations in a wheelbarrow, these do not exist anywhere except in a mind. We use these features or "submodalities" to encode meaning, and we do that symbolically and Semantically.
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 two-dimensions? What meanings arise or get evoked when you encode a voice with a serious tone versus a more humorous one? Because we learn to use the features of our representations symbolically—as metaphors, they come to stand for higher level meanings or frames. In this way they create our Neuro-semantic states and structures. This gives us the ability to cue our brains-and-nervous systems to respond to something as "real" versus "just fantasy." For most of us, we put the first 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 "Submodalities" Representational Systems Sensory Based Descriptions The Form & Structure of thought
Visual
Meta-Programs Evaluative States/ Thinking Patterns @ RS Evaluations Higher Meanings @ Thought
Meta-States Semantic States Higher Level Evaluations
Representation System: VAK
Brightness Focus/ Defocused Color/Black-&-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
Chunk Size: General/ Specific Global / Detail Options/ Procedures Sensor / Intuitor — Uptime—Downtime Judger/ Perceiver —Controlling / Perceiving Self- Referencing — Other-Referencing/ External Ref
Match- Mismatch / Same— Difference
Auditory Pitch Continuous or Interrupted
Toward / Away From Values
Associated/ Dissocated Goal Sort: Optimizing/Perfectionism/
Skepticism Tempo: fast/ slow Volume: loud/ soft Rhythm Duration Cadence Foreground/ Background Distance Location Clarity
Value buying: cost, Time, convenience Time Tenses: Past/ Present / Future "Time" In Time / Through Time Affiliation: Independent/ Dependent/ Team/ Manager Extrovert/ Introvert / Amivert Convincer/ Believability —VAK or Words
Kinesthetic Pressure
MO: Impossibility— Possibility MO: Necessity — Desire
Location & Extent Shape Texture Temperature Movement Rhythm Duration Foreground/ Background
Associated/ Dissociated Intensity Frequency Weight
Thinker/ Feeler
Assoc./ Dissoc.
THE STRATEGIC APPROACH OF LEARNING LEVELS Managing the contents of mind as we move up the levels. In learning, we inform and structure our consciousness. We do this to develop Structured Patterns for responding to the world, to people, to information, to experiences. This means that as we learn we encode and in-form (form ourselves on the inside) at different levels as we mental map things. With each Level of Learning we have a different Level of Mapping:
1) Perceptual Mapping: The mapping/ learning that we do as we perceive things with our eyes, ears, nose, etc. (our sense receptors). This level occurs at a pre-conscious level and is purely "neurological." It's part of our programming and wiring. It highlights our nature as "Learning Machines." We experience the world as we "capture"it (capire, Latin). We capture (percapire) its features 2) Representational Mapping: The immediate "screen of consciousness" that we experience (hence our experiential or phenomenological sense of reality). This refers to our internal theater of awareness—what we record and encode using the "languages of the mind" — the sensory systems (seeing, hearing, feeling, etc.). We video-track from our senses and hold our representations constant. This constancy of representation describes our internal "awareness" of the world. 3) Conceptual Mapping: To represent our representations, we have to move to yet a higher level and use yet a higher system of symbolization, namely, words, language, and linguistic systems. As we abstract and generalize from our information, we move to a higher level. This creates the phenomenon of "Concepts," and hence Conceptual States. This refers to those higher states (meta-states) that involve our more complex ideas about things: purpose, self, male, female, reasons, authority, etc. At this level and all the levels above this, we create the internal mental "programs" that we use for being, functioning, thinking, feeling, relating, believing, valuing, etc. After all, we are a semantic class of life who live by symbols and concepts.
THE BATESON LEVELS OF LEARNING Gregory Bateson (1972) developed a model that sorted out the different levels of learning. 1) Zero Learning: No learning. A stimulus (S) occurs but there is no predictable Response (R). A bell rings but it elicits nothing, no response. 2) Learning I: Here we learn to associate a Stimuli with a certain Response. This sets up a S—R pattern. This comprises the most basic form of learning of all life, from one cell organisms to animals and humans. S—R Learning is the learning of association, linkage, and connection. We go or stop according to the color of the light signal (red, green, yellow). We run or stop according to the coach's whistling. We learn to go respond to the school bell, to go out or to return from play on the playground. We learn to add when we see a plus sign, subtract at a minus, multiply at a times, and divide at a division sign. We call this kind of learning, an anchor or anchoring. Things get "anchored" to other things. Your favorite song "anchors" you to feelings of relaxation or romance. One thing is associated with another. 3) Learning II: When we learn about our S-R learnings we have moved up a level and now our learning is about our previous learnings. This brings us to Bateson's Learning II. We now learn to recognize contexts, hence, Contextual Learning. We learn about our associative patterns, hence we learn about our thinking and attentional patterns or Meta-Programs. We learn to detect patterns that work versus those that do not. We learn to index our Learning I patterns: when, how, why, with whom, etc. This introduces what we call "Epistemology." We study or learn about how we know what we know. At this level of learning, we are learning about Structures, Formats, and Models. Here we are learning in the sense of Framing. 4) Learning III: At the next highest level of learning, we learn how to change, alter, and transform our Learning II patterns about our associative learning. At this level, we step back from our learning styles to question them, from our models, from our paradigms, from the culturally inherited patterns and explore the question of how else could we think, perceive, etc. This leads into the realm that we call paradigm shifts and personality transformation. Here we learn about how to reframe our framing.
LEARNING FILTERS Thinking Filters Governing Our Learning Content thinking: what we think about, the details. Process thinking: a higher logical level of thinking-—the way and style of our thinking. Meta-Programs arise because we can "think" on several different levels. Sometimes the problems we struggle with involve the invisible realm prior to, and meta to, thinking itself. Often our tension and conflict involves our very thinking patterns. This raises several questions: What controls and determines the way we think in the first place? What governs our style and mode of thinking prior to the moment we actually "think?" How many thinking or sorting styles exist? How can we learn about and discern these invisible thinking styles? Once we identify them, what can we then do about them? Thinking styles (the form/ structure of thinking) exists at a level above (meta) to thinking. These MetaPrograms arise as we use our consciousness in sorting, paying attention to, and processing information. MetaPrograms operate as brain software or an operating system. The same inputted data will "mean" and evoke different things depending on the operating system of the computer.
Cognitive Distortions: Disempowering
Thinking Patterns
The following set of distinctions comes from Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck have specified thinking errors or cognitive distortions. These specific and unproductive ways of reasoning (at the process level) inevitably lead to problematic responses. Ellis & Harper (1975) and Beck (1983) stress that these cognitive distortions create mapping blindness and dysfunction.
Patterns of Generalization 1. Over-Generalizing: Jumping to conclusions on little evidence or without facts. 2. All-Or-Nothing Thinking: Polarizing at extremes-Black-and-White thinking. Either-Or thinking that posits options as two-valued choices. 3. Labeling: Name-calling that uses over-generalizations which allow one to dismiss something via the label, or to not make important distinctions, or that classifies a phenomenon in such a way that we do not engage in good reality-testing. Patterns of Distortion 4. Blaming: Think in an accusatory style, transferring blame, guilt, and responsibility for a problem to someone or something else. 5. Mind-reading: Projecting thoughts, feelings, intuitions onto others without checking out one's guesses with the person, over-trusting one's "intuitions" and not granting others the right to have the last word about their internal thoughts, feelings, intentions, etc. 6. Prophesying: Projecting negative outcomes into the future without seeing alternatives or possible ways to proactively intervene, usually a future pacing of fatalistic and negative outcomes. 7. Emotionalizing: Using one's emotions for filtering information. This style assumes an over-valuing of "emotions" as an information gathering mechanism; involves reacting emotionally to things rather than seeking objective information and using one's reasoning powers. Discounting. 8. Personalizing: Perceiving circumstances, especially the actions of others as specifically targeted toward oneself in a personal way, perceiving the world through ego-centric filters that whatever happens relates to, speaks about, or references oneself! 9. Awfulizing: Imagining the worst possible scenario and then amplifying it with a non-referencing word, "Awful" as in "This is awful!" 10. Should-ing: Putting pressure on oneself (and others) to conform to "divine" rules about the world and life, then expressing such in statements that involve "should" and "must." 11. Filtering: Over-focusing on one facet of something to the exclusive of everything else so that one develops a tunnel vision perspective and can only see "one thing." Typically, people use this thinking style to filter out
positive facets, thereby leaving a negative perception. 12. Can't-ing: Imposing linguistic and semantic limits on oneself and others from a "mode of impossibility," and expressing this using the "can't" word. V
Empowering Thinking Patterns Counter the ways that thinking can go astray and become distorted (ill-formed) thereby generating poor, inaccurate, and dysfunctional maps. Use the following list for more empowering cognitive ordering. These patterns forecast a more scientific way of thinking.
Empowering Thinking Patterns 1. Contextual thinking (Index thinking/ Inductive thinking). Inquire about the context of information and indexing it according to what, when, where, which, how, who, and why. Use the meta-model challenges for 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, then process information 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 / Appreciative thinking: Test the reality of the experience: to what extent, in what way, etc. someone deems something as "bad, undesirable, and unwanted?" Meta-model the criteria/value words. Denominalize the words to find the hidden verbs and the evaluative process within. Consider the things that you do appreciate and enjoy. 4. Denominating thinking (Deductive thinking): Reality-test to determine how a label functions: accurately, usefully, productively, too generally. Denominalize the nouns and pseudo-nouns that make thinking and language fuzzy. Identify the evaluative process that turned the action into a noun. 5. Systemic thinking (Responsibility To/For thinking): Reality-test to determine the pattern of causation. Distinguish linear causation from the multifacetic nature of systemic causation. Access a person's "ability" to respond," in what way, under what circumstances, etc. Distinguish between each person's responsibility for (personal accountability) and to (relationships). 6. Information gathering thinking: This involves using one's thoughts, feelings, and intuitions to gather information to find the facts and then to check the conclusions. Use the basic meta-model question. "How do you know?" 7. Tentative predictive thinking (Consequential thinking; Outcome thinking): Gather high quality information about the factors, causes, forces, trends, etc. that come together to create an event or phenomenon. Keep an open mind about ways of intervening and altering that destiny. Look at consequences of certain, actions, etc. 9. Critical thinking and Meta thinking: Thinking critically and analytically about the multi-causational nature of human emotions and back-track to the thoughts out of which the emotions arose. Think above and beyond the immediate content to the patterns, processes, and structures of the content. 10. Reality-test thinking about the "shoulds." Challenge the word "should" by discovering what rule or law orders or demands such. If you can find no such law, invite the thinker to shift to Desire Thinking, "I would prefer that..." "I would like." 11. Depersonalizing thinking; Dissociative Thinking; Responsibility To/For Thinking. Reality test to see if the content or context truly deals with and references you in a personal way. If not, then code information in a third-person perspective rather than in first-person. Learn to empathize without sympathizing. 12. Possibility thinking; Reality-Testing; Indexing Thinking. Reality test the term "can't" to distinguish physical or psychological can'ts, then shift to possibility thinking. Meta-model by asking about the constraints, "What stops you?" "What would it feel like, look like, or sound like if you could?"
Meta-Stating Our Thinking Patterns: 1) Identify cognitive distortions that create difficulties or limitations. Check list for cognitive distortions. Specify all of the ones that create problems and difficulties for you or another person. 2) Validate & 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 a meta-position. Does this pattern of thinking reflect one that you (or I) typically use? How long have you used this cognitive distortion in sorting through things? Has it served you well? In what way? In what way may it have undermined your sense of well-being and accurate processing? What more useful way of processing this information would you like to use? 4) 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. 5) Replace the cognitive distortions with some empowering thinking patterns. Check the list of the more enhancing ways of thinking.
CENTRAL LEARNING STYLES TO MASTER There are certain Meta-Programs or learning styles that we need to develop and use with almost every exploration. Others are only needed upon certain occasions with particular subjects. We need most of the following in a balanced and synthesized way. Here flexibility of consciousness gives us true mastery.
Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic When representational system do you prefer? How much flexibility do you have in shifting from one to the other? How skillful are you in over-lapping from one system to the other? To what extent (if any) do you over-do one system? Which system do you need to develop further?
Toward Pleasure / Away From Pain What motivates you most? When you think about learning, studying, exploring, etc do you do it to move toward some desired outcome or to move away from headaches and troubles? What do you attend to: If I don't do this, X will happen and I don't want that Look what opportunities X can open up for me! External (Other) and Internal (Self) Referencing What governs your orientation and reference: something external or your own internal desires, choices, beliefs? Do you easily take suggestions, instructions, procedures for how to do something, guidance? Do you have to receive outside guidance? Do you prefer to figure things out on your own? Do you have to figure things out for yourself? How easily can you shift back and forth from these styles? General (Global) and Specific (Details) What chunk size of information do you prefer: the big picture or the specific details? Do you like to move from the general understanding, principle, theme to specific applications? Do you ask, What is this all about? What's the bottomline? Do you prefer to move up from specific details to general principles? Do you ask, "Can you give me a specific example?" "Where will I use this?" How much flexibility of consciousness do you have about these choices? Meta-Detailing describes the gestalt configuration that arises when you can do both with ease and choice. Matching for Similarity and Mismatching for Differences When you approach a subject, do you look for how it is like what you already know or for what stands out as different? "Isn't this the same as X?" "This doesn't seem to fit with Y." Options for Variety and Procedures for Secure Routines How do you like to adapt yourself to a learning context? Do you like to have a step-by-step procedure regarding how to go about the learning or do you want several options that gives you plenty of variety? Associated into Feelings/ Dissociated into Reflective Thoughts People study and learn using various facets of the mind-body: some do so via internally experiencing the learning (associated into the emotions), others do so via stepping back and reflectively thinking about it.
Thinkers/ Feelers How much flexibility do you have in moving from one perceptive into the other? How much balance do you have in holding both perspectives at the same time? Feeling Convinced about the Learning What leads you to feel convinced that you know something? What do you look to for evidence that a knowledge field is important and valuable? VAK System: Language System: Repetition: how many times? Convinced as Default Program Specific number of times for Convinced Never convinced: unconvinceable, always tentative, doubtful. Time element: Over what period of time Short Medium Long Matching/ Mismatching: When it matches what I Know When I can't find any exceptions Global / Specific: When it fits my Big Picture of things When all the details add up to it.
GARDNER'S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE "We all possess different kinds of minds." Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner mapped out a new model of intelligence in his books, Frames of Mind (1983), The Unschooled Mind (1991), Multiple Intelligences (1993), etc. As a result, Gardner has initiated a new movement in education as he has expanded the old understandings and definitions of "intelligence." Gardner views the mind as modular—each intelligence comes from a distinct portion of the brain that operates somewhat independently of the others. We do not just have "one intelligence," we have multiple intelligences. "Intelligence" (a nominalization) does not refer to a single and general capacity. It refers to the ability to solve problems, create products and responses that are valued and useful in a given context. "Intelligence" relates in a relative way to various domains or contexts as problem solving skills.
