Criteria Meta-Program Sort

Meta-program sorts describe different ways that people delete, distort, and generalize about what they perceive. You can calibrate someone's meta-program sorts through the words they use. You can also use meta-program sorts to calibrate when certain changes have taken place.

One of the most interesting meta-program sorts, to me, is Criteria. Whose criteria is being used where? I came up with a simple way to think about these, and thought it might be useful to others.

. Name Whose criteria is applied to self? Whose criteria is applied to others? . Self Self Self . Shift -- Self . Simultaneous Self Other . Switch Other --

I Hate Positive Thinking

A new pandemic of positive thinking has certainly arrived, at least here in Austin, the wuwu capital of Texas. Everyone has seen the Secret by now (OK, except you -- my one friend who hasn't seen it), and even my dad has heard of Thich Nhat Hanh.

"Pandemic?" you ask. "But Katie, I thought you love and ooze positive thinking?"

It's true.... I do adore positive thinking when used effectively. I love going to Maui in my mind -- and I highly recommend it, too, by the way. I'm a huge fan or the word wuwu, and I use Thich Nhat Hanh's work every day. Part of the NLP outcome frame is to formulate our outcomes in positive terms -- another useful thing to do.

But what if you're afraid of the negative? Some people avoid it at all costs, lurking out of the room whenever something uncomfortable or negative surfaces. Others are angry if you say something negative to them, because they believe it could change the course of their life in a harmful way. They know that language shapes our reality, our possibility, and our beliefs.

More about other people's language later.

I propose that when are afraid of the negative, we miss out on several things.

First, we're missing out on what is. In NLP, we have to start with someone's present state, which contains all sorts of information about the limitations of someone's map of the world. And, if you know how to help the client find it, that present state also contains information about how to transform that limitation into something even more useful for the client -- perhaps even into manifesting their heart's desire. If you skip what is, you miss out on the problem and the solution.

Deleting or refusing to see "negative" things also means that you will very likely miss out on some very important news of difference. If you only look at your own map of the world, there's no road map for other states of consciousness, other ways to reach your goal, other ways to transcend your limitations. And you will need other perspectives, at some point! My friend Spider Joe uses negative or argumentative statements as a reminder to step out of his own ego and into another person's (often contradictory) perspective. From there, he sees some pretty amazing new things!

But Spider Joe is a story for a different day. Back to being afraid of the negative.

Insisting that others edit their speech to delete what you consider negative also means refusing to acknowledge your own role in your experience of reality. Yes, language influences what we think is possible and therefore it influences what we can perceive. But reality doesn't just happen to you. You choose the meaning you're making of "reality." Wouldn't you like to have more flexibility in how you respond to reality? Becoming a creator of reality instead of just a recipient of it means you're actively involved in shifting your own meaning-making towards what's better, lighter, easier.

Learning to respond to what is with increasing flexibility is real positive thinking. It requires acknowledging what is and then, consciously or otherwise, choosing what to make of it.

Here's the thing about positive thinking: Positive thinking is not enough. Action is required, sometimes very challenging action. Just ask Thich Nhat Hahn.

More States of Attention

For the last 6 months, I’ve been working with Nelson Zink’s 12 States of Attention.

Mary Ann Reynolds taught them to me at the September Austin NLP Meetup, and she had been talking about them for some time before that. You can read previous blog entries about Mary Ann’s presentation or how the 12 States have made parts of my life much more rich, especially in settings like the black sand beach in Maui, where I wanted to expand my awareness of the place. You can also read an excerpt from Nelson's Zink's The Structure of Delight and his explanation of the 12 States of Attention.

There are several parts of this model that I’ve wanted to refine, especially about the kinesthetic sense. Broad-External-Kinesthetic is supposed to be what I can feel right now on the surface of my skin (and maybe a few inches out, depending on how you want to do it). But there’s no distinction to describe me remembering a Broad-External-Kinesthetic sensation or planning one. The same thing applies to Narrow-External-Kinesthetic, Broad-Internal-Kinesthetic, and Narrow-Internal-Kinesthetic.