1) Linguistic Intelligence: Used in reading a boo, writing a paper, novel, or poem; and understanding spoken words. 2) Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: Used in solving mathematical problems, balancing a checkbook, doing a mathematical proof, and in logical reasoning. 3) Spatial Intelligence: Used in getting from one place to another, in reading a map, and in packing suitcases in the truck of a car. 4) Musical Intelligence: used in singing a song, composing a sonata, playing a trumpet, or even appreciating the structure of a piece of music. 5) Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence: used in dancing, playing basketball, running a mile, or throwing a javelin. 6) Inter-personal Intelligence: Used in relating to other people, such as when we try to understand another person's behavior, motives, or emotions. 7) Intra-personal Intelligence: Used in understanding ourselves— the basis for understanding who we are, what makes us tick, and how we can change ourselves, given the existing constrains on our abilities and interests.
The Multiple Intelligences Model Gardner utilizes much of the research and discoveries of Piaget with regard to cognitive development. He then speaks about levels and dimensions of "knowing." Know That; Propositional knowledge about the actual set of procedures involved in execution. Know How: Tacit knowledge of how to execute something Using the MI model enables us to recognize that human intellectual competence entails a set of skills in problem solving that covers a great range of application. It takes a special "intelligence" to handle music, sound, melody, space, pictorial symbols, linguistic symbols, kinesthetic activities, inter-personal, intra-psychic (sense of self), metaphors, etc.
MI, for Gardner, directs us to a much more Holistic and Systemic Approach to Learning. In The Unschooled Mind (1991), Gardner charted this out by identifying "how children think and how schools should teach" (the
sub-title of the book). "We have failed to appreciate that in nearly every student there is a five-year-old 'unschooled' mind struggling to get out and express itself The research of cognitive scientists demonstrates the surprising power and persistence of the young child's conceptions of the world. We are dealing here not with deliberate failures of education, but rather with unwitting ones." (p. 5) "The five-year-old is in many ways an energetic, imaginative, and integrating kind of learner; education should exploit the cognitive and affective powers of the five-year-old mind and keep it alive in all of us." (p. 250) So, how do children think? What is the natural thinking style of "the five-year-old mind?" In a word, children learn by playing, pretending, mimicking, getting totally and absolutely involved in and in full body contact with the object of their learnings, by engaging all of their senses in the learning, by being "apprentices" to other children and adults, etc. Therefore to Educate for Understanding, we need to restore fun, play, laughter, silliness, confusion, etc. to learning. We need to make learning a full-contact sport. "Education should try to preserve the most remarkable features of the young mind —its adventurousness, its generativity, its resourcefulness, and its flashes of flexibility, and creativity." (p. 111) "Apprenticeships work effectively. Why? They provide rich information, nearly all of which pertains in some readily recognizable way to final performances and products of demonstrable importance within a society." (p. 124) This restores context to learning. We learn in contexts and in contexts-of contexts. And this creates and allows for richer understandings. When we de-contextualize "learning" and just study mathematics, English, geography, writing, etc., we denude the learning. Gardner notes the saying, "No one flunks museum " and then comments, "School, as we know it, connotes a serious, regular, formal, deliberately de-contextualized institution." (p. 201) "What is needed is the creation of a climate in which students come naturally to link their intuitive ways of knowing with scholastic and disciplinary forms of knowing. These are needed as well as an educational milieu in which they use the resultant integrated knowledge to illuminate new problems and puzzles with which they are presented." (p. 252) Now we only have to think about ways to integrate the strengths of a museum atmosphere, the full engagement of apprenticeship, the delight and playfulness of a recess games, the spelling binding nature of storytelling, and the contextualization of modeling an the best kid on the block. Then we will have a model for accelerated learning. "Thinking" does not and cannot occur apart from interaction with real materials in a living context.
Project Learning Gardner says that "most productive human work takes place when individuals are engaged in meaning and relatively complex projects, which takes place over time, are engaging and motivational, and lead to the development of understanding and skill." (1993, p. 222) When we take on a project —a thematic area of concern and interest and study it as a "project" we tend to do our best and most thorough kind of learning. Our motivation keeps us involved, searching, open, receptive. Our recognition that it's a "project" orients us to the long-term and thereby taps into repetition, application, multi-dimension facets of learning, etc.
It's easy to turn Project Learning into an apprenticeship to a master and to use the modeling processes to support the learning. Via Project Learning we reward the learning and accelerate it by using the project for developing our sense of competency. This then reflects on our self-definitions, and sets frames for looking for things that fit the models that we build.
LEARNING AND INTELLIGENCE What is the relationship between learning and intelligence? For that matter, what is intelligence?
Alfred Binet was one of the first researchers and theorists in the field of intelligence. He suggested that intelligence has three distinct elements: 1) Direction: knowing what has to be done and how to do it. This has to do with Content, Data, Information about a field. 2) Adaptation: customizing a strategy for performing a task, then keeping track of that strategy and adapting while implementing it. This involves strategy, process, know-how, monitoring, flexibility. Monitoring our process through an experience means tracking our progress, evaluating our success, and adjusting our skills. 3) Criticism: the ability to critique your own thoughts and actions. This involves evaluation, quality controlling, testing against reality, contextual constraints, and other criteria. Intelligence, according to the Journal of Educational Psychology involves two things: 1) Learning from experience. Intelligence is not infallibility. Smart people make mistakes & do so all the time. What makes them smart is that they learn from them! We could even say that smart people make better and more interesting mistakes. Unintelligent people and people who operate in unintelligent ways don't learn from their mistakes. They over-try to not make mistakes. They hate making mistakes. They develop a bad relationship with "mistakes" as a semantic concept. So, they keep making the same mistakes over and over! They care too much about appearances (i.e., looking smart.) Actually, as we learn from our mistakes, our intelligence increases. Making mistakes is a key part of learning. Intelligence involves finding and cultivating our strengths in order to make the most of them. We play to our strengths and we overlap from them to our weaknesses. This enables us to flexibly adapt to the roles that we play. 2) Adapting to the surrounding environment. Adapting again emphasizes the importance of flexibility, how we handle the ups-and-downs in any given process. Flexibility training increases-our intelligence. Intelligence is flexibility. Intelligence is playing to, and capitalizing upon, our strengths. Conversely, rigid, stiff, and ungiving adaptations makes us dumber and dumber.
Intelligence has to do with mental-emotional processing. This means that intelligence is not set at birth, but highly malleable. Sternberg (1996) says "It can be shaped and even increased through various kinds of interventions." When we operationalize the nominalization "Intelligence" we come down to specific mental operations: representing, remembering, cognizing, valuing, believing, etc. This involves the so-called "contents" of mind: words, semantics, symbols, numbers, images, etc.
Intelligence also involves Meta-cognition. The Meta-Recognition of the limits of rationality and the "traps" of rationality. We can easily fall into specious reasoning and thinking.
The Meta-Cognition of Thinking about our Thinking and to use our learning about learning to keep refining our skills. The Meta-Awareness of the Cultural Dimension of intelligence. What's considered intelligent in one culture may be considered stupid in another. Different cultures have different conceptions of intelligence. "The language, legacies, needs, and beliefs of a society combine to form a culturally appropriate conception of intelligence." (Sternberg, p. 110) That's why no IQ tests are or even can be "culturally fair." We would all score as morons on some IQ tests. Consider mental "speed" or quickness as a behavioral component of intelligence in the West. When we say that someone is "quick" we mean that the person is intelligent. Yet in many cultures, people believe and value that "intelligent people do not rush into things." "If you tell someone that you have thought about it carefully for fifteen second and then decided to marry your current dating partner, or take a particular job, or buy a certain house, you are not likely to be commended for your intelligence. Even we in the United States know that it's not always smart to be quick or punctual. It depends on the situation." (Sternberg, p. 114) The Meta-Cognition of Monitoring one's Thoughts. The mindfulness of being able to step back and track, evaluate, and monitor one's thoughts and decisions. The Meta-Awareness of Balance. Intelligence entails knowing when to use your various intelligences. The balance between now analysis, now imagining and brainstorming, now critique, etc. Overcapitalizing on one system or intelligence creates limitations. Shift from creative, to practical, to analytical. The Meta-Cognition of Context. Various contexts create different demands on our awareness, choices, and flexibility: social, mental contexts, physical, etc.
P A R T II
LEARNING STRATEGIES STRATEGIES FOR LEARNING TASKS SPELLING: The Spelling Strategy 1) Write a word and divide it into syllables. 2) Look at the word and snapshot it as a set of pictures. Continue to make a snapshot and then close eyes and see it on the internal mental screen until you can "hold" the picture. 3) Test the picture by spelling it backwards. When you can spell a word backwards, you have a good clear picture of it. Spell the word while looking at your internal image. Now spell the word forward— as you continue to look at the picture. 4) Access a feeling of "right" about the picture. This will "confirm" and give you a good feeling about the spelling.
Troubleshooting the strategy: Start with the right state. Access a state of "visualizing". Begin by imagining something else that's easy to "see" internally, something familiar, compelling, exciting: movie star, house, dog, etc. Start small and build up. Begin with very small and simple words. Get into the habit of spelling backwards and forwards. Make it a game.
NEW VOCABULARY WORDS STRATEGY A word "works" to the extent that it elicits and evokes inside you the referent to which it refers. This means that the more we practice connecting words to pictures and sounds and referents—the more thoroughly we will have learned the words.
1) Look at the new word & get a clear and vivid representation of it. Use the spelling strategy on dealing with the word itself. 2) Link up the term with the referent. If the referent is sensory-based (something you can see, hear, feel, smell, taste) then representationally track it over on the Theater Screen of your Mind. If it is abstract, then create a diagram, picture, or sketch that alludes to the concept. For example, see a pair of scales for "justice." 3) Seeing the Referent... see, say, and feel the Term. Link the term or label with the referent... Anchor one to the other. 4) Feel good about this connection. Get a sense of rightness that confirms the linkage 5) Repeat until it sticks.
VIDEO-TRACKING AS A READING STRATEGY "Visual reading is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle the correct way. Each word is a part of the picture." (Don Blackerby, p. 33) 1) Begin by orienting yourself to the passage you are going to read. Do this by asking orientation questions: What is this material about? What is important about it? What do I want to get out of it? 2) Read a passage while tracking over from the words to your Mental Theater. As you turn the reading into a movie... notice the places where you didn't receive sufficient information to allow you to paint a complete picture. Wonder about that. This presupposes a state of openness to the text and its logic in the terms of the text. Access the perspective of Perceiving without judging.
3) Review the passage afterwards for understanding. Summarize the movie that you made. What happened? Who was involved? What was the point? 4) Challenge the passage. Using the indexing questions that ask for increasing specificity, explore the details to get an ever more precise understanding — when, where, who, how, in what way, etc.
ADVANCED READING What do you bring to the reading experience? "Recent literary theory suggests that the ability of a text to make sense in a coherent way depends less on the willed intentions of an originating author than on the creative ability of a reader.'* (James Clifford, 1988, The Predicament of Culture, p. 52) While we may train ourselves to "Lose our mind (the meta-level structures) and come to our senses" (Perls) in order to read as innocently, naively, and "objectively" as possible... we can only do in an approximate way and never absolutely. Absolutely, we forever bring things to our readings. But what? What do you bring to your readings?
"Reading with model in mind..." 1) When you first enter a field of study... lose your mind and read as innocently as possible. Let the volumes of the data rush in and enjoy the confusion. You will sort it out later and everything will become clear. Embrace the confusion, and thought-balls, and disorientation. Being by reading from a point of view sympathetic to the text's concerns and its logic. Welcome its logic no matter how much it doesn't fit your own "logic." Begin with the text as a text —"textfocused reading." Embrace the disorientation. "It's just disorientation... It just means I'm beginning to explore a new world..." Whenever we read a sentence, the encoded meaning by the author always emerges for us as a reader in a delayed fashion. We are always waiting for the next word to help make sense of the previous words. And, a later sentence can change the sense that we made of earlier words. Given this delay of meaning and sense inside of texts, we should give context and context-of-context a chance before we jump to conclusions. As we read, we bring along with us our previous experiences not only with a given author, but with hundreds of previous authors. This delay of meaning can and does cause us to contaminate what we read. It makes it difficult (if not impossible) to truly understand what an author meant. What's a reader to do? Pace the author— by entering as much as possible into the author's languaged world and accept the author's terms, grammar, logic, references, etc. for what they are— the author's conceptual world. This will significantly help us to reduce mis-readings.
2) Slowly begin to build a sense of the general terrain of the field. Get a general sense of what's there and the major pieces. Let the data swirl around. Avoid jumping to conclusions, rushing to classify, or desperately categorizing. Now begin to notice what is left out, foreclosed, or unarticulated by the text. This gives you the ability to read a text from both inside and outside its terms. This allows you to begin to engage in "reader-focused reading," or reading a text from the outside of the concerns of the text itself, frequently using a logic that is not part of the text under consideration. 3) Build your own working model of the field and begin to read with "model in mind." Articulate the model as clearly as you can, write it out, create diagrams, and then revisit them from time to time. Once you have a model in mind, then you can begin to quickly speed-read, scan, and zoom through books in that field. You now have a pre-set filter for how to read and what to sort for. Now you can shift to "what's new?" What's different? What have I not seen yet? What new twist or refinement is here?
"In our study, we asked adults to read different materials for different purposes— namely, for gist, for main ideas, for details, and for inference and application. We were particularly interested in how better and worse readers allocated their time. What we found was that better readers showed a different distribution of the time across the different purposes. Good readers spent more time reading for details and analysis, whereas poorer readers actually did not vary their reading time across the different reading purposes. They read everything the same way. Why are some people so much more productive than others? Why do some people seem to get so much done and others so little in the same amount of time? Allocation of resources is a key to the difference. Smart people allocate time in an effective manner, spending just as long as a task is worth. The non-so-smart allocate time in a more haphazard fashion, with the result that they get less done." (Sternberg, p. 166-167)
ARTICULATION OF KNOWLEDGE STRATEGY What is Expressed is Well-Impressed We learn things in order to make them ours, so as we think about expressing our learnings, this gives us yet another mechanism for learning—expression. What we express confirms and reinforces what has been impressed upon us. With this frame, we can turn "testing" into just another facet of deepening our learnings. Relaxing in this knowledge that we learn best by using our mistakes enables us to accelerate our learning. Who can you and will you share this information? How long will you have to wait to express what you're learning? As you imagine presenting this material to others, what will you emphasize?
EFFECTIVE TEST TAKING STRATEGY How to Reduce "Test" and "Performance" Anxiety To Stay Calm, Alert, Confident... 1) Recall a time when you felt some anxiety about taking a test or performing. Get back the sense of that anxiety so that you can later measure and detect its absence. If you have test anxiety, then just thinking about taking a test will initiate it. 2) Relax fully and set back and put a snapshot of the memory you just recalled up on the Mental Theater in your mind... while you munch on some popcorn and enjoy the old movie. Freeze that snapshot and make it a black-and-white picture. 3) Now float out of your body watching the snapshot and move back up to the Projection Booth so that you can look through the plexiglass and see yourself watching yourself. From here you can turn the snapshot into a movie and let it play out to the end. Play it past the anxiety and to a scene of comfort, relaxation, and playfulness. Freeze frame it there. 4) Stepping into that Comfort Scene at the end, feel it fully and completely and then in the time it takes to say "zzzzzippppp"—zoom backwards in time through all the events of the movie until you arrive at the beginning snapshot before the anxiety began. 5) Open your eyes and shake off the thoughts and feelings. Then stepping into that last scene, that Scene of Comfort and Playfulness at the end of the memory, zooooommmm backwards again to the beginning. Repeat this 5 times. Each time shaking off the state and starting again at the end and rewinding the movie to the beginning. 6) Now test yourself. Think about the anxiety memory again and see if you can get back the feelings that you had earlier. If you find this hard to do, then try really hard to feel that anxiety. POWER TEST TAKING Suppose you took a test pretending that you were the tester rather than the testee? "If I were the professor I would know every answer to every question... if only I were the professor..." Step into the perceptual position of the professor. Read, listen, think, inquire, etc. from that perceptive and model the tester fully. After all, we tend to become what (or who) we model.
ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS FOR LEARNING EXCELLENCE To accelerate and create excellence in learning, we need to have the freedom, confidence, and skill to inquire,
question, and explore. To "draw out" our own natural brilliance and the powers of the mind to construct models and maps of reality, we have to ask questions. This means that a major Learning Skill involves the communication skill of questioning. NLP speaks to the subject of communication as it presents the following guidelines and principles.
1) You never know what another person has "heard" (seen, felt, understood, etc.) until the other responds. We all operate from out of our own models of the world—constructed from our experiences. 2) The meaning of your communication involves the response you get irrespective of your intention. Whatever response your message and gestures elicit is the meaning that the other person gives to, reads, interprets, and feels. The meaning of any communication (verbal or non-verbal) does not lie in the words or gestures themselves. They are but symbols. 3) Each person in a communication exchange co-creates the "meanings." This makes each person equally response-able for the communicating. There is no "resistance," only responses. To keep getting the responses that we're currently receiving, keep doing the same thing. To get a different response, try something else. 4) We cannot not communicate. Even keeping our mouths shut communicates. 5) A positive intention drives every communication and behavior, no matter how bizarre or hurtful,. We all act according to the knowledge, experience, and understandings that we have and from a given mind-body state. We do the best we can but often this creates hurt and problems for ourselves and others. Therefore appeal to the highest intentions in people to create a non-blame communication frame. 6) To effectively connect and communicate, respect and pace the mental model people operate from. Rapport makes effective communication possible. 7) Assume total responsibility for speaking up, speaking clear, and speaking in a respectful way. Fully claim and own your right to have your own Mind, Emotions, Voice, and Responses. Claim your right to ask the stupidest questions as part of your explorations.
SLEEPING ON YOUR LEARNINGS Learning how to sleep on it. The "mind" in the sleep stage has the ability to integrate our learnings. Be careful therefore what you feed your brain prior to going to bed. Set learning, exploring, playful frames for your brain prior to retiring or napping. The mind in the state of sleep seems to work as an internal therapist, working through the issues, problems, concerns of the day. "Sleep is to learning as digesting is to a good meal." (D. Trinidad Hunt) It is a synthesizer accelerating the assimilation of our daily experience and lessons.
NOTE TAKING STRATEGIES Taking effective notes gives us a critical key to retention of information and long-term memory. This raises the strategy question: What strategy works best for taking effective notes from a class, book, or project? Not: It definitely is not writing down everything. Trying to literally transcribe what a person says is only a way to get lost in the details and contents and become "word" focused and miss the point. Meta-Essence: Taking effective notes necessitates that we listen for "the key points," for the essence of the message, for the over-riding themes. We have to move to a meta-level where we can detail "the essence" via summarizing, abstracting, and generalizing. Pictorial: use story boards (the Disney approach of sketching out his animated films), mind-mapping, diagrams, etc.
1) Access a state of stepping back from the content and details of something so that you can get a sense of the big picture. Orient yourself to the general subject, theme, purpose of the speaker. What is this about? What is the outcome or goal? What do I want to get out of this? 2) Listen for themes. Does the speaker him or herself tell you what the subject is? What themes do you keep hearing? 3) Summarize from time to time. Ask meta-level questions. What has this been about so far? Where did the speaker start at and where is he or she at now? Where does this subject seem to be going? -
4) Notice what pictures, sounds, sensations have been tracked onto your Mental Screen. Write down code words, themes, story-board scenes, etc. 5) Use some form of pictorial representation (mind-map, story boarding, diagraming) to capture the essence of the message in a memorable format.
REMEMBERING STRATEGIES First and foremost, do you want to remember? Do you have a strong reason to remember? Do you have a structure for remembering? Different contents necessitate different systems and processes for remembering. Memory pegs were developed by the ancient Greeks to assist in memory. Memory not only necessitates a structure, but attention. Lots of information goes in and out of the ears (head, brain) because we just never register it. We screened it out! Neuro-linguistic registering involves attending, focusing, snapshotting.
HOW TO GET TURNED ON ABOUT LEARNING Don Blackerby (1996) says that kids get turned on to school when they make the connection that school can help their achieve their highly valued criteria. Without any question, a person's motivation plays a crucial and gigantic role in learning and especially in accelerated learning skills. Are you absolutely turned on abut learning X? What would excite you? How would learning X improve your life?
1) Identify something that you already "learn" (absorb, pick up on) that happens easily, naturally, and spontaneously. Explore the structure of that. How do you do it? What enables you and allows you to pull that off? How do you find it important? What's the turn on? How do you not become bored? How do you find it fun? "A piece of cake?" 2) Use the same meta-level structures of beliefs, values, standards, etc. and apply to X. After you have flushed out the semantic levels and environments, transfer it to the new subject. What would it be like if you felt this, valued this, etc. regarding X? How would that change things for you?
RESEARCH STRATEGIES 1) Create your own index in books. 2) Create your own reading notation system. Never, but never read without a pencil! It's dangerous ... dangerous to your memory. 3) Develop and organize files and notebooks by themes and categories. Your external ordering will (or can) become an ordering inside your mind as well.
DEVELOPING A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT "Mind" does not just reside inside the skull. Our "intelligence" also resides in our tools, in our cultural environment, in the structures and formats that we have created and within which we live. How can this be?? It occurs because, as a symbolic class of life, we do not just keep our symbols inside our heads. Look around you. Our whole world is full of symbols. So while language obviously begins as a part of our biology and our biological heritage (as a result of our nervous system), we don't leave it there. We externalize it. We project it outward and infuse it into all aspects of our environment. The cognitive sciences, the fields of cybernetics, systems, cognitive linguistics, NLP, Neurosemantics, etc. now enables us to understand that "mind" exists as much outside the skull as within, that we have strewn "mind" abroad in the objects of our culture— from books, signs, computers, clothes, rituals, institutions, etc. "Culture" itself is the result of the world of symbols that we have created. That's why the richer and fuller our learning environment, the richer our opportunities for learning. That's why a day at the museum or a visit to a new place or an apprenticeship in a new job enables us to "learn" so quickly and thoroughly. We "pick up" and "absorb"so much from the environment itself. It's loaded with symbols and symbolic structures.
So how can we use this information? We can expose ourselves to many new and different environments and contexts. We can go exploring! We can create and engineering a learning environment at home with the tools that we need: dictionaries, reference books, music that supports learning, etc. We can engineer tools and cultural artifacts that deposits our "mind" effectively in readily available formats: notes, notebooks, paper files, computer files, artwork, etc. Where would you like to put a bit of your "mind?"
P A R T III META-STATING OUR LEARNING STATES How do you feel about your learning experiences? What do you think about your skills at learning? How much do you enjoy your learning states?
To ask these questions is to invite you into a meta-experience, to step back from your previous experience and to entertain additional and higher level thoughts and feelings about them. When you do this, you have entered into the domain of Meta-States. When you do, a wild & wonderful thing happens. You access a state and relate it to other states—you meta-state yourself. In so meta-stating yourself, you set in motion the creation of complex "states" as you use your self-reflexive consciousness to relate to yourself or to some abstract conceptual mental state. You access a state of Thoughts-Feelings (T-F) that you apply or bring to bear upon another state. You may feel upset about your anger; joyful about freedom; anger at your fear. The object of your state changes from an outside/external object to an internal/ conceptual/semantic object. You now think-and-feel about previous thoughts-and-feelings.
A Joyfully Vital Learning State Think or imagine a time when you felt really joyful, happy, delighted and when you have fully accessed that state so that you can strongly feel the joy.... bring that joy and delight and fun to bear on your vital learning state... So that you begin to feel those feelings about the learning experience. Having done that now access a state of appreciation ... thoughts and feelings of appreciation and bring it to bear on your joy about your joy about your learning.
Meta-Stating Learning: 1) Discovery: How have you already meta-stated your learning state? What is the quality and nature of your learning state? What is its texture and features? 2) Pick your magic: Meta-state your learning State. What higher level resources have you incorporated into your learning state? What resources would you like to install in it? Relaxation Alertness Questioning Appreciation Curiosity Playfulness... Does this state about learning enable you to automatically install new learnings? Experimenting, exploring Ferociousness, Passion, Going for It! Future-pacing, Thinking in terms of How to Implement Deciding ("I always take immediate action on new learnings that I value so that I get it into my neurology.")
3) Gestalting your learning excellence states. Gestalting refers to creating something that is more than the sum of the parts, creating a larger configuration using systemic processes. When we have an inter-active system (i.e. our mind-body neuro-linguistics) 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 levelupon-level in order for us to check the ecological value of a particular form of meta-stating. 4) The Design Question: Embedding Levels In Engineering New Gestalts. For many, 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 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? Exercise: Pair off and brainstorm for 5 minutes about how you want to refine and texture your Learning Gestalt. What resourceful states do you want to bring to bear upon your basic learning state? Sequence these states-upon-states and then write it as a spell. 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? How would you like to qualify and texture your learning state?
In a meta-state structure, we have the embedding of state within state, so that each higher state sets a frame and establishes a conceptual context. This both explains the power and pervasiveness of Meta-States, it also identifies the centrality of these formats. They play a truly critical role in human experiencing. When you use and work with the embedding structure of meta-level states, you: Create Conceptual Contexts— Conceptual States, your Semantic Paradigms. Establish conscious and unconscious frames-of reference.
Build up beliefs and belief systems, values and hierarchy of values, decisions, and domains of understanding. Establish higher level frameworks of "personality" —the sense of Identity and of Vision and Destiny. Formulate presuppositions about life, self, others, the world, etc. Construct your Reality Strategy — defining what you view as "real," "possible," "permissible," etc. Describe the range of resources and solutions that we deem feasible.
Given this crucial role of Meta-States regarding our Learning Excellence, consider these beginning Self-Exploration Questions: What are your Meta-States about Learning that you never leave home without? What meta-frames currently govern your Learning experiences? What higher level executive states organize how you orient yourself to learning? 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 learning? 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 Basic Meta-State Model UP the Levels: Meta-States operate as your Executive Programs for Being, Functioning, Seeing, etc. They exist as higher levels of References & Information & therefore govern our experiences as attractors in a self-organizing system.
It is all Mapping! Reflexivity: How Thought-Emotion reflect back onto itself to then set a higher frame-of-reference
The Looping: feedback loops of output/ input Creating layers upon layers of frames
Frames:
All Thoughts-Feelings (T-F) occur in some frame-of-reference. Thus we have the primary frame of representation, the meta-level frame, and ongoing Conceptual Frames.
In Meta-States and meta-stating, w e work methodically with consciousness, esp. with self-reflexive consciousness in order to learn how to utilize the spiralling of mind as we react to our reactions, & to feed back into our awareness that give us more choice, grace, elegance, and resourcefulness.
THE BASIC META-STATING PATTERN 1) ACCESS Access a Resource State that you want to bear on your Primary State (i.e. joy, pleasure, relaxation, love, confidence, etc.)
2) ANALYZE Check the Ecology of this construction. Do you believe it will serve you well? How will it enhance your life? What problems could it cause?
3) AMPLIFY & ANCHOR Intensify the kinesthetics of the resource state and establish an anchor for it. Do it until it radiates your neurology.
4) APPLY Bring the resource to bear on the PS. (Meta-level anchoring) Think of the primary state, thought, stimuli, etc. in terms of through the thinking-feeling of, the resource. Or embed a PS into the higher Resourceful State. 5) APPROPRIATE and ACTIVATE Future Pace into the days and weeks to come. Imagine this frame as a way of being in the world.