Also, what about one’s sense of where the body is in space, sometimes called the proprioceptive sense? And what about olfactory and gustatory senses?

So, I’ve been playing around with several different ways of organizing these senses to accommodate that. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Broad / Narrow (stays the same)
Sensed / Constructed (much like the original Internal / External, but this accommodates for the fact that you might construct a kinesthetic feeling, be it internal (on the skin) or external (inside the body).
Visual / Auditory / Kinesthetic – Skin / Kinesthetic – Viscera / Kinesthetic – Proprioception / Olfactory / Gustatory

That makes for 28 States of Attention! I have to admit, I like the simplicity of Nelson’s original model. Are the extra distinctions really worth it?

As I’ve experimented with this expanded model, here’s what I’ve learned. The last 3 types of perception (Kinesthetic – Proprioception, Olfactory, and Gustatory) are “bonus” states. Because they are often far beyond conscious awareness, sometimes they contain very interesting information. Sometimes, they are so secondary to the other states of attention, they provide less useful information.

I’ll probably continue to teach my friends Nelson’s original model, or my expanded model without the bonus states.

Spatial Relations Changework (SRC) and Fanning

Kathleen Radebaugh’s Spatial Relations Changework (SRC) is a way to finally get your Conscious and Unconscious Minds talking… and sometimes even collaborating.

First, some background. In NLP, we talk about the Conscious and Unconscious Minds. The Conscious Mind is in charge of setting conscious goals and thinking through problems, issues, memories, etc. The Unconscious Mind (or other-than-conscious mind) is in charge of interpreting the myriad details that your Conscious Mind can’t process, and focusing the attention of the Conscious Mind on what’s important. The Unconscious Mind seems to have its own goals and also processes problems, issues, memories, etc.

Many people have had the experience of setting a goal (Conscious Mind) but not being able to get started for some reason, often for an unknown, seemingly unsolvable, or indefinable reason (Unconscious Mind). Many different modalities, hypnosis and NLP included, aim to help the Conscious and Unconscious Minds to work together. SRC does this in a unique way, and I’ll describe my experience of it in a moment.

Second, some information about a recent class on SRC and Fanning that Kathleen facilitated and I attended. There were 11 attendees. SRC is the set of tools that Kathleen uses to help people create new worlds for themselves, and it includes her own renderings of David Grove’s Clean Space, Clean Language, and Emergent Knowledge work, along with some NLP and some of Stephen Gilligan's Self Relations work. Fanning is a shamanic breathing practice that helps to disconnect inappropriate connections you have with a person, place, or thing. Fanning is very much like an NLP technique, and you do not have to believe in shamanic principles (or NLP, for that matter) for it to produce results for you.

First, Kathleen guided us to represent what we wanted to work on. I used a piece of paper, some glitter pens, and some crayons to make a drawing. Then, we started interacting with the paper with Kathleen guiding us through a series of Clean Space questions, reviewing it from 6 different places. Throughout the entire process, we never reported any content to Kathleen nor did we tell her our responses to her questions. We wrote down notes and insights. Then, she asked us to take what we knew from that series of interactions and use it to “fan” something. We repeated this process several times.

What’s happening on the inside for each individual is magnificent. My experience was that SRC is, over and over, requesting that the Unconscious Mind deliver information to the Conscious Mind about what’s going on. The Conscious Mind makes meaning and takes note of this, and the process is repeated. When you add Fanning into the picture, it gives the Conscious Mind the chance to practice taking a small, meaningful action right away (by Fanning) to provide for and honor the Unconscious Mind. For me, the process solidified into an interaction like this:

Conscious Mind: What do you want? What is going on for you? (Clean Space and Clean Language questions from facilitator.)
Unconscious Mind: I want a pony! (Participant’s response to questions.)
Conscious Mind: OK, here’s a pony. (Participant using Fanning based on response to questions.)

Conscious Mind: What do you want? What is going on for you?
Unconscious Mind: I want less traffic in my life
Conscious Mind: OK, here’s less traffic in my life.