META-STATING EFFECTS What kinds of things happen when we meta-state ourselves and others? What kind of responses, consequences can we create by using various meta-stating patterns? In design engineering of human states and meta-states, we need to take into account the various interface effects of state-upon-state. (1) Reduce Painfully States. Some meta-states will reduce the primary state: Calm about anger. Playfully belligerent. Doubt about doubt Pleasant tension (2) Intensify Or Magnify States. Some meta-states will amplify and turn up the primary state: Worry about worry. Loving learning. Unruffled resolution. Anxious about anxiety (hyper-anxiety). Love love. Calm about calm. Belligerent Playfulness. Passionate about learning. Compulsive @ Being Compulsive. Appreciate appreciation. Boundless Joy. (3) Exaggerate & Distort States. This increases the intensity factor. Generally, when we bring a negative state of T-F to bear on another PS, we turn our psychic energies against ourselves. Anger about anger. Defiant Courage. Love hatred of— Fear about fear. Hesitating to hesitate (talk non-fluently) creates stuttering. Sadness about sadness (depression). Mistrust of mistrust (PS: accurate). (4) Negate or Neutralize a State. (Collapse a Level). In doubt about my doubt, I usually feel more sure. Resist your Resistance. Flexible Compusliveness. In procrastinating my procrastination, I take action and put off the putting off. Mistrust of Mistrust (PS: distorted, inaccurate). Ashamed of Shame. Impervious to Confusion (5) Interrupt States. It so jars and shifts the first state, it totally interrupts it. It can arrest the psycho-logic:. Humorous about serious. Intentionally panicking. Anxious about calmness. Calmness about anxiety (6) Confuse States. By getting various thoughts-feelings to collide and "fuse" "with" each other in ways that we do not comprehend. Ridiculous about Serious. (7) Contradict at Different Levels to Create Paradox. By shifting experience to a higher and different level; it explains powerful techniques as "paradoxical intention" Watzlawick (1984): "Kant recognized that every error of this kind [map/territory confusion error] consists in our taking the way we determine, divide, or deduce concepts for qualities of the things in and of themselves" (215). Bateson (1972) defined paradox as a contradiction in conclusions that one correctly argued from consistent premises. The "Be spontaneous now!" paradox. 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." Title of book: "This Book Needs No Title." (Raymond M. Smallya, 1980). (8) Dissociate Person from Strong Feelings. Whenever we dissociate from one state, we associate to another. We're never state-less! Sometimes in meta-stating, we experience a sense of "dissociation" in the sense of feeling not-in-ourbody, merely spectating, apart, strange, etc. If we dissociate dramatically enough, it may result in amnesia (switching states rapidly and without reference frequently produces amnesia and other trance phenomena). Sense of pain being over there. Spectating about anxiety. Observing old trauma. Ecology-checking value of resentment. Have the ringing in your ears but tune it down until you don't quite hear it anymore (9) Seed A New Process/ Create Response Potential. Can get us to initiate the first step of a new experience, create a new emergent experience: Courage to have courage. Playful uncertainty. Learning how to learn. Gentle anger. Willing to become willing. (10) Grab & Focus Attention/ Swish mind to provoke thoughtfulness in a different direction. As such it can arrest attention, overload consciousness, stimulate new thinking, and question axioms, beliefs, reasoning, memory, etc. (hence deframe). Calm about Anger. Appreciative about Anger. Lovingly Gentle about Anger. Resistance of Resistance. (11) Entrance & Hypnotize. Create 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 meta-stating that shifts logical types and sets up double-binds as initiating trance. 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) Gestalt Experiences to generate Gestalt States & Phenomena. States-about-states frequently generates gestalt experiences so that something new emerges from the process that we cannot explain as a summation of the parts, it partakes of a systemic and non-additivity quality. Suppress Excitement Anxiety. Worry @ what X means Existential Concern. We experience our experiences Self-Awareness, Consciousness. (13) Jar Consciousness to Create 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 our fancy, delights our consciousness, surprises, amazes, shocks, etc. (14) Qualify, Temper, and Add Texture to States & Experiences. The higher level state (i.e. the Meta-State) qualifies the lower level experience inasmuch as it sets the frame for the primary experience. Joyful learning. An accomplished liar. Devious negotiation. Boring learning. A charming lie. Ruthless compassion. Cleverly courageous. Courageously Clever. Unspeakable Peace. Flexible compulsiveness. Strict Standards. (15) Solidify a State or Level. To set up a frame that will solidify, and make permanent and solid the underlying experience. Therefore an installation pattern. Believe X; Value X; Take pride in X. Belief in your belief about X. Pride of depression. Proud of jealousy. Identify with X (make it your identity). (16) Loosen States, Frames, and Realities: Doubt X; Question X; Be playful about X.
Outframing: 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, we outframe. When meta-stating from within, we Upframe. Outframing creates an entirely new frame of reference. It enables us to use a different kind of thinking than what created the first frame. Outframing, as a meta-move, enables us 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 Bateson's Principle (1972) that "The meta-levels always modulates the lower levels" In outframing, we 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 us to radically alter our experience.
META-STATING LEARNING ATTRACTORS AS A SELF-ORGANIZING NEURO-SEMANTIC SYSTEM
"Self-organization theory is a branch of systems theory that relates to the process of order formation in complex dynamic systems. Paradoxically, it arose from the study of chaos. Scientists studying chaos (the absence of order) noticed that when enough complexly interacting elements were brought together, rather than create chaos, order seemed to 'spontaneously' form as a result of the interaction. 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 mapping, a focal point in a phenomenon around which the rest of our perceptions become organized. In representational and conceptual mapping, the content of some T-F that now pulls on other T-F and experience to support it. Hence, the program that energizes the human neuro-linguistic system. How does an Attractor work? It configures the images (representations) inside of a frame so that it attracts a certain way of seeing, hearing, feeling, languaging, or responding. It structures the foregrounding & backgrounding of a person's perceptions or Meta-Programs. It organizes our computations which we use as we construct our Model of the World —our belief formulas (CE, Ceq., Id. Structures) Once we have set an Attractor —it magnetizes and organizes pieces of data so that it forms to fit the ideas, beliefs, values, etc. in the Frame. Once installed, it governs, informs & modulates experiences —as a kind of Meta-Filter, a self-fulfilling prophecy. It operates by feedback loops. It generates our "resonant signature" for how we move through the world & operate upon it. What are you Attracted To? What functions as an Attractor in Your World? List the ideas, beliefs, understandings, values, experiences, references, etc. that tends to keep pulling on you. What drives them? What empowers them? Have you ever had an Attractor but it has become non-operational? What? How has it been decommissioned? What destablized the attractor? How did it become destablized?
PART IV META-STATING PATTERNS FOR BECOMING A FEROCIOUS LEARNER The State of Learning absorbing, taking in, being in sensory awareness, registering and representing effectively the content of a field, etc. is one thing the Meta-States of Learning, however, describes a very different phenomenon. In the meta-states of learning, we have qualified, textured, and modified the learning state with many other resources. Then, from this Gestalt Learning States emerge more than the sum of the parts, the end result of a system process. The following Meta-State Patterns offers you numerous ways to meta-state or set the frame on your learning experience so that you can access and commission your Executive States. As you do this, it will provide you the ability to establish and play newer and more powerful frame games for your learning.
1) STOPPING T H E "WORLD" TO DEVELOP INTENSE SENSORY A W A R E N E S S "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.
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 synesthesias. This does not refer to merely an "empty" observing state. Don't bring emptiness to bear on this, but rather simple, 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 seeseeing, 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."
2) META-STATING PERCEPTUAL POSITIONS Developing Wisdom & Flexibility of Consciousness Preparation for the Pattern We will do this exercise in groups of 3 persons. By design we will access each of the Perceptual Positions st
1 . Self 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. 2 . Other 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. 3 . Meta To step back, gain a sense of distance, observe, witness, feel neutral, and appreciate both positions fully. 4 . System To understand the contexts (cultural, linguistic, business, family, etc.) that influence all of the larger systems and contexts of our world. nd
rd
th
The Pattern: 1) Begin in the Self Position (1 ) express something that you feel or recognize as a resource. "What do you know about yourself that serves you as a valuable resource?" st
nd
2) Go to the Other Position (2 ). Look at the you of the First Position (Step 2) and the resource accessed there and do so from the Other Position. Express what you now see, hear and feel using the language of the Second Perceptual Position. "What do you (as other) know about X as a resource?"
3) Go to the Meta Position (3 ). Again, express the resource of the First Position and then the insights, learnings, and feelings of the Second Position seeing the First Position and do so from the Observer or Witness Position. "What resources does he (or she) have?" What do you think and feel about this? rd
4) Repeat as you go to the Systems Position (4 ). "What do you know, understand, think, feel, etc. as you look at the larger systems of that you with those resources?" th
Exercise: Think about a time when you expressed something in a strong, powerful, and persuasive way and which worked out in a way mat really delighted you and the other person.
3) META-DETAILING L E A R N I N G Design: To combine and synthesize both inductive & deductive thinking, perceiving the whole and the specific details. We can think in global ways & specifically. We can zoom in on a picture & zoom out. We can foreground a sound or sensation and background others. We can chunk up to handle larger units of information and to get a larger perspective as well as chunking down to very small and even tiny bits. We can use the 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. Putting these facets together, we facilitate a new synthesis and distinction. Synergistically a new gestalt emerges, meta-detailing. The Heart & Essence of Genius lies in the Meta-Details What can a person with expertise and excellence in a particular field do that the regular person typically does not do? What distinguishes a genius from the lay person? Answer: 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, the gestalt meta-state of meta-detailing enables us to stay focused, directed, insightful, and persistent. It enriches our abilities to make decisions. Having a higher sense of how various details play into the larger picture enables us to operate from an almost intuitive "knowing" about what is truly important and what is not. Meta-Detailing saves us from "living in the clouds " with great plans and tremendous visions, but without the practical knowledge involved in how to take care of the details. Visionaries suffer from this one. They can develop "a bad relationship" to details. The person who says, "I'm a global person; I don't do details." will also be a person who probably will not develop expertise and excellence in their field. Meta-Detailing Supports Patience and Persistence In the domain of Wealth Building, Blotnick (1980) noticed how a poor relationship to details undermines a person's ability to succeed. Such an attitude typically arises from some other attitudes and states (impatience, greediness, dislike of work, etc.) that further undermine success. "His intense desire to be a wealthy executive made him scornful of small details of any sort. 'Why should I have to deal with this sort of crap?' he asked exasperatedly. Unfortunately, petty details are an essential and abundant part of every aspect of business. "Their existence therefore isn't the real issue. Your response to them is. You can make a mountain out of any molehill, if you want to. And what we discovered is that someone is likely to do precisely that if they don't happen to like their job. In fact, the more they disliked it, the more resentful they are likely to be about its petty details. To put it more positively: people who enjoy their work usually didn't notice the many details connected with each task they had to attend to." (p. 60) By way of contrast, he spoke about some of the meta-frames of values, beliefs, understandings, ideas, decisions, etc. that would enable and enrich the details. "It gave Rita enormous satisfaction to do her job well. In a business in which even minor errors may look major to customers, Rita enjoyed seeing quality work produced. 'We don't always do it
flawlessly,' she said, but she was indeed prepared to try." (Blotnick, p. 61) His conclusion was 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 accidentally located that Golden Mean were those who profoundly enjoyed doing their work. Their absorption in it also allowed time to pass far more quickly than it did for others." (p. 68) The "META" of Meta-Detailing "The devil," it is said, "is in the details." In wealth building, the details will involve specifics about finances, book keeping, quality control over product and services, dealing effectively with customer satisfaction, employees, investments, real estate, taxes, etc. In sales, the details will involve specifics about product knowledge of features and benefits, one's market, prospect profiles, communication and negotiation skills, closing, cold calling, making lots of contacts, relationship skills, etc. In health and fitness, the details will involve specifics about food, calories, exercise, health, etc. But what higher level principles empower us for handling the details? What higher level beliefs, concepts, visions, outcomes, etc. will equip and prepare us so that we feel motivated to take care of the details? What meta-frame of reference to you need? What meta-states for your attitude do. you need to build? From Blotnick to Thomas Stanley & William Danko (1996, The Millionaire Next Door) and almost everybody in the field of wealth building, the meta-level state of excellence lies in becoming passionate and absorbed in your field. "What kind of businesses do millionaires own? All kinds. You can't predict if someone is a millionaire by the type of business. After 20 years of studying millionaires, we have concluded that the character of the business owner is more important in predicting his level of wealth than the classification of his business." (Stanley & Danko, p. 228, emphasis added) "A missing ingredient, a key one which operates so quietly it had previously been overlooked, had to be present if someone was ever to become rich: they had to find their work absorbing. Involving. Enthralling." (Blotnick, p. 6, italics added) "Enjoying work: doesn't mean thrilled to death every minute. If the quantity of consciousness happiness people experienced and the amount of visible joy they demonstrated were the criteria, we'd conclude that no one enjoys the work they do. We adopted another approach: how absorbing people found their work. (Blotnick, p. 37) *
META-DETAILING L E A R N I N G Get a Principle so that you can then operate from an agenda. What are you studying? What do you seek to learn? Why?
The Pattern: 1) Identify 3 to 5 Learning Principles that govern success, excellence, expertise or genius in your field of interest What do the people who learn quickly, rapidly, thoroughly, expertly, etc. know that gives them an edge? What principles, concepts, understandings enrich and enhance their performances? 2) Express 1 of these Principles fully. Write it out in full until you have a clear expression of it. Use the Language Precision model (the Meta-Model) to make it crystal clear. Rewrite it until you can describe the principle with both clarity and succinctness. Rewrite again until the clear and succinct statement feels totally compelling to you.
3) Step into the state of the principle. As you read and feel the principle that you've clarified, make succinct and compelling, see, hear and feel it. Experience it fully in the context of your work. Identify one specific behavior that corresponds to this principle—that enables you to express the principle through that behavior. The behavior would fit and be congruent with the principle. Repeat until you see-hear-feel 5 to 10 details that give flesh-and-blood to the principle.
4) Step into the details fully and as you experience them, go meta to the Principle. From within your vivid imagery of the detailing, shift upward to the governing principle that drives and organizes this detail. Open your eyes and ears to experience your world from the meta-level of the detailing. Repeat several times. 5) Future pace.
"LEARNING" AS META-DETAILING While most of us can get really turned on about some grand ideas, truths, and goals, life is mostly comprised of details. So is "learning." You may absolutely love some particular area of study—and yet find it hard to get yourself to get down to the nitty gritty of reading a book, taking notes, outlining, writing a paper, typing it, proofing, preparing it for publication, etc. So much of learning, school, college, graduate work, etc. involves very specific and sometimes "boring" tasks that you're rather not. These details may put you off. You may procrastinate about them and eventually get some negative emotional states and beliefs attached to them. Yet if you develop a bad attitude or relationship to details, you only undermine your own effectiveness as you contaminate everything you do with that negativity. Going Meta to Detail: Here, using the meta-level outcome, passion, and perspective can get you through the daily grind of the details. Refresh your vision... move up the levels of mind, access the highest states, and then step into them fully and completely as you then Mind-Muscle them back down the levels and stick them into your future. From there establish some basic detailing habits so that you can eventually turn over the details to the part of your mind that can carry out rote procedures without a lot of thought. Many with the symptoms of ADD: impulsiveness, distractibility disorganization, forgetfulness, procrastination, etc., are actually over-whelming themselves. They simply have not learned how to break down a subject or task into smaller component pieces while retaining the general idea. They get lost in details or they overwhelm themselves with the global perspective. "The most common intervention I use on the lack of organization is to teach them the skill of 'chunk down.' Because of the way their mind has worked in the past, they never thought it possible to take a general concept or idea and hold it steady in the mind while they broke it down into steps or parts. Since the primary skill or organization is to take complex tasks and break them down into smaller tasks or steps and prioritize them, the students with ADD symptoms have never before learned this basic skills. Now that they know how to stabilize ideas in their minds, this skill is a natural next step to learn." (Blackerby, p. 183)
4) ACCELERATING LEARNING VIA A BIG "WHY" Learning Excellence necessitates "Thought Ball Management." If we do not or cannot control and manage the "thought balls" that are forever bouncing in and out of our consciousness, we won't be able to make good connections (linkages between things) or representationally track over to our Mental Theater. William James talked about consciousness operating as if a "stream." The stream of attention seems to sweep us one way and then another. The way to navigate this stream then is with intention. We will therefore want to use the Intention—Attention Distinction of "mind" in order to learn how to flow with the Awareness Stream and not let thought balls disrupt us. We have a two-layered nature to our thoughts: We have intention and attention (Rollo May, 1969, Love & Will).
Within every "thought" we have two strands of thought We have our Attentions —the things immediately on our mind: Primary Level and we have our Intentions— the things in the back of our mind: Meta-Levels
In thinking we always have thoughts in the back of our mind about the thought we have in the front of our mind. The thinking that involves thoughts in the back of the mind occur at a higher level than the thoughts in front of us. Attention is at the Primary Level; Intention occurs at the meta-levels. This structure of thought explains the layered thoughts behind or above our thoughts. The Structuring of Thought: 1) At the Primary Level: every thought has an attentional content — a focus. We represent something. We have something "on our mind." Our focal attention processes something. 2) At the Meta-Levels, every thought has an intentional drive — a teleological outcome (Intentionality) A motivation, a reason, an agenda, something that we intend. This means that our thought-feeling states move forward by two dynamics (two psychic powers): intention and attention. Attention directs us to the PS Content; Intention directs us to the meta-level frame and desired outcome—or Positive Intention behind it. We have one stream of consciousness that has two dimensions within it. We experience the attention as overt and the intention as covert. The Domination of Attention or Intention: When predominates? If attention dominates— then we experience mind as jumping here and there and following whatever stimuli grab it. If Intention dominates, then we order our attention and make it do service to our intentions. And this is one secret for accelerated learning, namely, aligning with our attentions with our Intentions. Doing so de-energizes the attentions. To do this, we have to go higher and set a strong and powerful intention that will serve us well. We can then give ourselves permission to live in the new attention, to get out of our Comfort Zone, and to let the new intention become a higher level attractor. As we do this, we give it opportunity to become a self-organizing attractor in your mind-body system. Intend your new attention, because, after all,
META-STATING AN INTENTIONAL STANCE "The most successful people know what they want and why they want it." (David Plotkin)
1) Identify a Work-Related Activity that you perform that's important in your life. 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? Good, let's use that activity as a reference point to explore your higher intentions. 2) How is that Activity Important to you ? I take it that that activity is significant, right? How is it significant? How is it valuable? Meaningful? In what way? What else is important about that? How many other answers can you identify about this activity? 3) Move up the Meta-Levels.. One at a Time, So this activity is important to you because of these things. And how is this important to you? What's important by having mis? What important about that outcome? And what's even more important than that? And when you get that fully and completely and in just the way you want it, what's even more important? [Continue this until you flush out and detect all of the higher values.] 4) Step into the higher Value States of Importance so that you feel them fully. That' must be important to you? [Yes.] So just welcome in the good feelings that these meanings and significances invite, and just be with those higher level feelings for a bit. Do you like that? [Yes.] Let those feelings grow and intensify as you recognize that this is your highest Intentional Stance, this is what you are all about... isn't it? Enjoy this awareness. 5) Bring the Higher States/Frames of Mind down and out Having these higher feelings in mind... fully... imagine this intentional stance getting into your eyes, into your body, into your way of being in the world and imagine moving out into life tomorrow with them... and as you do... and as you engage in that work-related activity mat's part of your life, health, wealth building plan, etc., notice how the higher frames transforms it... And take all of this into tomorrow and into all of your tomorrows... 6) Commission Your Executive mind to take ownership of this. There's a part of your mind that makes decisions, that chooses the pathway that you want to go, will that highest executive part of your mind take full responsibility to "be of this mind" about this activity and to remind you to see the world this way? Imagine using this as the basis of your inner life, your way of being in the world. Do you like that? 7) Invite other Resources. Would you like to bring any other resource to this intentional stance? Would playfulness enrich it? Persistent? Passion? Etc.
5) ACCESSING Y O U R L E A R N I N G GENIUS "Genius" involves a totally committed and passionate state in which you become so totally engaged that the world goes away, your sense of self goes away, time vanishes, and your focus becomes highly intentional with a laser beam focus. Many of the ideas built into the following pattern came from John Grinder and Judith DeLozier's book, Turtles all the Way Down; Prerequisites For Personal Genius (1987). They explored the use of logical levels to protect and govern a focused commitment state in that work to use a higher level to govern first-level attentions. In the following pattern, we will access a current "genius" state of total engagement and use that as a template for building up a new genius state. Finding and Experiencing a Focus State for a Template of How You Do it 1) Access a state of Innocent Witnessing and/or Observing. I want you to access a pure and discreet state of "just observing." Step into this position and just notice some of the colors and sounds, etc. of this room. Have you ever stepped back from something and just observed things? Relax all of your muscles and just observe.
2) Identify a fully committed state wherein you can "get lost" in the State Take a moment to think back over your history and, has there ever been a time when you were in a committed state? What was that like? Have you ever been committed to something else? Find a specific state that you have fairly easy access to and which you can elicit fully. Choose a state that comes as close to a full 100% commitment as possible. 3) Access the Focus State fully What do you call this commitment state? As you recall a time when you were really into this state, step into it fully, seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you felt. Just be there fully and completely. Describe it until you refresh it and it amplifies. When you have fully accessed this state to a level of 8 or 9 on a scale of 10, nod to let me know or say so. 4) Practice Shifting in and out of the State to develop Impeccable State Shifting In just a moment I want you to step out of these state folly 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 tilings 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 "cage" or Boundaries of your "demon" or genius state? Good. Then just inside your mind, answer the following questions: When should you have this state? When should you not? Where should you have this state? Where not? How should you? In what way, with what style? How should you not? In what context or contexts? In what contexts should you not? Why should you? Your reasons, agendas, motivations? Why should you not? According to what other criteria and qualities? Any other considerations that you would like to determine the boundaries of this genius state?
With whom? With whom not? For what significance or meaning? What meanings to not give it? What other characteristics & 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.?
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 1) Access the new desired focus state What focused state would you like to build? What do you call it? Have you ever had a little bit of it? Good. Access that bit seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you felt. Go there and be with it fully. Amplify. Use your imagination and the "What If..:" Frame to assist. 2) Access a simple state of Just Observing Step in and out of this new genius state, practicing a clean state shift, in order to make the distinctions that allow you know how to have it upon cue. 3) Use your Executive Mind to further develop the genius state Re-access the state and then rise up in your mind to the part of your mind that makes decisions and answer the following questions. Why should you have this state? How would it be valuable to you? Why should you? Your reasons, agendas, motivations? Why should you not? How should you? In what way, with what style? How should you not? When should you have this state? When should you not? Where should you have this state? Where not? In what context or contexts? In what contexts should you not? According to what other criteria and qualities? Any other considerations that you would like to determine the boundaries of this genius state? With whom? With whom not? For what significance or meaning? What meanings to not give it? What other characteristics & 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.? 5) Commission the Executive Meta-State and Future Pace Are you willing to take full responsibility for setting these parameters for this commitment state so that this person can fully experience this commitment state? [Yes!] Are you willing to take responsibility for letting this person fully experience this intense and passionate state? For knowing the limits and boundaries, when to have it and when not, how to have it and how not, will you signal X when to step out? As you imagine moving out into your future, are you fully aligned with this? Any objections?
About the "Accessing Personal Genius" Pattern The qualities of a "genius" state involve focus, clarity, commitment, engagement, lost in the moment, at one's best with all of one's resources available, "in the zone," experiencing "flow," etc. Because such states are very focused, we need to protect them so that we don't contaminate them, dilute them, or reduce them. Finding our own template for how we get lost in a state enables us to recognize that personal genius is fully possible for you. Stepping in and out of the genius state allows us to find the differences that make a difference and to use those distinctions for creating ecological boundaries. These distinctions inform our neurology for when and where to cue the state. By stepping cleanly out of the state, and shifting the focus of our mind and body system, we learn to separate from this intense Flow state so that we can leave it cleanly behind. Do this repeatedly until you can do so impeccably... with no residue left over. Practicing interrupting further enables us to learn to trust ourselves, to trust that we will not lose the state, to trust that we can always get it back. This then changes our relationship to the experience and to the idea of "interruption." The pattern involves Inviting a person to be interrupted and handle it effectively by stepping out of state, handling the interruption, and then matter-of-factly stepping back into state. We begin by practicing responding to an interruption and then take charge of it by interrupting ourselves so that we step out of state with a minimum overlap, and then back into the state in a moment's notice. The brain/ nervous system will learn this pattern quickly and achieve the desire level of competency of state shifting. When the person carries over no mental or emotional residue from one state to the other, but cleanly separates and breaks between them and can then step back in and re-access that state with a strong intensity, you have achieved the goal of this exercise.
6) MIND-TO-MUSCLE PATTERN Transforming Learning into Muscle-Memory The design of this meta-stating pattern is to turn highly informative, insightful, and valued principles into neurological patterns. We do this when we 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 one's muscles. Yet by practicing and training, the learnings become incorporated into the very fabric of the muscles themselves. We then lose conscious awareness of the learnings as we let the muscles run the program. At that point, we have translated 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. We begin with a principle—a concept, understanding, awareness, belief, etc., and then we translate it into muscle. I have found this especially true in our modeling projects regarding resilience, leadership, wealth building, selling excellence, learning, etc. This pattern creates transformation by moving up and down the various levels of mind so that we map from our understandings about something from the lowest descriptive levels to the highest conceptual levels and back down again.
1) Identify a Principle (concept, understanding) you want incorporated into your muscles. What concept or principle do you want to put into your neurology? Describe your conceptual understanding. What do you know or understand or believe about this that you want to set as a frame in your mind? State it in a clear, succinct, and compelling way. Okay, now state it by finishing the statement, "I understand..." 2) Describe the Principle as a Belief. Would you like to believe that? If you really, really believed that, would that make a big difference in your life? State the concept by putting it as a belief. Say, believe..." Now state it as if you really did believe it. Notice what you're feeling as you say that again. 3) Reformat the Belief as a Decision. 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? State it as a decision. Restate the belief by saying, "I will.." "I want... it is time to..." "From this day forward I will.... because I believe... " 4) Rephrase the Belief and Decision as an emotional State or Experience. State the belief decision again noticing what 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. Put your feelings into words: "I feel... I experience... because I will... because I believe..." 5) Turn the Emotions Into Actions to Expression the belief/decision. "The one thing that I will do today as an expression of these feelings, to make this belief decision real is..." And what one thing will you do tomorrow? And the day after that?
6) Step into the Action and Let the higher levels of your mind Spiral As you fully imagine carrying out that one thing you will do today... seeing, hearing and feeling it you are doing this because you believe what? Because you've decided what? Because you feel what? And you will do what other thing? Because you understand what? Because you feel what? Because you've decided what? Because you believe what? And what other thing will you do? Mind-to-Muscle for Intuitive Understanding
"A simple criterion for effective education is just this—an education that yields greater understanding in students. The ways of acquiring skills are simply an amalgam of sensorimotor and symbolic knowledge; the competent individual learns readily how to commute back and forth between these ways of knowing and how to integrate them in order to execute the task at hand." (Gardner, 1991, p. 146) "Understanding is a complex process that is not well understood. Understanding does not and cannot occur unless the relations among different notations and representations come to be appreciated, and unless these formal expressions can be mapped onto more intuitive forms of knowing. A genuine understanding probably involves some kind of direct confrontation of those habits of the mind that tend to get in the way of a thoroughgoing understanding." (p. 179)
7) META-STATING Y O U R DECISIVE EXECUTIVE
Design: To find, identify, empower, and commission that higher part of you that can (and does) turn your central self in decisions and 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. 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. Validate: There's a part of you— a part of your mind—that makes decisions, that made that decision... 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. Explore: How do you know to respond decisively? What allows you? 3) With yet another Meta-Move, run an ecology check on the Quality of Decisions this part has made. 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 Bring thoughts-and-feelings of Ownership to this Manager. 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...
8) META-STATING FEEDBACK We all need feedback. We also need good, accurate, useful, and reflective feedback that truly assists us in tuning up our skills and getting new patterns down.
In Giving High Quality Feedback to Others: 1) Identify the Outcome of the Feedback. What is the outcome, design, or objective of a given exercise?
2) Obtain Behavior Feedback. This avoids personalizing and/or interpreting any feedback as having anything to do with our Identity, translate all feedback into specific behaviors. Make sure you have this in See, Hear, Feel (VAK) terms. Making the feedback sensory based, prevents evaluations and judgments. 3) Keep Feedback Tentative and Seek Validation. Hear the feedback as tentative even if the person didn't code it as such. 4) Inquire about the Timeliness of the Feedback.
In Receiving High Quality Feedback 1) 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) 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) Specific the qualities, traits, and resources that you would like to meta-state "feedback" with. For example: Patience — Acceptance — Appreciation — Positive Intention — Commitment to yourself, your learning, your budding genius, etc. 4) Use the basic Meta-Stating Pattern (the 5 A's) to set the frames that will best Texture your Learning State regarding Feedback 5) Future Pace.
9) BECOMING A FEROCIOUS LEARNER Defining Yourself as a Ferocious Learner: adding "learning" to your self-definition. Swishing to the You as an Effective Learner
Swishing to a New Self Frame: Brains go places. Therefore be sure to Swish them to go into the new direction that enhances your learning. Tell your brain "where to go" by giving it explicit instructions. Design: When your brain goes to problematic & limiting places, use this pattern to identify the current triggers that already swish your brain. Then change the pathway. This will re-directionalize your 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. The Swish Pattern 1) Develop a full representation of the triggering picture (or sound, sensation, word). The triggering representation sets off the unresourceful feeling, stuckness, or problematic behavior. The Trigger Representation answers the question, "What do you see, hear, feel just before you engage in unwanted behaviors?" Code this triggering picture as if in it associatedly. This makes the triggering representation a Primary State. 2) Develop a Compelling Desired Self Image. Imagine the You for whom that stimulus or trigger would no longer offer any problem. Relax and allow yourself to design engineer a picture of yourself having all of the qualities and attributes necessary to handle the trigger with ease, comfort, skill, elegance, and power. See the You for whom the triggering event is no problem. See this picture of the Desired Self as out there—attractive, compelling, and pulling on you. This step takes you meta to a higher level representation that you then 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 become that higher level self. Fully represent the You that you'll be when you no longer have that old habit. Invent the ever-becoming more resourceful You.