Conscious Mind: What do you want? What is going on for you?
Unconscious Mind: I want perfect attendance in 3rd grade.
Conscious Mind: OK, here’s perfect attendance in 3rd grade.

It’s quite wonderful to practice listening to and responding to the Unconscious Mind. Kathleen closed the session by having us write down a series of Action Steps that we could complete soon to further this process.

I left with a lot of insights.

Fanning continues to surprise me because it is such an effortless process that only requires that I do it. Things shift if I do it, and they often shift in unanticipated, unexpected ways that are more ecological and immediate that other solutions I was considering. I also like SRC because it’s so personal, and in a group session, that content mostly stays with each individual. I was in a room full of people doing deep work on their most personal issues, and it was very private. Finally, Kathleen brings her work with Steven Gilligan and his notion of the Field into how she conducts sessions. That means that she “holds the space” for the group and acts to make sure that whatever comes up is given full permissions to express and explore. That makes for a very accepting environment in which to do deep, personal change work.

Advanced Calibration Exercise by Keith Fail

While we're getting ready to have a great time at the Best Resources NLP Practitioner kickoff in Austin tomorrow, please enjoy this most excellent advanced calibration exercise that my husband Keith created.

Happy calibrating!

Edward T. Hall and Congruence

Do you know who Edward T. Hall is?

My husband Keith is re-reading a book of his, The Silent Language.

Hall is an anthropologist who originated the concept of proximics (personal space) and was an early writer on cross-cultural differences and non-verbal communication. He's written about westerners doing business in Japan. He did research with the Navajo and Hopi. He's also one of the people who greatly influenced early NLP developers like John Grinder, Richard Bandler, Judith Delozier, and Leslie Cameron-Bandler.

Hall was born in 1914 in Missouri and is still alive. He's been retired since 1977. He remarried in 2004, according to the timeline on his website!

According to Keith, Hall was saying things like this in 1959: "If a person really wants to introduce change, find out what is happening unconsciously and make it conscious." That's an interesting definition of modeling -- in this case, modeling of the problem to illuminate it and notice possibilities for change.

He also coined the term "congruence," which is now a standard part of the NLP lexicon. Today, in NLP circles, congruence refers to a person and all their "parts" being aligned. When we are congruent, our speech, non-verbal communication, and actions all match up.

If you remember your high school geometry class, you might observe that Hall borrowed this term from mathematics. Here's a one page refresher on congruence in math: http://www.mathopenref.com/congruent.html

On a side note: according to Keith, Hall also laid the groundwork for timelines, writing about the distinctions of "in time" (polychronic time, in Hall's terms) versus "through time" (monochronic time for Hall).

12 Minute Intervention

My first interaction with Jason Dixon involving NLP was a 12 minute conversation.

Before the conversation, I was struggling with an old friend who was moving on. I was sad and confused.

12 minutes later, I was relaxed and open and felt good about my old friend.

We laughed at how fast that went!

Jason did several important things. First, he actually listened, deeply, to what I said. People Helpers have a well-earned reputation for giving advice before understanding and empathizing. He let me "spill" what was happening inside my head, so that he could respond to what was actually going on for me.

I think armchair NLPers (especially those who read books more than they practice!) miss this a lot: because changing a belief with NLP is much easier than other ways of changing a belief, people jump to the conclusion that whenever they notice a limiting belief, they should reframe the belief or pattern interrupt, and that'll do 'er. Unfortunately, these folks also miss the most important thing that must be in place for a short, conversational intervention to work: unconscious rapport.

But that's a story for another day.

Luckily for me, Jason doesn't play that way!

Second, Jason tried several different things and waited for feedback. Utilizing feedback from the client or class is a "must" in my book. Otherwise, they're just following a recipe -- a recipe that I could be following on my own, for myself.

And third, Jason treated me with a lot of heart. It's my belief that all this stuff is just easier with love.

I'm sure he did other things. But I certainly don't know what they were!

That's the fun of working with a skilled NLP coach, even if you know some NLP. It seems as though you just had a deep, heartfelt conversation. And then things change.