3) Check for objections. 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. Create a linkage between the representations so that the cue always leads to the resourceful picture. 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 3dimensional as the driving variables. Whatever variables drive, use them. Start with the trigger picture big and bright (or close, or whatever). Have the person see it immediately in front of the person. 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. Always link by starting with the primary state trigger image and then swish in the attractive image of the resourceful You. Keep editing your Representational Screen in your Primary State so that you hide, as it were, 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? 5) And now... Swish! As the trigger image gets smaller and darker, you can notice that the future self image simultaneously grows bigger and brighter until it fills the whole screen. Do this very, very quickly. Since brains learn quickly, do this in just a couple seconds. Do it as fast as it takes to say, "Swwiissshhhhh." After you do this, shake your head and clear that internal representational screen. 6) Swish repeatedly 5 or 6 times. Not only does the brain learn by going places and do so quickly, but also doing so repeatedly. 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 & 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!
10) META-STATING N E W BELIEF FRAMES In meta-stating, we make a conceptual move up the levels of mind and set a new reference point, frame of reference, or even frame of mind. At these meta-levels we construct "beliefs" or confirmed thoughts about things. At this level we can set Accelerated Learning Beliefs as new and enhancing frames for learning that will further accelerate our progress. As you think about your learning from an empowering belief standpoint, what empowering beliefs would you like to add to your frames? What do the experts in learning think and believe?
Limiting and Toxic Beliefs that Sabotage Accelerated Learning Skills and States "I can't learn that." "I'm just no good with numbers (language, art, etc.)." "I'm too slow to learn that." "I just get too angry and frustrated with myself." "Losers and loners are always studying and don't have any friends." "If you get good grades, you'll be a loner and kids won't want to be around you." "I can't control my thoughts." "My thoughts intrude and distract and there's nothing I can do about it." "I'm afraid that I'm different and inadequate compared to others."
11) META-NO-ING & META-YES-ING Belief C h a n g e P a t t e r n Once you have discovered some limiting beliefs that you want to get out of your head & 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: Ecology for this pattern has to occur before we begin the pattern. Make sure you have a top-notch idea that you want to confirm. What enhancing & 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? How to Play with this Pattern: 1) Get "NO." Access a good strong "No!" Think of something that every fiber in your body can say "No!" to in a way that is fully congruent. Say that "No!" again and again until you notice and snapshot it on the inside. Anchor your "No!" with your hand gestures. Feel it. Hear your voice of "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 Limiting Belief. Feeling all of this powerful "No!", even "Hell No!" feel this fully as you think about that stupid, useless, limiting belief... now. And you can keep on saying No! to that limiting belief until you begin to feel that it no longer has any power to run your programs, that it has no more room in your presence, in your mind... And 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!" Think about something that every fiber of your being says "Yes!" to without any question or doubt. Is there anything like that? Notice your "Yes!" Notice the neurology and feeling of your "Yes!" Notice the voice of "Yes!" Gesture the "Yes!" with your hands and body. Amplify this "Yes!" 4) Meta "Yes!" the Enhancing belief And feeling that "Yes!" even more fully, utter it repeatedly to the Empowering Belief that you want. Do you want this? "Yes!" 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?
12) EINSTEIN'S CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOVLING Meta-Stating
Solution
Thinking
Frame: Robert Dilts (1994) noted in his study of Einstein's strategy for creativity and problem solving that we often need to move to a higher and/or different space from the problem space. "Our thinking creates problems that the same type of thinking will not solve." (p. 29). Design: 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. Specify some unresolved or problematic situation that you would like to think more creatively about.
2) Fully acknowledge & experience all perceptual positions about this difficulty. This will enable you to obtain rich "double descriptions" of the situation. Take Self (1 ), Other (2 ) and Witness (3 ) perceptual positions. As the person does, identify different meta-levels awarenesses and awarenesses about awarenesses that create meta-state incongruence. Levels of conceptual realities: T-F about self, time, cause, purpose, etc. st
nd
rd
3) Search for and identify Limiting Beliefs in those frames: What limiting beliefs support the antagonism between different states? Due to the influence of state-dependent learning, memory, perception, etc. we need a different way of thinking than that involved in this frame and which created the frame. Move to meta-level to examine limiting Presuppositions: Access MS of clear-minded evaluation of evaluations (Observer checking ecology). 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? 4) Find Positive Intent behind each State: What positive intention or value lies behind the functioning of this state? What does the person seek to accomplish of positive value? 5) Find Positive Intent behind the Positive Intent Continue the process of "going meta" to the positive intention behind the intentions until you get to a frame that allows synthesis and integration —an agreement frame. 6) Outframe: Synthesize the parts or states from a higher meta-position have the two combine and become one. Move to the highest meta-state to outframe both conflicting parts (maps) in order to create a psychosynthesis a perspective of complementarity. What do this "parts" have in common?
13) META-STATING I M P L E M E N T A T I O N Frame: What kind of a relationship to you have to the idea of Implementing What You Know and Learn? What frames have you set with regard to putting concepts into action? Design: To train and/or learn so that it has lasting and profound impact we have to implement. We have to translate into action. Exploration: What are your current thoughts-and-feelings about implementing knowledge? What have you set as a higher frame about this? To learn enhanced ways to run your brain isn't enough. You have to actually run your own brain with those patterns. This pattern facilitates your own installation of implementation. It answers the installation questions: How do we take new learnings, insights, processes, patterns, and models and get them inside us so that they make a difference in how we think, feel, talk, behave, and relate? How do we translate new skills into everyday action? How do we transfer them to our workplace, home, recreation, etc.? Take any or all of the following Resource States & Meta-State yourself with it: 1) Clarity of understanding of the process. Have I represented it vividly and clearly in my mind? How much more vividness and clarity would help? 2) Intensity of emotion and energy for the new skill. Do I feel a need for it or feel excited about it? 3) The Fittingness of the New Frame for our life situation. Does it fit? Is it aligned with our highest values and visions? Am I willing to let this become a part of my identity? 4) Responsibility: Ownership, Initiation Have I taken personal responsibility for transferring the skill into my life? Have I owned the learning? Am I willing to take responsibility for making this part of my life? 5) Willingness to experiment and play. Am I willing to play around (experiment) with the new skill, pattern, or model until it becomes second-nature to me? 6) Repetition of the skill or pattern. Will I work with this often enough so that it becomes habitual? Will I playfully repeat it enough so that I can do it in my sleep? 7) Future Pacing. Have I imagined vividly how this will play out in my life in the future? 8) Experimenting and active involvement in role playing in the groups. Am I willing to play around in respectful ways in the small groups using the role playing scenarios to get this installed in my behavior. 9) Skill Reinforcement in groups as experiencer, coach, and meta-person. Will I take responsibility to get the most out of the group experiences and enable the others to get the most out of it for themselves? 10) State Extending Exercises. Will I delight myself with the playfulness of extending the parameters of the new states and metastates that I create? 11) Empowering, Sensory-Based, and Immediate Feedback. Am I willing to learn how to give and receive the kind of enhancing feedback that makes for reinforcement and installation of these skills?
14) META-ALIGNMENT Aligning Higher Frames Are you Aligned in all of your higher levels of thinking and emoting regarding a given task? Do you have any parts organized to sabotage your propulsion for success? The following pattern provides you a way to align and utilize meta-level structures (Meta-States) to generate an overall sense (gestalt) of integration, Congruency, wholeness, and well-being. (This pattern has been adapted from Dilts' "Neuro-logical levels") Do this just standing and talking about each level or spatially anchor each level by back up from the primary state behavior.
1) Identify a Primary State sensory-based Experience wherein you want more alignment Is there any behavior that you would 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? Make a list. 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 PS 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 & Values that support & empower this (Beliefs/ Values) Why do you engage in this? Why do you believe this is important? What are some empowering beliefs that support this behavior? 4) 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? 5) Identify the Meta-State of Purpose & Destiny that then arises (Vision, Mission, Spirit) Does this fit into your overall sense of destiny and purpose? How does it? What's your highest intentions in doing this? 6) Identify the Decision that supports this. Have you decided to do this? You will? You have said "YES!" to this? 7) 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. 8) Bring the Higher Levels down to the PS Behavior to let it all Integrate As you even more fully step into all of this awareness, experience it completely, snapshot it and honor it and let it enrich all of your levels... and now imagine bringing this back down the levels, letting it coalesce into the lower levels to enrich them. How do you now experience the behavior, environment, etc. when you bring this higher level with you? And you can bring each of these levels, in turn, to bear upon your everyday states, can you not? 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 3 times until it flows as a Walk of Integration.
PART V COACHING OTHERS IN LEARNING SKILLS In this training, we have sought to demonstrate the following Skills as our understanding of NLP and Meta-States with regard to effectively coaching for accelerated learning. What follows therefore presents our understanding of how to effectively work with anybody else in the context of learning and training.
1) Begin from a State of Respect. People are more than their behavior, thoughts, emotions, actions, skills, roles, etc. We separate person from all of these behaviors in order to honor the person above and beyond any particular state, skill level, set of competencies or lack of them. We not only respect the person, but also believe in each person's right and responsibility to learn, grow, think, speak, etc. 2) Search for and Speak to Each Person's Highest Positive Intentions We use the NLP reframing principle that a positive intention drives and governs every behavior and communication. Assuming this, we then seek to recognize, validate, and satisfy those highest positive intentions rather than get caught up (sucked into) the primary level problems, symptoms and complaints. This leads us to explore with every learner what he or she specifically seeks to accomplish so that we can then align with that higher state of mind. Often we have to move up many levels to find that, especially if the person has been traumatized or raised with lots of impoverishing toxic beliefs. This challenges us to manage our own states, to access and use the empathy perspective and to truly care about facilitating empowering resources for the person. "The biggest obstacle to overcome for a student with ADD symptoms is that they are labeled 'stupid, weird, or different' as though something is wrong with them. Consistently looking for positive intention and accepting and appreciating them as unique persons with value will go a long way in helping them overcome this belief." (Blackerby, p. 184)
3) Pace and Lead to Empowerment. NLP and Meta-States is all about facilitating the powers to "run your own brain" and to manage the higher levels of mind. To do that we have to first pace, pace, pace —as we enter into another's world, understanding their mental filters (Meta-Programs), higher levels of mind (Meta-States), values, etc. Then we can persuasively lead to coaching the person's greater resourcefulness in learning. If you don't pace, you won't have a good connection or basis for communicating. And without pacing, you're likely to deny, judge, or fight with the person's frames. That will more than likely lead to a Frame War that will only escalate things. Begin by accepting and appreciating the person's highly valued criteria and frames. 4) Set Effective Frames for your Coaching to be an Exploration that takes full advantage of feedback and learnings. As you meta-model the person's reality structures, do so from the Know-Nothing frame of reference and demonstrate how an expert professionally uses and loves feedback. It's not failure at
all. Every miss provides valuable information about what to do next. Adopt a learner's role to your person, not that of a know-it-all. Constantly check the higher levels of mind to see if the person is okay with the skills, activities, and processes. If you train a person at the level of capacity, but he believes he is dumb and that it won't work— watch out. The higher level will govern that experience. Continually check for — Permission Alignment Comfort Congruence Belief Judgments/ Evaluations Value Emotions (meta-feelings) Understanding Decisions Identity Expectation Etc. 5) Layer Pattern upon Pattern until you get the person's desired outcome. You don't have to know what you're going to do, or how, you only need to trust that your explorations with the person will reveal the structure and that you will find a way. This empowering belief is essential to be a master at this art. Model how you continue when you get "stuck," and the kind of thoughts, states, beliefs that you set as your own frames when you don't know what to do. Remember to shift back to modeling (metamodeling) whenever you feel overwhelmed so that you can chunk down the language and structures into small pieces. Set a frame of playfulness. Enjoy the processes. Elicit humor, wonder, curiosity, trust, confidence, etc. in the person. 6) As a Learning Coach, remember that mastery necessitates practice, rehearsal, and time. This calls for both you and the person to be patient, disciplined, trusting of the process, etc. Aim to establish a learning direction so that the person slowly but solidly begins to build more and more confidence in his or her abilities to learn.
ARTICLES Another Look at "Attention Deficiency"
THE META-STATES OF ADD L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Attention Deficient Disorder or ADD is a distressful and unpleasant state. What is it like? How would we create it?