I really enjoyed the personal stories on Jason's website. And he has a Law of Attraction and NLP class coming up on December 13, too.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

In his new book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell proposes that people who succeed -- the best athletes, the richest people, the most talented professionals -- succeed not through sheer hard work. They succeed because they happened upon an unpredictably important series of opportunities, only noticeable in hindsight.

More about that in a minute.

In NLP, we use modeling to observe and replicate excellence. Often, "outliers" or people who are extremely successful, don't consciously know how they succeed. They may have suggestions or theories, but if they attempt to chunk down their success and make it useable for others, they often can't do it. Some of the worst teachers in the world are the best performers.

Modeling helps unpack what an outlier is doing, consciously and unconsciously, so that others can replicate their behaviors and beliefs and, hopefully, replicate the accompanying success of outliers. Many core techniques in NLP, such as the Outcome Frame and the Grief Process, come from modeling others.

But Gladwell proposes that it's not what the individual is doing by his or her own power that creates success. (By the way, these self-contained internal processes are often the focus of modeling.) Instead, unpredictably important opportunities come by way of:

• practical intelligence
• relative age to your peer group
• birth year and economic booms
• the power of collective support
• sheer chance meetings
  
• growing up in a culture of possibility
• having the time and motivation to acculumate 10,000 hours of experience in your field
• race and ethnicity (and not necessarily the most powerful or "desireable" race or ethnicity)

I like the twist to modeling that this suggests. It means that it's critical to look at all the logical levels in NLP modeling, including Environment.

And controlling the environment is tricky!

I highly recommend reading the book. Malcolm has his usual storyteller hat on, complete with twists and turns in plot. My favorite parts are:

• The "10,000 Hour Rule" chapter, especially section 2, which tells the story of K. Anders Ericsson's research about "gifted" musicians. It's not talent, but 10 years of practice, that makes for a master.
  
• "Marita's Bargain." This chapter tells the story of what it takes to escape the orbit of poverty and non-possibility thinking: lots of hard work... and luck.
• "A Jamaican Story," which tells the story of Malcolm Gladwell's own grandparents and parents. He told this section with a lot of heart and verve.
  

His best writing is in "Marita's Bargain" and "A Jamaican Story."

There were a couple of uneven parts. I didn't care for the chapter on airplane crashes and the detailed black box transcripts of the hours and minutes before deadly crashes. He makes a very strong case for the strength of cultural norms in this chapter. It's just unpleasant to read about such tragedy, I guess. My CSI-inclined friends may like this one!

If you'd like to sample some of the book for yourself, he's posted excepts on his website, including a part of the chapter on the 10,000 Hour Rule.

Living 1000 Beautiful Lives with the 12 States

Imagine yourself in a place of wondrous beauty, and seeing, hearing, and feeling even more than you usually do. We all have an increased, expanded awareness when we're in such a place. But what if you could measurably, noticeably experience more?

That's what the 12 States of Attention are about. You already use them in some ways. Learning more about the 12 States gives you the chance to use these unconscious processes, at will, whenever you want to "get more" of the scene around you... or within.

Wherever you are, you can take a moment to practice through the 12 states:

visual-external-broad -- notice the big picture in front of you
visual-internal-broad -- close your eyes and remember the big picture you just saw
visual-external-narrow -- look at something specific in front of you
visual-internal-narrow -- close your eyes and remember the specific thing you just saw

auditory-external-broad -- listen for the entire soundtrack that's happening around you
auditory-internal-broad -- close your ears and hear, inside, the soundtrack you just heard
auditory-external-narrow -- listen to one specific sound that's happening around you
auditory-internal narrow -- close your ears and hear, inside, that one specific sound you just heard

kinesthetic-external-broad -- notice what's happening, all over your skin
kinesthetic-internal-broad -- remember what you just felt
kinesthetic-external-narrow -- notice a specific feeling in your body
kinesthetic-internal-narrow -- remember that specific feeling you just felt

(As a side note: There's a lot of wonderful discussion on what, exactly kinesthetic external/ internal is, and how you fit the proprioceptive pieces in, etc. That's a story for another day! I just have outlined one way I'm currently practicing the 12 states.)