What things make up the disorder of the mind? To create and experience the state of mind that we call Attention Deficient Disorder, we have to use some very special strategies. Only then can we structure consciousness in such a way that we experience it with all of the ADD symptoms: highly distracted, jumping all over the place, and unable to focus. And, of course, once we have a distracted state of mind like that, it sends commands to our body to create emotions of impulsiveness and hyperactivity and corresponding behaviors. Then we have an expert system for distracting, reacting, forgetting, procrastinating, and the like. ADD does have a structure. It does makes sense. It doesn't come out of the blue from nowhere. A person has to set several higher frames of reference (or meta-states) in order to create this experience that the psychological community has mislabeled a disorder. It's only a disorder from the perspective of ordering consciousness so that it operates in a highly focused way that effectively encodes information in a way that makes sense (and so elicits the state of "comprehension.") What frames do we need? What meta-state structures? What meta-level frames of beliefs, values, expectations, etc.? Higher Frames or States of Mind In its natural and untrained state, mind attends whatever stimuli catches its attention. That's why we experience consciousness as so responsive and so reactive to the world when we first enter into it as children. We have no agenda, no intention, no focus, no purpose. We just free-float in such a way that the events, people, words, situations, etc. around us grab our attention. Attention, as what's "on" our mind, simply responds to anything new, different, vivid, moving, threatening, dangerous, etc. It is only later that we develop intentions. And yet we do so very early. We develop commitments, passions, motivations, expectations, agendas, etc. We set intentions in our mind at a higher logical level to our attentions when we want something, intend something, establish a purpose. When we do, these higher frames begin to govern and control things. At first, we develop very basic and primary type of intentions: We seek to move toward pleasure and away from pain We seek for satisfaction of hunger and dryness and we seek to move away from the discomfort of the basic biological drives (hunger, thirst, etc.). Later we develop more layered and complex intentions: to win, to feel powerful, to be important, to show someone up, to be the first, to get the biggest cookie, to not have to exert effort, to find the path of least resistance, to avoid dad's anger, to resist mom's shaming, to not be viewed as dumb, to not feel embarrassment, to not stand out, etc. When that happens, these become our governing frames of reference or meta-states and these higher intentions begin controlling our experiences. Suppose we don't "get" something the first time dad or mom explains something, and out of their frustration, stress, or anger, they say something like, "What's wrong with you? Are you stupid or something? You never use your head. If you'd only think before you act. Why are you so dumb?" When a child repeatedly hears words of this kind, it becomes seductively easy to buy into them. Then the child will more likely experience the state of "dislike of being scolded." Eventually this becomes, "dislike and rejection of experiencing any mistake" that could be used as evidence "being dumb." This then becomes more complex as the child
learns to hates the "dumb" state, fear it, and so taboo it for themselves. "Don't be dumb!" This state-about-a-state structure then means that the person will be operating from a frame of mind that could be summarized in such "belief statements as: "Its bad and painful to be reproved for being dumb." "Avoid using your brain, then you won't be thought stupid." "I'm no good at learning, intellectual matters. I always do poorly with such." Then, with such intentions, no wonder the child would find him or herself turned off about learning and school, distracted, unable to focus, and so fidgeting and constantly moving and procrastinating. Why move toward something so loaded up with pain psychic pain of embarrassment, inadequacy, and negative self-descriptions? Who would want to? I wouldn't. ADD as Driving a Brain in an Out of Control Manner In actuality, people labeled "ADD" do not have any problem in the production of attentions. There's no deficiency at that level. In fact, at that level there are too many attentions. Such individuals have a rich and varied world of attentions. Attentions are everywhere, and all at once, and moving very quickly. In fact, it is the out-of-control nature of attentions that causes one to feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and defeated. From a structural point of view, the "problem" we have here isn't one deficient of attentions... The problem lies rather in the way all these attentions "have" the person rather than the person "having" them. What causes that? What factors, influences, structures, and frames contribute to that? Intentions. The individuals may suffer from negative frames (or dragon states) or from simply a deficiency of intentions. Structurally, the ADD experience arise from having too many negative thoughts and feelings turned against oneself and overwhelming oneself with fears about learning, fears about being dumb, fears about being embarrassed, making a mistake, etc., or from a lack of structure in directionalizing mind. Conversely, the higher frames that govern a passionate state of learning and which enables a person to zoom in on information or experience, powerfully encode it so that it makes a powerful impression, and screen out every distraction leaves one in a state of excitement, desire, motivation, and commitment. It is when we lack that kind of higher frames of mind, that our attentions fling and dart all over the place. We don't care enough about something. We don't feel enough passion. When I met Terry, he was nine years old and had been labeled "ADHD." And he had all of the classic symptoms. He couldn't sit still. He moved and fidgeted. He looked at this and then at that. He seemed bored in my office. "Do you ever play computer games or Nintendo?" I inquired. "Sure." "But I bet you get tired of playing those games. I bet you can't even keep your mind on the computer screen!" (Laughing) "No, I can. That's easy." "You mean that you can focus on it and stay with it?" "Sure." "That's great! And of course, you know what that means, don't you?' "That I'm only interested in games?" "It means that you got a great brain that can learn in really effective ways. It means that you can focus and concentrate and that there's not a thing wrong with your brain." He was surprised. At nine, he had actually come to believe several things that were sabotaging his learning excellence. He believed that he was dumb. He believed that other kids were smarter than him. He believed that he could not control his brain. He believed that the learnings he was doing with Nintendo and baseball were not "real" learnings, but just play. He believed that there was nothing he could do to become better at school. He believed it was terrible to be laughed at or embarrassed. And the list went on. The Meta-Levels of ADD The "belief frames above highlight and structure the meta-levels of Attention Deficit These beliefs involve the checklist of beliefs that Dilts has put together in the so-called neurological levels, as well as the other logical levels. Capabilities: Am I capable of learning? Can I control my own brain? Is that possible?
Can I focus my attention? Values; How valuable is it to learn? To study. Identity: Am I intelligent or dumb?] Relationships: How would changing my learning style affect my relationships? Would others accept or reject me? Intentionality: What are my intentions? What are the higher intentions above and beyond those intentions? The Intention - Attention Dynamics Attention refers to what's immediately "on our mind." And this constantly shifts, changes, and alters. And so it should. Attention describes our immediate conscious experience of the world as we move through it. Oftentimes we have to "lose our mind and come to our senses" in order to shake off trance like states that prevent us from being in the here and now. Sometimes we have to lose one of our older meta-level "minds" in order to free ourselves from old ideas and concepts that put us in a bad relationship to something like "learning," "school," etc. Intention is a higher level of mind that arises from our orientation and that shows up in our everyday motivations and passions. The nine-year-old boy spending hours with a computer game obviously has great motivation and passion about that game and that motivation is precisely the higher mind that supports and enables him in his concentration and focus. And there's something else. As he becomes more and more skilled, as he finds delight and pleasure in succeeding (as we all do), he gets another meta-level pleasure: being able to define himself as successful in that area. This keeps him motivated. We say in NLP that energy goes where attention flows. Our mental and emotional energies go out to attend, invest, care, etc. Attend to anything long enough and our skills and knowledge will increase. There's no mystery in that. In Meta-States we add another phrase to this line, a phrase that fills it out and makes it more true to the supporting higher frames of mind. We say-
If you want more focused mental and emotional energy to go somewhere, not only do we have to bring our attention to it, but we most effectively bring our attention to it when we align it with our higher intentions. That's why finding, identifying, developing, and enriching our personal sense of intention so that we can take a strong and definitive Intentional Stance about something empowers us in activating our highest skills and potentials. How can we apply this for the experience of ADD? Many people start merely at the level of attention. Typically we start by trying to "command" or order attention: "Pay attention to this!" "When I talk in this classroom, I expect that you listen to me!" "You need to pay more attention to your homework." If that works at all, it usually doesn't work very long. So we shift into getting or grabbing attention by using attention getting devices. We try to make the information more interesting, more dynamic, varied, colorful, dramatic, etc. We liven things up, we use different approaches, etc. Sometimes that helps. But we're still at the level of attention. It's really not until we step back and go upward to the higher levels of awareness, that we can activate a person's intentions. Here we connect the primary attentions with higher level reasons, understandings, values, identities, etc. Then, when we have a big enough "Why" or "How this is important to me," we will find our attentions quite willing to do serve for our intentions. In this, it is never a question whether a person has enough or sufficient attentions, it's always a question of having sufficient and powerful enough intentions. When Bob Bodenhamer works with ADD children, he frequently asks, "What are you attending that your teacher or parent doesn't want you attending?" He knows that mind is forever attending something. What we attend, well, that's another question. The ability to become riveted to a TV show, movie, video-game, cards, book, drawing, love making, climbing a mountain, etc. comes with being a human being. Riveted R Us. Csikszentmihalyi studies in Flow as The Psychology of Optimal Experience show that we have the ability to enter into a focused flow state with a very wide range of things from walking, gardening, running, meditating, to vertical wall climbing, intense research, to even the mundane things: washing dishes, doing chores, etc. Getting lost in something that elicits focus states, concentration, perseverance, passion, etc., primarily involves our neuro-semantics- higher level reasons and meanings.
Mastering the Deficiency in ADD All of this describes the first step in the process of mastering ADD. First we need to go after intention. We need to develop it, expand it, enrich it. We need to get it to become strong and intense and powerful. We then need to meta-detail that intention into many specific attentions that will translate the intention into real-life and real-time experiences. Meta-detailing combines global thinking with specific thinking, it creates a unity and integration of moving up the levels of abstraction that occurs when we generalize and moving down the levels when we precisely specify something. To meta-detail, move up or down until you find a specific larger level frame of mind that's critically important to you... then detail it out into tomorrow's life. With this in mind (the meta-level principle), how will you act tomorrow? What one thing will you do? What will you say? How will you say it?
Meta-Detailing also helps us to add specific attention aligning behaviors to our repertoire of activities. With it we can look around our room to check the environment in which we read or study and check it out in terms of supporting our attentions. A great study environment reduces the distractions and outside noise. It assists us in focusing. It helps us relax. It allows "the world to go away" while we get lost in the study. Via meta-detailing, we can chunk down from feeling overwhelmed by information coming at us too hard and fast. We can chunk down to learning in steps and stages, taking on one thing at a time knowing and believing that "given some time and exposure, we will learn it. This illustrates the importance of treating ourselves and the learning/ misunderstanding/ correcting/ refining process in a kind and gentle way. Stress, pressure, and tension undermines effective learning. It de-accelerates the learning, sometimes even bringing it to a stand-still. By adopting a relaxed and yet alert state of interest and fascination we set the kind of frames wherein we feel safe to experiment, explore, learn from mistakes, etc. We can further master ADD by setting the kind of meta-frames or meta-states that support the experience of accelerated learning. "I can learn anything I set my mind to." "Learning is a fun and playful way of encountering the world." "The more I learn and become skilled in running my own brain, the more I accelerate my powers for learning." Summary Forget any so-called Attention deficit and focus instead on Intension deficit disordering. The over-prescribed condition of ADD and ADHD serves as an excuse for far too many people and a belief that sabotages their own personal genius. It takes a set of very special conditions in order to create the ADD. Knowing that structure now enables us to play with it and mess it up. It gives us the ability also to leverage the system at just the right places so that all of the mental and emotional energy wasted in worry about our labels can now be re-directed into new and more exciting focuses.
Appendix A The Neurology of Learning The Recticular Activating System (RAS) refers to the bundle of nerve fibers that are located at the base of the brain stem. These are about the size of the tip of your finger. They function as a regulator to filter incoming sensory information so that we don't go into sensory overload. Similar to the functioning of a volume dial, it controls the level of incoming information and functioning like a station control, it directs our attention by tuning in what we deem as important and tuning out what we deem as not interesting at the moment. It operates in a see-and-search manner. The RAS enables a young mother to hear a child in the middle of the night while ignoring other sounds. The RAS allows us to focus attention on a specific task at hand while tuning out extraneous sights and sounds. In this, attitude affects the working of our RAS. It Fight/Flight (General Arousal Syndrome) and The Relaxation Response: Since thinking, learning, memory, perception, etc. are all state dependent, the Survival State (activated by threat and danger) elicits one kind of mind-set in contrast to a Calm and Relaxed State. The "mind" under stress shifts to survival concerns and utilizes the lower layers of the brain, not the higher cortex.
HOW TO GET Y O U R MONEY'S W O R T H FROM THE TRAINING I trust that you have already begun to realize just how life changing and invigorating it will be for you as you consider becoming more focused, congruent, skilled, competent, excited, playful, and compassionate in learning the art of Personal & Professional Mastery. Can you see yourself mowing in that directly? Begin to imagine that fully. Feel it. Hear the sound of that Masterful You as you do... because you can ... and will... will you not? And as you say Yes to that powerfully and curiously, I would have you know that I have designed this training, the Training Manual, and the Presentations to do one thing—to totally facilitate your discovery of new Ideas and Models, new Skills and Technologies, and transformative tools by which you can greatly enhance your life. With each training, we seek for both positive recommendations and for insightful suggestions to keep improving things. Using such suggestions in previous trainings has lead us to realize just how much the fun, enjoyment, creativity, learning, installation of skills, and sense of adventure depends upon you become a totally active participant in this process. But you knew that, didn't you? This only means that I need your help in order to make this an exciting training wherein you will discover new vistas, network with others, and get new programs installed in you that you want installed. Specifically, I need your help so that we can start on time, utilize the small group experiential part effectively, access the best kind of learning states, support the exploration process, and get the most out of this for your money. After all, when someone sees and hears you operate in the weeks and months to come and say, I want them to never have to raise the question— What were you trained to do? I want all to know and see immediately that you were trained for excellence. To facilitate that, let's aim to— * Start on Time. Would you make whatever adjustments you need to in your personal time-line to become fully aware of the scheduling concerns of this training? It's easy to get lost when you get really involved in a process and pattern or when you're out on a walk. Yet to respect the time constraints of everybody in this training, let's work together to start promptly.
* Get the Most from the Human Laboratories. We use small practice groups in this training for experiential learning. Why? So we can tune each other up and practice in a safe environment. The small group interactions provide an immediate hands-on human laboratory so you can practice your magic before going "out there." Yes, sometimes it may feel strange to immediately move into a small group with people you don't know. Use it to practice being more bold, courageous, and even a tad bit ferocious. To practice a pattern, let others tune you up, discover new things you'll get the most out of this, just simply move quickly into the groups with a hungry attitude of wanting to get right to the process and play with it! Since you can feel stuffy and pompous anywhere, hesitate to do that here and just get right in make sure everybody gets to play who wants to! If you get lost, call on one of the assistants (that's what they are there for)! Don't deprive them of the coaching they can offer! * To Ask Questions & Present Insights that supports a focus on Excellence. Sometimes what really makes a presentation dynamic and effective are the insights, comments, and questions that arise. So don't hesitate to share them when we call for them! Sometimes these responses open new doors of discovery for all of us & extend the field itself! Further, sometimes a question or insight pops up for you, & you may answer it in your own mind, but it might also be just the question that might serve as a marvelous catalyst for the entire group. If so, share it! "Dumb" questions are especially welcomed since they are often the very doorways to new paradigms.
* Access & Maintain Your Very Best States. Because, ultimately, you are responsible for your own state of mind-and-body, pay attention to your needs so that you can stay alert, at your best, creative, playful, and curious.
*Make it a Team Experience. We are here as a group and so this gives us opportunity to practice the basics of NLP— pacing, calibrating, state management, resourcefulness, team spirit, etc. Get involved. * Trust the Process. Richard Bandler taught me how to use "confusion as the gateway to new learnings." So sometimes we just have to "confuse the hell out of people" to loosen up the old frames and constructs before creating the new powerful stuff. Sometimes I even use information overload to spin out old strategies. It you find yourself spinning and totally confused—welcome this experience joyfully in the full knowledge that you will come out the other end smarter & more resourceful! Trust the process. * No Shame/ No Blame. You can't be wrong— you just get results.
May you have an Outrageously Resourceful Experience!
Michael Hall
Glossary of Terms As-If Frame: Pretending; acting "as if something was true, had occurred; a creative problem-solving process. Association: Mentally seeing, hearing, and feeling from inside an experience; in contrast with dissociated; emotionally experiencing and feeling a thought, memory, imagination, etc. Auditory: The sense of hearing; one of the RS (VAK). Belief. A thought about a thought; a representation validated at a meta-level; generalizations about higher level concepts (i.e., causality, meaning, self, others, behaviors, identity, etc.). Calibration: Tuning in to another's state via reading non-verbal signals previously observed and calibrated (i.e. breathing, posture, eye movements, etc.); sensory awareness skill. Chunking: Moving up or down the levels of abstraction; computer term about the size of information; chunking up refers to going up a level (inducing up, induction) and leads to higher abstractions; chunking down refers to going down a level (deducing, deduction) and leads to more specific examples or cases. Complex Equivalence: A Meta-Model linguistic distinction; equating two representations which usually refer to different dimensions, e.g. "He is late; he doesn't love me." Content: The specifics details of an event; answers what, and why; in contrast with process or structure. Context: The setting, frame, or process in which events occur and provide meaning for content. Deletion: A modeling process; the missing portion of an experience. Digital: Varying between two states (i.e. a light switch, either on or off); a digital submodality (color or black-and-white; in contrast with an analogue submodality. Dissociation: Experiencing an event non-emotionally; seeing or hearing as if from a spectator's point of view; in contrast to association. Distortion: A modeling process; inaccurately representing something by changing form or structure. Ecology: Concerning the overall relationship between things; relation between an idea, skill, response and a larger environment or system; a question about how well something serves you. Elicitation: Evoking a state by a word, behavior, gesture or any stimuli; gathering information by direct observation of nonverbal signals or by asking meta-model questions. Empowerment: Process of adding vitality, energy, and new resources to a person; enabling someone to take effective action. Epistemology: The study of how we know what we know.