Imagine using the 12 States in a cool, black cave with waves at the entrance. Or water rushing down the mountainside in the form of a 50 foot waterfall. Or sitting with friends, staring at the sky. Or watching and listening to a meteor shower.

I feel as if I've lived 1000 beautiful lives. I've had a great time playing with Nelson Zink's 12 States of Attention, especially in Maui, ever since Mary Ann Reynold's presentation at Austin NLP in September. Many thanks to Nelson Zink and Mary Ann Reynolds.

Authentic Speaking

Here's an exercise that Keith Fail developed for a group of Toastmasters, to help them practice speaking with more presence and from the values that are important to each of them personally.

After teaching the prerequisite pieces (see below), he had the group do the exercise. Once they put all the pieces together, they didn't want to stop talking!

This post assumes you know the Circle of Excellence and can use the meta-outcome questions to come up with a core value.

Before Doing the Exercise
Before beginning, gather this information for yourself and a partner:

• What is one important value of yours? Use meta-outcome questions to get a really good one.
  
• Create a Circle of Excellence for that value (each partner does so for his or her own value).
• Practice "being present" with your partner, looking into each others' eyes, without talking, for 30 seconds, and then a minute.

The Exercise
Standing up, position yourself about 5 feet from your partner, facing each other.

1. Each person imagines his or her own Circle of Excellence one step in front of them... and then steps in.
2. After fully stepping into the Circle of Excellence, each person adds "being present" to that circle, looking into their partners' eyes.
3. Each person takes a turn speaking a few sentences, only as quickly as he or she can hold both the original Circle of Excellence value and "being present" with the other person.
   

Modifications
You can modify this exercise to be used with increasingly larger groups of people, one person standing at the front as a speaker, with the rest of the group as an audience.

You could also modify this exercise to use it with a couple. The Circle of Excellence could be individual states, as outlined above, or a shared resource state.

Mary Ann Reynolds & The 12 States of Attention

NLP Practitioner Mary Ann Reynolds spoke at last Tuesday’s Austin NLP Meetup. She blogged the exercises and stories for her presentation, and the links below lead to the related entries, or websites for Tom Best and Nelson Zink.

Mary Ann Reynolds managed to succeed at the impossible task of engaging advanced NLP students and beginners, all in the same room – by using a foundation of existing NLP materials, making them her own, and expanding upon them.

And she did that with Nelson Zink’s 12 States of Attention. After hearing Tom Best read from Nelson’s book The Structure of Delight during her NLP Practitioner class, she bought the book and started playing. She took a Nightwalking class. She researched how the eye works. She started practicing peripheral vision on the Austin greenbelt. And she started experimenting with the 12 states.

Mary Ann did several things that new presenters could learn from. First, she did that thing we all know we should do but never actually do: she gave herself plenty of time to prepare – months, in fact. She also got together with an experienced speaker and talked through her ideas. Nice. She copiously wrote out each of her exercises and stories for the night. And she did a practice run, by herself, to work out timing.

Very elegantly, she started out by talking about a recent trip to West Texas, lingering upon each of the 12 states. I do love a good isomorphic story.

One of my favorite exercises was the astonishingly simple Rapidly Moving Through the 12 States. It’s an easy way to practice specific examples of each of the 12 states, and could be done in a minute or two every day.

She also did a brief hypnotic induction about, I assume, the 12 states. I really can’t remember anything except a very clear vision of myself and my friends on the beach in Hana, Maui, under the full moon, brimming with joy. That was certainly worth a little amnesia!

One of the things I adore about Mary Ann is her unapologetic demeanor. The 12 states of Attention and Nightwalking are… a little weird. Really, anything that expands the filters with which you take in the world, that literally expands your ability to perceive – could fit in the category of weird for many people. And Mary Ann simply pays it no mind. She puts on her “peripheral training device” (a baseball cap with a rod attached to the bill, suspending a glow-in-the-dark ball out in front) to show people how it works. She describes the 12 states as if she were describing car mechanics. She has you stare at your thumb nail for a full minute. And she does it all with a twinkle in her eye, knowing that you’ll discover something wonderful, too.