First Position: Perceiving the world from one's own point of view; associated position; one of the perceptual positions. Frame: A context, environment, meta-level, a way of perceiving something. Generalization: A modeling process; taking a specific experience and generalizing to higher abstraction, class, or category. Gestalt: An overall configuration of individual elements. Internal Representations (IR): Thoughts; how we code and represent information in the mind; the VAK (sights, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes). Kinesthetic: Sensations, feelings, tactile sensations on surface of skin, proprioceptive sensations inside the body, include vestibular system or sense of balance; one representational system. Logical Level: A higher level, a level about a lower level, a meta-level that drives and modulates the lower level. Loops: A circle, cycle, a story, metaphor, or representation that goes back to its beginning; looping back (as in feedback) ; an open loop refers to an unfinished story or representation versus a closed loop. Map of Reality: Model of the world, a unique representation of the world built in each person's brain by abstracting from experiences, comprised of a neurological and a linguistic map, one's IR. Matching: Adopting facets of another's outputs (i.e., behavior, words, posture, breathing, etc.) to create rapport. Meta: Above, beyond, about; at a higher level; a logical level higher. Meta-Model: 12 linguistic distinctions that identifies language patterns that obscure meaning in a communication via distortion, deletion and generalization. 12 specific challenges or questions by which to clarify imprecise language (ill-formedness) to reconnect it to sensory experience and the deep structure. Metamodeling brings a person out of trance; developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder (1975); the basis of all other discoveries in NLP. Meta-Programs: The mental/perceptual programs for sorting and paying attention to stimuli; perceptual filters that govern attention. Meta-States: A state about a state; bringing a state of mind-body" (fear, anger, joy, learning) to bear upon another state from a higher logical level, generates a meta-state; developed by Michael Hall (1994).
Modal Operators: Meta-Model linguistic distinction that indicate the "mode" by which a person "operates" (i.e. necessity, impossibility, desire, possibility, etc.); the predicates (can, can't, possible, impossible, have to, must, etc.) we utilize for motivation. Model: A description of how something works; a generalized, deleted or distorted copy of the original. Modeling: A process for observing and replicating effective behaviors by detecting the sequence of IR that enable a person to achieve new levels of competency. Model of the World: A mental map of reality, a representation via abstraction from experiences, one's personal operating principles. Multiple Description: Describing something from different viewpoints. Nominalization: A Meta-Model linguistic distinction that describes the result of a verb or process turned into a noun; a process frozen in time. Pacing: Joining someone's model of the world by matching the person's language, beliefs, values, breathing, posture, etc.; crucial to building rapport. Perceptual Filters: The ideas, beliefs, values, decisions, memories, language, etc. that shape and color one's perceptions; the Meta-Programs. Predicates: Words indicating an assertion about something; the sensory based words indicating a particular RS (visual predicates, auditory, kinesthetic, unspecified). Presuppositions: Ideas that we take for granted in order for a communication to make sense; assumptions; that which "holds" (position) "up" (sup) a statement "ahead of time" (pre). Reframing: Altering a frame-of-reference; presenting an event or idea from a different point of view thereby eliciting different meanings; a change pattern. Representation: An idea, thought, presentation of sensory-based or evaluative based information (the VAK representations). Representation System (RS): The sensory systems (VAK) by which we code our internal thoughts. Resourceful State: A mental-emotional state wherein one feels resourceful or at his or her best. Second Position: Perceiving things from another's point of view. Sensory Acuity: Awareness of the outside world, of the senses, making finer distinctions about the sensory information we get from the world. Sensory-Based Description: Information directly observable and verifiable by the senses, see-hear-feel language that we can test empirically, in contrast to evaluative descriptions.
State: A holistic phenomenon of mind-body-emotions; mood; emotional condition; sum total of all neurological and physical processes within an individual at any moment in time. Submodality: The distinctions, features, and qualities of each RS. Third Position: Perceiving world from the viewpoint of an observer; one of the three perceptual positions; the metaposition. Time-line: A metaphor describing how we store the sights, sounds, and sensations (VAK) of memories and imaginations; a way to code and process "time" as a concept. Unconscious: Whatever we do not have in conscious awareness. Universal Quantifiers: A Meta-Model linguistic distinction indicating "allness" (i.e., every, all, never, none, etc.); a distinction admitting no exceptions. Unspecified Nouns: Meta-Model distinction; nouns that do not specify to whom or to what they refer. Unspecified Verbs: Meta-Model distinction; verbs that have the adverb deleted, delete specifics of the action. Uptime: A state wherein attention and senses get directed outward to immediate environment, all sensory channels open and alert: sensory awareness.
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About the Author:
Dr. L. Michael Hall is an entrepreneur who lives in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. As a psychologist he had a private psychotherapeutic practice for many years, and then began teaching and training— first in Communication Training (Assertiveness, Negotiations, Relationships), then in NLP. He studied NLP with co-founder, Richard Bandler in the late 1980s and became a Master Practitioner and Trainer. He wrote notes for the trainings at Bandler's request, edited Time For a Change. As a prolific author, he has written and published more than two dozen books including The Spirit of NLP (1996), Dragon Slaying, Meta-States, Mind-Lines, Figuring Out People, The Structure of Excellence, Frame Games, etc. Michael earned his doctorate in Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology with an emphasis in psycho-linguistics. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the languaging of four psychotherapies (NLP, RET, Reality Therapy, Logotherapy) using the formulations of General Semantics. He addressed the interdisciplinary International Conference (1995) presenting an integration of NLP and General Semantics. In 1994, Michael developed the Meta-States Model while modeling resilience and presenting the findings at the International NLP Conference in Denver. He has hundreds of articles published in NLP World, Anchor Point, Rapport, Connection, Meta-States Journal. Michael is the co-developer, along with Dr. Bob Bodenhamer, of Neuro-semantics having co-authored a unified field model using the 3 Meta-Domains of NLP. They initiated The Society of Neuro-semantics, and have begun to establish Institutes of Neuro-semantics in the USA and around the world. Elvis Keith Lester joined the team in 1998, and then established the LEARN Institute of Neuro-semantics in Tampa, Fl. Today Michael spends his time researching and modeling, training internationally, and writing. Recent modeling projects have included modeling excellence in sales, persuasion, accelerated learning, state management, wealth building, women in leadership, fitness and health, etc. These are now Meta-State Gateway Trainings. Historical Development of the Meta-States Model (Compiled by Denis Bridoux, NLP Trainer with Post-Graduate Professional Education, Harragate, England) 1933: Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase neuro-linguistic training, postulated his theory of the levels of abstraction, constructed his theory of second-order abstractions, third-order, etc. in his classic word Science and Sanity. 1972: Gregory Bateson's classic work Steps to an Ecology of Mind that brought together all his revolutionary studies on double-bind theory, applications of Logical Theory of Types, going meta to meta-levels, the levels of Learning Model, etc. 1975-1983: John Grinder & Richard Bandler utilizing the idea of going meta in their NLP model beginning with the Meta-model—an explicit model about how language and VAK representations work in human experience. They distinguish sensory-based level from the evaluative level, the importance of meta-parts, and the strategy model for modeling "the structure of subjective experience." 1994: Michael Hall specifies how meta-levels of mind-body neuro-linguistic states factor into the structure of subjective experience and bring over Korzybski and Bateson ideas into the strategy model. This arose from modeling resilience and discovering that within it people have embedded numerous layers and levels of consciousness and states. Awarded by the International Trainers Association of NLP (1995) for the most significant contribution to NLP during 1994-1995. Books:
Meta-States: Self-Reflexiveness in Human States of Consciousness (1995)
Dragon Slaying: Dragons to Princes (1996) The Spirit of NLP: The Process, Meaning & Criteria for Mastering NLP (1996) Languaging: The Linguistics of Psychotherapy (1996) Patterns For "Renewing the Mind" (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) Time-Lining: Advance Time-Line Processes (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) NLP: Going Meta—Advance Modeling Using Meta-Levels (1997) Figuring Out People: Design Engineering With Meta-Programs (w. Dr. Bodenhamer) (1997) A Sourcebook of Magic (formerly, How to Do What When (w. B. Belnap) (1997) Mind-Lines: Lines For Changing Minds (w. Dr. Bodenharmer) (1997) The Secrets ofMagic: Communication Excellence for the 21 . Century (1998) The Structure of Excellence: Unmasking the Meta-Levels of Submodalities (Hall and Bodenhamer, 1999) Instant Relaxation: Stress Reduction for Office & Home (Lederer & Hall) Meta-State Patterns for Developing Excellence (Meta-States Journal, V o l u m e I, II st
(1997, 1998)
Genius At Work (Meta-States Journal, Vol. I, II(1999) Books in Development Secrets of Personal Mastery (2000)
Frame Games: He who Sets the Frame Controls the Game (2000) Personality Ordering & Disordering Using NLP Accelerated Motivation: Human Propulsion Systems (1999)
TRAININGS AVAILABLE We have three classifications of Trainings in Neuro-semantics Basic NLP Trainings— Meta-NLP™ — The Essential Skills of NLP (7 day training). Basic Meta-State Trainings Accessing Personal Genius (The 3 day Basic). Introduction to Meta-States as an advanced NLP model (3 days). This training introduces and teaches the Meta-States Model and is ideal for NLP Practitioners. It presupposes knowledge of the NLP Model and builds the training around accessing the kinds of states that will access and support "personal genius."
Basic Meta-States in two other Simplified forms: 1) Secrets of Personal Mastery: Awakening Your Inner Executive. This training presents the power of Meta-States without directly teaching the model as such. The focus instead shifts to Personal Mastery and the Executive Powers of the participants. Formatted so that it can take the form of 1, 2 or 3 days, this training presents a simpler form of Meta-States, especially good for those without NLP background or those who are more focused on Meta-States Applications than the model. 2) Frame Games: Persuasion Elegance. The first truly User Friendly version of Meta-States. Frame Games provides practice and use of Meta-States in terms of frame detecting, setting, and changing. As a model of frames, Frame Games focuses on the power of persuasion via frames and so presents how to influence or persuade yourself and others using the Levels of Thought or Mind that lies at the heart of Meta-States. Designed as a 3 day program, the first two days presents the model of Frame Games and lots of exercises. Day three is for becoming a true Frame Game Master and working with frames conversationally and covertly. Meta-States Gateway Trainings 1) Wealth Building Excellence (Meta-Wealth). The focus of this training is on learning how to think like a millionaire, to develop the mind and meta-mind of someone who is structured and programmed to create wealth economically, personally, mentally, emotionally, relationally, etc. As a Meta-States Application Training, Wealth Building Excellence began as a modeling project and seeks to facilitate the replication of that excellence in participants. 2) Selling & Persuasion Excellence (Meta-Selling). Another Meta-States Application Training, modeled after experts in the fields of selling and persuasion and designed to replicate in participants. An excellent follow-up training to Wealth Building since most people who build wealth have to sell their ideas and dreams to others. This trainings goes way beyond mere Persuasion Engineering as it uses the Strategic Selling model of Heiman also known as Relational Selling, Facilitation Selling, etc. 3) Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds. Based upon the book by Drs. Hall and Bodenhamer (1997), now in its third edition, Mind-Line Training is a training about Conversational Reframing and Persuasion. The Mind-Lines model began as a rigorous update of the old NLP "Sleight of Mouth" Patterns and has grown to become the persuasion language of the Meta-State moves. This advanced training is highly and mainly a linguistic model, excellent as a follow-up training for Wealth Building and Selling Excellence. Generally a two day format, although sometimes 3 and 4 days. 4) Accelerated Learning Using NLP & Meta-States (Meta-Learning). A Meta-State Application training based upon the NLP model for "running your own brain" and the Neuro-semantic (Meta-States) model of managing your higher executive states of consciousness. Modeled after leading experts in the fields of education, cognitive psychologies, this training provides extensive insight into the Learning States and how to access your personal learning genius. It provides specific strategies for various learning tasks as well as processes for research and writing. 5) Defusing Hotheads: A Meta-States and NLP Application training for handling hot, stressed-out, and irrational people in Fight/Flight states. Designed to "talk someone down from a hot angry state," this training
provides training in state management, first for the skilled negotiator or manager, and then for eliciting another into a more resourceful state. Based upon the book by Dr. Hall, Defusing Strategies (1987), this training has been presented to managers and supervisors for greater skill in conflict management, and to police departments for coping with domestic violence. 6) Instant Relaxation. Another practical NLP and Meta-States Application Training designed to facilitate the advanced ability to quickly "fly into a calm." Based in part upon the book by Lederer and Hall (Instant Relaxation, 1999), this training does not teach NLP or Meta-States, but coaches the relaxation skills for greater "presence of mind," control over mind and neurology, and empowerment in handling stressful situations. An excellent training in conjunction with Defusing Hotheads. Advanced Neuro-semantic Trainings Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels: Advanced use of Meta-States by focusing on the domain of modeling excellence. This training typically occurs as the last 4 days of the 7 day Meta-States Certification. Based upon the modeling experiences of Dr. Hall and his book, NLP: Going Meta—Advanced Modeling Using Meta-Levels, this training looks at the formatting and structuring of the meta-levels in Resilience, UnInsultability, and Seeing Opportunities. The training touches on modeling of Wealth Building, Fitness, Women in Leadership, Persuasion, etc. Advanced Flexibility Training Using NLP & General Semantics. An advanced Neuro-semantics training that explores the riches and treasures in Alfred Korzybski's work, Science and Sanity. Originally presented in London (1998, 1999) as "The Merging of the Models: NLP and General Semantics," this training now focuses almost exclusively on developing Advanced Flexibility using tools, patterns, and models in General Semantics. Recommend for the advanced student of NLP and Meta-States. Neuro-semantics Trainers Training. An advanced training for those who have been certified in Meta-States and Neuro-semantics (the seven day program). This application training focuses the power and magic of Meta-States on the training experience itself—both public and individual training. It focuses first on the trainer, to access one's own Top Training States and then on how to meta-states or set the frames when working with others in coaching or facilitating greater resourcefulness.