Her confidence and presence are certainly unusual for a first-time presenter. She even had a couple of good belly laughs during her presentation! I don’t know where this petite, poised powerhouse is headed with NLP or presenting, but I sure hope to be there for what’s next.

Yin & Yanguage

This last weekend, I participated in Kathleen Radebaugh’s Yin and Yanguage: A Metaphorical Exploration of Creative Process.

I didn’t know what to expect, exactly. But I know Kathleen pretty well, so I knew it would be heartfelt and probably about deep change, or the beginnings of deep change.

From a selfish perspective, I also hoped it would involve her telling stories and putting me into trance. She’s great at these two things. More about that later.

The theory or history of how this class was developed is easy to describe: Kathleen is an NLP Practitioner, she’s done extensive work with Steve Gilligan and his Self Relations/ deep trance work, and she’s the third biggest fan I’ve ever met of David Grove’s Clean Language, Clean Space, and Emergent Knowledge. Add in Kathleen’s bend towards deep change and her recent explorations into her own masculine and feminine sides, and voila, you have Yin and Yanguage.

But what do you actually do in this class? That’s a little more difficult to describe.

Before we get to that, let’s talk results. The classes are purposefully small, so there were 3 of us participants. By the end of the class, I had more awareness of the balance in my own life of yin and yang (there’s not much, thanks for asking!). One participant had started to rewrite his life purpose, which has been the same for over 20 years. The other participant realized she had a limiting belief about flow and productivity being exclusive of each other, and she had started to revise that belief. None of us were thinking much about any of those things when we arrived.

These changes occurred in a 3 hour class.

Next, let’s talk metaphor and trance. I would lick the word crumbs off Kathleen’s fingers, she’s such a masterful storyteller and hypnosis guide. Kathleen is an accomplished novelist and storyteller – of both the literary and the vernacular kinds. And she’s spent years actually practicing hypnosis. The thing we all think of doing when we’re taking the NLP Practitioner series of classes – “hey, I could record my own voice and then put myself in hypnosis,” – she actually did that, over and over, enough that she achieved the outcome of those trances, within a year: she successfully sold her Florida house in the midst of a housing bust, got rid of most of her possessions, and moved to Austin.

Add those skills to her latest passion: David Grove, Penny Tompkins, and James Lawley’s work. She’s only taken a day class in these topics, and she is indeed “self taught.” But she doesn’t just sit around and read books. She uses what she learns to practice on herself and anyone else she can get an audience with who really wants personal change. She’s self taught in the way that means “she actually taught herself” instead of “she has no clue what’s going on because she’s only read books.” (As a side note, she does have immediate plans to take classes with the wonderful, talented, and informative Penny and James in England.)

So, you can tell I understand what she’s up to, mostly. Or at least I have a map of it :)

Besides understanding what she’s doing, I also happen to think it’s a very powerful class for personal change.

I’ll attempt to describe how the class actually works. Everyone arrives and mills around and says hello to each other. Kathleen welcomes folks and issues a simple set of instructions involving a box, a number, and you doing some writing/ drawing or something of that sort. You do some arranging of those items per her direction. Then, Kathleen uses her magical powers of metaphor and deep hypnosis to take you into trance while you create something -- anything. The class oscillates between creating in trance and arranging in space, creating in trance and arranging in space.

This class is not for people who prefer lengthy descriptions of why they’re doing something. But, if you want to spend a few hours with that dear friend, your right brain, knowing that any response you have is just right, this could be the class for you.

That’s a bit of a lame description, isn’t it? Let’s see….maybe something metaphorical...

Imagine yourself walking in a beautiful, verdant forest where you feel perfectly safe and fully at peace. Take a moment to look around and notice the bark on the trees, what’s beneath your feet, how the sunlight is coming through the trees. Every leaf, every bug buzzing across your path, every forest bird call, even the sunlight dappling through the forest canopy, and the sound of your own footsteps reminds you of your innate ability to create, and create you do.

When you work with your life issues, goals, dreams, and blocks in that space, so much can happen.